Day 23 - Climbing The Scenic Satta Toge Mountain Pass, From Okitsu To Yui Juku, To Kanbara Juku, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
Day 23 - Climbing The Scenic Satta Toge Mountain Pass, From Okitsu To Yui Juku, To Kanbara Juku, Walking The Tokaido Road In Japan
I loved our comfortable apartment in Shizuoka.
If it were a reasonable option, I would never again stay in a business hotel in Japan.
But I know that it is not possible to walk long pilgrimages in Japan and avoid all business hotels.
But whenever possible, I am happy to go for alternative accommodations.
We ate in our room a breakfast of avocado sandwiches with lettuce, cucumbers and tomatoes, and got a hot drink at the Starbucks across from our apartment.
By now, we have been frequenting this Starbucks for a few days, so they knew my order, and welcomed me warmly.
It was a cold and rainy morning, and the day never really warmed up.
We met Joseph and Wendy and together we took a train back to Okitsu station, where we began our day’s walk along the Tokaido.
A mountain slide has altered the road leading to the Satta pass, so I took a shortcut and walked straight to the entrance to the mountain.
Soon we entered the forest, where a short walk through a small cemetery led us to log steps, that led us up to the Satta mountain pass.
A sign warned hikers about black bears in the area.
I was a little anxious about climbing mountains with our small group, because I didn’t know what to expect.
Sometimes they looked strong and walked beautifully, and sometimes they huffed and puffed when the climb got steeper.
They would start asking me how long we had to the summit and if it would become any steeper.
The anxiety came from not having any real answers.
I have never walked the Tokaido before, and even though I studied the map and planned our walking route every day, I cannot get these kinds of details by examining the maps.
Besides, Google Maps’ elevation gain estimates are ALWAYS wrong.
I have an app on my phone that measures my current altitude, and it is always different from what Google Maps says. Sometimes the discrepancy between the altitude readings is very large.
Today, our little group breezed through the climb.
We were at the top of the pass and admiring the beautiful views of the Suruga bay in no time.
In the old days, this stretch of the Tokaido road was quite difficult, with people having to clamber over rocks along the cliffs, all the while keeping their eyes on the steep ravine leading to the sea below.
This road was used by feudal lords and processions, so it was a bit wider during the Edo period.
Traces of stone masonry can be seen in the fields below, which indicate that maybe there were stone walls that served as railings in some dangerous parts of the path during the Edo period.
The current coastline is passable, mostly as a result of recent land clearing that reopened the path, after many landslides.
A grand panorama of Mt. Fuji and Suruga Bay can be seen on a clear day.
It was often depicted in ukiyo-e woodblock artworks.
Since the Edo Period, the exquisite views from Satta Pass have been etched into the eyes and hearts of people passing through.
The majesty of Mt. Fuji and the deep blue of Suruga Bay are still as entrancing now as they were long ago.
We were alone on the hike, surrounded by flowering cherry trees, citrus trees loaded with grapefruits, and loquat trees with young bundles of fruit that had been carefully wrapped with newspapers, to protect the fruit from hungry birds.
Jules and I were moving slowly and joyfully through the pass, enjoying the blue sea views, the songs of birds and the flowering trees.
We wished all of the Tokaido road would have been as beautiful as this path.
Wendy and Joseph moved very fast, waiting for us at the end of the forest.
They explained that Joseph is afraid of mountains and of high places, and they preferred to go fast and be done with the steep parts.
At the end of the forest, we walked on narrow farm roads, down to Yui Juku.
We arrived in this small village in the Kurasawa-Terao district, which still retains traces of the old days when travelers going down or up the pass
rested in this town.
The old Honjin was called Kawashimaya Inn.
It was located east of Satta Pass.
Located at the foot of the hill, there were about ten teahouses where travelers could rest and relax with a cup of tea before setting off on their journey, enjoying the scenery of Suruga Bay.
The Kawashima family have been the inn keepers here for approximately 230 years.
Since the early Edo period, the family has provided the central inn for many generations.
Even feudal lords would come here to rest, and the Honjin was a famous hospitality place.
The head of the family also served as the headman of Nishikurasawa village.
