I’VE HAD SOME OF MY MOST SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCES WHILE GUIDING A BIKE DOWN A WET ROAD.
Though the Japanese give highways numbers and name bigger streets, it’s as if the government found the prospect of naming every street in the country too daunting and gave up. In the mountains, we’d turn onto roads that simply didn’t exist on any of our maps, which were connected to other roads that didn’t show up. (Later, however, I’d find that they did appear on Strava!) To top it all, the only English I saw while on Shikoku was on my phone, my computer, or in the book I had brought.
The effect was infantilising. I was zero help on navigation, and all communication had to be translated for me. I had to rely on others for everything except pedalling. Eventually, I had decided to surrender to my vulnerability – it felt like part of my Buddhist journey.
So I laugh as we survey our options. It seems the only appropriate response. I have the funny feeling that the steep road is our lot.
“Yeah, I think that will take us to the town our hotel is in,” Eric confirms.
During the first four days of the trip, we’d established a daily pattern of riding flat, coastal routes out of the towns we were staying in, and into the interior of the island. There the mountains rose and fell with drama, and were forested a deep green, with peaks draped in moisture. We’d know we were approaching the mountains when the roads would start to get really small. The rule of thumb I began to live by was that as soon as we turned onto something less than 2.5m wide, the real climbing was about to begin. Two-lane roads never seemed to get steeper than about eight per cent, but once the road shrank to the width of an SUV, all bets were off; pitches steep as a groomed ski run, curtained by bamboo or pine forest, were routine. Eric Smith described it aptly, “In Europe, you take the road that looks most promising. In Japan, you take the road that most resembles your neighbour’s driveway.”
As we follow Eric’s hunch, I hug the guardrail on the left (they drive on the left in Japan). Evergreen forest rises around us. The sky is aircraft gray, the air as damp as a dog’s tongue.
At the top, we rest and snack on sandwiches and Cokes, then zip up for the descent. We give up more than 300m in just three kays, and I lose count of the switchbacks. I take the whole of the road, looking as far ahead for cars and trucks as the steep walls of the mountain permit, watching Eric disappear into the mist below.
FORCES LARGER THAN ME
On our fifth day, it rains. Our route cuts across the south-western tip of the island, and takes us into some of the most remote territory we’ll encounter. We pass farms with no signs of animals or people – no smoke rising from chimneys, no power lines.
After riding for more than four hours on narrow roads, and up one climb that lasts for 41km, we are all desperate to get out of our wet kit. Our final descent leads us to the town of Uwajima.
Descending in the rain terrifies some people. But I’ve had some of my most spiritual experiences while guiding a bike down a wet road. Brazilian racecar driver Ayrton Senna once said that he “saw God” while racing in the rain. On this long descent to our hotel, I too feel guided by forces larger than myself, as if I have a supernatural intuition for my limits. I tuck my head to keep the rain out of my eyes, but my shoulders are relaxed. I have the sense that I know exactly what to do. Despite the chill, I arrive in Uwajima feeling elated.
Inside the ryokan (a traditional Japanese hotel) we enjoy what had become our standard practice for rides that ended in rain: a soak in an onsen, or public bath house. American jazz is the soundtrack of the onsen, and we walk to the locker room to the sound of swing. (I never heard koto music while in Japan.) That night we sleep on futons rolled out on bamboo mats. I dream of fish, and the kanji characters that represent the Japanese alphabet.
The next morning we are served a traditional breakfast including rice, a two-bite salad of greens
and pickled vegetables, some squid, and a whole fish that seems to stare at me with one baleful eye. I think about how Shana would be feeding the boys without me. It strikes me that I experience a constant pull to travel, then feel guilty that I’m not with them. There’s an irony to using a trip away from your family as a spiritual quest to become a better parent.
The Japanese breakfast can’t be more than 3 300 kilojoules, certainly not enough to get me through five hours of riding, so on the way out of town we engage in what had become another ritualised practice: stopping at a café for Cokes, little chocolate-filled buns, cookies, seaweed-wrapped rice cakes, and fish sandwiches on white bread from which the crust had been trimmed.
Near the end of the day we approach Temple 58, which is nestled in a tiny nook atop a rocky outcrop. It was always easy to tell when we drew close to another temple on the pilgrimage. We’d begin to see henro clad in white robes, wearing their wide conical hats (called sugegasa) and carrying their wooden staffs (kongōtsue). A sign with a number would indicate the turn-off.
The road leading to Temple 58 begins by casually looping up the hillside; but by this point I can do little more than shift into my lowest gear, sit in the saddle, and turn over the pedals. The road becomes progressively steeper with each bend, until I encounter a wall-like pitch just before the temple that forces me to stand so I don’t fall over.
At the temple, I stumble in and sit on the first bench I find. Outside, dozens of tiny stone carvings terrace the hillside like foot-high gravestones, each commemorating a different monk. Cherry blossoms rain down from a tree onto a statue of Kūkai, the monk who founded the pilgrimage. Despite the pain in my neck and shoulders from too many kays spent in the drops, and legs that are leaden to the point of being unresponsive, I feel serene.