For all practical purposes it has been 25 years and a time has come to go back. Since I spent nearly five years in Japan in the late 70s I have been back only 3 times for very short trips, the last of which lasted only 24 hours and took place more than 15 years ago. And so it was about time to go back and see how things changed over a quarter century.

Some things have changed dramatically. The first impression a westerner invariably had in Japan was one of great uniformity. I realize now, that this was dominantly conditioned by the uniform black hair color of all the locals. Well, not any more.
(Click on the picture to see it full size, use a back button to return to this spot.) Several years a wave of brown swept Japan and today you are as likely to find a brunette as a black haired girl. The brown color covers the spectrum from dark brown to blonde. Some of the younger people have become significantly taller, I often walked side by side with girls who were my height. There is now a number of westerners regularly appearing on Japanese television and expressing their opinion on a variety of subjects in flawless Japanese. The net result of all of these changes is that westerners no longer stick out a prominently as they used to. And that is a good thing.

Japanese always had a tendency to fall for fashion trends in such great numbers that it seemed as if everyone were wearing a uniform. I remember when I first came in the fall of 76 grey was in. Grey boots, grey stockings, grey sweaters, grey overcoats. Nearly every woman between the ages of 20 and 40 scrupulously avoided colors other than grey. This time around I did not see such obvious uniformity. Young women all seemed to be dressed differently even though often making fashion statements that seemed rather bold. It was only after a few days that I started to notice repeating motifs in this diversity and it took a couple of weeks before I connected all the dots. The young Japanese are still following one fashion trend but this time the trend is to resemble one of the characters from Manga (Japanese comics) – hence more than one “uniform” to be seen. Manga is something I am not an expert on but it would be an interesting area of investigation if I had several months to devote to it, because the volume of Manga is staggeringly large.

Tokyo has really grown up. In the late seventies they had just finished a new building in the Ikebukuro district, called Sunshine 60 because it had 60 floors. It acted as an orientation beacon because it towered over the surrounding much more modest buildings. I remember taking a picture of it just to have a before and after pair in case a major earthquake occurred while I lived in Tokyo. So far that has not happened and buildings of similar and greater size sprouted up all over Tokyo to such extent that Sunshine 60 is barely noticeable now. Many of the new buildings have a distinctly futuristic design more reminiscent of a planet in a different galaxy others are just good pure architectural fun. They are all supposed to be earthquake proof. Lets hope so. I still felt more comfortable in a two story mainly wooden house we stayed in because it felt like I could dig myself out if the big one struck. Even though I had a lot of fun looking at the more interesting recent architectural designs I was glad to see that the old fashioned Tokyo is still there.

The only thing that used to annoy me about Japan was its uncritical obsession with baseball, possibly the most boring thing to watch I ever came across. I am happy to report this is quickly becoming a thing of the past. Football (soccer in American English) is quickly taking over. We spent a weekend at my brother-in-law’s new flat which is next door to the 2002 World Cup stadium, now home to the most successful team in the Japanese Football League. Groups of fans, all dressed in the team colors, started to arrive around 10 in the morning, well in advance of the 4 p.m. match. Much more of a family affair than in Europe, everybody enthusiastic but very well behaved, not a hint of football hooligans that tend to surface at some European matches.

Often if we live somewhere for a long time we never get to see places that are easy to visit because we can do it “next month” and keep postponing it until we move away. I never visited the Quebec City winter festival while living in Montreal and there were a handful of places in Tokyo I did not get to see either. This was a chance to fill in those gaps. I visited the Yasukuni Shrine dedicated to the Japanese war dead – local equivalent to the Arlington National Cementary. You hear about this on a yearly basis when Japanese prime minister visits it and it is typically described as “where the Japanese war criminals are enshrined”. While this is technically correct the generals of WW II are a small fraction of all the war dead enshrined here, starting with the Japanese-Chinese conflict of the 19th century. I also visited the Hamamatsu Detached Palace Gardens (this always struck me as a very long name for a park) and took a boat up the Sumida River.

I lived in Tokyo for 5 years and so I visited most of the other memorable places but I typically moved around using public transport. While very efficient, it sometimes leaves you without a clear sense of how do different places relate to each other geometrically and in terms of distance and why. This time I walked just about everywhere and for the first time I have a better sense of the geography and predevelopment topography of the Edo Bay area. One of the main transportation devices in Tokyo is the Yamanote circular train track (it is actually more of a distorted oval than a circle) which is around 35 km long and takes exactly one hour to go around by train. I used to think that it would be an interesting project to walk around the loop because it passes through very different parts of the city and yet has the unifying element of the rail line. This visit finally presented an opportunity to act on this idea. I started shortly before 7 a.m. and proceeding in a clockwise direction I returned home just before 10 in the evening – very tired, I must add. Since I took out only one hour for an extended breakfast/lunch (consisting of a crepe millfeuille cake in a Ginza café) and half an hour for supper in a revolving sushi restaurant, it means I walked for about 13.5 hours and that gives a very low speed of 2.5 km/hour. I can only assume that since it is often not possible to follow the rail tracks directly the actual distance traveled was probably longer, let us say over 40 km. But that is basically the distance covered by marathon runners and these days even grandmothers run in marathons. Obviously this does not represent as much of an accomplishment as I imagined but it was fun.

