Month: April 2024

I’m in my cupboard. Going to experiment with switching my phone off tomorrow as it is a high daily fee and having done the last two days of the Nakahechi route I’m about to do the first two days of it which will be many hours of walking and then sleep and the routes are clearly marked once you’ve found the trailhead. It’s half 8 right now. As soon as this is written I’ll be out like a light with my phone in airplane mode. Tomorrow the bus to Nakahechiko Chikatsu leaves at 5:44. Then I’ll walk back to Hongu and check out the temple. Kumano Kodo doesn’t show on Google maps and there’s rarely reception so my phone is useless on trail but as a camera. It’s only good for buses but it is excellent for them.

After tomorrow all I have left to do is part of the beginning. I’ve stitched this all together backwards and forwards somehow and I’m basically only halfway through even though I’ve seen nearly all three temple and shrine complexes – (haven’t seen the hongu temple). I’ve only got to Hongu by bus though which doesn’t count of course. I was here two days ago in passing, starting the second day of walking. It’s only a 4 day walk however you look at it, although there are many alternative routes that are still called kumano-kodo. This area is sacred. I booked a break in the middle. (and it is 5 days walk in truth because stage 3 that I did with my brolly is a cakewalk and deliberately so in order to try and flog people a boat trip to Hayatama Taisha that almost certainly doesn’t take in the actual shinto shrine. Make sure you get to that and don’t rely on the plague of resellers. The boat probably died years ago.)

None of the finished walkers I met at Why Kumano Hostel in kii-katsuura had been up the Kamikura Shrine. I sent Dom a photo and he was sad he had missed it. It’s not SOLD. It’s no longer treated as part of kk. There’s so much reselling on this route that the impossible hope is that everyone will take a boat but the boats are tiny.

You have to walk weird streets from the temple and then up a crazy steep hill for the shrine, and nobody is there. I had done enough research to book the time in. Most pilgrims either go by tourist boat to the temple and stop there, or they don’t go at all. Almost all miss the shrine. It’s sad. We have this path that used to take in these powerful places. The penultimate part of the path, to walk it, is a road unless you’ve booked a yessirnosir boat to the Ji. Then there’s the mountain path up to the jinja, still intact thankfully, but most people stop at the Ji. (Ji = temple. Jinja = Shrine) (“Go to the Hayatama-ji temple = Go to the Hayatama Temple Temple”) (I’m as confused as you are.)

Nobody walks the road bit. They either pay someone in a hat for a boat – and actors sometimes connect deeply with such material so it might be wonderful – or they don’t go at all. There’s a train. There’s a bus. But after the waterfall it is a sad walk down a main road for hours and I wouldn’t recommend it.

At the bottom of the hill at the Kamikura Jinja yesterday I went to an obscure secondary shrine just because and I met a woman dressed as a nun. I observed shinto and then gave her space, worrying she was judging my unconvincing bows – (They’re lip service. Spirits don’t care about hierarchy).

“Don’t worry, I’m not actually a nun,” she suddenly told me in excellent English. “I have a tour group coming through soon and I need to be dressed as a nun.” Kinda sweet of her to be like that. She seemed a little nervous and I think she wanted to practice her English.”I am sure you will bring wisdom to the people on the tour as if you were a nun.” We spoke for a while, thanks to her language. I left before the group came. She’s the first actor I’ve met and her heart was in the right place. But … there are coach loads of tourists here, that don’t walk at all but flood the shrines and book out the boats and get panto from the likes of her. You can walk all day without seeing another soul but get to the shrine and it is full of people who came by coach led by people dressed as nuns. So far so Macchu-Picchu by train.

It’s nine. I’m gonna crash. It is HOT in my cupboard tonight. Top bunk.

Most of the day was taking my luggage back to kii-tanabe and then getting myself back to hongu on the bus. Logistics for this trip have been hard. But it’s all fallen into place nicely so far and as long as I get this bus tomorrow morning I’ll be golden.

…

So zzzz

Today a much shorter walk, just to Kumano Hayatama Taisha in Shingu, then down the road a bit and up a mountain to the Kamikura Shrine.

