The Last River

Following the Ichino River from source to sea in Kobe

Apologies for the patchy posting recently. I’m getting ready to move down to Kumamoto soon, and in the tidying up process, I’ve put my notes for the Kumano Kodo somewhere so safe, I can’t currently find them. So the Kumano Kodo travelogue will be put on hold (just as we are nearing Hongu!) and I will complete this series on Kobe’s rivers first.

The last river before Kobe’s Suma Alps interject and separate Kobe proper from nearby towns like Tarumi and Akashi is the Ichino River. If the last river was a piddling trickle, then this one really is just the final few shake-off droplets, unless it’s rained overnight, then presumably it’s a raging torrent, just like most other Japanese rivers.

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I didn’t reach the start of my walk until lunchtime, and ate my sandwiches to the sound of whirling beer cans, between a blue plastic Totoro and a white plastic Hello Kitty under a crisp blue sky with rapidly-moving puffs of white cloud.

Totoro, Hello Kitty and whirling beer cans

I spent a long time after I passed Kobe International High School puzzling over the highly-stylized katakana letters on this sign, and trying to read it. I eventually realised it said “Enjoy Room”, presumably a gakudo after-school child care facility.

Beyond the schools, I climbed up Takakurayama, which gave amazing views out over to my home suburb new town on the outskirts of Kobe, the Akashi Straits, and Osaka Bay.

Left to right: Akashi Straits, Osaka Bay, and new town suburbs of Kobe

I dropped down the other side of Takakurayama until I met a gate, which was locked. I didn’t want to go all the way back over the mountain, so I tried to skirt the locked gate to the right. This brought me to the lip of a rocky gorge, with a road far below, and no obvious way down or past the point of the locked gate.

The locked gate and the first hole

So, I tried the left side of the gate, working my way along the fence, until lo! A small but penetrable hole, which sans-rucksack I could squeeze through, pulling my rucksack behind me. All was well. I followed the other side of the fence, hacking through thick brush where necessary, past the point of the locked gate - yes! And then another fence jutted out, to another rocky outcropping. This time the drop wasn’t that great, I wouldn’t die, even if I fell, and I realised I could swing around the end of the fence like one-half of a frantically spinning pair of crossed-armed, hand-holding schoolkids (I was quite pleased with myself for this manoeuvre). Past that, I hacked and trod my way through thin bamboo-grass until I came to a track. OK, now I just needed to stroll a few metres into the housing estate beyond. But no, another locked gate, and this time no holes in fence to allow me through. Back up through the bamboo grass, back along the inside of the fence, back through the hole in the fence. I studied Google Maps intently. If I crossed the highway (which is what all these chain-link fences and gates were protecting) I could maybe make it into another suburb and back to the source of the river I was aiming for.

I followed the fence again, and this time found a big hole, with a well-trodden path both sides of it. I passed through, into dark forest, past trickling streams, down to the suburb. I was out! I’d done it! Without going all the way back up a small mountain.

Those pesky green chainlink fences of the highway department!

I pushed on, under the offending highway, and climbed the road to try and find the source of the Ichino River, which according to a pair of Japanese YouTubers was just alongside the road. It was pretty much impossible to see. The dam that was designed to hold back the waters of the Ichino when it rained heavily was completely empty.

Left to right: Cartoon explaining strengthening of highway pillars, the Ichino River valley, and the empty dam

Now, I tried to follow the Ichino as closely as I could as it trickled its way down the thickly-wooded valley and into the suburbs of Suma. It was really a trickle, until it seemed to dry out completely, before being replenished by an unseen drainage channel, so a good swill could pass under the rail and road bridges as the coast approached. There was a gloom now, in the shadow of the Suma Alps, the gloom of a winter evening, of the end of things. The energy and optimism of outwitting the green chain-link fences had gone, replaced with a melancholy that the abandoned children’s bicycle on one of the bridges over the Ichino deepened.

The swill was so slight, that as it emerged onto the beach at Suma, some enterprising child had built a dam with sand, and the Ichino was blocked from those final few centimetres to the sea until the tide came fully in.

Under and out...

...but not quite to the sea!