Roving Japan

Day 40 Photoset

This morning we went to Kochi castle, one of the few castles in Japan that is not a concrete replica. The castle is also unique in that it was made during the Tokugawa shogunate, and therefore its main purpose was to house the local lord, and not defend against attack. This castle was actually lived in, which gave it a really nice vibe. Since all the wood is original, the castle creeks and pops as people walk through. The smell of the wood is in the air, and the entire experience is much more authentic than most of the other castles we’ve been in.

As we looked around the bottom level of the tower, we walked in on a TV show recording session. There were a couple of pretty girls sitting in a room of the castle while a guide told them something interesting. Then the producer lady would tell them what to say and any questions they should ask. The girls would do as they were told, acting like they had come up with the questions. It was pretty funny to see them bossed around by the producer.
Producer:“Go in here.”
Actress: “But could I go…”
Producer: “NO, just GO IN HERE and say [blah blah blah]”
Actress: “Ok”

The producer didn’t take any lip and was pretty bossy. Highly entertaining to those of us watching, but I sure wouldn’t want to be one of the actors.

I emailed my friend Stefan who used to live in Kochi about the local sights, and he mentioned Godaisan temple, so that was our next stop. Godaisan is part of the Ohenro trail, so we weren’t surprised to see some pilgrims when we got there. What we WERE surpised to see was the tour bus that was driving them to each temple. All the pilgrims had walking sticks, but they only used them from the bus to the temple and back. The driver would collect everyones walking stick and stow it away until the next stop. After meeting Nakata san and the bicycle Ohenro, these people seemed pretty weak. But I suppose you do what you gotta do. Maybe one of them recently strained his Planar Fascia and can’t walk very well for a while.

Our next destination for the day was Ishizuchi-san. The map to the mountain shows a couple of windy highways, but nothing too bad. However, once we hit route 426 the “highway” quickly became a single lane two-way traffic paved road carved into a cliff side. While occasionally nerve wracking, this road was really awesome. The views of the valley were fantastic, and Risa and I thoroughly enjoyed the drive.

I have to make one more comment about the wilderness in Japan. For some reason, the Japanese feel the need to give all their rivers tall cement walls. I don’t understand why they need to turn a pristine mountain river into a concrete channel. They sometimes even pave the river bed! I read in the Lonely Planet guide book that the government employs a lot of the people who live in the mountains. They used to be farmers, but now they work on government subsidized river paving. (Interesting reading about Japanese concrete addiction here, here, and here)

This evening we finally got to the Omogoke wilderness area and it didn’t disappoint. The river up here is free of concrete walls, and the water is crystal clear. When we first arrived we came across a man fishing for bait fish. Tomorrow he is going to use the small fish to help him catch eels.

We are here in the off-season, so the campground is closed (free). We are the only people camping, and its absolutely beautiful. We are just a few meters from an awesome looking stream that I plan to jump in tomorrow.

Day 39 Photoset

Our first day with the car was pretty fun! It’s amazing how far you can go when you’re traveling at 60kph instead of 4kph.

We got a bit of a late start, not leaving Takamatsu until around 11am, but it only took an hour to get to the first stop of the day, Konpirasan. The Konpirasan shrine is famous for the 1,367 stairs it takes to get to the top. When I first read about that, I pictured one of those famous temples with the single, super long staircase that goes straight up. This temple is not like that at all. The first few hundred stairs take you through a shopping mall area. The rest of the stairs go up in chunks of about 50-100 steps, but are broken up by long stretches of flat walkways. The temple itself has several levels with the main temple buildings about 75% of the way up. The top shrine, which was quite a ways up and took a lot of effort getting too… was under construction. Thanks guys! Way to make my climb to the top worth it!

My foot felt pretty good today, somehow going up stairs doesn’t flex the foot as painfully as walking on flat ground. However, heading DOWN the 1367 steps was a bit painful.

When we reached the mall area, a couple of guys carrying an old women in a palaquin stopped to talk to me when I told them, “Ganbatte!” One of the guys was impressed that I could speak any Japanese at all. After a bit, they asked me if I wanted to try to carry the palaquin! OF COURSE! They wouldn’t let me actually walk with it, but I got to pick it up. It was kind of heavy, but the main discomfort was the bamboo pole digging into my shoulder. Those guys are pretty tough. The one who stopped to talk to me is 75 years old! If you’re interested in having a couple guys carry you up the stairs, it only costs $68.

After the temple, we drove south to Oboke gorge. The gorge is actually broken into 2 parts, the north part is called ‘Koboke’ and the south part is called ‘Oboke’. It’s hard to translate, but basically the names imply that whether you use little steps or big steps, its still dangerous to walk here.

Back at the rental car place, we found a magazine that showed some good routes through Shikoku. The book mentioned this gorge, and how for $10 you can take a boat ride down the river. So we decided to splurge and ride down the river for the 30minute tour.

The gorge was pretty, but unfortunately, like most rivers in Japan, it had tall cement walls on one side. For some reason, Japan feels the need to turn all its rivers into concrete channels. I’m happy the water level was so low today, it let us have about 20 meters of rock before the concrete walls begin. If you didn’t look up too far, you almost didn’t notice it. We tried to photograph only the pretty parts!

The book also had a picture of a cool vine bridge crossing a pretty mountain river, so we figured we might as well drive the 15minutes to see that as well. When we arrived, we immediately started feeling like something was amiss. This is a single vine bridge, yet the tiny town nearby had enough parking to handle hundreds of people. We started thinking, “Man, this bridge better be AWESOME if this many people come here.” Guess what? This bridge ranks right up there with “The World Largest Ball Of Twine” It’s a total tourist trap. They charge $5 to walk across it, and you can only walk across once. Also, the “vines” are hiding steel cables. Nice. We took some pictures and left as fast as possible. Glad we parked in the free parking and no, we didn’t pay the $5 to walk across. We walked across better bridges on the mountain trail in Yakushima.

With the bridge out of the way, we were done for the day. The only thing left was to find a place to sleep. We started driving down the highway, looking for a place to eat and then camp. An hour and a half later we were in Kochi. We drove all the way through the mountains and couldn’t find a single place to eat or camp! In Kochi we found a 24hr Joyfull and made plans for tomorrow. Joyfull is like IHOP or Sherry’s. One of those 24hr family style restaurants. A real life saver when you want to spend time looking at maps and reading books.

Tonight we are camping next to a river about 20km outside of Kochi. We are going to head back to town tomorrow to check out the castle, then go back to the mountains to see Ishizuchi-san, the tallest peak in western Japan. There are several campgrounds near the mountain, so we are looking forward to that!

(Photo of the camp from the next morning)