I got my calligraphy all nicely done at the temple, but didn’t stay long as it felt strangely sterile. As always, the real power was at the shrine. Nachi was a waterfall for the present. Kamikura is about the future. It’s a rock. A solid point, but you have to work hard to get to it. Right up the top of a steep steep hill. As I go up, lots of people are coming down on their bums.

The shrine itself is a huge rock overlooking the town, with the inner sanctum as a vagina of three rocks. It’s powerful.

I spend a good amount of time at that shrine, praying to the rock yoni, and I blow my plan of buying presents today – there’s no shop. Then I have to run back down the steps as I’m getting a lift to my next accommodation from Kii-katsuura and I have to catch a bus. Thankfully I don’t go arse over tit, but people look at me disapprovingly as I run away from the future again while they shuffle away from it on their bums.

I get back just in time for my bus, and I’m driven up into the hills. This is a scheduled rest stop now and a chance to recharge.

My host tells me through Google Translate that there is an ancient shrine nearby. He takes me there and it is another rock shrine. This one is dedicated to Hachiman now, so the shinto animal would have been a dove.

I flick an old Georgian penny into the brook below the rock and clap my appreciation of the incumbent spirit here. My host approves. Then we drive back up the winding mountain pass to my place for tonight and I know I’m going to rest well.

A little wooden hut in the hills. A kitchen. A bath. A view. I spent the evening cooking things for my next couple of lunches, listening to the birdsong and thinking about how lucky I am. I’m coming to the end of this first tester journey and walk in Japan and there’s no way in hell I’m not coming back here. I’ll have to find time to walk Shikoku 88 temples, and this time I’ll plan it way in advance, although my choices at short notice so far have been satisfying. The next 4 days are logistically much more complicated though. I’m on a train to kii-tanabe at the moment to see if I can leave my wheelie case in left luggage there for a few days. Then I’m gonna walk a short steep ascent, the very beginning of the Nakahechi route, from Takajiri-oji just as far as Takahara. Logistically it might be the only chance I have to cover that part of the trail. I’m feeling pretty good for it, even though I stubbed my toe horribly last night.

When planning this route, the Japanese specificity really didn’t help. I walked from Hongu to Koguchi. The trailheads are in Umezawa and Kowaze. So when you’re trying to plan the fucker, your head starts to explode when you actually get people saying “It doesn’t start in Hongu, actually. It actually starts in Umezawa actually actually I think you’ll find.” Sure if you need to meet someone say “The Art’s Theatre” not “Leicester Square”. But either will do if you’re planning a walk. Go with the bigger one.

I woke up in the morning and spent two hours on buses to Hongu. Then a very valuable drop into the tourist information centre to make sure I was hitting the right trailhead, and forty five minutes walking down a main road – crucially ignoring a Kumano-Kodo trailhead that isn’t at Umezawa and goes the wrong way. Which I imagine is why people feel their pedantry is justified.

I have time pressure today, as Koguchi *ow* Kowaze is not well served with buses. My last one leaves shortly after 5. A late start means I can’t take it too easy. But I’ve been told this section is pretty chilled. Yesterday was Nakahechi Route Stage 4. Today was stage 3. “You’ll do it in 5 hours I reckon,” says Dominic. And he’s right. But I don’t trust it so I’m yomping.

An Englishman in Kumano, it would be madness not to bring an umbrella, I tell you. I’ve got a little one sticking out of my pack and when the heavens open I am very proud of myself for that. It’s an easy trail, the views are supposed to be wonderful. But I’m in a cloud, and I’ve seen plenty of ancient cedars by now. The nightingales are still bravely trying for call and response. I put one foot in front of the other.

Hyakken-gura lookout is a rare moment when the trees are clear and you can see for miles. “Take time to admire this glorious view, as pilgrims have done for 3000 years!”

White is resonant. The spirits have laid on a white view to reflect back on those of us lucky enough to have walked this section today.

I know I shouldn’t be wearing cotton. The rain will make it cold. The mist though – it gives an atmosphere. At times I stand in awe, listening to the sound of the forest. One moment I worry I’ve got stuck in a loop as a bridge seems to repeat itself. I have to check my photos and the trees around it to be sure it wasn’t the same bridge twice.

Plenty of time to think with the world so quiet. I’m occasionally talking to myself, working through things I’ve been bad at looking at.

