Travels: Shikok Part I

It's one of the four main islands which make up Japan and for some reason, is the least popular among them. To add to this mystique, it is also one of the most pristine (if that's an adjective someone can use to describe Japan) with the only undammed river in the entire country, the site of one of the last stands between the samurai of old and the modernized Meiji army and an ancient 88 temple circuit founded by a now renowned Buddhist monk. So, after scouring a map of Shikoku, in a deep breath which resembled more of a huff and a puff, I gathered my-could-be-last-amount-of-Japan-traveling energy and made it down there for my spring break which was about a month ago.

It was my fifth time to hit the railroad tracks, the hills, the roads and the mountains on a cross-country mission here in Japan. I've been to a lot of places in this country, from Okinawa to Hokkaido, Ise Shrine to Tottori Sand Dunes, from A-bomb domes to Anime museums, Kabuki theatres to mangrove forests and to be honest, this time it took more than the usual motivation to get my backpack packed and my butt out the door. The winds which before had filled my Japan-exploring sails as it were has been dying due to the phenomena of becoming "familiar with", "used to" and "assimilated"--that, and as I had to catch the 5:30 train from Sendai to Himeji City in one day; it's the furthest one can go on regular trains in a single day and it would put my all-you-can-ride jyuu-hachi kippu train ticket to the test.

The seishyun jyuuhachi kippu (literally the "18 year old youth ticket") goes on sale every spring here in Japan for anyone who wants to use it. It was conceived for all the university students out there who go on break come March and April. But, the random traveler is free to use it as well, and so I dished out the 8000 yen (80 bucks) and that was that. One of the most rewarding aspects of traveling for more than 18 hours on the local train lines from the northern town of Sendai to Himeji was the perspective it gives you on Japan as a nation. Sendai, the metropolis of the northern Tohoku region finds itself situated in the boonies, the countryside, Japan's "granary". It's more of a town slumbering, set apart from the concrete jungles that give the country its urban image (and therefore one of the reasons Sendai is a great place to live). So, the first train I got on had a backdrop of rice fields, with the odd passenger getting on here and there. Trees whizzed by, an odd temple or two, and many unmanned rural stations. But slowly and surely enough, after around four hours of riding in this picturesque manner, the train started to get more crowded, greenery turned to concrete, the blue sky donned a hazy light, and signboards, office buildings, the zig zag of bridges, streets, and telephone lines littered the landscape--not a single earth tone in sight. I had arrived in Tokyo.

This is where things turned into a balancing act for me and my backpack. There was to be no sitting, unless I was lucky. I had no choice but to go with the ebb and flow of the Tokyo passenger tide; for around two hours I felt like I was at the mercy of the some urban sea--when it flowed left, so did I, when it tried sucking me out I had to hold on to the vinyl handle above me until the surge passed. The more limp I was, the easier it was to sift through the train stops, transfers, and two step commute shuffle.

Then, just as quickly as it appeared, soon high rises began to be etched out from the horizon, then the concrete, then the advertisements, and soon everything vanished and I was traveling along the coast, ducking in and out of tunnels, with rice fields on my right and the vast expanse of the pacific ocean on my left. A moment's reprieve before another concrete slap in the face: for within an hour or so I had arrived in Nagoya, Japan's third biggest city. Again: suits, briefcases, black and gray cookie cutter people packed the sardine can train. Then, poof, they vanished and I was traveling through the green mountains, brown and silent pre-spring forest to my right and left, no people except beautiful farm houses and the odd town.

But just as the tide comes and goes, the next urban wave came to shore. The train stopped and as if signaling my arrival at Japan's notorious and famous town of comedic personalities, the city with an edge and a flare for life out of the ordinary, a man hopped on the train. He wore striped socks pulled up to his knees, dark bug-eyes sunglasses, and a tight long sleeve t-shirt and shorts. He did a sort of pirouette, looking for a seat and skipped on past like a urban faerie of modernity. I was in Osaka.

