I sat down at a table and ordered a bacon omelette from the friendly owner. He was a wizened but cheeky looking old man with blue eyes, which I thought must have been unusual for a Japanese person. He looked uncannily like something that Jim Henson might have created back in the 80’s. I digested my food and considered my predicament. It was dark outside, and I had to find a place to sleep. The restaurant owner sat down at my table as my eyes scoured my map for nearby campsites. I asked him if he knew about any campsites nearby where I might be able to stay for the night. He immediately gave me an offer to stay in the family’s spare room. At first I thought I had misheard, or misunderstood. But no, he took me to a room by the side of the dining area and let me put my bags there.
I then spent a merry couple of hours eating, drinking and talking with the wonderfully friendly people in the restaurant. It still amazes me how, no matter where you are in Japan, there are people who treat foreigners like celebrities (or in some cases, minor deities). I felt a bit uneasy about it, like I was getting all this wonderful attention despite having done nothing to deserve it, but it’s something that’s just part of living in Japan and that you have to get used to. After we taught each other to write in our own respective languages, and once we had taken several photos of each other, everyone left. My weary body decided that it could do with some sleep, and my brain wasn’t going to argue. I slept, warm and comfortable, my belly full of food and my mind full of amazement at the generosity of my hosts.
The next day I was treated to a reasonably healthy breakfast, but I soon had to set off early. It was raining, so my kind hosts stretched the limit of credible generosity by insisting that I got a lift with their son. He was a wonderful chap, and we got on handsomely during the drive to my next destination in the mountains. About halfway there, he picked up his girlfriend, just so she too could enjoy the novelty of gawping at a foreigner. We all got on pretty well, and I was sad to say goodbye to them once they dropped me off at a train station near the hostel I had booked for that night.
I put on my extremely cheap waterproof gear (a steal at ¥1600 for a waterproof coat and trousers) and unfolded my bike. I tried to help a delightful German girl who was passing by (and happened to speak perfect English) find her way but failed pretty miserably. She was looking for a valley with white stone walls “washed smooth by the river”. I told her that I hadn’t read about any such thing in my travel guide, but agreed that it sounded enchanting. I completely failed to dispense any useful advice about how to find her destination, wished her luck, and went on my way.
It was a winding path up and down the mountains in the driving rain that eventually took me to my hostel. Well, it wasn’t really a hostel, but more of a remote lodge run by a nice young man who had the air of a buddhist monk but, I suspected, wasn’t one at all but more like a hippie. Or whatever the Japanese equivalent of a hippie would be. I arrived at his remote dwelling at about two-ish and dropped off my luggage. I had intended to explore the famed “Iya valley”, one of the “hidden valleys of Japan”, which is a bit of a misnomer since anything with a reputation for being “hidden” in Japan is almost inevitably a ghastly tourist trap full of souvenir shops and bus loads of tourists. In particular I really wanted to see an ancient vine bridge there and a cheeky statue of a cherub peeing several hundred feet into the valley below, both of which here highly recommended in my guide book. The owner of the hostel assured me that I would have time to see everything, so I set off again, back along the winding path through the mountains the way I came.
Once I got back to where I had started that day, I had to take a different path which went steeply up the side of the mountain. It was pretty miserable going, as the rain poured on and I found out to my increasing horror that, unsurprisingly, my bargain basement waterproofs weren’t actually waterproof at all. Neither were my boots.
At the top of the mountain was a tunnel. It was clearly designed by someone who loves cars and trucks, but hates pedestrians, and especially cyclists, with all the passion of a religious fanatic. The tunnel was two kilometres long, with a walkway that was no more than two feet wide. Barely enough space for one person, let alone someone with a bike. To make matters worse, someone had hammered nails into the wall every few metres, sticking out at shoulder height, which I ripped my coat on several times. Every time a truck came through the tunnel I had to cling to the wall, thinking I was going to die as it roared past, deafeningly, right next to me. It was a long two kilometres to walk with my bike. When I finally exited the tunnel, I swore at the tunnel as loudly as I could (in Japanese, so it could understand) and thankfully had a nice downhill slope from then on to take me into the valley.