In comparative terms Japan used to be so expensive it was silly. It has not gotten any cheaper but in many respects the prices have not increased very much in the last quarter century (this is what deflation means) and in the meantime, the west has experienced ridiculous increase in prices (way above the 2% annually that governments claim). In the early 80s you could check into a Motel 6 and pay somewhere around $20. That was very economical in comparison to the cheapest accommodation you could find in Japan at the time which would have run around $60-70. I have not tried Motel 6 lately but I imagine $20 would not do it any more. On the other hand the places I stayed in this time in Japan were still in the $60-70 range. In a traditional Japanese Inn or Bed and Breakfast, this also buys you two meals: a gourmet supper, which, if you could get it in Houston would have a street value of $50 and a very large breakfast, which is essentially a scaled down version of the supper. The net result was I never needed lunch. If you decide to stay in western type hotel in the city it will cost you about the same but without meals. On the other hand you get other amenities. Years ago the big worry used to be the type of toilet you were going to get – in many cases it was the traditional one which forced you to squat like a Frenchman. Not any more, not only are you practically guaranteed a western style toilet, but it is going to have a heated seat and in most cases a remote control. I will not go into details, but let me just say that it renders paper obsolete.

And finally, the Tokyo sumo championship was won by a Bulgarian. That is how much things have changed.

Japan is far and the time difference from Houston is 14 hours. It is not a place I wanted to visit for a week, because just as I would be recovering from the trip and getting over the jet lag it would be time to go back. Long trip made a lot more sense. On the other hand, I knew that no matter how interesting Tokyo is, spending a whole month there would not be the best use of my vacation. I wanted to see a part of Japan I did not know (and there are still many). At the same time I thought it would be best to see a small part on foot rather than trying to cover a large area and just hitting the tourist highlights. In poking around I found that there is a 1200 km long walking trail on the island of Shikoku. The trail is more than 1000 years old and in reality is an ancient Buddhist pilgrimage route running around the whole island and connecting 88 temples. Apparently it retraces the route taken by Kobo Daishi, a Shikoku native who in the 8th century traveled to China and then returned as a Buddhist missionary, performing assorted miracles along the way. Sort of Japanese St. Patrick except that he is also credited with inventing the Japanese sylabary which made it easier to write Japanese using Chinese characters. Since Shikoku is one of the four main islands of the Japanese archipelago that I had never visited it seemed to be exactly what I was looking for.

For longer distance travel in Japan nothing beats car ferries. Slower but a lot cheaper than trains or planes and about as fast and inexpensive as busses but a lot more comfortable. The ferry from Tokyo to Tokushima on the island of Shikoku takes 18 hours, travels mostly overnight, one can sleep quite comfortably and so effectively looses very little time. Next morning I stopped by the local tourist office in Tokushima and made reservations for the next 4 nights – some of them in bed and breakfasts and some of them in temple dormitories, which as it turned out, are basically the same quality of service as a Japanese inn. At the first temple shop I bought the bare required minimum, that is a while pilgrim overcoat, but for the time being did not get the pilgrim’s staff nor hat, Initially I started very slowly, about 20 km per day. This worked well the first day, because it was raining all day and I was glad to take a hot bath and change into dry clothes as soon as I could. Later I walked about 25 km per day and this turned out to be the optimum pace. The trail starts not far from the suburbs of Tokushima and moves upstream through a wide valley filled with small villages and rice fields. Most of it follows little paved roads on flat ground, pretty easy going for the first two days up to temple 11. After that the trail switches to a narrow mountain path as is crosses a minor mountain range. Temple 11 and 12 are only 12 km apart but the elevation difference is 600 m and it is repeated several times as one climes up and drops into a valley and climbs up again. The following day, just as I was deciding to go a little slower the weather forecast promised rain. The trail returns back to Tokushima and I decided to save a day and try to make it all the way to town. It started to drizzle in the early afternoon but luckily it did not start to rain seriously until I was already in the city. Most of the heavy rain was at night and the next day opened up with beautiful blue sky without a single cloud. However, by trying to walk little bit too far and a little bit too fast I developed my first blisters. Once out of the city, the trail moved into blooming citrus orchards in mountain valleys. The previous day as I was watching two pilgrims walking through the rice paddies in their reed hats, I realized how nicely they fit into the landscape and that I was actually spoiling the picture. At the next temple with a shop I finally also bought a hat and a staff and quite apart form the esthetic aspect, both proved to be very handy over the rest of the trip. The hat has an internal structure so that there is a good deal of space between the hat and the top of your head. This provides surprisingly effective air-conditioning when the temperatures start rising. The staff was very handy when the trail returned to mountain terrain, both on the way up and down.

