The Great Schlep
September 26th, 2008
There’s one last Japan post to happen, but before that…
The Great Schlep from The Great Schlep on Vimeo.
Categories: My Life, Smart Things
Mother, may I take five giant steps?
September 15th, 2008
Free again from the strictures and bindings of towns, we returned to the mountains for Temple 20. Kakurinji Temple of the Crane Forest was a far less arduous hike than the tripe up Temple 12, but it was no less tiring. We started on the road, would up around the base of the mountain, and then, finally, reached the dirt trail. Even at seven in the morning, the day was hot and muggy. Wisely, we stopped for fresh, cool water every time it was made available.
Along the road, we avoided someone spraying pesticides in a space-suit (really, it looked like the Intel Bunny Guy - I used to have one, but someone stole it off my desk), accepted Ossetai of tomatoes and cucumbers (and salt! She gave us a salt shaker!), and we found 
a Grateful Dead sticker on a car. This last novelty prompted me to start singing all the Dead songs I could remember, as well as any camp songs.
The trip was hard, don’t get me wrong, but once we got on the mountain and off the road, I was doing much better. It was steeper with fewer switchbacks than anything we’d yet done. At one point, we walked up some small stairs rather than follow the trail because it was easier. Mountain King Boone met his match, and by the time we got to the temple, everyone was beat. We ate some ’salad a fresco’, the last granola bars, and chugged our water.
We had arrived at the temple just as it opened, and a priest ran out to show up the fresh water (which was from a hose, so naturally there was a little spraying of personage involved). The place was cool, safe and very wonderful. We listened to the early morning serenade of nature and in general we were pleased with ourselves. A couple little old ladies had driven up, and gave us the stink eye that we’d beaten them (or that we were gaijin, it was unclear). Dad helped everyone tape up knees and feet while we relaxed. It was only 10:30AM, but already it was in the mid 80s (F), and we had another mountain to climb.
That was the plan, at least. We were intending to hike back down 20, follow the road around the mountain to 21, and the up 21. Boone and I speculated on how this wouldn’t happen. As we made the short (2.6km) trek down, the steepness was brutal. My knee was holding up okay, though, because it wasn’t as twisty turny. That and it was taped up. Boone’s feet started to swell up, sadly, and nothing was helping them. The really hard part was when we got to the Giant Steps. They were so wide you always ended up stepping down on the same foot. It was like playing Mother May I.
Even taped up, we all petered out at the bottom. Too hot, too tired, too sore, and it wasn’t even noon! One member of our party couldn’t tie his shoes. He had to wrap the laces around the whole of his shoe instead! Thankfully, while Shikoku is remote and lacks WiFi, it has a great bus system, taxis and phones. One 11km car ride later, we were at the Minshuku for the night. The rooms were, surprisingly, ready, so we stashed our gear and took a Gondola up the back side of 21. Had we walked, it would have only been 6 or so km, but the Gondola only comes up the back of 21.
Temple 21 is, by far, the richest of all the temples. It was so huge and sprawling, Boone and I got lost trying to find everything. After wandering and exploring, we found everything and everyone, including the party members who opted to walk. We took the Gondola back down just as the rain started. It was a nice drizzle and quickly turned into a downpour when we hit the hotel. The valley, as Dad explained, was in a micro climate, and thus was totally different than the rest of Japan.
I was, yet again, the only woman at the hotel. They were expecting a group of women who were Henroing by bus later that evening, so I was asked to wait for my bath. I was fine with that, and figured out how to pick up Sumo on the TV. We watched with the sound off while Dad and Boone and the boys got their bath in. I had to wait over an hour, but finally around 5pm, I got my turn. After all that fuss about making sure the Gaijin Girl didn’t have to bathe with the boys, what do you think happened? A dude walked in. I was shaving my legs, like you do, and washing my hair when in walked the guy. He went to the far corner of the the bathroom, I stayed in mine, and we didn’t look at each other. I really could have done without it, truth be told, but I was in Japan, and that’s just how it goes.
Sumo was still on when I got back, and I told the boys what had happened. Dad was pleased that I hadn’t lost my hippie bohemian ways living in Chicago. Generic nudity is something I can easily separate from sexual nudity. Boone was a little surprised and I think worried. He’s 17, it’s hard to tell concern on a teenager’s face sometimes. The joke turned out to be on the dude, of course. Five women went in after me, his tour group, and proceeded to give him shit. He was apparently supposed to wait until they had finished. At dinner, he was pretty much mortified about the whole thing.
Categories: Henro 2008
Space Pen: Lost
September 4th, 2008
After the relatively easy day, traveling with a fun group and having entertaining conversations, there were only four of us at the Japan Rail (JR) station that morning. Instead of walking, we caught the rail to Choden station at from there walked to Temple 18. Though it wasn’t rush hour (as I understand it, we were a little late), and school was out, the train was full but not crowded at all. 
The parking lot is small (maybe enough room for a couple cars), but that doesn’t bother anyone as the majority of the folks seem to walk or bike. Given how crowded the train was with students, though, I was a little confused that everyone was telling me there was a school break.
The students that were on the train were, for the most part, on their way to clubs or extracurriculars. They still wear their uniforms, which prompted my father to make the inevitable Sailor Moon comments. But here I was able to flaunt my knowledge and trump him in JapanLore (Natural 20!) because I knew that their uniforms change based on school, season and occasion. Much like my first high school, they have regular and dress uniforms. That said, unlike Canadian Academies (and apparently like my old school is now), they don’t get options in the uniforms.
Of course, this doesn’t stop the girls, and it was mostly girls. They were just like any high school student I’ve ever met. They joked and teased each other, rolled up their skirt waistbands so the hem was above the knee, crammed in last second homework, etc etc. Some of them slept, but for the most part, it was kids going to school.
The only odd thing about the train ride was that at the the transfer hub, they took off the last two cars, in order to make things more efficient. I demanded this be explained, and apparently they’ve been doing train studies in Japan since forever, and know where each train rider is at all times, within a reasonable error rate. This explained why the train was still crowded, even though there were fewer riders. They had less cars in the ‘off’ season! The entire system is a finely tuned … machine.
