Cycling the Shikoku no Michi 10

Day Ten: Tires Blown and Muroto!, Temples 22 – 23

Weather: Rain, sun, rain, sun, rain, sun, rain…

Today I rode down and out of the mountains towards the sea, then south along the coast down to the tip of Muroto, stopping for the night about 2 kilometres away from temple 24. The hotel manager was very nice; he gave me a great breakfast and a bath towel as I was leaving! I was touched.


Temple 22, Byodoji, was about 6 km. south of Emoto where I was staying. The photo at the top of this post is of the ceiling of the main temple there.



Yakuoji is a twenty kilometre ride south in a small town called Hiwasa, along the ocean. It's a seventy five kilometre ride to temple 24 from here, though, so I moved out smartly.

Yakuoji, temple 23.


I blew my back tire out at about 2:30 in a place called Shishikui; it had been wobbling and behaving increasingly badly all morning, but, though I looked, I had seen no bike shops. I now took the bike across the road to a parking lot near a coffee shop, an eccentric modernist structure, and tried to fix the tire. The strains of karaoke drifted out the door. Realising I could ride no further, I went into the shop and asked the manageress where I might find a bike shop. She helpfully pointed out, then drew a map to a place just a block away! Lucky, lucky…

The bike guy was there, and put a 28 cm. tire (all he had) on the front rim, moving the 35mm tire to the back. I thanked him and headed off. The bike felt good, solid again, and the front tire was responsive. He was a cool guy, had another Bridgestone road bike of the same basic model as mine (mine was modified), and was able to tell me how old mine was. It was only six years old (I thought it was about ten to fifteen).


I love ocean views, and there are wonderful ones down this peninsula. Encountered a bad headwind for the last 30 kilometres though. The weather was windy, rainy, gusting. The landscape is powerful, but somehow brooding, a little somber. I lived on Haida Gwai, the Queen Charlotte Islands, off the coast of British Columbia, for two years, and in some ways this landscape had the same wild energy as that place.


I stopped at a hotel near a giant statue of Kukai, just south of Sea World, probably about two kilometres away from the tip of the peninsula. This was the most expensive hotel room yet, at about 9500 yen ($95), though it included dinner and breakfast, a good thing as I had not seen a combini for miles, and there was nothing much else around. Most restaurants and houses seemed abandoned or closed up. People I passed on the street seemed shy, or a bit sour. I got the feeling Muroto was a bit depressed, perhaps feeling hard times due to the recent recession.

I wore my dirty bike clothes to dinner as I wasn’t sure if I could wear my yukata to the restaurant. I had plenty of time to feel silly, as I sat in my soaked shoes and dirty clothes, watching the handful of other guests, dry, comfortable, and enjoying themselves.

Dinner was Japanese style, sashimi, miso, tataki (seared bonito), and one of those whole, six or seven inch long fish (I ate it, of course). There was also a bowl of oden, bubbling away in a spirit heater. Yum!

My room overlooked the water, and I fell asleep listening to the wind and waves crashing on the rocks 30 metres away.

Cycling the Shikoku no Michi 9

Day Nine: Riding out, Temples 14 – 21

Weather: Pouring rain till 2 pm, then mixed sun and cloud, fog at the top of the mountain.

Jorakuji. Strange decorative rock forms built into the temple grounds.

I backtracked nine kilometres to temple 14, Jorakuji, as it started to pour rain. To my astonishment, the priest there gave me 500 yen o-settai when I gave her my book and 300 yen for the temple calligraphy in my nokyocho. Cheered, I put my head down and pedalled out.

Kokobunji, temple 15. More lens fogging.





Temple 16, Kanonji. There is a sacred well here, said to cure all manner of illness. They sell the water as medicine.


















Temple 17, Ijodoji.


Temples 14 through 17 are all within about seven kilometres of each other; then there is a longer ride of 17 kilometres to temple 18.

I stopped at a Mcdonalds a few hours later, utterly soaked and feeling slightly chilled. I ate near the door, and left a puddle two feet wide when I left twenty minutes later. Often the problem with riding in hard rain is that if the rain gets cold, or the temperature drops, it can get very cold. So I took one of the large, transparent, garbage bags I’d brought along for this purpose, cut holes for the neck and arms, and put it on. It worked, and kept me, not dry of course, but warm, until the sun came out later. I rode south down route 55 to temple 18, Onzanji.







Temple 18, Onzanji.







Tatsueji, temple 19







Riding through rain like this is, for me, a matter of keeping my head down and slogging away. But it still seems to take longer to get anywhere…






The rain eased off around two and I took off my raincoat a little later. I climbed route 16, up a steep municipal road, then up route 146 to temple 20, Kakurinji.























