When i went back to Shikoku in 2005, Tom sent an email suggesting that we walk together for a few days. I agreed, we did, and we continued that tradition each year i went back after that through the end of my 2nd henro in 2008.
In that last year, my plans were to start by walking to Temple 65 (Sankakuji), then visiting Bangai Temples 13 (Senryūji) and 14 (Jōfukuji), and then heading on to Temple 66 (Unpenji) and points beyond. Tom was going to meet me at Bangai Temple 14 on the afternoon of my first day.
I was at Sankakuji early in the morning. To get to Senryūji from there, you can either go around the mountain on long, quiet, winding roads, or, take the trail up and over the peak and drop down into the temple compound right on the other side. In 1999 i chose the first option; this year i planned to take the trail.
While getting my nōkyōchō stamped, i asked the woman doing the stamping where the trail head was and she told me to go back down the stairs in front of the sanmon and turn to the right. I thanked her and was heading for the door when it dawned on me that doing that put me back on the main road, not the trail head. When i stopped and asked her if she was sure, and explained again what i was looking for, she told me the trail was unusable and that i had to use the road.
Now, i have found that henro have to be careful when asking directions — and take everything they hear with a grain of salt. Sometimes the advice may be true, and sometimes it isn't. In this case, i doubted her advice but she was insistent that the trail was certainly impassable because it had been raining and the footing would be treacherous. I won't say that we argued, per se, but we 'discussed' the issue for about 5 minutes with her telling me no and me telling her i couldn't believe it. Luckily for me, at that point a man walked in and she said we should ask him because he walked that trail all the time. I asked. He said 'Sure you can walk it. Just watch your step.' I thanked him and set out.
While visiting the Hondō and Daishidō at Senryūji, the priest was entertaining a visitor in the small attached sitting room. When i finished my business, i went and stood at the nōkyōjo to get my stamps so that i could then move on. Even though the nōkyōjo is only about 6 feet from where the priest was sitting, he completely ignored me. They continued to chat and sip tea while i stood there, trying to look nonchalant and in no hurry by picking up each and every item for sale on the counter and inspecting it from top to bottom and front and back.
After finishing looking at all of the trinkets, and still being ignored, i started on the left side of the counter and began looking at them all again. Was this a test of wills to see who was going to give in first? Was i going to ask him to come over? Or, was he going to just get up and come over on his own?
We'll never know, because after about 15 minutes, the phone ran. For this, the priest jumped up and ran over to the counter to answer it. I was shocked when, after a minute of back and forth with the person on the other end of the line, he handed the phone to me and i found Tom on the line. Here i am, in the middle of absolutely nowhere, and the phone is for me!
Tom was at Jōfukuji already and was trying to figure out where i was and when i would get there. In the end, we agreed that i would leave then and would start walking to Jōfukuji and he would leave there and start walking towards Senryūji, and we would meet somewhere in the middle. With that, i got my stamp and set out.
After only a half hour, i step off the road to let a truck pass, when all of the sudden the truck stops, and there is Tom. He said that while making the phone call from the nōkyōjo at Jōfukuji, a farmer who also happened to be there offered to give him a ride. It was raining that day and he couldn't work out in the fields so he had decided to drive around to a few of the local temples instead.
I wrote this about the rest of the day in my journal after that trip in 2008.
We walked together to Bangai 14, i did my thing, we took a break, and then headed off to find Minshuku Okada, at the base of the trail up to Unpenji (Temple 66). My plan was was to spend the night at Minshuku Okada, walk to Bangai 15 (Hashikuraji) and back to Okada on Tuesday, and then climb up to Unpenji on Wednesday. Somewhere between Bangai 14 and Okada, Tom lost his mind and mine, not wanting to be left alone, followed his.
Tom pointed out to me that back in '99, when i walked this part of the trail, i had done the exact same thing as i was planning to do on Tuesday and Wednesday. Why not, he threw out glibly, do something different this time? Why not leave early Tuesday morning, go to Bangai 15, and then cut diagonally straight over to Unpenji on the same day. Then drop down the back side of the mountain and there is a minshuku right there for us to stay at. I think i told him he was nuts, but don't remember anymore, before he convinced me to get out the maps. After going over those for a while, we went back and forth for a while with him saying we could do it and me saying it looked like a long walk.
In the end, i couldn't say he was wrong because the numbers did seem to add up to a doable walk. Long, but doable. So, i threw in the towel and simply told him "Shindara, komaru, yo," or, "If i die i'll really be upset, but OK, i'm game." With that we found our way to Okada for the night.
Later in the journal, i continued the story the next morning with an entry i called "Attempted Murder on Unpenji Mountain,"
I smelled trouble first thing in the morning when, as soon as we came out for breakfast, the owner told us that there was no way we could get to Bangai 15, up to Unpenji, and then down the back side to our lodging in one day. He didn't say "I've thought about it again..." or "You know, it's really pretty far...," just you can't do it.
