Post by Ella We are staying at the Fujiya Mae Ryokan, a traditional Japanese hotel in the town of Kawayu Onsen. Grubb is busy working on a post about our final hike yesterday. Onsen indicates hot springs. You can get a scoop at the front desk, walk down to the river, dig yourself a little…
Finally, people!
Post by Ella I’m finding it hard to keep this blog up to date. So many experiences on the Kumano Kodo portion of our trip. The first two days of our walking, we met no one else on the trail. Yesterday our hike took us onto a more popular portion of the Kumano Kodo and…
Game changer
We took a train out of Gobo and transferred to a bus in Tanabe where got off for our third day of trekking into the mountains on the Kumano Kodo. After staying at in inn in Hadaka (the only visitors, we had the inn to ourselves which was very pleasant) we were well fortified nutritionally for…
Shinto pilgrimage
Post by Ella I’ve not said much about the pilgrimage aspect of the Kumano Kodo. The trails we are walking are part of the Kumano Kodo and were developed as a way to get to the most revered shrines. The rugged mountains of the Kii peninsula are a spiritual haven where deities reside. By the way,…
The thigh burning continues
Post by Ella Yuasa to Hidaka Hike #2 went considerably better than Hike #1. No rain for starters. The ascent was paved (gravel in concrete) and not slippery even though we’d had a drenching storm the night before. Howling wind, rumbling thunder, flashing lightning. So all was wet but no mossy rocks to slide on….
The emperor used to walk this?
Last night, after the slip and slide hike on the Kumano Kodo, we stayed at a guest house in Aridagawa on the side of the mountain where orange groves are cultivated on steep terraces. To cap my day of misadventure, sleep was something I was supposed to achieve on a futon rolled out on a tatami…
Guesthouse Moriamon in Adiragawa
Post by Ella Maki, a vibrant woman in her 30s, fetched us from the Yuasa train station for the 20 minute drive to her guesthouse in the small village of Adiragawa. The Adira region is famous for mikan (mandarin oranges) and the area is chock full of steeply terraced mikan orchards. Guesthouse Moriamon sits nestled…
Shoyu
Post by Ella After our hike yesterday we took a train from Kainan to Yuasa. We had about an hour to kill before the owner of Guesthouse Moriamon cane to pick us up so we wandered around the town. Yuasa is the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce (shoyu) and has been designated as a historical…
Okay, that was brutal
Yesterday we checked our bags at the hotel, loaded our daypacks, and left Osaka to begin our four day hike on the Kumano Kodo Kijii, aka the Emperor’s Trail, aka the Land of Death. Two trains got us to the Shimizu-Ura platform where we began following the printed directions in a booklet Ella had printed out…
On the trail
Post by Ella We finished our first day on the trail. Steep up, steep down, rainy, lots of slippery rocks. Guess who fell twice? Not me! Are you asking what trail? Where the heck are you? To answer…The Kumano Kodo, the trail of the Emperors. It is an ancient trail, or rather set of trails…
Osaka Underground
I’m not saying that Japan is unduly haunted by the history of aerial bombing that took place in World War II, but in taking the Osaka Train Station escalator down from street level to the subway kingdom of avenue wide tunnels jammed with shopping outlets and eateries I can’t help thinking that if I were…
A dazed breakfast
Post by Ella Time: We are 15 hours ahead of New Mexico. Who knows what time our bodies think it is. Breakfast: our hotel offers a choice of Japanese style breakfast and western style breakfast. We went Japanese of course. Picture below. Tomorrow maybe I’ll remember to take the tops off before taking the picture. Like…
Jet Lag Jackhammer
Post by Grubb Whoa…we left LAX Monday mid-afternoon and, after a twelve-hour flight, landed in Osaka in the early evening on the next day. My body was prepared for an early morning stretch and now it was dazedly doing nighttime maneuvers negotiating a very large airport terminal where a very large crowd was lined up for…
Silently in Japan
Post by Ella. Silence? That’s what we hear. Hmmm. We will get to that. Japan is a place full of natural beauty, shrines (Shinto) and temples (Buddhist), and superb public transportation. There will be crowds to navigate – especially the big cities like Osaka and Tokyo. Mountains, active volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis (hoping we don’t have…
The French road to Barcelona
Post by Ella We are on our way back to the States. Reluctantly. Waiting in Atlanta for the final flight. I usually try for a wrap up at the end of each trip. Grubb describes the trip as a medieval to modern Gothic journey crowded with ghosts. I describe it in bits. The French love…