AlBarclay

Despite the fact that jetlag is playing havoc with my sleep patterns, I’m managing to cope with a full diary. The next two weeks I’ve been trying say “yes” to as much as possible in order to try and get back to black after a delightfully profligate time in Japan. It’s just as well that the yen is suffering at the moment, as despite the fact the money worked in my favour, I’ve put myself out of pocket. Time to get my head down. Thankfully there are some things in the pipeline, and joyful ones too. No more lazy pricey food. No more coffee out. I’ve even left my aeropress in Brighton so I can make lovely brew without blowing money at the Kemptown Bakery where I usually end up getting unnecessary cake as well as the pricey but excellent coffee. It’s got so it’s often over four quid now for a coffee over the counter, and that’s too much to frame as a cheap luxury.

It does mean I have to be more organised. This morning, for instance, invigilating early after a terrible sleep, I had to stop pushing snooze and stagger into the kitchen to bubble up. It all fits with the “planning” drive. I’m not used to being organised.

But I’m feeling very heady, back in London. I think the plane trees might be dropping. I’m all blocked up and had a headache this morning. Might have been the wake. Some of us sat in Chelsea and got mildly sozzled in his favourite pub. It’s just a few minutes walk from my flat. Wakes are an odd party, everyone there for the one person who isn’t. It was good to catch up with family and friends though, even under sad circumstances. I fill up my diary and then socialise with the people who happen to be nearby, and so it goes in London. An ever shifting vortex of people coming in and out of the centre of town. When Keith died I realised how long it had been since I went and saw him. There are hugely important friends of mine that I haven’t seen for months and months. With my new organisation drive I think I’m gonna experiment with putting visits into the diary as well. Gone are the days when I could just show up and say “let’s go for a walk”. Everyone has kids.

I was meant to see a friend this evening but the ever present jetlag wall jumped me early. It’s all I can do to write this and I’ll be asleep the moment I finish this sentence.

London again and giving thanks to the people I love. Brian, despite his absurdly busy life, made time to come to the church and stay with me after. Lou watched it live-streamed and took screenshots.

I was stressing out, trying to make sure that my mum’s final boyfriend, a man who achieved so much, had a send-off worthy of his contentious charming brilliant human life. Stephanie, a strong Christian with time on her hands, had worked hard having made herself next of kin to give him a good last few years, and as a result she was calling the shots. Max and I were there to try to honour the man we knew, knowing we had known him deeper and longer. She took the burden of arranging things though. And did it beautifully. She was perhaps a bit too controlling about the readings. I fought for some Blake, knowing that Blake was huge for Keith, and had to butcher it to make it short, but then she wanted “If”, Kiplings piece that is in every bathroom in the home counties.

Keith gave me some Blake Tarot cards, long before tarot became part of my expression, just when I was a curious young wannabe mystic. I used to use them until I lost a card. I might try them again going forward, lost card be damned. He was always a mischief, and he helped augment my father’s drive towards mischief. Two male role models in formative years, both pushing me towards examination of external stimulus. Dad: “Work out what the herd is doing. Do the opposite.” Keith, later: “If you’re going counterflow, which you are, look after the people who haven’t thought as deeply as you and be kind.”

He knew he wasn’t my dad. He was never dumb enough to try to say he would be. He was mum’s boyfriend and he understood my conflict about him. He found the edges where he could be my friend. He gave me creative freedom on my first ever dayjob, in my summer holiday from school, to typeset and arrange the annual report for his charity. We won an award for reports on the scale of charity he ran. That was his eye and his guidance, but at 17 I had an experience of my creativity being recognised. He introduced me to David Monroe, a young film maker who took the headshots that got me my first agent, became my friend, taught me about rioja, made me feel like my idea of being an actor wasn’t the mistake my parents had worried it might be, and promptly died.

Now I look at the figures who were older and influential in my twenties, as I was making sense of this job I do, Michael McCallion, David, Dad and Keith… the first three died so suddenly… Keith stayed solid, but I started to fear being friends with older men. Michael went too suddenly, just as we were getting started. He gave me Christopher Logue and Alexander Technique and was a brilliant friend when I was auditioning for drama school, always with a helpful creative prompt. He wrote “The Voice Book” and at the time my focus and interest was on voice. A gorgeous man. He was actively instrumental in getting me into Guildhall just by being truthful when I practiced my Trigorin speech with him. David made work feel possible for me. Dad tried to discourage me but I saw his playfulness. All three died in the space of a year.