I think it must have been close to three thirty when I decided to try for temple 21, Tairiuji, the mountaintop temple. I dropped over the south side of the mountain from Kakurinji, then was able to follow route 95 east, turning north onto route 28 to climb up and round to Tairiuji from the small, little-used, steep back road. There is a ropeway running up the other side of the mountain. I found myself racing the clock up the mountain, walking the last kilometre or so on a path and arriving at the top, exhausted and convinced the place would be closed.

There's a daruma watching me! Or maybe he's just looking at the scenery.

It was empty, except for the ropeway operator and the priest, who signed my nokyocho without comment. Lucky two days in a row! I had resolved to pitch my tent and stay there dinner or not, till tomorrow, rather than climb back up the mountain again. Luckily, I didn’t have to. I took half an hour to pray and shoot some photos.




Tairiuji is an extraordinarily beautiful temple, but must seem quite isolated in the winter, with no one about. It was foggy up there, though it had been sunny on the way up, and I came back out of it, later, twenty minutes down the highway. It had a very special atmosphere and some gorgeous big trees.

At six I was standing by my bike in the parking lot; by 7:15 I was talking to a man at a hotel in Emoto, about 12 km. away, and got a room there. He was very nice; most of his trade in the hotel seemed to be work crews and factory workers in the area. My room was comfortable and I was able to do my laundry.


I cycled three kilometres back up the road to a combini for some bento, as I was too late for dinner. A tough but rewarding day. I had a major rash on the inside of my upper thighs from the rubbing of my soaked shorts and the seat. Also noticed the front wheel bearings making funny noises again

Cycling the Shikoku no Michi 8

Day Eight: Bushwack, Temples 11 – 13

Weather: hot, started rainy, ended sunny.

Up and at ‘em at 6:30, found the usual combini bento and canned coffee, and headed off to Fujidera, temple 11. It is situated on the south side of the valley, tucked up against the bottom of the mountains, a small, and it seemed to me, quiet temple.


From here arises the trail up the mountain to Shosanji, a mountain-top, barrier temple. The walking trail, a 12.9 kilometre section, is reputed to be the toughest on the entire circuit. The road, route 242, hooks right to route 43, which then runs westward, up and over a ridge, up a small valley and over it’s saddle, snaking around and up in a complex series of hairpins and switchbacks to the temple. It looked pretty straightforward on the map, but of course I got lost…


Just before this, however, I chanced upon a Japanese clearcut, the first one I've seen 'in production' so to speak. I have a lingering professional interest in such things; I believe this is called a hi-lead setup, where the logs are clinched to a cable and dragged, or suspended in the air, then pulled up to the landing by the motor, called a donkey, under the blue tarp. It is considered to be a practice that has a lowered impact on the forest soils, as there is relatively less dirt displaced and general ecosystem mayhem inflicted.

Riding route 242, rising west along the flank of the mountain, I took a small road switchbacking up and east. Later I realized it is not on my map, but at the time it seemed possible that this was route 43. This road, while still rising, quickly got smaller and smaller. This is usually a bad sign. Finally it deposited me in front of a standing stone, and a small abandoned house.



This house has been empty for some time as it is completely over grown with kudzu; the forest looks like a re-plantation of cedar trees, about twenty to thirty years old. This was done all over Japan in the seventies and eighties, a subsidised program to aid farmers. It resulted in a large scale shift in the number of cedar trees in Japan, a massive drop in the price of the wood as too much came into the market later, and, recently, a big upsurge in pollen allergies to all those trees. Oh dear.

Anyway, I came up the road with the small farm shed on it, and, feeling stubborn, or something, decided to continue down the road to the left.

Which quickly, within 100 meters, turned into a rutted, washed out rockpile useable only by serious four wheel drives. I could see it used to be a road. Noticing one of the small metal henro signs stuck to a tree, and feeling stubborn, or something, I continued, walking and pulling the bike, as I couldn’t possibly ride it over this terrain.

Long story short, I ended up dragging the bike uphill and back across the flank of the mountain on a path about a foot wide, cursing and swearing all the way. I found spent shotgun shells at one point, leading me to think this might be someone’s hunting trail. Finally, around nine am, I dragged the bike up a seven meter incline and emerged at…

A path. I mean a real, sort of flat path, with a, what is it, a jinja? The light began to dawn, and I pulled my maps out. Oh dear. The jinja’s name was Chodo-an, and I was about 3 kilometres up the mountain from temple 11! I was now standing on the walking pilgrim path to Shosanji.


I had a choice: I could walk my bike back to Fujidera, then start again around the mountain on route 242…or I could continue up the mountain on this path. Naturally, feeling stubborn, or something, I decided to go right.