From the station, the hike to Temple 18 was murderous. It was almost 90 degrees on some of the ugliest stretches of road I’d seen yet on Japan. The landscape was dull and boring, the architecture was uninteresting and really I could have been anywhere. When we finally got to some shade, the track was muddy and Boone got his feet wet. Then we had an uphill that was pure pain and made Dad miserable. Oddly, I was feeling much better than I had at Temple 12, but really that wasn’t saying all that much.
Temple 18 used to be off limits to women, until Kobo-Daishi came with his mother (who I think was a nun at that point). He sat outside and prayed for a very long time, possibly did some special spell or chant, and then suddenly women were allowed. The translations for some of the histories were a bit rough, so you got to make up your own reasoning for a lot of the Temples. Now that women were allowed in, the Temple became known as The Mountain of Gratitude to Parents. Boone and I told Dad ‘Thank you’ a lot as we walked back down.
As hard as the hike up had been, going down was worse. My knee had held up pretty well on the flat ground, but it was a return to stabbing pain in the outside of my kneecap with every step. I ended up walking backwards down parts of the hill to take the pressure off my knee, which everyone found amusing and worrying. Still, all our spirits were high when we hit the flat ground and starting cruising along again through the town.
Temple 19 was one I had mistaken for the one with a bunch of crutches in the yard. The logic was that at this one temple, people were magically healed of walking injuries, so they’d leave their crutches and stuff. Instead, this is the temple where I realized I’d lost my Space Pen. I even dumped my bag out to try and find it, but alas, it was lost in Japan. For the first time since my arrival, I swore. As soon as I had, I started to laugh at myself, whipped out my backup ballpoint pent and returned to my notes.
We all decided a break was in order, and Dad taped up Boone’s feet while I wrote. The poor boy’s feet had started to swell up, he had bugbites and blisters and he was overheated and tired. I was trying hard to keep hydrated and by lunch I’d downed over two liters. We had 10km let to get to the hotel, but everyone was so grouchy and at some level of miserable. Too hot, too sore, too tired. I could pound out the miles on flat ground, so long as I was staying hydrated, but Boone the Mountain King was dying. He’s just not build for this heat, as his British Isles genetics have dominance over his fair complexion. In short: Boone’s Whitey McWhiteStein. At least I’ve got some of the Mediterranean in me.
The last 10km were a slaughter. The map said it was 10k, and the signs said it was 10k, but after an hour of hiking, the signs got to 7km left and stayed there for another hour. I knew that I could run a 5k in 30 minutes, and walk it in an hour. That meant that after the two hours, we should have been a lot closer than ‘7′. And yet. We had to stop to buy breakfast and dinner, since the hotel had no kitchen, was just one more damn thing going on. As the weather hit 32C and we stopped for the nth time to breathe, I staged a rebellion. Give me a bus, or give me death. My knee was extra painful, Boone had turned taciturn in his flip-flops, and Dad was grumpy, loathe though he was to admit this.
The hotel was small, lacking a kitchen, but they had a huge eating area and a small sitting room. The bathing room was decent sized, and as I was the only woman in the joint (again), I went last and got it all to myself. At dinner, Boone and I geeked out and talked about RPGs while we ate ramen and other convenience store crap food. We watched TV for the first time in Japan, since our brains were too awake and we were physically tired and uninspired. The show was a political soap drama with a fellow who looked like Robert Downey Jr. and a man who was faking his own death (there were also newspaper reporters, long lost siblings and other regular soap crazy stuff). Then we watched a kids sports competition show with a game that was a cross between badminton, football with a paper airplane and cosplay.
I did not make that up.
Categories: Henro 2008
Reflection of Self
August 26th, 2008
If every other Henro from our hotel hadn’t been on the same bus, I might have felt a little guilty. But. We’d all had a shit-kicker of a hike, followed by a painful night with no AirCon (AC to me), a morning that started at 4am with a rooster I promptly named C’oq au Vin, and we were pretty much all pooped. Obaa-san (the little old lady) and the young strong guys were all with us on the bus, and we Henro filled up the bus when it came. Thankfully we were all clean and had been able to wash our clothes.
From Temple 12 to 13 was 13k on it’s own, but the bus zipped us along a welcoming river where, even at 8am, families were camped out trying to beat the heat. There were innertubers and swimmers, people setting up coolers and barbecues, and then, of course, folks just relaxing. Even from the bus we could see the trout jumping while the swans and cranes got their feet wet. I was struck by a mad desire to get out and walk, just to better admire the day. My father wanted to go fly fishing. Neither of us did these things.
At Temple 13, we four became six and change, when our friends from the last hotel decided to hike with us. Obaa-san and the young man, as well as the fellow with swollen feet, and another young man who was camping outside everything, walked with us for the entire day. This was normal, to pick up traveling companions as you went along. 
The walking was much easier, even though it was hotter and less windy. I didn’t even mind we were walking through towns. Most likely it was because there were no hills, but also the company was nice. I began to think of the day as a stroll. On the hike to Temple 12, I’d had no idea how far I’d gone or how long I’d been walking far, or how far we had left to go. I had existed in a little, surreal, bubble. Now I was easily measuring distance, time, and my own pace.
Still, the heat was painful on our joints, and we stopped frequently to pick up cool water at every opportunity. At one such 7-11, the owner insisted we stop and partake of his fresh, home-grown, tomatoes. We ended up carrying them along in our packs, as we couldn’t eat that many.
After having been to only one temple the day before, the subsequent five were so close that we zipped past them in almost a blur. 
Temple 14 was the moon landing temple, and was only a half kilometer away from temple fifteen (which had been newly rebuilt after burning down). Sadly, at this point we ran into hordes of bus and car Henro.
We lost our hiking companions between 16 and 17, because we made a pit stop at our hotel. Most minshuku are open from 3pm to 9am, and they’re much more like a B&B than a hotel. You get 2 meals, bathing privileges, and a room with tatami floors and thin mattresses. The problem was that since we’d taken the bus partway, we were hours too early. It was only noon! The rooms weren’t ready, and we didn’t want the owner to fuss over us. We did leave our bags, as a promise to return and stay there, and went on to get lunch in town.