Keith…? He lived and he took time to challenge me. He wasn’t ingratiating himself with me. My trust was shot so it was hard for me to love him in case my love killed. He was happy to help me realise that success in my industry comes with work if you’re not a classic beauty. He put me in front of his friend John Schlesinger, who told me I needed to train, perhaps because I wasn’t his type. Keith never told me I couldn’t, but he taught me I had to get on with it working out how to make it work for myself, and gave me the courage that took me to Guildhall and thence to a functioning career.

Bless his heart. God rest his soul.

His was the dead body I sat with a month ago. I don’t think I ever really appreciated the extent to which he woke ambition in me until I started getting involved in his funeral and reflecting on what he was silently doing when his focus was on me. He accepted my goal – to be a regularly working actor – and was helping me to think about “how”, rather than just discouraging me as my parents were.

He was ninety when he died, after a heavy “More Menthol” cigarette habit. He lived hard and well despite suffering things nobody should suffer. He never let it dim his fire. I thought he’d be forever. If nobody else will write his life, maybe I should.

Fare forward old bean. It was lovely to meet so many of those that loved him today.

Lou just laid me down and smothered me with oil.

Both of us impulsebought a trip we couldn’t really afford for similar reasons. Mine you’ve heard all about. Walking off some of the things that don’t help. Burning out some eels. Clearing the pathways. Lou was upskilling herself. Working really hard over weeks in the sun learning about oily things and digestion and deepening her spiritual practice with a physical and practical Ayervedic Massage Training.

She got back to Brighton and before she assembles her client base she very generously told me that it might be helpful for her to work on a man as there were only two men on her course so she was better with women’s bodies.

She chose a particular oil for me involving sesame and strange herbs. Warmed up gently in a special metal gong type bowl, and then two hours of absolute bliss. As is often the case with me, it was man vs head. Itches and cramps and twitches and mumbles. I had to mostly stay still for two hours. As I write, my right foot is twitching. I struggle to stay still for ten seconds even when I’m sleeping. So this is another expression of how brilliant the relationship I have with her is. I paid her with a driving lesson and lunch and she helped shut my brain.

She’s gonna pass her test, but she needs to get the sense memory back, so I could sit in Bergman and let her move him around a car park in Stanmer. We did lots of the old stopping and starting, which really is the entire nuts and bolts of it. We learn road sense as a cyclist, or a passenger. Once we can operate the car without thinking, we just have to pay attention and not be too cautious or too reckless.

Lunch was fish and chips. I got back from Japan actually craving chips and ketchup. I love umami, strange tastes, heat. But there’s such a thing as too much of a good thing. Good old fish and chips. In a pub. With a pint at lunchtime.

And then an oily massage and I can feel the wall approaching like a bullet train so I’m writing this early.

I committed to this before Japan, with the understanding that I wouldn’t be ready, but the desire to do it anyway. A trip to The Battersea Boot, offloading whatever I could fit into the car before I left. Absolute gubbins for the most part, but large amounts of absolute gubbins. Old clothes left over from the van days. Time time time. Records from my attic. Although an ex flatmate has a skaghead boyfriend who she let in to the flat when I was away. Ages ago the idiot cut off all my mum’s burglar alarm motion sensors, probably convinced they were cameras, and then loaded up on total guff that he figured would make a few bucks. Old prints and bits of art, some of which I’d painted. Some comics, loads of magic cards, lots of records.

He broke the hinges on the attic door and put his foot through the ceiling, smashed up a junction box up there too. I suspect there’s stuff gone from the other side too. Fucking creepy, thinking he was dancing around up there. I shouldn’t have said that I thought there might be a bitcoin code in one of my old bags. There isn’t. I have looked through everything that is in both attics, been through all the old phones for photos of it, but he’s too lazy and entitled to understand that.

He’d have got some value but not enough for the karmic damage he’s done himself. But this life for him is a null life anyway, so perhaps he figures nothing to lose. Addicted broke and from privilege is arguably worse than addicted broke and without privilege, as the resentment of those you can frame with “they’ve got stuff and I haven’t” is more easy to frame. “I used to have stuff, his stuff should be mine.” I might go up in the other attic when I’m back from Brighton, and might involve the police if I think it’s worth the bother, just as it’s not the first time he’s stolen from me thinking I won’t notice and each time it gets easier. I didn’t have before and after photos though.

