When we reached the summit, we were thoroughly chilled and could hardly breathe. The sun had already set and the moon had come out. Making ourselves a bed of bamboo grass with twigs of bamboo for a pillow, we lay down and waited for the dawn... Basho, TNRttDN 息絶え身こごえて頂上に至れば、日没して月顕る。 笹を敷き篠を材 として、臥して明るくを待つ。 芭蕉「奥の細道」 Dewa Sanzan! The name probably says absolutely nothing to 98% of my readers, but for the Japanese, the reaction will be more like that of my innkeeper in Naruko, who clapped his hands and bowed in reverence when I told him I was headed that way. The area consists of three mountains -- Haguro-san, the most accessible; Gas-san, the highest; and Yudono-san, the holiest -- that have been worshipped by yamabushi (mountain priests) and followers of Shugendo, a syncretic Shinto/Buddhist spinoff, for centuries. Getting there proved a little kinky. I spent an hour hashing over various plans with an incredibly helpful tourist office clerk. I wanted to stay two nights at Dewa Sanzan, the other at Yudono-san, but Yudono's accommodations were full so I resorted to plan B: stay one night atop Haguro-san at Saikan, leave early the next morning and cross both Gas-san and Yudono-san, then catch the 16:00 bus to Yamagata and stay at a cheap ryokan there. Since there was no way I'd lug all my gear all the way, I Takkyubin'd most of it to Yamagata for all of 1000 yen. I shudder to think how much next-day express for a 20-kg backpack would cost in elsewhere... After a quick visit to Zenpoji Temple, a large but compact and quite nice temple complex near Tsuruoka, it was time to get going. As preparation for rain I purchased an rain-proof Teflon-coated pilgrim-white "anorak" conviniently on sale for Y2900, then set off. It was past 4 by the time I got to the bottom of Haguro-san and started the climb. First a leisurely stroll through the forest through some astonishing scenery, huge trees, bright red bridges, waterfalls, thousand-year-old pagodas, and then the climb itself, an endless path of stone steps. The path was quiet, few people were going up at this time of day; I stopped halfway at a teahouse where I was enthusiastically welcomed and (as always) quizzed by the owner. A little after 5 I reached the top, sweaty and hot but not all that tired.
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Haguro-san doesn't really have a sharply defined "peak", instead the top houses a very large temple complex including my lodgings, the pilgrims' inn Saikan. It's a large and rather soulless place, the staff seemed quite curt as they processed me in and took me to my room. Then again, with 300 guests nightly, perhaps it's no surprise. What did take me by surprise was my room: it was HUGE by any standards, especially Japanese ones. Most Japanese rooms are 3 to 6 jo (tatami mats, 1x2m), mine was 28, with a nice view out into the garden too. Dinner was an admirable spread of mountain cuisine, grilled fish with sesame tofu, sesame pickles, sesame vegetables and lots more. After dinner the reason why a poor gaijin student paying a miserly 7000 yen per night got the emperor- sized room became clear: the main dining hall was one paper wall away and the people paying 10000 yen for their dinner alone were making the most of it with lots of sake and beer. I escaped for a stroll around the deserted temple grounds at sunset. One sight tugged at my heart: a corner of the area was devoted to Jizo, with dozens of statues dressed by mourning mothers watching a hill covered by thousands upon thousands of wooden grave markers, each one representing a dead child. The Jizos were surrounded by Doraemon figures, kids' sandals, picture books and other offerings. I returned to Saikan just in time before a massive downpour, which I sat and watched from my room, entranced by the view of the neglected little Japanese garden in the rain.
Saikan at night |
Each marker a dead child... |
I didn't sleep very well and the morning's breakfast didn't go down very well either. At dinner most items were novel and tasty, at breakfast they were bizarre and unpalatable. The single most odd item was floating in the miso soup: little presumably plant- originated things that I can only describe as vagina-shaped, sickly gray hairy ovals with a lengthwise slit in the middle, covered with a thick layer of transparent jelly. (Honest.) They didn't taste like much, and neither did the seaweed tofu nor the rice noodles, but I couldn't help feeling as if I were at an Indiana Jones banquet. For the first time in Japan, I left half uneaten, and so did most other guests. At 7 it was time to leave and trek down Haguro-san on the other side to catch the morning bus. The path went down the other side, and it was deserted, muddy and slippery after the rain. It was still early in the morning and every mosquito, fly and random creepy-crawly was looking for breakfast, ie. me. I stomped down in 40 minutes, unable to stop because I would have been devoured alive. The bus was on time and an hour later I was at Gas-san Eighth Station. A note. The studlinessTM of a mountain is measured by its height: thus, it is studlier to climb Gas-san (1984m) than, say, Kinkazan (445m), but what should matter is the distance climbed. I climbed every one of those 445m myself, but in Gas-san's case, the first 1400m were taken care of by the bus, leaving only 500-odd for me. In the end, clambering up Gas-san took me a little over 2 hours, with some tougher spots but mostly just leisurely strolling across a high plateau. Most of the time the scenery reminded me of Ireland, endless, green, rocky, misty plains in extending in all directions. At the summit, I paid Y500 for the privilege of entering the shrine and being blessed by the priest, then it was time to start the walk down to Yudono-san. All downhill, so it's a piece of cake, right?