The day quickly went from being bad to being horrendous. Occasional flat sections of perhaps twenty or thirty meters were interspersed with rock strewn steep sections, where I was essentially lifting the bike up the path, and long upward sections where concrete, imitation logs had been placed in the path to create steps, forcing me to do the same. It was exhausting and slow, and the weight on the back of my bike from my tent, the drybox, and the rest of it made it difficult to lift.


At one point, I was approaching a corner when a man bounded around it, running toward me with two henro sticks as outriggers. He stopped dead on seeing me, and burst out into a loud laugh. ‘A bike!’ he said. ‘That’s the first time I’ve seen one of those on this trail!’ I explained that I had gotten lost, which provoked another laugh. He asked if I was American. I explained I was from Canada, whereupon he wished me the best of luck and ran off. I continued. Up, and up and up…on this inhospitable, rocky path.

I popped over a tight ridge and could hear voices. Stopping for a moment to catch my breath, I could make out, 70 or 80 meters away and 30 meters down the ridge ahead, a group of Japanese hikers resting at a hut. When I got there I was greeted with frank astonishment and a little disbelief. You came up the trail?! You’re going to Shosanji?! When I explained that I was from Canada, nothing else (apparently) needed to be said.

They were a group who liked to hike the trail recreationally. They wished me luck. This showed on my map as Ryusui-an (Dragon water place?).







And onward. The same, only more so. Sometime later I suddenly came to a set of impressive stone stairs set into the mountain. At the top of the stairs was a large statue of Kukai, a small shrine sitting under a huge sacred tree surrounded by a fence, two stone signs neither of which I could read and an abandoned priests’ house.



And the middle aged Japanese couple who had overtaken me and wished me well several hours before, eating lunch. This, I think, was Joren-an. I don’t know what its importance is, but someone had gone to a considerable amount of work, here in the middle of nowhere. I was quite impressed with the stairs.












Finally, at 2:30, I staggered out of the bush at Shosanji, half disbelieving that I was actually there. It had taken me five and a half hours to cover the 9.7 kilometers from Chodo-an to the temple. I felt knackered, but on reflection, somewhat self-satisfied that I had contributed to the local legend of the trail. Another first!


I ran into FriendlyBikeHenro under the big trees, and told him what I had done. He laughed, and said ‘a learning experience’. Truer words were never spoken. After praying, getting my Nokyocho signed, and drinking a well-earned coke, I headed off down the other side of the mountain, on a road and thankful for it, towards temple 13, Dainichiji.

An hour later, studying my maps where this road, rte. 438, met rte. 21, FriendlyBikeHenro rode up to me. We agreed to bike along together for a ways, and continued down along 21 along the Akuigawa River. His rear wheel now had no brakes and the rim was wobbling dangerously so at 4:45 we separated at a bridge where he could cross over and continue (slowly) down to around Shimoura or Ishii train station to try to find a bike shop and get his machine fixed. I had fifteen minutes to continue on rte. 21 to Dainichiji. Feeling stubborn, or something, I wished him luck, and hared off down the road as fast as my exhausted legs could push me.

I kept riding as fast as I could until, amazingly, closing on five pm, the temple appeared. I walked up to the priest’s office at 5:02, by my watch. She was in, smiled, and signed my book.













I took twenty minutes to pray and, after another glance at my maps, headed 10 kilometers downtown, to stay at a small business hotel called Eigetsu, just off the main drag, route 192.

This was a small place run by an aging couple, quiet, very nice, no other guests. It had an amazing bathroom upstairs, quite large, done up entirely in black, glossy tiles, with a deep red plush toilet seat cover and accents. I thought of Elvis, for some reason; the owner was quite proud of it.


When I asked, he said they didn’t have laundry facilities, but I could find some just down the street. After my combini bento dinner (I always made sure I was close by to a Lawsons or Circle K) I went out and combed the neighborhood for a Laundromat, and sure enough, eventually found a tiny, hole in the wall place, no one about. I threw my laundry in – blessings! - clean clothes – and found the end of a long but eventful day.

Cycling the Shikoku no Michi 7

A barrier,
a gate,
a landmark.




Day Seven: Start again, Temples 1 – 10

Weather: sunny, hot and hazy, with a breeze in the afternoon.

I’m not sure why, perhaps it was simply having reached the 88th temple, a landmark of sorts, but the ride down into the Yoshinogawa valley just north of Tokushima seemed soooo easy. Around 9am I stopped to take a photo of a rice field with my camera, which for this trip was my iphone.