I was flogging things today hand over fist anyway. I need to offload more and more and more. Just let it all dance away to new homes where maybe it gets loved again, and maybe it gets resold or chucked. I loaded up on incense and flogged enough at a 100% markup to cover my outlay. Now I can burn freely. And I’ve got lots to burn. They make top quality stuff out there as it is such a big part of their culture.

Off to bed. Too tired. Repeated incursion is a good incentive to get up there and get it all out and in the process really work out what’s gone. Today was hard work but I got a decent hourly rate. No single item they nicked will make you rich. But lots of little things make a big thing. It just takes hard work. Which some people don’t do well.

I landed back in London near 7am and thankfully both my bags came through, as one of them had my contact lenses in and I was tired. A careful drive back from the Gatwick long stay car park, on the left side of the road. That’s one of the things we have in common with the Japanese right now.

There’s a great deal that is very different over there, of course. It’s the other side of the world. I’ve already touched on this but cash is still king and it really highlights how arrogant we are about technology that in such an incredible tech country they respect the fact that it could all go to the wall. Attack London with something that stops all the card machines working, and everyone will go into screaming panic. If they notice in Japan they’ll just shrug. They’ve got plenty of yen around the place. I got to know the coins very well. Lucky 5 for throwing at the shrines. “It’s got a hole in it!” So does the 50. My dad showed me these coins. They haven’t changed since he was there in the forties and they are still in heavy use. I love the connection aspect, the counting, the sorting. It feels more like an exchange than *boop*. You can keep an eye on it. I had two 500 yen coins left and tiny bit of shrapnel and so I went and found a bowl of noodles for Y1225 which pretty much cleaned me out of coins. I spent the last few hundred on silly gacha for gifts.

Slot machines are a big part of culture here. Again this is informed by the cash use. Shinto shrines are activated by throwing a shiny thing into the box. Doesn’t matter what denomination. Some without boxes have so much money in piles in front of them. If everyone in England gave me a penny I could buy a house. Someone must occasionally go around, a priest, blessing the shrine, removing all the old shiny stuff that the spirits won’t need anymore because look at all the smoke and the chanting and now there’s NEW shiny stuff. So you chuck money in a box for worship. Then to relax you chuck money in a box and fire shiny pachinko balls. In the morning you chuck money in a box for a coffee. They have them hot in vending machines as well as cold. The can is cooked into the coffee, but you get your aluminium shot with caffeine.

Take your shoes off indoors and in the temples. Again the religion informing the secular, but also for practicality because tatami is basically straw and you’ll ruin it in wet boots. Every home provides slippers for guests. There are even special ones in the loo so you don’t wear the loo slippers in the home space. And the loo seat is almost always warm and can be calibrated to bumgun you with warm water if you can read kanji. Or make sense of some pretty clear pictures.

Bowing. We bow a lot. To the spirits and to one another. Smoke. There are smoking cafes and non smoking cafes. Hate smoke? Just go to a non smoking place. The smoking places don’t mind losing your custom. Everyone wins and the non smokers don’t have to look at someone’s horrible tunour on the table, or some actor pretending to blow smoke at kids or whatever some valueless committee has decided will be the thing to save the world from smoke. Also incense. Everywhere. I can get behind that. I’ve loaded up on the stuff. It’s strong and good and will key specific memories.

You might suddenly hear a merry tune coming from loudspeakers, like a much less demanding call to prayer. I usually got this at 5pm in rural towns but that might have been to do with the fact I was normally walking from 7 to 3. It seems pointless until you examine it and remember that Japan has all the lovely hot springs because it is volcanic, on loads of fault lines and very prone to earthquake. This is why they are so clever with living space. They can’t build high. The speakers are there as a tsunami warning, or quake or bears or North Korean Nuke. If they play that happy tune, the warning system is still working and everything is ok.

They eat very well. They eat everything. I had some pretty hairy food experiences. But even I drew the line at raw horse.

It’ll take a while for my stomach to settle now though. An onslaught of strange flavours and very little familiar. My happy place, but there is such a thing as too much variety. I’m craving fish and chips at the moment.

Naked public baths, gender segregated… but I love the onsen culture. Get clean. There’s a stool in the shower. Sit on it and scrub the hell out of yourself. You are being judged. When you are demonstrably clean, get in the onsen. You can hold a towel casually in front of your todger like it’s just a coincidence and then just leave it on the side. No tattoos. That’s yakuza. Bandage if it’s small. Not your todger, the tattoo.

