Back to our familiar stomping ground of Japan, we had the opportunity, once again, to do some exploring. This year the Golden Week holiday was actually almost a full week so it gave us the opportunity to head south and do some exploring of the Shikoku island, one of the large and more main islands of Japan. This area is famed for its' centuries old pilgrimage of the circuit of 88 Buddhist temples spread around the island. For hundreds of years pilgrims have circled the island, and climbed the mountains dressed in white with a sacred walking stick. Click here for more details.
We were excited about a bike tour that would take us by any temples that happened to be along the way and a trip more as tourists than as pilgrims... so our "pilgrim" attire and "pilgrim" fare was slightly different than so many other pilgrims we came across:
We started out on a confused note in that it turned out we had bought train tickets to the right town... only there are two towns of the same name in Japan so our tickets were to the wrong prefecture.Once that was figured out we headed off into the depth of the Shikoku mountains to explore some of the relatively untouched valleys.
Beautiful gardens along the way...
And small villages plastered along the edge of the valley.
As per my original plan our road meandered gently up the valley past waterfalls,
And unspoiled gorges.
Along the way we had lunch at an abandoned school house that has been turned into a hostel and "locovore" restaurant (here is a deer meat pizza) by a group of young idealists form the city.
Towards the top of the pass we particularly enjoyed a hotsprings that required taking a cable car 300 meters down to the valley bottom and river-bed where the actual hotsprings were located.
Our first "easy" day turned into quite a bit harder day when we realized we had a whole other pass to bike over to get to our guest house tucked high in the mountains. Our first day turned out to add up to 2000 meters of vertical gain; it was a bit of a grunt!
Our lodge was tucked high up in the hills up a narrow winding road. As we got to know our hosts better, it turns out that the husband's family has lived on and cultivated that land for over a 1000 years!!!
The owners of the lodge are well over 80 but the son and grand-daughter are also working with the lodge.
Because of our "seniority" we were honored to be given the best room with lots of fine details in the woodworking.
We were fascinated to find, through one of the doors at the back of the room, a family protrait gallery of several generations including two of the family who were killed during WW11.
The rear wall of that room had a Buddhist shrine...
And a shinto shrine, just for good luck.
It so happened that it was Shelley's birthday that day so we had a tiny Japanese size chocolate cake to be shared with the three generations of the family of our hosts.
Later on that evening we walked up narrow trails in the dark to a neighbor's house who is a retired IT tech who was born in the valley and now lives here part time. His hobby is making knives that he spends several weeks finishing.
He showed us one of his family's proud treasures, a family samurai sword that was part of the military dress for both World War 1 and 2.
The following day we zipped down hill on a long and busy highway to the coast. Along the coast our only slightly rainy day saw us take shelter in one of the huts set out for pilgrims to make origami...
bike along bike trails paved along the tsunami protection walls...
and spent that night at a tall "business hotel" with the first 4 floors a Pachinko hall so that we could gamble all night if we wanted to!
The following day, as we cycled along the coast we were interested to see the slightly different traditional architecture of this area around Kochi.
We were also struck by the brand new structures built in every community; the larger communities having two or three of these structures. All towns and villages along all of the coast of Japan have tsunami protection walls built to protect them from the average tsunami heights. They also all had tsunami protection towers built... without ever expecting the tsunami that hit Fukushima which, at its highest, was 44 meters (more details here) The citizens who escaped to the tsunami protection towers were all killed by the wave. Since then the government has taken on a massive construction program to built higher tsunami protection towers:
As we rode along the coast we enjoyed turning onto some of the small side roads that were much quieter and more interesting. Here we stumbled onto an ancient sake brewery:
And though we would have liked to buy a bottle, we decided we didn't want this extra weight in our saddle bag so we took this picture instead so we could buy the Sake in Tokyo.
That evening we pulled into a lovely bay that, as it turns out, is a surfers paradise. If you look closely at the specks in the waves here you will see tons of surfers.
Wet suits were hanging everywhere, even at our lodge.
After a long, hot ride, a swim seemed like a great idea until we actually put our feet in the water and it was still pretty chilly.
So instead we hung out with a beer over-looking the beautiful bay and enjoyed the approaching evening light.
The next day turned out to be a bit of an epic day with a 90 km ride all along the coast, right out to the tip of the Murato point and on up along the coast. (That does say Murato point just in case you were wondering!)
The waves were wild...
the cost was dramatic...
and certain huge rocks were considered sacred with their uniquely knotted rope delineating their sacredness:
As we rode with the ocean on our right, on our left we kept discovering little and large shrines in various states of repair reminding us of the Sacred.
This was the first "listed" temple we visited ...
and Shelley was able to get an official stamp and lettering in her pilgrim's book.
We enjoyed a side trip to Teba island, one of the many historic islands dotting the coast. The ferry zipped us out to this island that has no cars and calls bicycles cars.
It is a rapidly aging ancient community with many old, abandoned houses.
And some current signs of life. The population has shrunk from several thousand to 70.
The last night of our trip we stayed in a pilgrim's hostel with a view out our window of one of the great temples of the pilgrimage:
The view from our window:
Enjoying the early morning sun, we got up at 5:30 to catch the morning sutra chanting in the great temple.
then hopped on a train with our great folding bikes to Tokushima, famous for its huge dance festival in August.
We happened to wander into a large Manga and Cosplay festival
After this wonderful trip it was a little hard for me to return to my work digs (my office)...
doing the marketing and outreach necessary at this time of year with my colleagues (Mr. Matsutani, my co-principal)
while Shelley continued for another week of adventures on her bike with friends in southern Shikoku!
Keep posted!