This was the first, and only, time on Henro that I did not eat Japanese food. Instead, we had Chinese. The only real difference between Japanese style Chinese food, and American style Chinese food, that I noticed was the food was less saucy. It was wonderful, though, and as chance would have it, our walking partners caught up with us! Since the restaurant was empty, we politely waited for them to eat and cool off before taking them to Temple 17.
At lunch I kept thinking that nothing I had read or been told sufficiently prepared me for Henro. Even having read Oliver Statler’s Japanese Pilgrimage after my trip, I feel like the only thing I know about Henro is not enough. By this point in my journey, I’d walked two-thirds of our intended route along the Dojo of Awakening Faith. I had to begin accepting the possibility that I, a self-professed writer, was unable to explain or prepare anyone for Henro.
The devout Buddhists I asked told me that Henro was simply Henro. The pilgrimage is a private journey, and while anyone cal tell you what to pack and how to travel safely, no one can tell you what to expect on an internal voyage. When my time is shared with my brother, we learn about our shared loves — comics, TV, RPGs, and music. We trade stories about school, life, religion, our father and his wives. But while we may spend an hour or five talking, we spend at least equal time in our own silence.
And that’s what I can’t explain.
At Temple 13, I talked to the fellow who was camping outside everything. He was about my age and planned to visit all 88 temples. He and I chatted about religions and America, while we waited behind a woman who was getting books stamped for the dozen people in her tour group. He wanted to know how many people in America knew about this (few) and if we were all Christians (mostly), and why I was there. While we parted ways at Temple 17, I spent a lot of time thinking about his questions.
Temple 17 was frustrating and really interesting at the same time. There were hordes upon hordes of tourists there. While I cheerfully accept people who choose to bicycle, drive or motorcycle Henro, the bus people who were being led by guides bothered me. It’s not that it’s an invalid way to visit O-Henro, and in truth I’m thrilled that these people are getting out there. 
They were just so damn noisy. It was almost like being back in the US again, with the sound of chattering and gossiping, and then sometimes prayer. All the serenity was sucked out of the experience. We took time to look down the well where, if you don’t see your reflection, you’ll come to a bad end soon. I wanted to bring some of the water back for my cousins, but Dad reminded me I’d never get the liquid past security. Instead, we talked about imagery, reflection and dream visualization, pulling in Helen Keller and The Who’s Tommy as our references.
The day ended up being a cooker, in the high 80s, with no humidity, and it sucked the life right out of me. The hotel’s bath was so hot, I could barely get in it and had to soak my body by degrees. The rooms were huge, though I later found out they’d given us two rooms due to the hotel being mostly empty. Even with a good, long rest at Temple 17, we were still at the hotel a little early, and ended up showered and soaked with two hours to go. I didn’t feel as tired, but I ended up falling asleep before dinner. After dinner we watched baseball.
Dad’s favorite team is the Tigers, who are a mix of the Cubs, Indians and Red Sox — everyone loves them, and they always lose. Two or three years ago, they had the best record in baseball, and lost the series in four straight games. And they lost big. We’re talking 10-2 and 13-4 big. The game went very fast. They start at 6pm and have to be done by 10pm, so everyone can catch a train home and be at work tomorrow at a decent hour. They’re by far superior to the current level you see in the US, and yet they have rules limited the number of gaijin you can have on a team because it’s an advantage. If they only knew.
Categories: Henro 2008
Masters of the Understatement
August 19th, 2008
In retrospect, I’m really glad that I hiked the 10 miles to Temple Twelve. By this point, we were doing 10-12 miles a day, so the distance was never the issue to me. The mountain was my issue.
To tell a tale out of sequence, I’m currently in Physical Therapy to fix my right knee, because of this mountain. Essentially all the lateral (side to side) motion on my knee tore the cartilage under my kneecap, and forced the knee muscles to do the work my ankle and thigh should have been doing. Beth, my Therapist, is having me strengthen those muscles now. I’m 31, in decent shape, I can walk for days on end, and the mountain shredded my knee on the downhill.
The night before, we had an option to send our packs on ahead to the next Minchuku (hotel), and hike more easily. Or at least, a little lighter. The problem was the timing. We’d gotten to our Minchuku a little late that day and in order to get the packs sent ahead, we’d have to get up at 5am, walk down a couple miles to the train, send them ahead, and then after hiking the mountain, hike a few miles past that night’s hotel to the train station to pick them up. We decided it was too much of a pain and didn’t do it. I think part of that was my stupid idea. Then again, I think the extra walking would have been worse (for me) than the extra weight.
The first four miles were up a gentle, rising slope. While we weren’t making our usual 15 minute miles, we were going at a pretty decent pace. I knew it was just about 10 miles to the temple and another couple down to the hotel, so I thought that a total of 12 miles wouldn’t be that bad. At the first rest point, we met the little old lady from the night before, as well as a middle-aged man with swollen feet. They were taking a long break (it was only about 9 or 10am) and eating the lunch the hotel had given us. We sat long enough to cool off, drink some water, and carry on.
It was there that we also met Fern (no photo available). Now, his name wasn’t actually Fern at all. He was a 63 year-old retiree and told us he liked to hike up this mountain every day in clear weather. I misunderstood him and thought he meant that he did the whole hike from Temple 11 to Temple 12 every day. As he explained, he hiked the 6k (3.5 miles) to the top of the 600 meter mountain, and even then, only in good weather. Why do I call him Fern? In the second season of the reality show The Amazing Race (TAR), my favorite contestants Danny and Oswald met a teen girl named Fern who ditched school to help them on the Bangkok leg. From then on, any helpful native guide is a Fern. Boone, who also watches the show, caught the joke.
Fern talked to me and Boone the whole way up to the 600 meter altitude. He told us about the history of the mountain, how he’d had hip replacement and this was his therapy, and about anything else that came to mind. He showed up a part of the forest that was ‘dead’ (it didn’t get enough sun), and was happy to point out good photo ops for me. Essentially, he was a great guy. We went well under his normal pace, and many times suggested he go on ahead, but Fern was determined to stick with us. Finally we had to part ways, but from the vantage point he pointed out Temple Ten, miles away, across the rive and the mountain we’d crossed yesterday. Already we were that much higher, and could see three miles away with ease.