Wait for the green man. Even if there is no car for twenty miles, you will be JUDGED if you walk on red man. And NEVER TALK ON YOUR PHONE IN PUBLIC.

If it was brought in after the war when they started to merge more with our culture, chances are they use English or American terms, slightly Japanesified. So even if you speak no words, you can try things and they might work. “Hotto cohee” is what I want every morning. A hot coffee. I already told you about deruggo setorro for pharmacy. Birru after a long day, or maybe aisa kirimu if you want to cool down. I got a lot of buses, so “Busu?” with a point was helpful to find the stops. There are SO MANY loanwords. And some of them work in different ways. At Imperial I learnt that cheating when you’re doing an exam can be called “kanningu”. Is that a coincidence? Maybe not when a state of massive anticipation is referred to as “hai tenshon”. Their religions absorb and merge, and so with language, creating Shakespearean joy and the possibility of new directions because nobody is the language police, tryeng too kil owr langwedge und tel uss dess onli wan wey 2 spel tings. That is a way of thinking that only leads to dead expression. I jump at bad grammar and spelling just for that it is that my brain to prosess it alot finds it, anoyingly hard?.

As with religion so with language I appreciate the Japanese way. They nicked kanji from the Chinese too, and then just totally rejigged it all for their purposes. Open, straight down the line, odd creative noisy fun people. I’ll be back.

Here’s the Japanglish song. Found it trying to keep self awake. It’s late enough now. zzx

I’m flying back home.

Kumano-Kodo is not just one path. Like Camino it is many, and the focal points are the shrines. For practicality they put more emphasis on the Past shrine in Hongu. Nachi Falls, the shrine at the end of most people’s route, is strong and gorgeous and much more ancient and resonant than Hongu. The Hongu shrine was destroyed in a flood and rebuilt, and you no longer have to wade through water to get there, losing an important part of the ritual. The Hayatama shrine for the future isn’t really on the walk at all anymore. Organised people get a boat. Mooks like me walk down a road and get the bus back.

You can’t really buy stuff on the route and you can’t easily book in many of the little villages. This is partly because Kumano Travel block buys much of the good accommodation so they can provide itineraries to anyone who is patient enough to work out their atrocious website and then put up with the fact you hear nothing from them for ages. I was in room 9 of 9 when I stayed at kiri-no-sato Takahara, but only 6 rooms were filled. I don’t think it’s the best system but it’s the one we’ve got. I rather haphazardly booked via booking dot com as I get 20% off and it was fine.

Knowing what I know now I would’ve done things very differently. If I couldn’t book a place to stay where I finished walking that meant I could start walking again in the morning I’d have booked a night in Hongu, most likely at Kumano Backpackers, where you get a cupboard for twenty quid. No availability there? Yunomine Onsen and J-Hoppers. Just a bit more to pay and a touch less practical to get to.

I was sleeping at the end for the first few days and the first bus out of Kii-katsuura is waaaay too late, at 8am.

I danced all over the place. It didn’t detract from my experience.

Koguchi and Chikatsuyu are the two places where they book out fast. You’ll struggle to get reliable last minute bookings. Both are perfectly achievable in the morning from Hongu. The buses are EARLY but great for that. My eventual route, which I described as Frankenstein’s monster of Kumano-Kodo was so incomprehensible to the lady who puts the dual pilgrim data in that she thought I had gone by coach and logged it as such for posterity. We know different. No point being vain. I’ve asked them to change it. But I didn’t do this for the certificate. I only got the stamps because I knew they’d let me bang the Taika drum. Which was a huge resonant moment on the life journey I’m currently experiencing.

Shinto is an excellent thing. It can be taken too far, and I’ve railed against Marie Kondo trying to persuade us that our socks have preferences. All religions can be taken too far and usually are. Humans are silly things. But generally Shinto is a powerful antidote to the thinking structures that we are using to burn ourselves out of functional civilisation. The group is more important than the individual. Screw you Ayn Rand. Nature is powerful and to be respected. Even if you eat stewed blue whale eyeballs and river dolphin nose. Don’t expect the crazy kami to do you a favour. You can go clap and hope they help out but you know they’ve got their own stuff going on and the chances are they aren’t particularly concerned about your granny’s angina. But they might be. It’s a benign and peaceable way of thought and it means there are some seriously old and well cared for trees in the shrines. The beauty of the natural world is preserved because of the understanding that we are not the most important thing on this planet even if we sometimes forget that.