The island of Shikoku is suffering from a severe population decline with most of the young people leaving for jobs in Osaka and Tokyo. I spent the next night in an elementary school which was converted by the locals into a bed and breakfast. The only room left was what used to be a music room and so I had an enormous amount of space all to myself.

The next day climbing resumed. At one point as I was resting I say a group of Buddhist monks in their distinctive costume coming up the trail. It looked like a scene from a Kurosawa movie and even though I felt I was spoiling the moment I could not resist, took out my camera and snapped a picture. I still felt a little guilty when the monks reached me but then one of them took out a cell phone and asked me to pose with the other monks. I did not feel guilty any more. Then he pushed an few buttons on the phone and said “ I just uploaded the picture to our blog”. If you do not believe me, click here,this will open the monks' blog in a new window. Slide down to the 6th picture and carefully look on the left side.. Quite up to date these Buddhist monks.

Temple 21 was absolutely spectacular, nestled in a ancient cypress forest on top of a mountain. But here I ran into a bit of a problem. The logical place to stop would have been at temple 22 but there was only one bed and breakfast and they were already full. My options were to stop walking at noon and stay where I was or to try to make it to the next possible accommodation which meant reaching the coast before sundown. It was a beautiful day and so I decided to go for it. It turned out to be a long walk, I reached the inn at 7 with few more blisters.

While the trail through the mountains was beautiful, the coast was stunning. Most of it actually follows a old road which has essentially no traffic since they built a new, wider and straighter road further inland. After reaching temple 23, the last one in the Tokushima province, decided to go to the next coastal village which proved to be a little bit further than I expected and I again reached it around dusk. Two long days in a row was not a good idea. The next morning my backpack felt a lot heavier. It was also starting to get substantially warmer. But that did not matter because this was the last day of my trip. I walked until lunch and then took a little train back to Tokushima. I still had time to visit the famous tidal whirlpools of Naruto and in the evening take in a performance of the Awa dance.
[When you click on this image you should see a little movie file. It may take several minutes for the file to download so be patient. Depending on how your computer is set up, you may get a message from your explorer warning about content that can harm your computer. If you trust me, click on the warning bar, allow content and then confirm that you want to see it. The first time it loads it is a little uneven so the best thing is to replay it a second time. Then you can use the Explorer back arrow to get back to the main page.]

Next day, back on the boat and the following morning, bright and early (5 a.m.) back in Tokyo.

I was essentially looking for an easy hike through rural Japan away from the bustle of big cities. The 88 temple trail far exceeded my expectations. It is varied, flat and easy one moment, steep and challenging the next, rice paddies, citrus orchards, bamboo groves and cypress forests alternate, sometimes on a narrow paved road facing heavy trucks and then on a rocky path that has not changed from the days of Kobo Daishi. And the scenery is absolutely stunning. You probably know the feeling when you are driving along a scenic route that you are missing a lot because you are driving through too quickly. I had the same feeling, I felt I was walking too quickly to enjoy it all.

And then there are the pilgrims. They come in two basic flavors, large groups, mostly elderly and traveling by bus who visit all the temples in a week. They typically have a Buddhist priest with them and he leads them in chanting the Heart Sutra, burn a lot of incense and create quite an atmosphere. A temple with a bus load of pilgrims feels quite different from a temple without them. Both are worth seeing. And then there are the walking pilgrims. Much fewer in number and much more diverse in composition. Young and old and in between. People who come for a week a year during their vacation, people who have retired and walk the whole circuit and then there are pilgrims who just walk and walk. I met one who was on his 5th continuous circle (that is 6,000 km) and when I asked him how many times he was planning to go around he told me he was not sure. For the moment the plan was just to keep going. Since the number of places to spend the night is limited the walking pilgrims get to know each other quite well. You can walk with someone for half a day and then you separate because each may be staying in a different village, but you meet them again a few days later. I met a retired journalist at supper at the second temple where I was spending the first night and we crossed paths several times and finally at temple 23 as we were both ending out trip. A young boy who was planning to do the whole 1200 km in one go and who last year spend 4 months cycling the entire Japanese coastline. Two retired women I kept meeting from the first day to the last because even though I walked a lot faster, they would take trains and buses from time to time. Everybody with a different story. You walk alone and you walk with someone else. You are never bored.

And then there are the people. Japanese are very nice and polite but the people in Shikoku are super nice. On the way back from the tidal whirlpools I asked one of the employees of the park if the bus stop was at the foot of the hill. He said it was but that I was going to miss the next bus and ran for his car and drove me to the bus stop. And when it comes to walking pilgrims it can be downright embarrassing. Many villages will have little rest areas for pilgrims and if you sit down chances are that someone will show up and bring you tea and cookies. And you can talk to strangers as if you had known them all your life. So needless to say, I will be back. I walked trough 23 temples, went through one of the four provinces but so far I have covered only 200 km of the 1200 km total. Plenty more to see.