The miles peel away in the mist. I’m hot enough walking that the wet t-shirt isn’t killing me. No lunch though today. For some reason I don’t want my cheese. I just have an orange and some rice crackers.

Someone used to live in one of the teahouses until 1960. I find myself envying them. The nightingales at night. The absolute solitude, and this particular teahouse ruin is not a hard walk from either trailhead. You could get a mule. Keep chickens. Live a peaceful life. Flog hot tea and rice cakes to pilgrims.

Koguchi just happens. Kowaze actually, I think you’ll find Koguchi is two bus stops down the road to the right after you’ve crossed the river.

I wait for a bus. Then there’s another bus. By the time I’ve got to the third bus stop I’ve spent almost as much time on buses today as I have on the path. I go into a little Sakē shop by the bus stop. It’s really just to have something to think about other than being hungry and bedraggled. I pick up and put down a few bottles, and smile at the owner but honestly I’m not here to buy sakē. I return to the bus stop and a few minutes later the owner comes out and gives me this:

By the time I’m back at the digs I’m exhausted. I try to go shopping a bit, grab a snack, and go and pass out in my cupboard.

Misty but not raining, and by the time the bus gets to the trailhead there are twelve other pilgrims walking the same way from Koguchi, so we string out onto the trail. This is the fourth stage of the Nakahechi route, and it’s considered to be the hardest walk.

It’s pretty easy to find the trailhead, particularly in company. There’s a little box for a stamp, where someone keeps the ink refreshed. Some of us stop, others are totally over the whole stamp thing by now. I think it’s cute so I get one, and Mae tells me I am stupid for not having walking poles, and that my T-shirt is cotton. She’s half my size and twice my age. I smile and show helpless hands. She smiles back and starts swarming up the hill. I never see her again.

The trail goes up into the clouds, over boulders that have been there for thousands of years, some surely dropped by glaciers, and through tree roots that will be shifting and probing, holding up the long straight cedars that line this ancient walk.

It is quiet here. The rush of water when there are streams, occasional woodpeckers, the calls of birds. I have been promised leeches and snakeses and bears, oh my. I find I’m disappointed at the lack of wildlife. Beautiful spiderwebs. A large ichneumon wasp lands on my arm with the long ovipositor that everyone mistakes for a sting. Nothing unpleasant all day.

This walk used to be busy, right up until 1920 there were people who lived here running businesses. “Bath is ready. We have tofu”. Roads killed it off and very little remains now. I’m glad that there’s only one rest stop with a vending machine and a loo. And nowhere to stop and sleep until it’s finished.

Up and up and up. My Fitbit is very excited by the exercise I’m doing. I am less excited but there’s only one way I’m going.

Fujiwara Teika:

Fleeting, indeed, are
Dew and tear drops, both
Unceasing;
She loved
This house, where Autumn winds blow now.

In 1210 the poet and wordsmith wrote: “This route is very rough and difficult; it is impossible to describe precisely how tough it is.” He sounds pissed off. It’s beautiful, Teika me old bean.

Up and up and up. My trousers can convert to shorts so I convert them. I’ve found a stick now. It’s not perfect but it’s a stick. And up and up and up. Sweat swamps my back and I’m not even carrying full pack. Why did I take the books? And up and up and up. I’m hoping for a shrine as it’s an excuse to kneel down and clap and get my breath back and up and up and up.

There must be a heck of a view but I can’t see it. I can see the path. Moss making things look more ancient. I can feel the ages in this land, in these sounds.

We are walking to Nachi Falls today. In terms of the purpose of this stage, it is to find peace with your present. The falls and the shrines there are all to do with the present moment. The longest single drop waterfall in Japan hitting the ground and that endless forever changing flow of water reminding us that now that now that now that now

I have to get there first though. Not there yet ha ha. “I like your perspective on this. Loads of people just think it’s a hike.”

At the top is it the top it says it’s the top at the top two Italians are waiting. “Have you seen a Canadian?” They have his lunch with them. “He’s a way back but I’m stopping so I can guard his lunch.” I sit in the quiet and I think I hear monkeys but they don’t steal his lunch. I peel my orange peacefully. An orange at 10000 paces. An old tradition from Camino and one I’ve brought back as it’s glorious. And I meet Dominic the Canadian. He’s steady and inevitable in pace. That’s about where I am unless we go downhill where without poles I’m mostly running and grabbing trees to catch my speed, plotting the safe path with eyes that learnt to ski as a toddler.