People talk about Osaka like it's in a league of its own, its people strong, outspoken, a little mad. It is overshadowed by Tokyo, with a bit of a rivalry going on there, as Osaka is has been casted as "number two". But as most rivalries have, there is the element of the underdog boasting something that even the biggest city cannot touch--an element of culture, of originality and intrigue that no other city offers. It's dubbed as "Japan's Kitchen" for its renowned food, and one of Japan's playgrounds, with a rowdy nightlife scene. Most of Japan's famous comedians hail from Osaka, which adds to its image of extroverted quirkiness. At any rate, as the train filled up once again, this time with party-goers (as it was nearly 10:00 PM by this time) the thought that I should try to spend more time in the cities struck me. But my brain was too tired to pursue the thought by this point and I soon drifted off to sleep as the train took me out of Japan's second largest city.

After twelve transfers (some which merely consisted of a meander from one boarding gate to another, and others which were a mad dash through hoards of people, bag-straps flying and with only a couple seconds to spare) and 18 hours and one novel later, I made it to Himeji City (well just outside of it actually).

I walked off the nearly empty train, my massive back pack full (as I was to live out of it for the next week or so) and a telling sign to any onlookers that I was not heading home. My knees felt weak, kind of like the rust which had formed on my bones during all the hours sitting down at work was in the process flaking off but not yet gone. My eyes had that sunken-in feeling like they had been drilled by a fluorescent light bulb, then dried out with a hair dryer. I wondered if my contacts were part of my eyeball at this point.


I flashed my ticket to the attendant who gave a grunt in acknowle- dgment that I was able to leave and with that, I walked out into the crisp March night air, past a convenience store, and down a dark street towards the harbor. I had no idea where I was going (in fact I wasn't even sure there was a harbor), but my goal was simple: to find a patch of grass and pitch my tent. The more concealed the better as I still feel like a bum every time I camp in the middle of a city. But this is where Japanese's Shinto shrines come into play... find one of them and you'll most definitely find a few trees, probably even a wooded area and some privacy. I stumbled upon one, half-assedly put up my tent, set my alarm for five and passed out dreaming of mobile house parties on wheels and train crashes where Astro Boy was the resounding hero.

The next morning I woke up, jumepd out of my tent to see an old man in a jumper- of-a- jogging suit power walking by and doing his best not to stare. I quickly ate some peanut butter and jam sandwiches and wondered if I could make it to the mountains by nightfall.

I took up mountain hiking and camping on an almost ridiculous level since I moved to Japan. Why? For three reasons:

1) I was raised in Nelson BC, on camping, hiking and the outdoors
2) It is ridiculously easy to access any railhead in this country
3) I would go mental if I couldn't at least sometimes get away from the concrete and power lines which enclose every single sight from any single spot in any single city

And hence Shikoku. It not only has two renowned mountains, but it, as I mentioned earlier, has some of the most remote mountain villages and valleys in the country and is, well, just not a tourist destination (there's no Kyoto, no Nara, no Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Fukuoka or Osaka on it). I flipped open my atlas, its pages wrinkled from four years of hitchhiking journeys, its pages awash with faded phone numbers, station names, and timetables written in ink, and I double checked my destination: Tsurigi-san mountain, or "Sword/Katana Mountain" in English. Another day's travel if all went smoothly. But it is impossible to plan, for from here on out there would be no trains or schedules to prop myself up on: it was to be all hitching. I just needed to find a good place for someone to pick my unshaven and white ass up, a place to buy a piece of cardboard to write my destination on it, and a flashy smile. I also needed to figure out which direction to head to get onto one of the three renowned bridges leading to Shikoku--bridges which have a past linked with dodgy politicians, bubble-economy hubris, and environmentally devastating public works construction projects.

I packed up my stuff, put on my house of a back pack with a little hop to get it resting properly on my shoulders, and put my fate into the hands of... of... it turned out to be a used clothing store owner with a lisp and a milk truck of a car. He also had funky clothes on.