AlBarclay

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.

11 hours is barely enough to scratch the surface in seeing most cities, Shanghai included, although the place has one major advantage for the layover visitor – The Maglev. Super quick transfer into town. But I’m gonna go through this piece by piece and break it down for price to help future layover humans. Now I’m in the land of Tiktok I should try and raise my hits. For new visitors finding this for the layover info, I do this blog every day in some form or other. Often it’s just a contemplation of my own armpit, something a bit pretentious, or a drunken rant about nothing. Other times I make something I’m proud of. Imagine a tombola at a church fête and the donated prizes. “A Top of the Pops CASSETTE!” “A can of BEANS!” “A Ming VASE!” One day I’ll feed it all into an AI and go toe to toe with it. Today though it’s whistle stop Shanghai-time and I’ll miss the posting deadline because internet is virtually impossible here.

I did some planning in advance. It is important to do so considering the culture shock and lack of internet. Even if you download Google maps for the city in advance, the GPS might well be off if it finds you at all. US big sites are all blocked including this one. No wonder my right wing techgeriatric brother wants us all to believe by numbers that TikTok is evil as its how the youth are being Chinificated by Iran or somesuch I stopped listening bless his hard heart.

I made my layover work out without quite enough prep, but found myself thanking my stars for my strangely good direction instinct – “You’ve got a bump of locality,” dad would say. Haven’t used it much lately. I’ve been cursing myself for quite how much I’ve come to rely on my phone to tell me things, including where I am. Also I knew the shape of the city and there are distinct tall buildings to navigate by.

Also If I hadn’t been quick and lucky it might have worked out very badly for me so there’s a warning in my day too. Shanghai has never been known as a safe place. Tintin, Phileas Fogg and any number of unwilling midshipmen had trouble. So did I.

We landed in Pudong at 5.55am local time. My flight to Osaka wasn’t until 17:25. I had come from the UK so had been trying to trick my body into being ready to stay up long enough to see the sights. I was a little woozy leaving the plane though. Less than an hour of actual sleep. The rest was just sitting with my eyes closed.

The blue landing form I was served on the plane turned out to be the wrong one, but I filled it in anyway and then brandished it as I made my way out. My bag is checked to Japan but I’ve got my iPad and Kindle with me in hand luggage. I have no Chinese language. Not a sausage. I’ve made no effort to learn any words at all. I’ve been thinking about my Japanese which was almost as bad a week ago.

I make do with numbers and gesticulating.

What you need to do is head through immigration, oh fellow layoverite. Don’t go into transit. If anyone tries to make you – (and they probably will) – I found the words “Transit Visa” are useless, but they use the same symbols for numbers so “24 hour transit visa” usually elicited the response “24!” and a wave in the right direction. I didn’t have any correct form though until I got to the immigration security desk. He was very helpful though, and basically got out the right one and filled it in with me. It’s free. In exchange for your skin.

Having never activated facial recognition on my Samsung device, nor fingerprint recognition, the price of entry into Shanghai was all of that information – all fingers and thumbs – “information acquired” as it says on the screen. My career as an international masterthief is over before it began. Who knows where that biometric info will all go, but the guy at the desk waves me through and I walk out into actual China for the first time – Hong Kong doesn’t count. I guess I’ll have to make the experience worth the information expense, and at least now I am not so concerned about switching facial or fingers on on my phone. They’ve got me now. Although thankfully I’ve got a big thick beard which means I might be able to go rogue if I shave. There are cameras EVERYWHERE. Every inch of ground is covered. Every molecule scrutinised.

First stop left luggage so I’m not having to carry all my devices around with me. The surveillance isn’t for our safety anyway. They don’t have to pretend it is like we do in the UK. She wants cash payment at left luggage as it is only 20 Yuan. At the time of writing, convert Yuan to pounds by shifting it up one decimal place. 20Y = £2. 100Y = £10. It’s not exact but it’s a good enough benchmark if you remember that it’s actually a bit more pounds in the end.