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Wrong. The final climb up was a bit tough, but the first half-hour of descent was downright mean. My monopod turned into my walking stick as I clambered down the randomly strewn boulders, getting stuck in pilgrim traffic jams every two minutes as the poor people going up struggled. With the wind blowing up the mountain it was bitterly cold. Eventually the clouds cleared and stunning vistas opened on both sides as the trail went across and down a ridge. Half an hour later the trail split, a staircase going up a hill while a much smaller, rockier path turned to the right. Most people went up, but the signs for Yudono pointed to the right, so there I went. The trail varied between bad and horrible, a muddy, rocky, narrow path deep in the bush. The few people going up were all so tired they could barely manage a "Konnichiwa". It was hot again, I was out of water (stupidly not having refilled at the last mountain hut), but I stomped on until I reached a beautiful sight... a little shed with (praise the gods!) a tap for drinkable water. Glug, glug, glug. Refreshed, I plunged on. The trail rapidly turned from horrible to atrocious. According to my map, the already steep 2-hour descent between the summit and the shed was 300m, whereas in the next hour the trail would drop 400m. Cartographic error, right? Nope. The average descent angle varied between 30 and 45 degrees, with some literally vertical sections fitted with rusty steel ladders tens of meters long. Legs shaking from exertion -- I'd been at it for 6 hours at this point -- I climbed down, poking with my monopod to detect loose rocks that would send me hurtling down if stepped on... while a old granny pilgrim as agile as a gazelle walked down the ladders and sped past me. The final descent was at a 45-deg angle within a rushing mountain stream, hopping from slippery algae-covered rock to rock. I bow in reverence to the nutc^H^H^H^Hdevout pilgrims who climbed up this route (and extend my tongue at the smart guys who took the other path, where the last descent is taken care of by a ski lift). Unbelievable as it seemed, eventually the stream ran into the lake of a dam and the trail became almost level. After a pause to catch my breath and wring the sweat out of my soaked towel/headband, I continued down beside what was now a very picturesque mountain stream to the end of the path, the Yudono-san Shrine. Describing the wonders of the shrine is forbidden, so I won't spill the beans, but I will note that a) the guidebook descriptions I've read don't do it any justice and b) it would make one hell of an onsen. And that, really, was it. The obligatory tourist mecca was a short bus ride away, so I too bought my T-shirt, souvenirs and a curry rice for lunch, before catching an "express" (ha!) bus to Yamagata and collapsing at my ryokan. All in a day's work. My feet withstood the battering surprisingly well, but because I bought the raincoat, I got somewhat sunburnt instead. Just the same, given that the rest of the week it'd been raining more or less non-stop, I was in fact amazingly lucky. I had one day left and one more sightseeing destination to cover, namely Yamadera (aka Risshakuji), the well-named Mountain Temple. While not a part of Dewa Sanzan, being on the other side of the central plain, the climb to get to the main complex took half an hour and should be worth at least half a Hagurosan in studliness points. The temples were quite nice and the views were better... and hey, Basho was there too, long enough to write a famous haiku which describes the sound of the semi (an amazingly noisy Japanese cicada) penetrating the rocks. But while the chirping of the semi has been a constant feature of summer in Japan, on this rainy day they were silent.
Swiss cheese hillsides |
Mountains and an umbrella |
Then it was time to get back. I was (again) going to hitchhike, but (again) the weather pre-empted these plans; my original backup plan was to take the Shinkansen from Sendai, but it turned out that Yamagata had a Shinkansen line as well. Or almost, anyway, since Shinkansen trains ply a normal track at normal speed. To save a few pennies I took a local to Yonezawa, then switched and rode the rest of the way home at speeds that were utterly amazing after getting used to the 40 km/h donkos of rural Toohoku. Cheers, -j.