Finally there’s a view. Nachi. Where I’ll be sleeping. This is the land of the dead. You might be happily strolling down after a hard ascent, and you might see an old friend coming up towards you. You wave and they vanish. You get home and discover they died. Everyone has to go up this mountain when they die. It’s how you get to the next one. I’m happy not to see any old friends. I catch my breath and look at my accommodation.

In my usual manner I’m picking up and dropping things all the way. I put a Camino rock on that stump. Now I’m loaded up with unusual things that caught my eye as I walked and they’ll all end up somewhere else or charging up on my altar back home.

I run down the hill to the shrine. “It’s easier on my kneeeees” I tell the Australians as I pass them. “No it isnnnnnt” one of them reminds me but I’m too dumb for clever.

And the shrines. Loads of smoke. Buddhists are good at stinky smoke. It’s one of the reasons I like them. I’m a big fan of stinky smoke too. Big wooden buildings with bells. I really really really want to ring the big bell but there are certain things that are restricted to the tour groups who are paying more. Like special wristbands at Punchdrunk. Like the botafumeiro at Santiago, the largest censer in the world that only swings when someone has donated loads of money that day. I consider doing it anyway but my feet are too tired to run away from angry monks. I do desire a BOIIING. I think I’ll get to bang a particular drum at Hongu because I did Camino as well and I get a little dual pilgrim thing.

The shrine is good up the top. The 850 year old sacred camphor tree is as powerful. I take a leaf from it when nobody is watching. I ask it first. I resist buying tourist things. The present is my favourite state, my last Camino was for the past, this walk feels like it is for the future, so I’ll buy my tourist stuff at the future shrine, at Shingu.

As is standard with Buddhist Shinto syncretism, the shinto shrine has been incorporated. And it is the deeper and older power. The waterfall for the present, of course. No need for a shrine, but you pass through a torii gate at the top of the stairs.

A tour group goes out onto a special platform and a man in a hat plays Simon Says with them. They all clap and blow and put their hands on their heads because the man in the hat tells them to and it looks so empty but they paid for it. I chuck a shiny thing into the pool, wake up the sleepy kami, thank it for a lovely Present and watch the water turn around and around shifting, unpredictable, vast, wonderful. I love that the waterfall IS the shrine. Why mess with what nature has provided so perfectly?

I’m doing this all backwards and forwards, but I’m doing it.

Walking finished, Dominic and I ate wonderful sashimi together. The slight downside of launching from kii-katsuura is that most people sleeping there have just finished so they want to celebrate. The Aussies get involved, a lot of beer is consumed and I actually have to pull away and go up to my cupboard and pass out. Now I’m on the bus to Hongu, well rested, ready to walk from Hongu to Koguchi, hoping I finish the walk in time for the bus home, hoping it doesn’t rain too hard. It is noticeably colder today.

A long long train journey round a nub of coastline from Kyoto to Kii-Katsuura. This was supposed to be my launchpad, and it will be, but my first problem comes with the fact that I’ve booked everything backwards. Nobody else is doing it this way so there’s no infrastructure in place for us to do it this way, I tell myself as I sit on the road at the bus stop in Shingu just after dawn watching the hawks.

Then Mae arrives. She’s doing exactly the same thing as me today for the same reason, but was able to get a minshuku in Shingu. I had to book in Katsuura and taxi here. She’s from Taiwan. “I thought I was the only person to have thought of this,” she says laughing, and I tell her the same. The two of us are the only people on this bus. It’s an inelegant workaround, and it’ll be over £100 in taxis by the time I’m sleeping somewhere else. But I’m way too stubborn to let a little thing like logistics get in the way. I’m off into the hills. Hooray!

Last night was a tuna extravaganza. I booked an expensive meal at Wakatake. It largely involved tuna as that town seems to be where they haul a lot of it out of the ocean. I sat cross legged and ate my own bodyweight in fish. I’m full of protein and ready for the trail now, although maybe I should have said no to the Sakē. It was so good though, and didn’t seem to affect my ability to get up this morning.