After Fern left, the hike got nasty. While we had Fern to distract us with stories about his life and the area, the hike had been pretty easy. The road was gentle, the view majestic, and the path was straight forward. But after those first six miles, I wanted to die. Between the heat (nudging 90F), the packs (7kilo), the humidity (88%) and everything else, I got way too overheated. It was at the point that my sweat stopped being salty and I couldn’t figure out where my sunburn ended and my skin started. In the end, I slowed down, sat down on a rock, stripped off my Hakui (the jacket) and chugged as much water as I could without making myself sick. Dad was sure I had heatstroke, and I probably was only moments away from it, to be honest. But I sat still until I could breath without gasping, then I stretched out. After fifteen minutes, I clipped the hakui to my bag, turned my pants into shorts, and started walking again.
The thing is, once we got to the temple, I bounced back pretty fast. I drank a cold (ice cold) bottle of water, another half-liter of coolish water, and then poured water over my legs and arms. As soon as my skin cooled down, I regained that ability to control my core temp. You don’t know how important it is until it takes a piss. I had promised my brother ice cream, so we went and found some ‘Crunky’ ice cream bars, and a woman insisted we have some green tea as well. The hot tea worried me a little, but the store had AC, so I didn’t mind at all. As we sat in the shade and relaxed, I felt vindicated, good and strong.
The Japanese have at least one temple in each Prefecture designated as a Nansho, or a ‘dangerous’ place. My favorite definition was that a Nansho is a ‘perilous’ temple. The idea behind it is that even in this day and age, with bus and motorcycle Henro becoming the popular way to travel, the folks all decided that each of the four prefectures ought to have at least one reminder of how hard it was to do O-Henro. Of course, the only temple I know of that you can’t drive or take a gondola up to is either 61 or 66, but that’s beside the point. We hiked up a Nansho, and we wanted to make an O-Henro t-shirt. It had taken us seven hours to do 10 miles, and now a couple more hours of hiking lay between us and our hotel.
The walk down was hardest for me, but in a totally different way. It was cooling down, so we didn’t feel so drained, and the hike went faster. It was just harder on my knees, with the constant switchbacks. I started to feel a stabbing pain in the outside of my knee with every step I took (which is why I’m now in PT). Along the way down, we stopped at the statue of Emon Saburo, which marked his grave. The man was really the reason people walk Henro. After rich land owner Emon Saburo was a total jerk to Kobo-Daishi, his sons all rolled up dead. Recognizing it as karma in action, Emon Saburo took off after Kobo-Daishi, following him around the temple circuit, to apologize for being a twit.
After a few rounds of the temple and never being able to catch up, Emon Saburo had a great idea. He’d walk backwards around the temples, and thus was sure to catch up to Kobo-Daishi. Coming up the back of temple Twelve, he had a heart attack and fell down. As he lay there, dying, who should arrive but Kobo-Daishi. Emon Saburo begged for forgiveness, and Kobo-Daishi said he was already forgiven. Then he asked what he could do for Emon Saburo’s next life, and the dying man asked to be reborn as a rich lord, but this time, he’d help the poor. Kobo-Daishi took a stone, wrote on it, put it in Emon’s hand, and then Emon died. He stuck Emon’s Kongo-Tsue (the walking stick) in the ground and a cedar tree bloomed (the tree by the statue is the second generation tree). 
Nine months later, Lord Iyo had a son who was born with his hand in a fist. A priest was brought to free up the kid’s hand, at which point they found he’d been holding a stone all this time. The stone read ‘I am the reincarnation of Emon Saburo.’ The boy grew up to be a kind and conscientious ruler of his people.
The statue has Emon kneeling before Kobo-Daishi, who is pressing a stone into his hand. Nearby is the tree.
The statue was the half-way marker on our trip from the temple to the hotel, and due to the switchbacks, it felt like a lot longer. I’m not sure if the map was ‘crow files’ distance or true foot pounder. Even though we made it in just over an hour, it felt like two. As we got in, I paused to try and get a couple photos of the koi when Boone called out “You’re not gonna believe who’s here.”
There was the little old lady! She was showered and clean, just chillin’ outside the hotel and having a smoke before dinner. I was astounded since we’d passed her up hours ago and I’d never seen her after that. We asked and, apparently, someone picked her up at the temple and offered to drive her down.
As she and I were the only women at the hotel, and there was but one bathing room, all the boys had to go get clean in a hurry so I could have a long soak before dinner. It’s good to be the Queen sometimes! I sorted out the laundry while I was waiting, and by the time I was cleaned and fed, I was about ready to fall over. There was no AC, a piddly fan (which we aimed at Boone, since he was a fussy sleeper, my knee hurt, and all I wanted was a comfy bed. Instead we got the thinnest futons I’ve ever slept on (my exercise mat is softer), and our door had a ‘window’ into the hallway, where a light was on 24/7. I don’t think any of us slept well, for all that we were in bed by 8pm.
Categories: Henro 2008
We Interrupt This Program …
August 13th, 2008
We interrupt this program (a recap of a trip to Japan) with an Olympic update.
NBC has many problems with their website, least of which is how difficult it is to find out who won what on the mobile version. 
Last night, many people on the East Coast went to bed before the Womens Gymnastic Finals were completed, and woke up to news that China had won the Gold. In looking on the NBC Olympic Mobile site, you could find report after report that the Chinese had won gold, Romania had won bronze, but nowhere, in most articles, did they mention that USA had won silver, leaving it up to be inferred by the reader. While the medal index for Gymnastics correctly awards the medals to the appropriate winners, the Medalists Index (which lists the names of winning competitors) held a shocking revelation. According to that page, the USA won gold, China won silver and Russia the bronze. As of 2pm Eastern US time, this has not been corrected, even after NBC was contacted and informed of the error.