Tom and i basically ignored this comment and told him that we would be able to do it, even if it was hard. I probably said something like 'it will be good training.' So, with that, shortly after breakfast we were out the door to take some pictures with the owner, and then off down the road.
It was a beautiful spring day with clear sunny skies and chilly, but warming, temperatures. The walk to Bangai 15 (Hashikuraji) was completely uneventful. We never really hurried but chose to walk at a nice pace and chat the whole way. About 2/3 of the way there, an elderly grandmother (maybe great grandmother) stopped us and wanted to talk. Really she wanted to give us settai and kept talking about tea, which we accepted, but told her we couldn't stay long, if that was OK. She seemed really puzzled, until it sank in what we were saying, and then let us know that she wasn't offering us tea, she wanted to give us ¥1,000 so that we could buy tea somewhere down the road when we wanted a break. We accepted it, thanked her many times, and headed out for the last section to Bangai 15.
We arrived at the base of the mountain around 11:30 and decided to stop for lunch at a restaurant before making the climb up to the top since we both knew that there was nothing up there to eat. We were lucky we made this choice as you'll see later on. We had udon at a restaurant right across the street from the cable car station and relaxed until sometime after 12:00. I used to think that ordering udon was simple — you choose from a half dozen choices on the menu, place your order, then sit back and wait for it to arrive. Not in Kagawa-ken, the home of world famous Kagawa Udon. I think Tom talked to the waitress for about 15 minuted before he figured out just what it was they were offering on their menu. I stayed out of it because if Tom was confused, with my Japanese i would have no chance of understanding.
The menu was on a board on the wall, and it probably listed 2 or 3 dozen different types of udon, and none of them were just "regular udon" like you would get in a normal restaurant. There were different sauces, different styles, different this, different that, and on and on. Then, there were a few glass cabinets with all the shrimp, eggplant, lotus root, etc. that had been deep fried and you bought separately to put in the udon that you did finally agree to buy. So, after about fifteen minutes, Tom had chosen, and i simply said, 'the same thing,' when they looked at me.
With that adventure under our belts, we climbed to the top to pay our respects at Hashikuraji. Knowing by this time that we were fighting time, when we got there i did nothing but get my book stamped. We then took a break for a while while making plans and looking at the maps to see how to get from where we were over to Unpenji. Luckily, we didn't have to go back down the way we came because the map showed a shortcut dropping down the side of the mountain heading in the way we wanted to go. After our break, we found that shortcut and headed down the mountain.
The walk down the back side was fairly easy as we walked on what appeared to be a service road the whole way. The only problem was, at one point we had to choose a turn to the left or the right, and about a half hour after choosing the right, we got to a dead end in someone's driveway and were told that we should have chosen the left. By the time we backtracked (it really was beautiful scenery the whole way, however) and got back on the road we had lost one precious hour, and we didn't have that many to lose with our schedule.
Once we got back to the bottom of the mountain, and to where we now had to recommence the climb back up towards Unpenji, we wondered about our possibilities. It was obviously now going to be late when we did arrive, so should we reevaluate our plans? I suggested considering finding somewhere to stay in this area and making the climb tomorrow morning. Tom didn't like that idea, and since i didn't really either, i agreed. We could walk until it got too dark and then find a cab, then the next morning take a cab back to where it had picked us up and start walking again? Possible, we guessed, but didn't know how we might find a cab. In the end, we just decided to start walking and see where we get.
It was an amazingly beautiful walk that afternoon. It was warm, sunny, we were in the mountains, we walked on small back roads with no traffic and where the very few people we did meet walked in the middle of the road like we did. Everything was perfect. We found one fruit & vegetable stand on the side of the road where we could take a break, but other than that, we passed no stores, no restaurants, no convenience stores, no nothing. We were in the boonies and it was getting late. But, we continued plodding onwards and upwards.
Somewhere after one of our breaks, it was obvious we would be late, so Tom called the minshuku and broke the news to them. He said we'd be there around 6:00. They said fine, and we continued walking. As we got closer still, he called them again and told them that it looked more like 7:00 than 6:00. They said fine and we continued walking. By the time we got to the top and were getting ready to enter Unpenji, we got to see a very beautiful sunset. As we walked under the trees and into the temple, it went dark, dark, dark.
We got to Unpenji at about 7:00 and it was pitch black in the compound. Everything was closed and there wasn't a light to be seen anywhere. When we stopped what appeared to be the last worker heading home for the night and asked him were the trail head was to head down to our lodging, he told us we couldn't walk it in the dark. Impossible. Tom assured him he had a flashlight, and the guy begrudgingly told him where we had to go before hopping back in his truck and driving off.