Just a little bag today. That’s the advantage of the workaround – I won’t need to walk with my pack. I’ve got lunch, my books for stamps and a map book. Contact lenses. Flask of water. Not much else. I’m wearing Charlotte’s hat. I thought I’d given it back to her but found it when I was packing. Thanks.

This is rural Japan now, and I’m going deep into nowhere. The view from the bus even is astonishing. And thanks to the vending machine culture, I’ve already had a hot coffee before 7am in a tiny little town.

I’ve eaten well enough the last few days to last me the rest of my life. Now I’m gonna get hot and sweaty and plod my way through these beautiful mountains looking for whatever I’m looking for and getting whatever I get. Gonna conserve battery and look out the window now.

Having established online for certain that the woman at the fourth queue misinformed me about my pass not being valid to Hiroshima, I am relieved that she was so adamantly wrong. I stayed in Osaka instead, and eventually my peregrinations took me to the Fushimi Inari Shrine, and from there up the slopes of Mount Inari.

The blog my iPad lost was all about Inari. People have tried to make Inari look like people because there will always be narcissists, but Inari is a fox spirit and has loads of friendly kitsune helping out. Inari deals with harvest – (and the performing arts). He’s a big fan of rice cakes and tofu. She had the shrine next to my first digs, and on the first day I didn’t have any coins with me so I offered him a Victorian collar stud, a shiny ball and a plastic rabbit. I think she liked the rabbit and the ball, but the collar stud…?

OK there was a shrine keeper there. Maybe they go through all the offerings and maybe they worked out that the stud was from the gaijin staying next door. Maybe they then spoke to my hostess, let themselves into my bedroom, and left the collar stud on my pillow. Right? That’s the rational explanation. Because the only other option is that Inari gave it back. It was on my pillow when I got home. It took it in my stride at the time but the more I thought about it the weirder it felt.

Now it’s in my shirt top buttonhole. It wasn’t a rebuke, the thing coming back. The stud is white, the colour you see Inari and the kitsune painted. White like rice. Maybe Inari charged up my collar stud and then sent a quick kitsune to drop it back on my pillow as a surprise. By the time it came back they’d had a few coins off me too, as well as the shiny ball and the rabbit, so they couldn’t think I was being stingy. And they’d had some company. That shrine out in the styx – it’s strong but not well attended.

Maybe the shrine keeper dropped it back in contempt. Maybe it was another collar stud that somehow came out of my bag where they are all still hooked to card. However it got onto my pillow, I’m taking it as a positive thing to have it. I do have other studs so human error is possible. Still, I’ll restrict my box offerings to cash, and leave my random things elsewhere, and the remaining studs are all gonna get left overnight at various shrines to see if I can repeat the experiment, and charge them up with various friends.

Mt Inari has the Fushima Inari Shrine at its base. It was a bit human conveyor belt down there and as I was going nose to tail with all of Instagram I noticed a little path off to the side that nobody was taking, so I took it.

The little path winds up the mountain, past legions of ancient Inari. I think it might be how they marked graves, but most of them seem to be clean shrines, radiating power. I took the path close to dusk, just as the rain was starting. I barely saw another soul on the way up. Just an ancient couple tending the most incredible complex of old shrines – absolutely rammed with frogs as well. Their sound was so loud you could believe it was electronically wired for sound. (it wasn’t). I bought all their incense at Y50 a batch. That’s about 25p each. And it’s gorgeous stuff. She gave me a free box of matches. Now I have fire.

By the time I got to the top I was hot but soaked. A steady rainfall all the way, but I was so happy to be there that I didn’t mind. I left a bit of Jersey granite with one of the old ones.

I don’t resent the woman at JR for thinking I had a different pass from the one I have. I’m just sad I lost those morning hours to a queue. It was a lesson though. Today I just got on the train. The pass lets me through the barrier. The guard knows the pass. So long as I know I’m on the right train, the fact I haven’t got a reserved seat is irrelevant.

I’m off to Nachi-Taisha, via Kii-Tanabe. Inari Mountain was a warm up. I’ve got to think about left luggage now, and stripping back what I’m carrying, and getting up even earlier… I think I’ll have to leave my case in kii-tanabe and pick it up just before I fly.