We passed by a busy restaurant with a line of people waiting to be seated, specialising in Sakura Ebi dishes.
Sakura ebi is a type of small pink shrimp that is no longer caught wild here like in the old days, but which is now farmed here.
They mostly make it in rice dishes or as fried ebi tempura.
Wendy wanted to stop here, but I had already checked the menu and saw that there was nothing Jules would agree to eat.
It was also an expensive restaurant and honestly, I have eaten it a few times before, and Sakura shrimp are not that tasty to me.
They are watery and don’t taste as sweet and delicious as other shrimp, and the process of fish-farming produces such environmental pollution, that I am not happy about eating it anyway.
We walked by a few other Sakura shrimp restaurants full of people feasting or waiting in line to get in.
Everyone looked overweight and unhealthy, and I thought about a quote from the book about the Tokaido that I am reading now.
It is the chant of a monk who walked the Tokaido, chanting in town squares about how the feasting of today becomes the illnesses and sorrows of tomorrow.
The monk was chanting:
“This is the Sutra of the Lotus of the Pure Law.
The children of darkness will one day see the light, for the sound of the Samisen music is too loud and continuous in their ears.
The feasting of yesterday means the sickness of today, and leads to utter misery!
Until the neighbouring doctor is called, and he compounds medicines that are prescribed, which take effect and make the stomach swell even more.
Listen to the holy words!”
The quote that “the children of darkness will one day see the light, for the sound of the Samisen music is too loud and continuous in their ears”means that people live in darkness and ignorance of the laws, and only obey their temptations and cravings without considering the consequences of their actions.
They do not listen to the laws of life as described both in Buddhism and Christianity, and they allow their greed and taste buds to make bad choices for them.
The "cardinal sins," in Christianity are also known as the "seven deadly sins."
They can be seen as advice about what to avoid in order to live a happy, healthy, lighter life.
They are considered major sins, only because they lead to decay of the body and mind, and to death.
The sins are pride (too much ego), greed (wanting to satiate cravings), lust (could be for food, luxuries, sex, money), gluttony (obviously related to rich food and overeating), anger, envy, and sloth, which is laziness.
I can honestly tell you that these “seven sins” should not be looked at as biblical rules.
Not heaven nor hell, just sane, practical advice to anyone seeking better living.
Eat simple food, fast often, don’t eat rich foods, don’t be lazy, be active and happy to be on your feet, walk a lot, exercise, play, dance, run or work.
The Yui post station was established in the year 1601 as a post station along the Tokaido Road.
Yui was chosen as the 16th of fifty-three along the route from Edo to Kyoto.
The Juku, or shuku, had special quarters (honjin) for feudal lords and the nobility, warehouses for porters and spare horses, and accommodation for common people, along with many tea houses and eating places for ordinary travelers.
The honjin and the warehouses were operated by the Iwanabe family, descended from the Yui Clan.
According to the records, the Yui shuku was approximately 600 meters long, had a population of only 707 people, 160 buildings, one honjin for high ranking visitors, one waki honjin for retainers, and 32 travelers' lodgings.
Because the Yui town was small and did not have more than a hundred workers or horses, nearby villages were required to give assistance when necessary.
Crossing the Yui River on the western edge of the station was a wooden bridge that could be removed during flooding, that served as a defensible road block.
To slow down enemy troops, the east-west roadway was also made with sharp turns, which can still be seen today.
The honjin, at the center of the Yui shuku, was a compound surrounded by stone terraces and wooden walls, containing the guest hall for nobles, storehouses, and detached sitting rooms.
Unfortunately, very little of this remains, but the stone terraces and the space for watering horses, still mark the site of the honjin.
In 1831–1834, the artist Hiroshige chose not to depict Yui post town at all, but instead painted travelers climbing the very steep Satta mountain pass.
Down the road, there was a Taiwanese restaurant, and I asked Wendy and Joseph if they wanted to rest and eat there,
They shrugged their shoulders in ambivalent agreement.
When we got there, it turned out that it wasn’t a Taiwanese restaurant, but a Chinese restaurant.
Still we needed to rest and eat something, so we took off our coats and settled in to eat lunch.
