Kumano Kodo 4: mushrooms and saki bottles
Shards of saki bottle
Masquerading as mushroom
Guard the path in groves
Last night’s dinner was a Japanese epic undertaking of 10 courses. It came with its own instruction sheet; which was, admittedly, very handy. I was a little confronted by snails, horse sashimi, eel, and more but it was all tasty.
Breakfast, however, was more of the same – which reminded me how much I don’t like Japanese breakfasts. Fish, tofu, miso soup are all great in their place but their place is not breakfast in my world. At least we could get a coffee at an extra cost, so Jennifer started out the day happy.
After a short bus ride back down the mountain we rejoined the trail. Now the astute reader will have noticed that the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage leads to the shrine we were at yesterday. Our next bit of walking is, in effect, walking backward away from the shrine to smaller shrines.
Today involved some pretty steep ups and downs. But our mountain mojo from days of dealing with hills in Spain and Italy earlier this year is coming back, so we made good time. It didn’t rain today, yay, but it was sweaty work in the dappled sunshine and extreme humidity.
About half way through we reached the High Cliff of 3600 peaks which presents an amazing expansive view of the surrounding forested mountains. It also provided the first tiny breeze we’ve felt for days.
The margins of the trail were covered in all sorts of mushrooms. And there was also a lot of broken saki bottles that I mistook for mushrooms from a distance. This area used to have a lot of small villages which were abandoned in the early 1900s, and then yet more that were vacated in the post-war years. There was a lot of logging and the loggers had nothing to do once the Sun went down but drink sake.
A lot of the trail was steep and had cobblestone stairs. These smooth rocks were a real health hazard. Jennifer did have a fall, but not on the rocks.
Our ryokan this evening is a little disappointing compared to the others. It was described as being in a converted school, but there isn’t a lot of conversion. It feels like a place designed for local groups, with all comunal facilities, that realised there was money to be made from the foreign tourists. We found out the other night that locals can’t really walk the trail because all the accommodation gets block-booked far in advance by the foreign tour companies. That’s a bit sad.
Sadder still is that we’re pretty sure there will be no coffee available tomorrow morning.