I go to the cash point. I’m tired. I’m in a very unfamiliar place, weird cash machine, working out the maths to convert currency, literally just got off the plane, using my Starling Card and can’t remember the PIN. I get it right but I’m still worrying when the machine chunters and opens a low drawer showing a load of pink notes. My alarm system is switched off at a time it should be on high. As the notes come out unfamiliarly, suddenly slamming into me to my left a guy in a suit, looking directly at the notes revealed, shouting something in Chinese. This is a practiced act. Could be anything. “Do you want your Starling Card?” I reflexively shake my head”No” to whatever he’s said, and won’t let him push me. I’ve already been conditioned to saying “no” here as the place is full of taxi drivers and most of us know how it is leaving the airport when you can’t pass as a native. I like to say I’m pretty on it with scams. I’ve done plenty of 360° spins over the years to see the person sneaking up on me and let them know the jig’s up, but this team is practiced on this particular cashpoint, looking for exactly me, and I only ever see one of them. I don’t pirouette when I should. It’s a theft team. Well oiled. The guy in the suit could be called “The Face”. He looks respectable. His job is to take all of my attention for a moment or two while “The Hand” steals what they are set up to steal, and usually immediately sends it to a third player, I dunno, “The Feet”? I’m kinda extrapolating from how I’ve seen it work or read it in all those books.

Smart distraction though. My instinct immediately was to protect the cash, which I of course did. But over here your card comes out AFTER the cash. And I didn’t notice they had it until they were all out of sight and I was still coming down from the shock of the shoutbarge. I had been in quiet contemplation. Prickles of cold sweat now. They have my card. I can’t get on the internet as it’s fucking China, but thankfully there’s a WiFi point more or less exactly behind me. You stick your passport on it and it gives you access to about 3 websites with a code for your phone, so long as your passport in the system. I’m in the system. One of the websites it allows happens to be my Starling app. Phew. Phew. Phew.

I freeze the card, still a bit freaked out. Literally ten seconds later, while the app is still open, it flashes that they’ve tried to make a contactless payment but it has been declined cos the card is frozen. Lucky lucky boy. Just in time for the tester charge somewhere nearby. I have two other cards, and in this modern world can likely bring my Monzo up on my phone once I’m in Japan. No harm done but a minor inconvenience and maybe they’ll try and steal my identity. So many cameras around though. Not here to do anything practical really. Just to remind everyone who’s in charge. I don’t involve the cops. That will end up wasting my whole layover just to fuck up some desperate people. Yeah sure desperate people who have decided that robbing those gaijin is the best way of making money but, you don’t save people with Chinese prison.

I give the left-luggage lady my bag and she takes a 15 yuan cash deposit. I very nearly put my passport in left luggage for safety. Don’t do that everyone!! This is an identity card culture. You have to carry the thing. Another near miss. I was asked a few times for it and might have hit trouble had I stashed it.

In some ways it is good to have an early reminder that I’m nothing like as streetwise as I like to think. London you’ll pick up a tail from time to time, or someone will come at you with a big loud need and you have to spin. But I have to harden. In general as well, I can be too trusting. Another lesson of the trip and I’m not even in Japan.

Annoying though it is to have lost my card, it’s totally ok. I tie my jumper around my waist for extra pocket cover plus it’s humid. I’m going to spend the rest of the day on high alert. It’s probably unnecessary mostly as these people are rarely blind opportunists – they have patches and routines. But that’s as maybe.

Then it’s the Maglev. On a short layover I see absolutely no reason not to take it. It’s just a few minutes into Longyang, at 301 kilometres an hour. Y80 return. That’s £8. Worth it just to experience the tech. I was on the second of the day. Virtually empty. Everyone in one section but me.

I exit Longyang briefly looking for coffee. It’s pretty Kings Cross around there, but there’s a chain called “luckin coffee” and they give me a Flat White. Y32. Back in and Metro 2 to East Nanjing Road – just Y4 for a single – about six stops and it is intuitively organised to a city dweller, with English on the signs. I had no issues buying a ticket or finding the right train. The shopping street is empty and it’s not my bag either, it’s basically Oxford Street with kanji. Good perhaps if you’re after a specific bit of tech at Jersey prices and you happen to be on a layover.

I wandered towards Yu Garden. I like to pound the streets in a new town, even if I now feel I have to watch every shadow. It’s exhausting keeping an eye out but I don’t pick up any negative attention and I’m not gonna lose the rest of my cards / my phone just for tourism.

I got to the garden just as it was about to open. I joined a queue and on the dot of nine we all went in. It was Y40 entry. It’s someone’s old garden. Rocks and old things but absolutely swamped in local tourism.