Jules and I ordered a vegetable fried rice, steamed water spinach and steamed dumplings.
The food we ate was good.
Wendy and Joseph ordered two big dishes of brown fried fish and squid and a huge dish of Mapo-tofu, swimming in a thick meat sauce.
The rain intensified after we left the restaurant.
Jules frequently feels too cold recently.
He asked me if I felt cold.
I explained that you cannot live on the edge of your skin.
You’ve got to live from within your soul, where it is always warm and toasty and comfortable.
You cannot take your cues from your muscles or fatigue, or from your skin.
You must go deep into your warm soul, and draw comfort from that source.
Next, we stopped at the Hiroshige museum.
It was an impressive museum full of the art he painted as he walked the Tokaido, and I was happy that we were there when the museum was open.
It had first edition woodblock prints of all the post stations of the Tokaido, along with lots of information about him and his process of making woodblock prints.
After we left the museum, we walked by a food cannery polluting the river with terrible smelling, hot wastewater pouring directly into the river and canals that run right to the sea.
At first, Wendy asked if the hot stinking water was an overflow from an onsen, but then she realized that the wastewater polluting the river was coming from the fish farms, the sakura ebi farms and the fish canneries.
Together, they created a very unpleasant odor that hung over the area.
We walked fast, trying to leave the sickening smell behind us.
We then arrived at Kanbara Juku post town (also written as Kambara in some places).
We visited a very attractive building that was the former dental clinic and residence of Igarashi.
The building stands along the Tokaido Highway and it was originally built as a machiya (townhouse) before the Taisho Period.
In 1914, the late Jun Igarashi, the head of the family at that time, opened a dental clinic, and the townhouse was reconstructed in a Western style.
Later, by around 1940, the western and eastern portions of the house were enlarged to their current size. The house has a unique Western-style exterior, while retaining the characteristics of an old machiya.
The second floor was used as a study room at that time.
The wavy glass in the sunroom is original and very impressive.
The glass is handmade, and its unique transparency and distortions give it a tasteful appearance.
The interior of the Igarashi-tei, unlike its exterior, is done in a pure Japanese style.
Gorgeous fusuma paintings and elaborately carved wood carvings can be seen inside.
A sunny room on the second floor was used as the dental treatment room.
It had old dental instruments and medicines that looked like medieval torture devices.
We saw the remains of the Honjin in Kambara.
There were two main Honjin in Kambara-shuku, the East Honjin and the West Honjin.
The present building dates from the Taisho era (1912-1926).
Kambara town has some other beautiful historic buildings, and we saw some Japanese tourists with maps, visiting the area to learn about them and to enjoy the quiet atmosphere of this scenic town.
It was the end of the day and we we were walking to take the train back to our apartment in Shizuoka.
When Jules and I arrived at Fujikawa Station, we noticed that Wendy and Joseph were not behind us.
I sent them a message and then Wendy called me, saying that she was feeling sick and that she had thrown up.
Jules and I quickly retraced our steps back along the Tokaido, until we found them.
Wendy was looking pale, and the napkin she held in her hand had some blood stains on it.
She drank some water and looked sweaty and weak.
She said that she felt hot and cold flashes and some chills.
I thought it might be something she ate, maybe the Chinese food at lunch, but I didn’t know their health conditions, so I was very worried.
Slowly we walked together to the train station.
I helped Wendy up the stairs and to the toilet, where I heard her throw up again.
We took the train to Shizuoka city and a taxi back to our apartments.
I left Jules at the Starbucks and helped Wendy up to their apartment,
I helped them change the air conditioner to heat, and Wendy took a shower and fell asleep for a few hours.
Jules and I felt very worried about Wendy.
We didn’t know if she would be able to go on tomorrow’s walk, which will be just as long as today’s with similar weather conditions.
Tonight we will say a prayer for Wendy’s health and wellbeing.
With love, and light,
Tali
Today’s Stats:
Steps - 31,501
km walked - 21 km
Total walked: 454 km
Old Post Towns Visited:
Okitsu Juku #17
Yui Juku #16
Kanbara Juku #15