There are literally 2000 temples and shrines in Kyoto, and more. Trying to walk home the hour and a half from The Philosopher’s Path was a hiding to nothing. Every few minutes there would be another incredible complex to be explored. It ended up getting dark when I was only halfway.

At many of them you can pay someone to do some calligraphy in a little book. I’ll need this book on Kumano as it works like the little stamp book at the end of Camino. You get a completely meaningless certificate to leave rolled up underneath the altar at home, and all you have to do for it is have the calligraphy from two or three major temples in the area. Often they are unattended and you can go have a word with pig.

Buddhist Shinto syncretism means you are mixing up your worship in the complexes. Usually you’ll have a load of animals at the mini shrines and then some dude in the central shrine. An aspect of Buddha, or one of the Bodhisattvas, who are legion. It takes a few lifetimes to properly get a handle on all the characters involved in this hotchpotch of Buddhist Shinto bell ringing incense madness.

Which reminds me, you can’t buy lighters in Japan. I’ve got tons of incense and no means of setting it on fire. I’m off to Hiroshima today if they let me on the train. Fourth queue now. The last three were just rude when I got to the front and didn’t help tell me where to go. I’ve got a ticket but I have to reserve a seat so I have to queue anyway. “What will happen if I just get on the next train and go?” “You have to reserve a seat.”

Anyway Philosophers Path was a pleasant stroll down a canal, on level ground, with a superabundance of coffee shops and loads of unusual shrines. My favourite so far was Otoyo Shrine, guarded by two Nezumi – a rat shrine. It was founded in 886 when the emperor was sick. It is currently festooned with camelias, and hosts some unusual kami. There’s an orochi shrine, I guess because snakes have always been related to medicine. Think of caduceus, the snake on medic alert bracelets etc, carried through from Hermes. The Judeo-Christian creation myth gave a lot of bad press to snakes as a symbol. People think they’re Satan. Sure they can kill you but so can a cow. There’s a lot around how they can shed skin and how poison can be turned to medicine if understood. That’s why the snake has a shrine at Otoyo.

I’m close to the front of my fourth queue trying to get a bullet train to Hiroshima and I’ve lost the whole morning to it. I’m disappointed. Even if it had worked out a bit more expensive, I’m thinking that I would have been better off buying individual tickets for journeys rather than what I thought was going to be a useful JR WEST pass that has turned into a timesink.

—

Another sixty quid on top of the pass as it only goes so far as Okayama. I binned the Hiroshima thing. This trip isn’t about war tourism anyway. It’s about ancient things and getting organised. I’m getting out of this station and over to the Imperial Palace, and the gold shrines. Gonna hang with the animals.

Earth day at a time when I’m examining my relationship with technology. Perfect moment for my phone to be broken.

Knowing I’m in Japan, I have no doubt whatsoever that someone will be able to fix it quickly. It’s a few years old so it’s about finding someone who has the stock. And stumping up.

My broken phone was the macguffin for covering a huge amount of ground in Osaka central on foot. Women dressed as comic characters beckon passers by into manga shops, gacha machines and vending machines line the streets, intimidating food booths and tiny bars full of smokers. Unique smells. Bizarre noises. Everyone is smiling, and most people are skinny, and this is the kitchen of Japan. How do they stay so slim? Nervous energy?

Eventually I am directed to a place on the fifth floor of a mall, where I am told by a happy young woman in a mask that they do have my screen and it’ll take just two hours to fix. The price I am quoted makes my eyes water but I know I’ll need the phone once I’m walking, just in case I get attacked by bears or somesuch. You can distract bears by getting them hooked on Candy Crush. I put the repair on my credit card and silently understood that I’ll be eating a lot more cheaply than I would like to for the rest of the trip. That’s for tomorrow Al. A third of the cost of a new phone. These things are expensive.

I get the damn thing back just in time for my official tourist booking. It’s a food tour. Not super cheap, but worth every penny. I worked a long time for a well respected London tour company that turned weird on me in the end. It’s a habit they have. I know the work of guiding though from when it was good, and I tend to like the people who are drawn to it. Food, walking and facts? What’s not to like, right?