People EVERYWHERE.

This is China. If there are spirits they hide from the carnage in the day. Right at the heart of it there was a smidge of something other. An ancient theatre, a space a little calmer than the rock gardens, stage and tiers both roped off so you can just stand in the pit, but just as I arrived there, a cat sloped out into the stage and eyed us all in the way that only cats can.  I felt a little shift in the air. Power here after all. Follow the cats, they know.

I left. That was the best the place was gonna muster.

Streets again, back through the harangue of the old town “Copy watch? Want a copy watch?” to The Bund – (were the Germans busy here?) No idea how much these copy watches are. Unless I’m gift shopping on purpose I try and avoid anyone who is actively trying to sell to me.

I spend a short time by the river among all the people the people the people. There aren’t many bridges over the Huangpu, so I go under it instead, and find a way to avoid the crowds at the same time via The Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, a French style ghost train sound and light railway type nonsense that gets you where you’re going for Y50. It pops up in Pudong right by the TV tower after a bit of this and that. No locals on it. Suddenly absolutely still. Nevertheless with an empty carriage in front of me and another one behind me, they stacked me into the same one as two Russians just to make sure I couldn’t even have peace and quiet at 50 yuan.

Time is already ticking. I wander South, quite a long way, following my nose down the river. It’s twenty to twelve when I stumble on the JW Marriott Marquis Hotel, and wander in. I’m hungry, I find myself reasoning, and I’ve got yuan to spend. They direct me to the second floor Merchant Kitchen where, starting at noon, there’s an all you can eat cold buffet. I think with loads more time I would have eaten pretty much anywhere else, but I was starting to feel the pull of the airport and it was easy there so I went for it.

Unlimited booze and food for Y338. I gave them 400. Forty quid. Pricey but if I don’t spend these yuan they’ll just turn into paper when I leave. And it was a decent spread in a pleasant surrounding. Unidentifiable bits of fish and cuts of meat. Lovely big prawns in abundance. Crab claws, all a bit dry, and a selection of sushi – much of which I’ve never tried.

I only notice the pudding when I’m heading out the door and down in order to ask the concierge for a cab back to East Nanjing Road. At my request he shows me on his phone how much the cab should cost. In my pre trip research I get the feeling the cabbies like to take the piss with gaijin, so I prepare the right ballpark plus a few yuan, and sit silent until we get there, looking out the window. I hand him the notes with finality and am pleased when he does the pantomime for “Oh I should find some change for you,” which I wave away. Satisfactory on both sides. I’m back at Nanjing. Y40. Might have been cheaper but to be fair it was a long ride.

Busier than it was, but no time for shopping. I take the metro back, and then the maglev. It almost certainly would have been cheaper and quicker to cab from the Marriott to Longyang but with the damn internet and GPS blocked it just feels the logical and correct safety procedure retracing my steps. I wandered off piste when I wasn’t hungry on reaching the TV Tower:

By and large the interactions I’ve had in Shanghai have been positive. There’s a direct and stern character to the people in general, but this is a very crowded authoritarian society. Rules matter here. I was nervous crossing the road in the wrong place as my research didn’t go as far as determining if there’s jaywalking laws. Thankfully the green man system is well organised – it’s a much better city for walking than many of the American ones. I covered plenty of ground. I’ve got a snapshot now of the smells and sounds.

Rice and spit. Birds still, sometimes caged but often free – sparrows in the trees. Electric mopeds tooting their horns to be heard. Crowds. I saw one butterfly…

By the time I get back to left luggage I’m tired. Y5 to get the bag back making just 20 in total and it’s all still there. I cast around for the cash point shoutythief. Now he’s had it declined I’m thinking I’ll tell him I dropped my card near here this morning and will pay Y100 if anyone can find it, then wait ten minutes. But he’s not there, and it’s not at lost property. So, back through security and it’s Japan time coming right up.

Y670 plus £5 to replace my Starling card when I’m home. A day in Shanghai without counting the cost, less than seventy quid by my imperfect currency conversion system. Either way less than £100. I’m fine with that. I can’t imagine I’ll be back any time soon, but I guess you never know with life, right?

Thank the lord I spent ages with the map and thinking yesterday or that would have been a confusing and frustrating day in a confusing and frustrating place.