This is only the latest in a series of ‘Ooops! My bad!’ from NBC, including labeling taped events as ‘live’ to the West Coast, neglecting to explain that the fireworks seen in the opening ceremonies were CGI, and forgoing coverage of athletes not named Michael Phelps. When added to the controversy over Chinese gymnasts being underage, doping scandals, a Blue Screen of Death during the opening ceremonies, and Free Tibet protesters, the Chinese Olympics are shaping up to be exactly as expected.
We will return you to Mika’s ongoing recap of her trip to Japan on Monday, with a post about the hike up Temple Twelve. Thank you.
Categories: Sports
A Dainty Japanese Girl
August 11th, 2008
The only Western food I’d had since the flight (which was Asian Kosher) were the Quaker Oats granola bars I’d packed. My father had mocked me, initially, but as we all have a tendency to get grumpy when we don’t eat, and Boone is a diabetic, I felt they were needed. In the end, they were a lifesaver. All of our other food was Japanese, and while I loved most of it, I did get to be missing a bagel or some oatmeal around breakfast time. On the other hand, there was vending machine coffee that was actually amazing.
You really can’t explain Henro without the smells and sounds. The familiar drone of traffic was drowned out by the rushing water in the rice patties, the Om of people praying at road-side shrines, the caw of crows and the croaks of a bullfrog chorus. As we walked, our Kongo-tsue’s bells chimed in peaceful, if non-rythmic, harmony. Even in the 90-deg (F) heat, the incense didn’t put me to sleep, but made me feel more a part of everything. I was becoming aware of the things that were important, and not just what I wanted to think about.
We started out early, cruising through three temples as if this was something we did every day, and were in fantastic shape and preparation. The hills were long, with a lot of paved up and down, but gentle enough that we drank water and made jokes about the ‘No Swimming’ signs that looked like people were being mutated into teenage mutant ninja turtles if they tried. Temple Eight was reached as the sun climbed over the mountain, and while the temple was small, it was very well cared for. A small hondo, not related to the temple it self, was positioned in the small lake. They also had cold water for our water bottles. Knowing how hot the day was supposed to become, we gladly accepted.
One of the temples we saw that day, Temple 10, had 330 steps. 
It’s the temple of the weaver woman, who was (or became) an avatar of Kannon. Possibly she was Kannon herself in human form. The translation was a bit unclear, though perhaps that’s the point of it. The woman insisted on making Kobo-Daishi a new robe, and once she did, she was transformed. Maybe it’s a blessing on Kobo-Daishi for respecting Kannon or maybe for just respecting women. At any rate, it was explained that this was a temple of great importance to women and I should pay attention. We walked up the 330 steps, through a wild forest of Hortensia, just to get to the hondo.
The seven kilometers from there to Temple 11 were long and hard. The distance was short, but I was presented with the first attack of the concrete jungle. We walked across two long bridges, crossing the river twice, and marveling at the breeze (so refreshing) and the water (ditto). But the heat took it’s toll on us all, and the burning sear that rose up from the pavement worked its way into our shoes and feet, making every step feel like four. The payoff was worth it, mind you, as the temple was tucked into the foothill of the mountain and was surrounded by trees. As we’d hiked, the road of urbanity had given way to the provincial outlying area, and then finally to the trees. Suddenly, you were isolated.
The road to Temple Twelve leads directly from the back of Eleven, but that road is far, far too long to even attempt to hike in one night, unless you’re planning to camp out. We went to a hotel instead where, at long last, we connected with other people walking O-Henro. The season for Henro is the spring, but there were a fair number of hikers out in the early part of summer. A great deal more people drive (or bicycle or motorcycle) O-Henro in the summer, so many of the smaller hotels close. On the other hand, you get very personal attention when you do show up, since you’re bringing them extra money. The part I liked best was being the only woman at most of the places we stayed. While my brother had to bathe with our father, I had the smaller bathing rooms all to myself.
That night at dinner they served pork, and I had to explain that I didn’t eat pork, shellfish, or certain other foods out of religious discipline. I had decided before I went that I was not going to ask any hotel owner to make me a special meal. I knew it would be rude and imposing, and a lot of the smaller places weren’t going to have anything else to offer. Also, every meal came with a lot of vegetables, so my plan was to trade with my father. I gave him the pork and took his veggies (and some sweet potato). It was perfect to me, and I ate my fill. Our hostess noticed this exchange and declared me to be a ‘dainty Japanese girl,’ which made everyone in the family laugh. I love me some good food, and I can pack it away with the best of ‘em.
Thankfully, no one was offended by my actions, especially after I told them it was due to religious choices. In fact, many people became even more impressed with me at that point and my crazy Gaijin family. My brother, being a Buddhist, only got funky looks when people realized the skinny, tall white boy was the worshiper and the other two were there because we loved him. Dad speaks Japanese pretty well now, and they accepted him right away. Then there was first timer noob, me, who stood out. Of course, everyone in Japan knows how to say ‘Mika,’ so I’ll take the funny looks.
At dinner there were few people. Our little table of four, a fellow with sore feet, a young dude we never saw again, and a little old lady. Now, you call little old ladies ‘Obba-chan’, but I couldn’t remember that and thus Boone and I named her ‘Biddy-chan.’ Obba-chan was traveling alone and was 85. Her goal was to hit all 88 temples, and I was rather impressed. We compared our sunburns and bug bites, and then went off to rest while a young fellow with a goatee staggered in, late. After dinner, she thought my room was hers and, since we didn’t lock the doors, walked right in. After a brief Mexican stare-off and a lot of ’sumimasen’ (I’m sorry), she went to the right room and everyone went to bed before sunset.
Temple Twelve, we had been assured, was going to be hard.
Categories: Henro 2008
You will always walk with me
August 4th, 2008
On our second day, we had a trek of 14.2km, which is just under 7 miles, and really isn’t all that far at all. At some point I stopped keeping track of kilometers and millage and all that sort of thing. It stopped mattering. We started out our day at 7am, following a lovely breakfast with iced coffee. Normally I hate iced coffee, it tastes wrong and the sugars are screwed up. In Japan, the sugar comes in a syrup, laced with agave to keep it liquid. It’s genius and simple and someone at the coffee chains here needs to pick up on that.