I stayed in some incredible places, some more practical than others. Kiri-no-sato and Kumano Winery Guest House were the only two that I walked to and then departed from without having to get a bus to the trail head. My last two nights.

Wakatake gave me my best Japanese meal, but I had to get a taxi to Shingu the next morning to make sure I caught the 7:10 bus to Koguchi. WhyKumano was a friendly cupboard and good for Hayatama Taisha but not much good for the trail with that damn 8am first bus. Myoho mountain lodge? God it was beautiful. But way out.

Kumano Backpackers, cheap and cheerful and friendly. The café never opens, but they gave me a peanut butter and jelly sandwich kit. I knew how to operate it despite being English. And a banana and a yogurt. Nice people. At J-Hoppers they know you’re only passing through and are perfectly happy to let that show. They’ve got amazing onsen that you can make private though, so it’s worth the studied indifference. And the owner is a lovely family man. He’s just employed gap year travellers to help cook and they slump around scowling at you.

I’ll come back to these trails, and walk a different route, in this or another lifetime. It’s a powerful part of the world and helpful for me when I’m trying to get back into some form of fitness. The time commitment is low enough that if you’re needing to do some reconstruction I recommend it heartily.

The paths are long and rarely feel dangerous. A few landslidey bits and big drops but nothing you can’t manage. People occasionally get killed. A friend of Mary and Andy from Melbourne went off the edge and died while letting someone pass. There are posts hammered right in the middle of flights of steps and pathways that appear to have been designed to ensure paralysis instead of just a wet bum if anyone is unlucky enough to slip when passing them and go over backwards. They really need to rethink that. They are an awful awful idea, and plastic to boot. What are they even for?

The Nakahechi route is busy enough that you aren’t going to be left there all night with a broken leg unless you start really really late. But there’s solitude to be found. Pilgrimages are not about being on your own though. Seeing and sharing information with others on the route, walking with strangers a while, sharing food and stories – lots of us had to read The Canterbury Tales at school. That’s part of it. This walk is much less busy than the Camino Frances, because it is harder and less well served by coffee shops and people with guest houses. Many more people bus through hard sections. I only don’t because I like seeing things through.

I saw it through and loved it and the bits I prepared were largely better than the bits I did by instinct last minute. Damn. I might have learned something.

Down to the bottom of the Nakahechi Route and at the torii gate I did some ritual with a bunch of red sand I had brought from a place of power in the Neom desert. Then my last day of walking is towards an excellent meal. I’ve taken my proclivities into consideration when booking this whole experience. I’ve booked my last night at The Kumano Winery Guest House, where the meal is going to cost twice as much as the room. Dinner is at 6.30.

To get there I’m going to have to walk up the Shiomi-Toge mountain pass. It’s 2pm when I finish faffing at the start of Kumano-Kodo and it’s gonna be another 3 hours minimum to get up the pass, and that’s if I don’t get lost. This route is not well travelled, nor is it well signposted. All I’ve got is a zoomed out Japanese map which Google Translate tells me says “The path through cedar wood is rough and steep. If you can’t walk take road.”

I want to walk. I’m in my stride now. I set off and the first thing that surprises me is that as soon as I get off the road I’m cobweb breaking. Nobody has been up here for a while.

Quietly hoping I’m going the right way, as the regular signs I’ve grown used to are not in evidence here, I start up the hill. There’s peace here. There also might be bears.

It is with great relief that I eventually emerge on a road, as I’m expecting from my terrible map. Not just any road either. A road that is protected by owls. Up we go.

The shrine is peaceful and heralds the start of the difficult cedar wood prefigured on the map. At one point I find myself pulling myself up a slope with one of those filthy knotted ropes, hoping to hell I’m going the right way, trusting that I am.

There’s nobody behind me and rare reception so I am largely in a state of trust. So peaceful there though with nature. Time to really think. The weight of the pack has eased or my shoulders have improved. Still a lot of work to be done to get my body fighting fit by August. I’m seriously considering taking up a weird martial art as I slide into middle age. Like those pretentious wiry chaps who really want you to know about it. “Ya I’m a SlodiKran JiGin 7th Dan Fongsputter.” It’s the first thing on their dating profile. Could I do it and not talk about it? Hopefully. Vanity…

The miles slough away and just before my destination I help a young Japanese woman who is trying to prop her camera on a rock for a selfie. In recompense she takes the first shots of me all trek that are taken by someone good at cameras. A memento. Vanity again. Look at the walking beard, folks.

