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 ć. 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.
