Heaven's Bridge
From Miyazu to Mineyama along the Japan Standard Time line
It was the first day of Golden Week, three days of holidays tacked onto a weekend, giving a straight five days of potential sightseeing and travel for Japanese. The weather forecast had gradually got better for the first two days of the vacation - first cloud and a little rain was predicted, then just cloud, and finally the night before I left, two days of sunshine.
Miyazu was the same as I had left it - sometimes when you return to a walking point the feel is completely different; either due to a change in the weather, or how many people are around. But the weather was the same - bright and breezy, and the food trucks were out in force - just like last time. The only difference was the crowds were slightly larger and there were East Asian students taking a break from their studies to go sightseeing.
Back to Miyazu
I went to the same park as last time, ate some nuts washed down with a can of café au lait and headed round Miyazu’s port. I was better equipped for the sun this time, sporting a Tilly hat and high-factor sunscreen. There was precious little shade for the first few kilometres, hugging the coast past rows of fishermen’s huts and seafood restaurants. As I approached Amanohashidate - one of Japan’s three best scenic views as selected by the Confucian scholar Hayashi Gahō in the seventeenth century - a proper coastal path emerged. Pine trees gave some shade to my left and then the long white sandbar that separates the Sea of Japan from the sheltered Asoumi Sea appeared on my right, also covered with pine trees.
The waterway that separated the mainland from the sandbar was neatly trimmed with stone edging and a towpath, and filled with chugging, gurgling sightseeing motorboats. As I got closer to the swing bridge that connects the sandbar to the mainland, the crowds grew thicker, the risk of being pushed off the towpath greater. I crossed the bridge to look at the sandbar. From up close, there’s not much to see. It’s some sand with some pine trees on it. I’d seen similar in south-west France. From up high on the mountains at either end, I guess it’s a great sight. Here, it was a crowded, noisy beach. It felt like a Showa-era resort. Worth stopping to see in passing possibly, but not really worth a dedicated trip. There was a feel of faded glory, like an old English seaside resort. The gardens of the hotels and villas that backed onto the towpath were overgrown. If holidaymakers wanted beaches, they could take a cheap flight to Okinawa. What they wanted now were experiences, and looking through your legs (as you’re supposed to do) to look at a pine-covered sandbar just doesn’t cut it.
The pine-covered sand beach at Amanohashidate
I kept following the towpath, beyond where I was supposed to go, behind a temple and a hotel, stepping over protruding pines and following the neat bamboo fences until I reached a car park. Then I was back on the main road along the coastline, away from Amanohashidate (heaven’s bridge) and into a world of tarmacadam and gravel plants.
Sign on the concrete plant: If you’re in trouble, take a deep breath and tell the boss!
I stopped for lunch at Aso Seaside Park, eating my sandwiches on a picnic bench under one of the few bits of shade, while families enjoyed their Golden Week holidays all around. Behind the park were one of the two ridges of mountains I needed to cross to get to my hotel in Mineyama. I’d set a late check-in time of 8pm, but I was starting to worry if I’d make it. I measured how far I’d come on the map against how far I had to go. It seemed a bit giri-giri (close/tight), but once I reached the flat straight section of road in the valley that contained Mineyama, the going should be much easier.
The road into the mountains was quiet. Something - a tanuki (Japanese raccoon dog) or anakuma (Japanese badger) - I couldn’t tell which because it was so fast and I could only see its arse disappearing into the bamboo thicket - ran across the road in front of me. The road wrapped its way up, hairpin after hairpin, overhung with crumbling banks of orange-brown stone and soil. And then a sign in the middle of the road. No passage.
I’d wasted thirty minutes climbing up there. I was even more worried I wouldn’t make it to the hotel in time. I tried the next road over the mountain ridge, this one had a number - 651, surely it wouldn’t be arbitrarily closed? It wasn’t, but it was just as creepy as the first road. Hardly a car passed. There were boar traps at regular intervals on both sides of the road. A lizard flickered across the tarmac. Something was making some weird noise - a bird? I began to imagine monkeys chattering to each other. But it didn’t sound quite right. I recorded it, sent the recording to a friend. Maybe some kind of frog? The bamboo arched across the road, creaking and then suddenly popping. The road was sloping down now, fields began to emerge, and then I was out into a bright paddy-filled valley.
Abandoned hoikusho (child-care centre) near Mineyama
Rice planting was underway: I watched the neat rectangles of seedlings being fed onto slots on the back of the planter, they slid down and then were separated so individual seedlings were planted in careful rows that prickled the mirror surface of the paddy.
The second ridge of mountains was smaller, the road ran through a narrow valley rather than winding up the mountainside. I was making good progress. I realised I was going to arrive way before the 8pm check-in time. I relaxed, took my time walking the long, straight road across the fields towards the hotel. There were so many fields, and the area looked so villagey that I couldn’t really believe there would be a multi-storey business hotel out here. But there it was, surrounded by fields and shopping centres.
One of my co-workers told me he had been charged extra for staying at a hotel because they assumed he had come fresh off a flight from overseas. He needed his vaccine certificates, which he didn’t have, so the hotel staff told him he had to pay extra if he wanted to stay there. This aroused a worry in me. What if the hotel refused to let me stay? I doubted it, somehow I give off an aura that says “I’ve been in Japan a long time”. Indeed, there was no problem when I checked into the hotel, they didn’t even ask for any ID.
It was great to have a room and know I was going to get a decent night’s sleep, rather than having to bivy bag it outside. The room was good, like every other business hotel I’ve ever stayed in in Japan. The view from the window was of old village houses, with an old square brick chimney, maybe for a kiln attached to the back of one of the houses. Something about these square brick chimneys strikes a note of doom - they remind me of Auschwitz, possibly because brick chimneys like this are nearly always round in England.
I found a curry restaurant attached to the big shopping centre in front of the hotel. I sat at the counter, eating my cheese curry, hoping the elderly lady owner would ask me where I was from to start a conversation. She didn’t seem in the mood for conversation though, spending her time pottering about in the kitchen out of sight. I noticed a sign above the counter saying the restaurant would be closing at the end of the month.
I had a wander round, looking for a bar. I was in an unusually talkative mood, having not really spoken to anyone all day. The only option was a Filipino karaoke place, but it seemed to be closed, so I retired to my room with a convenience store umeshu (plum liquer) drink.