We get Tommy. He’s a fine example of the Aussie abroad. He fell in love with Japan and I totally see why. He wears his joy openly. The Japanese kids working the route all have a genuine affection for him, which is testament to his energetic persona. He makes his tour feel like an extended conversation with a friend.

Our group is a little reserved at first. A surprisingly buttoned up New York couple, a chef from Bristol, Sydney Aussies, a shy beanpole from somewhere so remote in The Netherlands that he doesn’t even bother naming it when asked twice. Is there a place called FukBum out there or something? I’ll never know.

It’s not an easy conversation group, but Tommy is disarming and knows his shape well enough not to be thrown. I’m trying my best to be the joker without taking all the air. It settles surprisingly quickly. It’s a 3 hour tour.

We are in the old Red Light District, South West of Tennoji. There are loads of little eateries around here, and the tour operator is doing brisk business, somehow managing to stitch in three groups of about ten tourists without pissing the locals off too much. It is a real gastronomic delight. We start with a little place serving exquisite barbeque skewers, unusual roots and radishes, and a mystery dish, something that I swore I would never enjoy, but somehow found to be okay. Then we go for Kitsune Udon in a little intimidating place where you stand to eat. I would never have gone into a place like this without Tommy’s lead. Everything in kanji. Nowhere to sit. Too intimidating. Having had a really tasty hot bowl there I am now happy to do it again on my own. Upskilling in Japanese food.

Third stop, prize winning octopus balls, baby. Served with a tomato sour, which is basically rakzi – (shochu … moonshine) – with tomato juice and soda. The balls are a wheaty pancake with a bit of octopus in the middle, and I’m the one who bought a food tour in Japan so I can shut up about the fact that I tried to promise myself never to eat octopus again and put three balls into my face. They were yummy. And not that much smarter than a pig, and I eat bacon without thinking.

Feeling a little guilty and with the effect of the shochu kicking in, I bought an ‘adult” gacha for the group. Someone had to. Y500 into a slot, turn the wheel and a kinder egg ball falls out without the chocolate. You pop open the ball to reveal your prize. Our prize? A BRAND NEW SEXY THONG. They had taken pains to put a label on it saying Y800 so we could feel we had WON. I hadn’t won. I had been hoping for a little mini plastic Arniecock like the ones in this claw machine. I’m not sure what to do with my Y800 thong in an egg.

There are vending machines for everything. It’s how I get my morning coffee. It’s how I get my nightcap tea. Both cold. They sell beer too. They have ID readers but they are disabled. The law says to sell alcohol in a vending machine you must have an ID reader on the machine. In a fine example of wilful bending of rules, they have attached them but they are disabled. Too much faff. They would lose sales. The machines pepper the streets in rural areas as well as central city. Cash is still huge here in Japan thank God. Living in London it is easy to think that the world has forgotten cash entirely. Not yet, it seems.

We stop outside “EAT THE FISH YOU CATCH”. If you catch it, you have to eat it. If you’re on your own and you get a whopper, you have to be hungry. None of us risked it.

Final few stops were a blur. Shochu is strong stuff and I only had one. And a beer. We constructed our own noodle sauce thing and had little tasting trays of all sorts of curious things. A second mystery dish was something I didn’t know anyone ever ate, and wish nobody ever ate. It’s a mystery and I’m not telling. Partly because I feel guilty. The Columbian dude guessed almost right, which implies they eat similar stuff out there. Monsters.

Final stop and deep fried avocado was the revelation of the evening. Don’t knock it til you’ve tried it. It isn’t an official tour dish, but Tommy likes to go above and beyond. I tipped him ostentatiously in the hopes it caused an avalanche of tips. A good tour guide is priceless, and he made it so relaxed, casual and unshowy. The opposite of the Halloween Tour I’ve guided the last three years, and all the better for it. A perfect evening with strangers, just as I found I was missing conversation in English.

I’m gonna start by talking about technology a little bit. This is not the first blog I’ve written for today. That blog may or may not one day magically pop up. It is uploading. It has been uploading all day.

WordPress decided to call itself Jetpack and it still sucks ass. I guess Hermes had to do the same when it became synonymous with bad delivery – “We’ve left it in the bin outside your home”. Now it’s Evri, as in “Evri parcel gets kicked into the river”.