Unfortunately that was the last photo it took that day. The iphone has two, I think, moisture meters inside it, designed to shut the camera down to avoid damage if moisture levels are too high. I had been having problems with lens fogging (see day two photos!) every day since starting out, and the camera was definitely having some trouble coping. Now the operating system shut down completely. Later that evening, luckily, by hooking it up to my macbook and rebooting it, I was able to reset the thing so it could be a camera again.

Meanwhile, however, on a day with ten temples scheduled, no pictures. Maybe that was why I managed to complete the tenth visit by four o’clock. In any case they were all crowded, and not particularly amenable to shooting. I only got lost once, to speak of.

Temple number one, Ryozenji, was a circus. I think I counted 12 buses in the parking lot, and there were cars everywhere. I marvelled for a few moments, then remembered it was Saturday so all the weekend pilgrims would be about. Here is a website in Japanese with some pictures of Temples one to four. This one, from 'The Temple Guy's page, might be easier to follow.

I met three bike henro; one distinctly unfriendly, one more friendly, and one who seemed nice.

At temple five, Jizoji, I met a cool old guy with a small cart who travels around the circuit, painting postcards of drawings he’s done with water-color washes, and selling them, to support himself I suppose. I bought a few; they are done in a kind of hypercute bubbly style, which, when I first came to Japan, I found hilarious and disturbing, all at the same time. As I bought them, however, it dawned on me that now I was starting to like this style of drawing/painting.

This made me nervous at first, but I have come to realize that, like the sculptures of the Umakoshis, father and son, the roundness and the, what to my western eyes appears as a kind of vacuous lightness is a formal structure which contains a deep seriousness of purpose. Like the statues of o-Jiso-sama which can be found everywhere on Shikoku, and all over Japan; these apparently childlike images take on a completely different hue when it is remembered that they are always a memorial to, and a plea for intervention in the fate of, a dead person. Or at least it changed my perception when I realized this.

And there is something about the roundness of form in Japanese art which seems deeply enculturated; it is a thread ancient and central to Japanese-ness; from Otafuku’s face, considered most lovely and lucky, to these modern sculptures and this man’s drawings. It’s no accident that the sun is Japan’s flag, the circle of completeness, of wa, of family and nation, of the island. And Ameterasu, the goddess who is the mother of Japan, came down from the sun.

Anyway I liked his work a lot; bought a couple and he insisted I take a few more. This was his work and he was not a rich man; I found his generosity touching.

After visiting temple ten, Kirihataji, I took route 237 down and across the Yoshinogawa to the south side, on a strange kind of bailey bridge down in the flats across the river. It felt like much too small a bridge for the kind of road it served, but once across, I felt more like I was on the right track. I decided to head towards Kamojima, the local rail station, as my maps showed a business hotel near there. In Japan, there are nearly always one or more business hotels right by the railway station, which is nearly always in the middle of small or medium sized towns.

Just east of the bridge, I discovered a closed amusement park, and simultaneously bumped into the friendly bike henro. He told me he was going to sleep out in a park picnic shelter. I wished him luck and headed off to where I thought the station might be.

The business hotel had gone out of business, alas, and it was the only one nearby the station. As I was standing in my bike, looking at my maps, in front of the station, I glanced up and saw a young woman, in her early mid twenties, with an infant in her arms, in a small shop. She waved, then came out to talk. She told me she had visited Canada a few years before, and suggested I stay at a nearby minshuku, or traditional lodging house.

I said sure, and, giving the babe to her mom, she walked me 150 metres to a small side street, knocked on a door, and introduced me to a woman who, after ascertaining she wouldn’t have to feed me, told me I could stay there. The price was great; just ￥3300 ($33). I thanked the young woman; I found such kindnesses were shown to me almost every day.




The ryokan was called ‘Shigeru’, and after finding out I like onsen, both insisted I go to Kamojima う. This is the symbol for a public onsen (and the character sounding ‘oo’ in hiragana), and this onsen was one my friend Katsuhiko had urged me to go to by name.

So, after settling my things, and with a map provided by the landlady, I was sent off looking for the hotspring. It didn’t prove too difficult to find, but was surprisingly small when I found it. There was a campsite there and in addition I found the unfriendly bike henro, standing on the grass off to the side, starkers, dumping a pail of water over his head! I smiled and nodded hello. He seemed surprised to see me.

The attendants were both women, both friendly, and one of them seemed to enjoy hanging out with all the naked men in the change room. They all seemed to be regulars. She gave me a nice bath towel with a duck on it. The water was excellent, hot, simultaneously relaxing and invigorating.





I have been having dreams about LBK, my little cat, and she is not happy. I should phone the Nagai’s and check up on her.

Heard an unhappy, lost cat under a big bridge when I was crossing over, could not help. I felt sad.