Kumano Can-do

Time flies. Nearly six months ago I was packing my bag to leave the UK, now I’m halfway back home. Been a bit slack with the blogging but I’ve still got a few things to write about.

I knew I wanted to do something interesting after Kobe, but not another Workaway. Once you start digging through the listings there’s not actually that many good placements to choose from in Japan. Cross off the ones that have zero feedback or look a bit dodgy, then the fact that I try to avoid guesthouse work, and there’s maybe… thirty in the whole country. Most of those are off in the remote countryside which I’ve seen quite enough of, so no more Workaways for this trip. But looking through some articles about ‘Lesser Known Japan’ I found a lot of mentions of something called the Kumano Kodo.

Long story short it’s an ancient pilgrimage route linking three huge shrines, criss-crossing the southern end of Wakayama Prefecture south of Osaka. There is a story behind it all about how three gods met by a river for tea but, well, Google it. It’s one of two World Heritage hikes in the world - the other’s the Camino De Santiago through France and Spain - and from the tourist side that means A Very Pretty Hike. So I thought I’d dust off the trusty (stinky) hiking boots and give it a go.

Logistically it’s one of the easiest things I’ve had to plan in Japan. The Kumano tourist board website is super thorough - the best thing is that I could book all of my accommodation in advance including meals, so by the time I got down there all I had to do is concentrate on putting one foot in front of another. I did the ‘Classic’ trek which is around 75km over five days. From Osaka you can get the bus about three hours south to Kii-Tanabe, a sleepy little seaside town where you can rest up and hop a bus to the first trailhead the next morning. From there the days break down as roughly 4, 15, 22, 13 and 15km. There’s no way to dress it up - this is tough going. I’d say maybe 15% of the total distance is spent on even paths, the rest is either rough, loose stonework or root-filled trails. There’s a lot of steep, thigh-punishing climbs and long descents on slippery stone steps as well. If you want to look up and enjoy the surroundings you need to stop, or end up catching your toe in a crack and going arse over tit down a hillside. And that wasn't a very attractive prospect given that in five days I saw one other hiker doing the same route as me and a couple of others doing short stints, so it got pretty quiet out in them there hills. It was sort of nice having the isolation - the other people I saw on the trail had done the Camino and said it's almost a commuter trail in the peak months - but at times I had a very vivid mental image of me sliding over and cracking some part of me open on a rock, lost in a gorge until I’d had to 127 Hours myself.

The mountain weather’s pretty unpredictable too, or at least it was in June. The day I arrived in Tanabe it was hammering with rain, and over the next few days I had everything from hiking through low-lying, misty clouds (which was sort of amazing in a creepy way) to blazing sunshine. If the weather turns bad on the trail there’s not a lot of covered rest stops to take a break under. Or much of anything to be fair. It’s sort of ironic that a lot of the ruins along the path are of tea houses that used to cater to the original pilgrims - these days there's maybe two places to stop and grab a coffee and one conveni. Any snacks you might want are worth stocking up on in advance.

I hit a few mental walls along the way. Day 5 includes a stretch that translates into English as ‘The Back Breaking Slope’, it's fun times, but that 22km day in particular was a fairly miserable endurance event. I woke up to steady, unavoidable rain and nearly considered giving up and getting the bus to my next guesthouse. But then I thought that’s not very pilgrimy of me when people were doing this 2000 years ago in the rain and they did it in sandals and pyjamas. But even with waterproofs and an umbrella everything I had was soaked within an hour. There was extreme chafing in places that need never be mentioned.

But... it’s all worth it. Aside from just ticking off an awesome area of Japan not many (not enough) people will ever visit, the landscapes are incredible. The trail takes you through lush forest with rushing rivers, up to high passes with amazing views over mountain ranges, via Ghibli-esque winding trails with amazing, sunlit cedar forests and hillside stairways lined with ornate shrines. It’s hard not to stop every few turns and lose a few minutes taking it all in. There's some great wildlife spotting as well. Rabbits, huge frogs, snakes, lizards, eagles, bees the size of Coke cans, crabs (apparently Japan has mountain crabs). I nearly had a heart attack when a serow, sort of a Japanese goat, jumped out in front of me from behind a corner. I’m not sure who was more surprised out of the two of us.

My route took in two of the three main shrines. Kumano Hongu Taisha is pretty dramatic, Japan’s largest free-standing torii gate which appears in the distance around 18km into the longest day, it couldn’t have been more eerie seeing this big shape looming out of the drifting fog in the valley below, it's hard not to be impressed. The trail ends at Kumano Nachi Taisha which is maybe one of the Japan’s most photogenic sights that most people will never see in person - a picture-perfect, bright orange pagoda with a thundering waterfall just across the gorge. Even feeling as exhausted as I did it was hard not to feel a bit smug walking around alongside the day-trippers who took the easy option and got the bus up. Pshh… they didn’t earn that view.

For foodies like me the highlight of the whole trek is the guesthouses along the way, and the food you get to eat. Each stopover town has a few options, I went for the mid/budget range ‘minshuku’ which is the Japanese equivalent of a Bed & Breakfast. One night I had a whole house to myself owned by a really generous farmer (without his slightly broken, but happily donated, umbrella my already miserable rain day would have been a lot worse), the next a traditional little tatami mat guesthouse, and the next a converted school which had far too many horror movie moments for my movie geek brain. Hosts are universally welcoming, especially when it comes to helping dry out a stinking pair of walking boots. And the food… everything is served in the traditional Japanese style with loads of little dishes flanked by pickles, soup and sides. It’s all amazing and colourful, simple local produce prepared amazingly. Although you better be ok with eating a shit-ton of white rice. I know it’s a Japanese staple but after breakfast with rice, a lunchbox with three rice balls, and a dinner with another pound of the stuff, I started to get some sort of rice mania. Once the trek was all over and done with I avoided rice for about a week.

Yunomine Onsen especially was a cool little place, a tiny little one-street town following the path of a volcano-hot creek. Everything smelled of sulphur and the water in the creek’s hot enough that the locals hang bags of eggs and vegetables in it to cook, and my guesthouse had the singularly hottest bath water I’ve ever been in. I could only stand about four minutes but it definitely did my muscles good.

For anyone thinking of doing the trek I'd say... do some training. I put in a lot of hours criss-crossing Kobe on warm-up walks to avoid my main memory of the week being 'My thighs bloody hurt'. If I did it again I'd try to do about a hundred air squats and lunges every day for a month, those stone stairs really take it out of you. But you don’t need to worry about getting lost, the whole route’s signposted to that delightful level of Japanese accuracy (who else even puts up “Not This Way” signs on branching paths?). There’s marker posts every 500 metres which make for a nice mental ticklist, and little bird houses along the trail have rubber stamps that you can collect in a souvenir book. The first 1000 people to collect all the stamps this year get a free commemorative towel. So, you know, hooray for free towels. Apparently if I do the Kumano and the Camino I’ll get a special certificate to go with my towel. Guess I should start planning a trip to France…

#travel #japan #Workaway #japanese