I dropped my phone. Just a little drop but the kami are fucking with my love of technology. The screen went bananas. Hundreds of pounds to fix, even in Osaka. I’m glad it’s fixed but that was all day.

I wrote my blog on iPad instead and then scheduled it. It has been uploading for the last twelve hours and more. It’ll never publish. I had to download Jetpack for iPad. One would associate a “jet pack” with speed, but unfortunately it seems my blog was under the flame of said jetpack. My blog is gone. I think it might be prioritising loading up 5 years of daily blogs and all the photos I’ve ever posted into my iPad memory before it lets me post the single one I tried to expedite. If so I’m immediately deleting it when it starts working.

It sucks. Jetpack for iPad sucks. App. The Jetpack app for iPad is absolutely slow #rubbish. Oh and since I’ve tried to fish for hits, WordPress is far far far too expensive for the rare fish of a blogger that isn’t putting on adverts and lying to you about what they like for marketing purposes. Go on, tiny fish for jetpack – escalate this.

My blog loss today though, maybe it wasn’t just Jetpack being the epidemic of explosive poo I’ve come to know it to be despite my annual subs. Maybe it was also about the mischievous kami in this area, who don’t want me posting photos and details of a tiny but extremely powerful shrine that is sufficiently far from Osaka and Kyoto as to be mostly silent. I love the kitsune whose land I’m currently sleeping on. But the thing with spirits is they know us on a more fundamental level than this life we are hallucinating. We have forgotten too much as we go from this one to this one. They have to be eternal, outside of the idea of time. The rules are different. I wrote about the shrine, and might have encouraged more footfall. Maybe one day jetpack will publish it, just as Hermes might deliver that thing in the end. Chances are it’s in the bin. And if it never publishes then insha’Kitsune. Here’s the thing I’ve written instead.

It was dark when I finally landed at Kansai Airport. The runway is a spit out over the water flanking the town so it can feel like you’re putting down on water. I was too tired to appreciate it really, but very relieved to finally be on soil where I’m not treated like I’m a pathogen.

Knowing my limits, I’ve booked a cabin at the airport tonight. It’s cheap and very close to where we land. I go straight there and arrive twenty minutes early. My room is not ready yet because I said ten o’clock arrival so that is the time it will be ready. So I go back into the airport.

There’s a pharmacy and I’m looking for something that helps with nappy rash. The first plane was long and hot, sitting down for longer than I’m used to. Then China without the chance of a shower and the sweaty streets of Shanghai. My bum is a bit raw. Nothing to worry about so long as I look after it now. I don’t want to be thinking backwards as I’m walking forwards.

I’m so tired there’s no time for inspiration, and there’s an Italian restaurant right next to my cabin. I take a ticket and the computer voice tells me my table number. There’s a tablet and a menu in Japanese, but thankfully there’s also a human who clocks that my Japanese is bad and gives it to me in English. I order an Arrabiata with minced pork cos Japan, and a cold Kirin Ichiban. The beer is delivered by a human, and then a robot toodles up to my table with the pasta and asks me to take my food. Too tired to establish if I’m impressed or terrified, I do as it bids, eat it all up, and stagger next door to my cabin. It is one of a long row of such cabins. My bag won’t fit, but there’s a place to put things.

I do downstairs and sit on a heated loo seat, bliss, before getting into the most remarkable shower. I couldn’t make head or tail of the pharmacy so I’m going for natural solutions. I spend ages in the shower, then back up to my cabin where they’ve laid on uniform jimmy-jamas. Mine are large, which means sumo wrestler, but they have a drawstring so I can stop them falling down. No reading. No writing. I stick a few pictures into the Shanghai blog and fall deep asleep. Twice I have to go downstairs in the night – that’ll be the Kirin. But apart from that it is a long dead sleep and now I’m up and about, writing with my coffee before I have my first planned gentle day in Tennoji.

The next two days have been put by for jetlag and planning. No pressure to do much other than BE in Japan, with the obvious proviso that I’m terrible at just being with the ADHD monkey screaming at me all the time.

One thing I’ll need to do though is get more adventurous with food. Breakfast has been a panini and a latte, thanks to the robot. It’s the only place I could find that wasn’t Starbucks for coffee in the airport.

I’m off into town. If I can make sense of the railways.