Again the hike was more of a walk. When we got to the mountains, a few days later, the real hike began. The adventure always begins in a town, though, and so did ours. Travelers who met in a bar or in (or a train station) pack up and begin their escapade on the streets and roads of the town. The paths are easier to follow this way. Even The Wizard of Oz began on the Yellow Brick Road. But while the paths are marked, sometimes a fork in the road proved bewildering and comical. There were easily identifiable route markers of a little Henro in red, stuck on poles and roadway guards. The problem with them was that they marked both the Walking Henro and the Driving Henro. These stickers later were differentiated by a Henro in a car sticker and a Henro walking sticker, which helped. Also, the stickers were the ‘New’ Henro trail markers, and the older counterpart was far more helpful. Eighteen inch tall, or there about, these stone markers listed the temple number, the name in Kanji, the distance, and an arrow or hand pointing the way.
Most of the Old Henro markers were on the more natural trails. On those paths, we walked through woods, on the packed earth tamped down by millions of Henro over the generations. Sometimes we walked in between rice parries, where many people warned us about the one poisonous snake in all of Japan. Naturally I found it many hours later. My brother the naturalist knew that the snake was related to the cobra (he said you could tell by the head). Boone also said that any allergic reactions you have to bugs and plants were often worse than in the US or Europe. I was later able to confirm this as fact, as we all were, when the no-see-ums attacked us en-masse.
Our walk quickly became introspective. Boone and I led the charge until 11 or so, when the heat became soul sucking. The daunting difference of Japan had started to wear off, I now I was able to see it as a country and not as ‘not home.’ In the snake, the 2cm frog, and the birds singing, I began to see the real Japan. It will make Manga and Anime different to me, in the same way that a live concert makes your love for a band even sweeter. As the temperature climbed into the high 80s and the humidity convinced the Holland-made weather sensors that it was raining (it wasn’t), we stopped for a lunch of cold udon noodles across the road from the temple.
The more temples I saw, the more I found each temples differences were rooted in the same core of Buddhism. Some where ancient and rough around the edges, while others were concrete odes to modernity. Many had giant straw sandals hanging in the gates, but every single one had a gate and a shrine and the feeling that you were in a special place. Even though most temples had vending machines and air conditioning for the priests, you felt like you stepped out of the TARDIS into a different time. The way that Bladerunner showed us the neo-cyberpunk future with crusty back alleys contrasting the glittering golden downtown, so did the temples marry a layman’s belief in the simplest of holy things with the organization that comes with almost all modern religions. At the same time, you had a precise order and method to follow, but you were free to pray as you liked. There was no one, right way.
As we walked, people directed us through paths that they thought were more interesting (they were usually right). They also gave us things, gifts called O-settai. You can not refuse these gifts, even if it’s a food you hate or are deathly allergic to. You just take it, thank them, and figure it out later. A woman sold me a coffee on discount, and Dad told me about a fellow who got a six-pack of Coke. Like me, this guy never touched the stuff. Normally you’d shove the give into your pack and sort it out later, but a six-pack is heavy stuff. He had no fellow Henro to share the bounty with, and he really didn’t want to schlep it up a mountain. So the fellow found a roadside shine and left the cans there.
Later that afternoon, a 79-year old man made us come inside, a mere 500 meters from our hotel, and have a cake with bean paste inside. He also gave us a shot of Apple Juice that was, of all things, CRC approved. In the notebook of people who’d visited, there was a thank you written in Quebecois (which I pointed out was not French, and the authors were not using some special private language, but Dad didn’t believe me). This couple had been traveling with their 9 month old baby, only a few weeks ahead of us. The baby was fine. Just around the corner, quite literally, was the hotel where the owner not only knew my father, but adored him. He has that schtick.
They took our clothes to do our laundry, brought us lots of water, insisted on treating my sunburn, discussed how to handle a painful knee, and then took us to the nearby spa. I had assumed it would be a rustic sort of spa, but really it was a modern bathing center built atop a natural spring. Still, the boys went their way, I went mine, and for the first time in Japan, I felt lonely. It wasn’t the lack of English that did it, but the fact that I no longer had a traveling companion. I was the only Gaijin there, none of the women spoke much English, and I felt like Mary Livingston sister, Babe. Go look it up. Outside of the two little old ladies who demanded to know why I was in Japan (O-heno oshimasu), where I was from (Chicago, USA) and why I was alone (my male family were in the other side), I spoke to no one. Mind you, my ’speaking’ was done with a lot of pantomime.
I soaked alone — no one shared my tubs while I was in them, and I caught the hint and went to the smallest ones — and I dwelled on my lack of spiritual movement. It was only the second day, however, and I’d be rather presumptuous to expect epiphany or nirvana after only seven temples. Still, I felt good. While I was walking, I forgot about being in pain or the weight of my backpack, or even that I was tired. I was lonely without my girlfriend, but I wasn’t said because just like how Kobo-Daishi walked with the Henro, so did she. She always walked with me and she always will.
A wise man said we all walk O-Henro for our own reasons, and only one is enlightenment. That night we talked over Sake and a chicken/egg dish we named ‘Mother and Child Reunion’, a yellow watermelon, and ‘Ice Cold’ packs on various sun-burnt body parts. My brother and I re-connected on our shared loves and I started to hear Japanese as a language. What I was hearing began to shift from sound into words, and while I couldn’t tell you what anyone said, I began to understand the feeling behind the meaning.
Categories: Henro 2008
Organically OCD
July 28th, 2008
Last year my father and brother did the Henro trail alone, and along the way they met Sone-san and his son. As Sone-san only has 2/3rds of a heart, his wife doesn’t let him do the hike on his own. In this weird way, we’re doing him a favor by doing this with him, while still acknowledging that he’s doing us the far greater favor in that he has planned and mapped our journey so we can all have fun. To my surprise, there are three days we’re taking a train or a bus part of the way. This is because some of the temples are 30 km apart (18 miles) and we only have 8 days to make it on 23 temples.