The guest house is all I hoped for. A working farm, and a loving ambitious project. They opened 5 years ago just before COVID. The wine is plum wine, so I order a bottle of Amarone that he’s imported. He’s Italian. She’s Japanese. They met in Ipswich, of all places. And they’ve made a wonderful thing. I fall into a deep sleep and just as I’m waking from it I am ambushed by breakfast. There’s no way in hell I’m not eating my breakfast NOW. People are running around with plates. I go for a pee and everybody freaks out that I’ve disappeared. I then get hustled up a slope to a viewpoint. Breakfast happens. I wake up about half an hour later with food in me. The breakfast vegetable was broccoli. And tomatoes. And greens. Everything so fresh and grown on this sunny hillside.

She drives me back to kii-tanabe and I’ve found a tree to sit beneath and write.

Back to the hustle and bustle. I’m gonna see how long I can carry the piece of me that sat wordlessly and thoughtlessly on this bench for fifteen minutes before it occurred to me that I should get this blog scheduled as it posts in two hours.

After my long walk I woke from a deep sleep and got myself onto the bus back to Hongu. At 8am I was waiting for the priest to finish his morning prayer circle at the Hongu Taisha. A tall skinny young man, he is, with shining eyes, radiant in the ascetic life he has embraced. We speak in mime and I show him my certificate. It is pouring with rain. He walks me over to the shrine. “Shoes” he says. I take them off and walk in socks with him over the “no entry” sign. He beckons me to the taiko. It’s a sacred drum at the side of the temple, good for waking up the kami. Nobody is here but he and I. No tourists yet in this part of the shrine, for the rain and the fact that it has just opened. Just the local kami. And this is the past shrine. A complicated place for me, the past. For us all.

He beats a complex rhythm. It is a touch longer than I expected, and I can see why it is a rhythm connected to journeys. DUM DUM DUM dum dum-dum-Dum-Dum-DUm-DUm-dUM-dUM-DUM … DUM .. DUM .. DDUUMM … …

Yeah, you try and write a rhythm. He hands me the stick. “Now”

I bang it. He seems pleasantly surprised that I’m not an eejit. This drum is only bangable if you can prove you’ve done both world heritage walks. It connects me directly to the last huge spiritual pilgrimage I made, in 2018. It’s why I’ve been getting all those stamps. As I hand the large wooden stick to him, I find I’m welling up. We bow to each other and I go ring and clap to the Bodhisattva in the main shrine, praying as I let the tears come out and not really knowing or minding where they came from. Life is a complex journey. We have to remember to participate though. It’s all very tempting to stay in bed sometimes because it can be hard work, but we only affect things by affecting things. Mohammed was quite right about the mountain.

I walked to Takahara from Chikatsuyu in the absolutely pouring rain. No leeches this time but it was relentless and by the time I got to Kiri-no-sato Takahara I was desperate to get in their onsen. I threw my clothes off, put my kimono thing on, and bounded to the shower room. You quite rightly have to clean every inch of yourself before you get into the onsen. Shower for washing, then sit in hot water. I scrubbed and scrubbed and then more or less leaped into the onsen that was, at best, tepid. Very different from what I expected. And yet somehow refreshing. I put my head under, then popped back out, dried off and called Lou. Three hours later it was hot. In my enthusiasm I had got there too early.

Kiri-no-sato has been a focal point for my stay. It’s the first booking I made and then I organised the whole awkward Kumano-Kodo around it. It only has nine rooms and a camping area. All the rooms look out over the mountains and Takahara is gorgeous and quiet. The shared space is busy by Japanese standards but made me feel completely at home. The staff were great and fed me beautifully. I woke up to a view of the valley and the sound of the birds. Perfection. It takes a lot for me to forgive a tepid onsen, but hell it was my fault for being so keen and getting there before they expected anyone.

I checked out this morning and, knowing it is my last day walking, I bounded back up a mountain to see the daimon-oji shrine and the view when it wasn’t pouring. Now I’m halfway back down again, on the way to Takajiri-oji and then back up another mountain to my last night’s sleep. I don’t have to do any of this, and it is hard work. But this is what it’s about. None of us HAVE to work hard. But if we don’t walk up the mountain we don’t get the endorphins from walking up the mountain, nor do we have the experience of walking up the mountain. Be that positive, or negative, it’s life.