I had to cycle pretty far from there, just to see some tiny statue of a boy peeing, but it wasn’t so bad. Though I was soaked to the skin and shivering, the view down the valley was breathtaking, with the rain covering everything in an eerie mist. The statue itself was pretty anticlimactic, but it was at least a good excuse for a pleasant bike ride along a flat part of valley. I took all the photos I needed (well, more, since one would be enough to get the gist) and went back to find the exciting-sounding “vine bridge”.
Now, this was a most peculiar sight, and yet something that tells you everything you need to know about any sightseeing spot in Japan. Shikoku has relatively few of these, so it seemed when they have something even as unremarkable as an old bridge, everyone flocks to it since there’s nothing else to see in the area. The bridge itself is, of course, not original, but reconstructed with steel cables cunningly hidden amongst the vines, so that it’s safe to cross. That, in itself, is understandable. I certainly appreciated not plunging to my death as I crossed it. The thing that surprised me was the entrance to the bridge. Someone in the local council has decided that it would be a great idea to build a massive, ugly souvenir shop as a “gateway” to the vine bridge. You are actually supposed to go through this monstrosity in order to get to it. The most offensive thing is that it obstructs any views of the bridge that you might get if you were going along the valley. It was with extreme reluctance that I handed over my ¥500 bridge toll, knowing that it was both a rip-off and that it would go towards financing the hideous building I had just walked through.
Crossing the bridge was actually surprisingly more exciting than I had anticipated. It was very slippery from all the rain, and the slats going across the bridge were spaced very far apart, even for my feet, so I had to proceed slowly to avoid slipping between them. Once I had crossed, I looked back to see some primary school children running back and forth across the bridge, jumping up and down. I have never felt so old in my life. Not only that, but there was no-one guarding the other side of the bridge, so I could have crossed it from that end and walked back for free. I felt cheated.
I cycled back up the mountain, very tired and very wet by that time, back through the Tunnel of Doom (I swore to myself there and then that if I ever met the designer, I would kill him) and all the way back to the lodge, very much looking forward to a change of clothes and a nice hot bath.
I met a charming university student back at the lodge, who didn’t speak much English at all, but we still got on pretty well. He was travelling Shikoku on his own, on a break from his studies in Osaka. The owner of the lodge gave us a lift to get some groceries and take a dip in a Japanese onsen (a kind of public bath that’s very popular in Japan, and uses water from volcanic hot springs). I am a big fan of onsen. The first time I visited one, it was very strange to be naked in a room full of other naked men, all bathing together in the same, huge bath. A bath which is so hot that you feel like a lobster that’s being boiled alive. But after a couple of visits, you get used to people staring at you, trying to confirm if various racial stereotypes are true, and somehow manage to relax and enjoy the experience. There are few things more calming yet refreshing than a good onsen.
Back at the lodge, I met a lovely Dutch couple who were themselves travelling around Japan. I thought they were both American, or maybe Canadian at first. Neither of them had a trace of a Dutch accent. And their English was native level. I asked them what ages they started learning English from, and they told me they started at eleven. The same age I started learning German (all but forgotten now), and no less that five years later than the age that Japanese kids start learning English. Their education systems must be a marvel. Everyone I have met from Scandinavia seems to speak English perfectly, and yet they don’t seem to begin learning at a very early age, like the kids here in Japan do, where the English is, generally, appalling.
We all cooked various things and shared meals and conversation. The Dutch couple were playing a puzzle game on their Nintendo DS (Professor Layton and the Curious Village), one which I had recently finished, so I was glad to spoil the puzzles and plot for them. The university student was being lectured at length by the lodge owner about some aspect of Japanese society (probably the rampant consumerism) that he didn’t agree with. Every time I looked over at them, the student was giving an occasional nod of agreement, while at the same time looking like he wanted to escape. I was feeling very tired after the days exertions, so I made my excuses and went to bed early.