Later on I came to understand that the point wasn’t so much how we traveled, but that we traveled. Even walking 90% of the way made us abnormal to the modern Henro. My brother, Boone, was a little upset at all the tour buses, saying it felt anti-Henro. We talked about that for a few miles, but we came to no real conclusions. Henro was different for each person, and perhaps some Henro was better than no Henro.
From the bus stop in Naruto, we walked up a hill and down a town path. It was pretty much all along paved roads, not what I was expecting. The town was very quiet, and the only people we saw were workers. We were the only pilgrims. As we passed by a house called ‘The German House’, Dad and Sone-san explained that the German POWs were housed near here during WWI. 
After the war, they chose to stay because they were treated much better as Japanese POWs than as German citizens. The temple seemed like it was built as an afterthought, with the town swirling around it, but apparently a lot of Japanese villages built the temple first and then everything else around it. From some of the higher vantage points, you can see the almost spiraling pattern, where buildings follow rivers and natural landscapes. They were both organic and exceptionally OCD at the same time.
Before we went in to pray, I had to get the right clothes. While dressing up as an O-Henro is not required, it certainly makes people a lot nicer to you. They recognize you as someone hiking, and are far more forgiving of, among other things, that smell a hiker picks up after a day tromping in the weather. The one thing everyone wore was a hakui, which is a white 3/4ths jacket (sometimes a vest). Even the bus Henro had this one on, and it really became, to me, the symbol of a Henro. All the hikers wore hats, though a surprising minority wore the cone-like Henro-Kasa (or sugegasa). 
Dad said it was too hot to wear, but I found that since it’s perched on your head, it protected me from the sun far better than my ass-hat (tm Miss Alli) and allowed a nice breeze through my hair. Sadly, my hair was still at that annoying ‘between’ state, where it’s too long to wear down and too short tie back without flopping out of the pony tail, so I wore a bandana. This had the cheerful plus side of soaking the sweat off my forehead before it ran down my nose, so no glasses-blisters this time!
All the hikers also had a Kongo-Tsue, which is a walking staff with a bell on it. The staff is cheap, and since you’re supposed to leave it at Mount Koya once you walk all 88, that makes sense. The handle is covered in a blue cloth, and there are some lines from the Heart Sutra embroidered on it. You also have a bell on the Kongo-Tsue, which is supposed to jingle and keep you in the present, or at least reality, and stop you from day dreaming. Anyone who knows me knows that I sit and day dream all the time, so this had no effect on my creative imagination. It’s on 100% all the time. All the walkers also had a sort of murse called a fuda-basami, in which you carry your immediate supplies. For me this included toilet paper and my passport.
If you’re a Buddhist, you also wear a wagesa, which is a scarf about 2 feet long and 3 inches wide. I generally only saw it in shades of purple/blue, though one was almost blood red, and they were all embroidered in gold. The scarf is a sort of layman’s priestly robe, which indicates you’re a general person on a holy pilgrimage. There’s also the Buddhist rosary that you wrap around your hand to pray, though I saw a lot of people with that on 24/7. For reasons obvious, I didn’t wear these.
Boone explained that the white hakui signified death, and that the Henro pilgrim knows they may die on the trail. I noted there that no one mentioned until then the high number of O-Henro who died on the trail, or that there was potential death involved. The staff represented Kobo-Daishi himself, and how the pilgrim leans on the staff, and thus on Kobo-Daishi, who in turn always travels with you.
I also picked up a special book that you get stamped and signed at each temple. You only get each temple page calligraphied once, but every time you visit you get a new stamp. This way, you an tell how many times a fellow Henro has walked the trail. There are also slips of paper called Ofuda, on which you write your name, your address, the date and a prayer (or saying), to leave at each temple, as well as to anyone who gives you a gift (settai) on the trail. I made a habit of writing something different on each of mine, and since you leave two at each temple, and I visitied 23, I had to come up with 46 different sayings. I only put my address on them when I gave an Ofuda to someone as a thank you, or to exchange at the end of an enjoyable time together, and even then I put my email address.
At each temple, you follow a pattern. First you wash your hands and rinse your mouth to clean and purity them for what you’re gonig to do. Second, you ring a giant bell (if it’s there and not being repaired), to announce your presence to the spirits. Then you can go pray. There are two Hondos (or shrines), called the inner and outer Hondo. You go to the outer one first, put an Ofuda in the box, give a small offering (about $.01 to $.05 US), and then read the Heart Sutra, before repeating this at the inner Hondo.
The Heart Sutra is hard to translate, and surprisingly enough, most people I met don’t know what it means. They read it in Sanskrit and don’t bother to translate it into their native language. Some translations are hellishly anti other religions, while some are ‘The Big Who’ of religion, which I can get behind. I chose to read a Big Who version and was pretty content in not setting my personal faith against the one I was choosing not to dis while in Japan. It’s a complex thing, honoring your own religion while not flipping the bird at others, and yet still not being seen to do the wrong thing. At a certain point, you have to accept that people are going to see what they want to see, no matter what you do, and the real issue of doing the right or wrong thing is a personal matter between you and your higher being. Maybe it’s just justification to do what I want, but if the Dalai Llama can eat meat, then I can visit temples and not be wrong either.
After all the praying, you get your book stamped and signed for $3 and go on to the next temple. But don’t think we did all this all ein-zwei, ein-zwei, of course. That’s ‘one-two, one-two’ for those of you who aren’t Eddie Izzard fans. At each temple, even the ones that were only half a kilometer apart, we stopped to rest our feet, drink water, wander about the grounds, admire the natural and the built beauty of the temples and read the history and legend of each one. Sometimes people would stop us to make sure we knew what was going on, and other times they just wanted to know what the Americans were doing in Japan.
That first day we only walked about three miles and I reflected on how Shikoku feels like the Japan I imagined. I always had this idea that Tokyo was a glittering techno-pop, ultra modern Japan (I was wrong there, but there are corridors right out of Bladerunner, to the point that I expected Harrison Ford to rush out). In contrast, rural Japan is sort of stuck in the 1950s and 1960s, just as much of the McHomes of suburban southern California are perennially trapped in the 1980s, when their boom happened. The towns are small and almost fuedal (there’s that word again!), trying to be modern without really knowing how. It made me think about what each culture feels it’s okay to sacrifice, and what we hang onto with our dying breaths. Civility is something I found beautiful in Japan, but I also missed the can-do freedom of America.
