Day 57 - Kirishima City To Miyakonojo Through Mount Shiragatake, The Kyushu 108 Temple Pilgrimage, Japan

 

Day 57 - Kirishima City To Miyakonojo Through Mount Shiragatake, The Kyushu 108 Temple Pilgrimage, Japan 

Kirishima is a vast volcanic mountain range, with tall peaks and volcanic lakes.

The official name is Kirishima Kinko Bay National Park, and it is one of the first national parks in Japan.

It was declared a National Park in 1934. 

This mountain range is largely divided into two sections, the northern and southern parts, and each has a distinctive landscape.

The northern range faces the Ebino plateau and the southern range faces Kirishima city and the Kinko Bay area.

In the northern part of the park, there are more than 20 large and small volcanoes, and there is natural vegetation and crater lakes, eruption sand formations, hot springs and plateaus that were born out of volcanic activity.

We had visited the northern part of the park when we were in Ebino.

Now we are in the southern part of the park, where the mountain range is covered in a dense forest.

The Kinko Bay area is located in the southern part of the park, with Mount Sakurajima, which still emits smoke regularly and is a symbol of the region.

Kirishima city is a short walk from Kajiki Aira, which we had reached the day before.

Our plan was to cross the mountain range in two days.

On day one, we would take the train to Osumi Okawara station and walk through the mountains back to Kirishima City.

Then on the next day, we would take the train back to Osumi Okawara station, but this time we would walk down to Miyakonojo city.

Today was day one of the plan, and we were walking with our backpacks.

Although they were much lighter, climbing four mountain passes was still not easy.

For half of the day, we walked along the main car road.

We did have some sidewalks, but  almost every truck that passed us by surrounded us with the foul smell of manure and unwashed cows.

This horrible smell lingered for a long time before the next truck surrounded us again with the smell of manure and death.

Beef is considered a delicacy of this region, and there were frequent trucks delivering cattle for slaughter. 

Maybe if more people were able to see how cattle are raised and treated, less people would be willing to eat steak.

The cows do not roam freely on the fields of the farms like they do in the Swiss Alps, carrying big brass bells.

They live in small feed lots, never once in their lives getting to see green grass or taste a flower.

They spend their days in the most cruel conditions and get slaughtered when they reach the age and weight deemed best for killing them.

There was no other road through the mountains beside the truck road, until its sidewalks ended and we had to make a choice.

Either we continued on the truck road and hoped that the sidewalks would resume, or we walked through a rural road that was much steeper.

We chose the rural road.

The rural road had no sidewalks and many hills, but almost no cars or trucks.

Then came a very long downhill in a beautiful mountain gorge, with forests on all sides and a river and waterfalls.

We finally felt happy, seeing this glorious landscape without any cars or trucks with the smell of manure.

We felt very blessed, until… the road was closed for construction.

Many signs blocked the barricaded road with illustrations showing  construction workers saying you should not enter.

We had two options: to go back, which meant reversing more than two hours of walking and mostly climbing uphill back to the main truck road, or ignoring the signs and walking through.

We decided that since we were not driving a car, we would walk through.

If we saw the construction crew, we would apologize and explain our predicament.

If we saw no construction crew but encountered bad road conditions, we would climb over rocks and fallen trees, because we felt that we could not walk back up the mountain and add hours to our journey.

Soon it became clear that the reasons for the road closure were some major landslides of the walls of the gorge.

The steep rocky walls were covered in concrete now, as landslide protection.

It must have taken months or even years to cover them with concrete and the crews were still working on it, with steel frames and heavy equipment.

We did encounter construction crews, but none of them seemed surprised by our intrusion. 

They were more surprised to see two foreigners walking at all down the steep slopes of the mountain, than concerned about us walking through the barricaded road.

We greeted them with warm smiles, as if we were walking down the Main Street of any city, on our way to a cafe.

They greeted us with the same warm smiles, shy and a little inquisitive, but said nothing.

We walked through.

At some point, we walked past the landslides and construction, and I stopped to pee in the woods.

When I pulled up my pants again, they were covered with plant stickers which stuck to my pants and were hard to remove.

Jules helped me pull some out, but most broke off leaving the sharp pointy ends stuck to my pants.

With every step I felt them scratching my thighs.

I wanted to cry.

Of all the places in the empty road, I chose the worst place to stop for a pee break…

I thought about changing my pants, since we were walking with our backpacks, but decided to ignore the incident and push on.

Finally we were down the mountain and through the closed road.

We reached the farmland by the river and had our first and only rest stop of the day.

We saw a bench by a garden across from a farmhouse, and assumed that the farmer who lived there would not mind if we stopped to rest and had some tea while sitting on his bench.

We felt so happy to sit for a few minutes and have some hot tea and a cookie.

When we reached the town, we walked to the Starbucks, which was close to our hotel.

The last few kilometers felt so long and my feet were throbbing.

We rested in the Starbucks until evening.

It was dark by the time we left and the temperature had dropped significantly.

Our hotel was a big hot springs hotel that spreads across two huge buildings.

It was busy with guests and the hot springs were open to the public, and were very popular.

We had no desire to go out for dinner after a long day of walking, and it was getting colder outside.

The hotel has a French restaurant, so we decided to eat dinner there.

I didn’t know that the meal could be so mediocre.

The hotel has a lovely Onsen that is well maintained.

The rooms are comfortable and very clean. 

The lobby and atrium are well designed and clean, so it was a surprise that the dinner was barely edible.

We decided that tomorrow, we would eat dinner somewhere around town, before returning to the hotel.

After the soak in the Onsen, my muscles felt better, although I did have some cramps in my legs during the night.

With love and affection,

Tali

Stats: 37,047 steps 

Today’s walk: 26 km 

Kilometers walked to date: 978

Temples visited: none