With that, Tom called the minshuku once more and told them we'd be there at 8:00. They said no way, it would be 9:00, but we didn't believe them and they didn't argue. The map showed a simple 4km down the mountain and it was downhill all the way, so we knew they were wrong. Tom did have two flashlights, but the bulb was broken in one of them, and the batteries weren't fully charged in the other. Just in case we needed it, he had the brilliant idea of taking a picture of the light in the top of a phone booth with his digital camera. When he looked at the picture on the camera's preview screen after that, he had a screen of solid white, which, when held out in front of him, did illuminate the trail a little. That gave us a back up plan in case the batteries in his only flashlight didn't hold up.
And with that, we headed out into the dark to find the trail down the mountain towards our minshuku. It was a beautifully serene night, quiet, calm, and isolated, but i certainly wondered what we were getting into as we headed out.
So were does attempted murder fit into this story? You have to remember what i had been doing for two days now. By the time i got to this stage of the walk back in '99, i had about 6 weeks of work under my belt and was in very good shape. This year i was coming straight from my couch in Chicago, unfortunately. When i started my walk on Monday, i immediately began with a climb up to 500 m (1,650 ft) for Temple 65. From there it was a further climb up to 780 m (2,575 ft) at the top of the pass before dropping back down to Bangai 13 at 230 m (760 ft). Then from there i climbed back up to 400 m (1,320 ft) before dropping back down to Bangai 14 and then down to about 240 m (790 ft) for the long walk to Okadaya on Monday night, and then on to Bangai 15 on Tuesday. After getting to the base of Bangai 15, it was a climb up to 500 m (1,650 ft) to the Hondo before dropping back down to 240 m (790 ft) so that we could begin the long slow climb up to Unpenji at 900 m (2,970 ft). For a flat lander on untrained legs, that is a lot of climbing in 2 days.
Given that, by the time we got to the top of Unpenji, i was almost dead, and i wondered if i was going to kill my legs before i found somewhere to sit down for any extended period of time. My legs were exhausted and getting them to move was pure misery and hard work. The further we walked, the slower i got. While walking on flat ground was no problem, each step down was agonizing, and given that we were on a trail going down the back side of Unpenji Mountain, we were taking a lot of steps down. It took everything in me to keep up with Tom as he lead us down the trail, and i had to stop every 10 minutes, or so, for a short break. My quads were like spaghetti, after being boiled for 45 minutes.
Since we only had one flashlight, Tom carried that with him as he lead the way. I followed about 1 m (3 ft) behind him, just close enough that i could see the trail in the little light there was. Let me tell you, though, that when we occasionally saw the lights in the valley below through the trees, it was stunning. If we had had more light, or at least some moonlight above, it would have been a beautiful night for a walk.
Through the first 2km (1 mi) we still thought we would be down in an hour. But, it had been raining so there were may stretches of muddy trail that we couldn't see but had to walk through, and there were section with lots of rocks. In addition, the second half was much steeper than the top so it was more like walking down step by step, rather than a trail. Unfortunately that meant that the minshuku owner's had been right and it would be 9:00 before we got off the mountain.
A little before 9:00, the owner of the minshuku called Tom and asked were we were. When Tom told him, he said we were almost there. Then the flashlight gave out. We were on a semi-flat section of the trail by this time so we walked in the dark for a while, but when the walking started to get tricky again, Tom got out his digital camera. Then, miraculously, we saw lights ahead. The owner of the minshuku had pulled his jeep up onto the bottom of the trail so that the headlights were shining directly up the trail for the last few minutes of the walk. Needless to say, that made the walking much, much easier.
When we got down, the owner, being a henro himself, said he would give us a ride to the minshuku if we wanted, but would understand if we said we wanted to walk it. We opted for the latter, but then found out that that meant that he was going to follow behind and next to us to light the way with his jeep. This guy was just too nice.
To make a long story short, when we got there just after 9:00, the wife asked us to be quiet because everyone else had already gone to bed. But, they still had the bath hot for us, still fed us a full meal, just like all the other guests, and still sat around and chatted with us — all as if we had arrived at 4:00 like most henro do. I can not recommend Minshuku Aozora highly enough. They are wonderful peole, friendly, outgoing, helpful, considerate, and henro through and through. If you can adjust your schedule, stay at Minshuku Aozora.
By the time it was over, we had walked about 45 km (27 mi) and 14½ hours this day. While it had been an unbelievably long and hard day, after a bath, dinner, and a cold beer, it felt good to have completed it. In hindsight, it had been an adventure, even though it had been a mini-nightmare while we were walking it. Hindsight is a marvelous filter, so this day will go in the memory banks as one of those to remember for the rest of my life. The day it felt like i was going to kill myself on Unpenji Mountain.
Two wonderful days on the henro trail with a friend, the memories of which will stay with me forever. To give you another idea of the type of person Tom is ... he's a dentist in Tōkyō and i wouldn't be at all surprised to hear that he had suggested to one of his clients that they try to fill the client's cavity with Tom laying in the chair and the client standing up; just to see if it could be done.
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