Everything felt ‘off’ to my Gaijin eyes. While I was doing my best to try and have as much of a Japanese experience as possible, I felt too tall, too broad, and too clumsy. I didn’t want to try too hard, and lose myself in the trying, but I didn’t want to force my American style on people either. I spent the eight days walking a thin line, conscious of every action I took, and how it was different. The houses weren’t the same either, and they and the cars are thinner, more compact, than in the USA. While Europe has small and thin buildings too, the ones in Shikoku could only belong to Japan. You couldn’t even compare it to the Japanese style houses in the US. Make no mistake, this was Japan.
Just in case I’d had any lingering thoughts or doubts about my location, the hotel room with it’s tatami floors and thin futons hammered it home. We stayed at minshuku, which are a cross between a motel and a bed and breakfast, somehow managing to keep the good aspects of both. They’re fairly cheap, at $40 to $80 a night, per person, and they include dinner, breakfast, and sometimes a packed lunch. Since we were traveling in the off season, and I was sharing a room with the boys, we got a rather huge room every night, bigger than my old studio apartment. The downside was that all the bathrooms and toilets are shared, but as almost every hotel had a Western toilet, I was okay. You also get Ofuro, which I miss terribly. See, in Japan, you shower with a hand-held shower outside the tub (in a bathing ‘area’) and get clean. Once all the soap and dirt is off you, you get into a 40C tub for a soak. I was in love.
At dinner, my skill with chopsticks (hashi, I was corrected) and willingness to try new foods that were ideologically (if not certified - yes, some food was) Kosher impressed the Japanese. At first I was offended by the thought that I was a n00b who didn’t know fuck all about culture, but eventually I learned that a lot of the worst sort of Americans come to Japan, and eat only McDonalds and KFC type food. I couldn’t imagine coming to France and not trying classic French dishes, and the very idea of trying to make your trip ‘familiar’ is repulsive to me. I feel that the purpose of visiting a foreign land is to embrace, as much as you can, that you are the stranger in a strange land, and this is your chance to learn something new.
This is how you grow.
Categories: Henro 2008
A Gaijin’s Journey?
July 21st, 2008
I jokingly wrote ‘O-Henro - A gaijin’s journey that does not end in enlightenment so much as family peace’ on the cover of my first moleskin. At the time I intended to write about what it was like to be a Jewish, American woman in Japan. In the end, I came to realize that none of that mattered in the least. To everyone I met, I was just another pilgrim on the trail. To the rest of Japan, when I had the chance to explain ‘O-Henro oshimasu’ (I am walking Henro), they were equal parts impressed and polite. Most wanted to know if I was really walking (as opposed to taking a tour bus) and how many Americans knew about Henro. The answers were ‘Yes, I’m walking as much as I can’ (about 90%) and ‘No, not many know about this at all).
I was in Japan for 12 days, including 2 on either end for traveling and exploration of the cities Ageo and Tokyo. The other 8 days were spent hiking through towns and hamlets, on roads and trails, in woods and between rice patties, on the small island of Shikoku, following the path of Kobo-Daishi.
To get to Shikoku from Ageo, we took a regular commuter train to Tokyo. While I had taken the train in from the airport, this was my first chance to get a look at the high-tech and highly social system. While the rail systems (and there are more than I took time to count) are all a little different, they have very basic rules that only work because the culture doesn’t allow for social screwups. The social engineer in my father brought my brother and I to discuss the many ways we could break the system and ride for free, but no one in Japan would even think about doing such a horrible thing.
For example. If someone on the train has headphones on, you have to afford them the virtual privacy that the overcrowding does not provide. Buy by that same token, if the headphone wearing person goes to buy coffee and does not remove the headphones, they’re being rude by pushing their personal space into the barissta’s. We do that similarly in the USA, but I suspect with a much lower success rate.
And the fact that the trains are clean, efficient, on time and fairly energy friendly makes the US system look stupid. Of course, the cost is a lot higher ($10 a day, easily, to get into and out of Tokyo from Ageo, depending on which rail you take), but the longest I waited for a train past it’s planned arrival was 3 minutes.
The tech on the trains is a mix of super hi-tech and plain old paper. One can buy a ticket with your cellphone and then beam the info to the turnstile to ‘pay’ with your cell phone account, or you can buy paper (from a person or a machine) and feed it into the turnstile, or you can get a smart card and swipe it. You can upgrade from American ass-to-elbow subway crowded, standing room only, into comfortable Amtrak seats, and there are reserved trains that run express. And then again, it depends on what type of train you’re on and what time of day it is. The options were mind boggling.
I see I’ve already gone back on my word to tell this as a story of just my Shikoku adventure. Melvillian aspirations aside, you have to appreciate the delicate balance of Japan’s duality if you can ever hope to comprehend Henro for the modern city girl. Tokyo, for example, is not as modern as downtown Chicago, but by far it’s more technologically advanced. Unlike American cities, there’s no zoning, so a house is beside an office building and a Starbucks and so on. Also they don’t tear things down quite so often, so your view from Tokyo Tower is a patchwork quilt of generations of buildings.
While Shikoku is the least technologically advanced islands of Japan, as near as I can figure, as well as being the smallest, it still sports the dichotomy particular to Japan: Feudal Science. To those of us familiar with Manga or Anime, this makes perfect sense. Giant robots (science) fighting with swords (Samurai) in space (science again). The nation, at it’s heart, appears to want to be in a simpler, more OCDly organized way. At the same time, they understand how isolated they are, and that to survive, they have to adapt.
After you take the high-tech express train to Kobe, there’s a more 1950s bus to go to Shikoku. We went to Naruto, to start at Temple #1. I learned later that a lot of peopel start at Mount Koya, where Kobo-Daishi is buried, but our O-Henro Sensi, Sone-san, said we should start at the first temple: Ryozenji .
Categories: Henro 2008
