Oh, we've been there before!

Day 7

We said goodbye to our hosts. A couple that have changed a family home into a guesthouse with magnificent views and delicious vegan food.

We’ve met the couple, the elder father and the apprentice. We learned that they are only vegan when they live in the mountains, they eat meat/fish during off-season. The main reason being that all the ingredients are local and are in abundance. I’m sure that there is a marketing reason as well as it is more difficult to eat vegetarian in Japan than you would assume.

The wife is the chef, the responsible person to mix up the ingredients there and then and make up, as she goes, the marvellous meals we have eaten throughout our stay. No recipes. No menu known in advance. Every day is a surprise, even for the husband!

The green tea is from the neighborough’s crop, the husband tells me. A 92 years old grandma that still works the land!

The chef is the lady with a head scarf on the shadow of the house:

We took the scenic route 32 and then route 439 heading east, the same roads we drove yesterday. Plenty more drivers today so the adventure of driving in narrow mountain roads continued. Jorge and Will were taking the same route and throughout the day they managed to pass us 3 or 4 times. They are mighty fast on those bikes!

Japanese bumble bees are big!

Nagoro Scarecrow village is a bit weird. Tsukimi Ayano returned home from Osaka to take care of her elderly father and faced what many small villages in the industrialised world are facing: depopulation. She creates dolls to replace her neighboroughs when they die. Knowing this also makes it a bit freaky!

Scarecrows are life-sized figures made of cloth stuffed with cotton and newspapers and they are scattered throughout the village.

  

I think this one looks like Donald Trump. Does this mean that even an old lady in a remote village in Japan doesn't like Trump?

Manuel being silly:

Mout Tsurugi (Tsurugisan) is the second highest mountain in Shikoku at 1955m. The weather was good so we decided to go up and check out the view.

Shugendo is a Japanese folk religion based on mountain worship and there is a shrine to it at the base of Tsurugisan.

To get (almost) to the top you have to catch a chairlift. We got a little shocked with the price: ¥1860 round trip (£13, €15, $16). I was too quick at saying ‘yes, return’, we should have walked down…

A chairlift it is but it is not your usual chairlift. It consists of a chair hanging by a metal bar but there are no safety measures at all. No seat belt or leg bars. You sit, hang on and hope not to fall. It goes quite slowly but it is still quite scary. I was a bit worried in the beginning but managed to control myself, whilst holding the bar very tightly.

The chairlift takes you almost to the top, it drops you at 1750m. The last 200m need to be done on foot. I had flip-flops and Manuel had forgotten his ‘climbing muscles’ in the car so we decided to take some pictures where the chairlift finishes and return. There were however many Japanese hikers going up, all geared up.

The way down, as expected, was a bit scarier. Why do I do this to myself?!? I do not like heights but I continue to put myself so close to the abyss.

Again, I screamed my way down the chairlift. There seems to be a pattern these days…

Part of me preferred it would go faster to finish the dreadful experience quicker, the other part was way too worried I might faint and fall off the chair.

  

This is how you get your bags up the mountain:

Lunch was at a small restaurant near Tsurugi shrine:

Last stop on Shikoku was Tokushima. We were not sightseeing in town, we were catching a ferry to the Kii Peninsula, the largest peninsula in Honshu island and across the Kiisuido Strait from Shikoku. From Tokushima (in Shikoku) to Wakayama (in Kii).

It took us a while to find the ferry port due to contradictory information between the road signs and the GPS. We arrived almost at the same time as Jorge and Will on their bikes.

At 16h30 the Nankai ferry departed sharply on time. It is a massive ferry taking people, bicycles, motorbikes, cars, coaches and trucks.

I had a massive headache so I spent the 2h of the trip sleeping at the designated rest area:

Manuel took some pictures:

Jorge and Will beat us to the accommodation on their bikes. Not sure how they did that…

Shinwaka Lodge is a very simple and outdated hotel. Staff is very friendly and one of the ladies speaks English. It’s by the beach and we have a room with a view!

After shower we got in the car and went looking for dinner. We stopped in a restaurant that looked promising. The car parking was almost full. Popular restaurants are usually good restaurants.

Plenty of people queuing at the door. The boys were hungry. We weren’t keen on waiting.

An Asian gentleman queuing at the door started conversation. I do not think he was Japanese, his English was very good and his skin very tanned. He asked us what kind of restaurant we were looking for, how much we wanted to spend and whether we were keen on fish. He directed us to a fish restaurant which we almost missed out as it had no advertising board and it was in a small side street.

The waitress’s English was very limited. No English menu. Oh, we’ve been there before!

This time however we tried a different approach. We asked the waitress to bring us food for 4 people, her own recommendations. She seemed to be taken aback but smiled, bowed and to the kitchen she went.

I don’t think we have ever had this much fish in one sitting! Dish after dish, they kept coming, well prepared and presented and absolutely delicious. There were 6 dishes of pure delight (we stopped taking pictures at the 4^th as we were distracted with our own gluttony).

As we left, both the waitress and the chef came to see us out and say goodbye. I don’t think they see many tourists…

The recommendation of the restaurant by a random stranger was good. The waitress’s recommendations were excellent. It was pricey but it was worth every yen: ¥14000 for all (£96, €113, $124).

Pilgrim tally:

Still 5/5. No pilgrims seen today either. Disappointing!

Maybe we did not go through the more usual pilgrim routes...