Up bright and early and I’m waiting at a rainy bus stop in Hongu for the 5:44 bus to Miyanoue so I can head up the road to Nakahechiko Chikatsuyu and start my walk.

Chikatsuyu is a rice farming town, but the gradual rise in pilgrimage as word spreads about Kumano Kodo is breathing enterprise into the people there. It’s barely quarter to seven when I find the path, but a woman in a little wooden hut has been waiting for the likes of me, and she easily sells me a coffee at pilgrim prices.

Around me as I drink my coffee, people with backpacks start to emerge from the little minshukus that have started to pop up along the route. They book out months in advance. Soon the availability of rooms will be greater on this route, and I only hope that it doesn’t start to look like a bin. People like my coffee angel have rightly realised that there’s gold in tham thar pilgrims. But with increased footfall comes increased risk of the sort of louts who have literally turned sections of the Camino into litter-alleys.

I’m one of the first on the path, which is how I like it, although it raises the odds of wildlife. You know when you’re the first as you are breaking cobwebs with your face. When that happens, slow down and switch on. Nobody is in front of you to step on the snakes and scare the bears. That’s your job, cobweb breaker.

It’s a stunning and varied walk to Hongu on this – the Nakahechi Route Stage 2. But it’s a long long way if you take it all in and go up to all the oji – (little travel shrines. There are loads.)

I’m picking my way up to one oji, cobweb breaking, when I hear Mary and Andy down below. Good people. Andy quit marijuana the year before I was born. They have started early too.

I catch up with them and it breaks into a pleasant and conversational start to the day. We flank the fields and paddies as the town slowly tails off and the woods begin. An old man has carved a humorous fountain to flog cold coffee.

Eventually the woods begin again. Much of the rest of the day is going to be about trees. And water. The rain starts up in earnest.

The wildlife count goes right up over the course of this day. Some incredible vast trees, of course.

A deer, trying to determine if we were a threat. At one point a crab crosses the path. And the rain brings out some unexpected travelling companions.

I felt something pulling, and looked down. It took me a moment for my brain to compute it, and now I can tell you how to remove a leech. These are precisely the steps you take.

1: Insult it. My first word, upon computing what it was and what it was doing, was “Fucker”. It remained unmoved, so I repeated it twice, each time more targeted and with more vehemence. Perhaps this weakened its resolve

2: Gingerly poke it. Maybe it is touch averse. If so it will apologise and leave you in peace.

3: Take off your pack and sit on it. Your pack, not the leech.

4: Photograph it. Some leeches are camera shy.

5: Consider your options. “I have no salt. I don’t want to kill it when it is attached. If I pull it off I might have infected bits of leech in me. I could wait for it to finish and then it’ll just fall off… but I really don’t want it on me.”

6: Finally remember there’s a damp box of matches in your pocket. (The previous stages are, of course, all crucial to the efficacy of this method.)

7: Fail to light three damp matches. Start to worry you might run out of matches.

8: Successfully light a match. Burn it until it is red then touch the red bit to the leech.

The first time I did it, I was surprised at how quickly the heat makes the leech pull out and move. I waited for it to move both ends once before I flicked it off. Strange creature. With the rain, by the end of the day I’d met plenty of them.

Wet, varied and beautiful, with the Kumano river crossing back and forth, the path wound out, mile by mile. Some shrines with great strength. I clap at a few of them.

Parts of today’s route were inhabited until 1956, but now once you’re in the woods you are very much on your own with a long long way to a nice woman selling coffee in a china cup.

Eventually, at the top of a hill, I caught a glimpse of the town where I woke up, and the massive torii-gate I walked out of at dusk last night.

What’s the point of taking a bus in the morning just so you can walk over twenty miles back to where you started? Who knows but it has been marvelous and I just had time at the end of the day to register myself at the tourist office as a “dual pilgrim”. I’ll even get a certificate.

Dinner at the ramen joint in Hongu as the bus to Yunomine Onsen wasn’t until just before 7pm. Bus to J-Hoppers, and it’s got brilliant hot springs where you can lock the door, shower, and sit in a pool of hot water coming out of the rock in front of you. I never wanted to leave. It’s still golden week. Lots of people taking the week off.

I was incomprehensibly tired by the time I went to bed. But they’ve already put a piccy up of me with my CERTIFICATE.

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