Along the Beach to Gotsu

 

After the temple and shrines in Tsunozu, the next stop is a temple in Gotsu Honmachi and so head off down the small coast road rather than the main road.

When I can I opt to continue along the beach rather than the road....

It's late November and the sea is much more active than usual.

Most of this post will be shots of the wavy sea.....

I pass Majima where I had stopped and explored at the start of the days walk....

The final few photos are not seashots.... peering inside a collapsing wooden garage I found this incredible old American car of some kind..... so much rust that I doubt it could be renovated.....

As I get cose to the mouth of the river a Heron......

And then the final photo, one of the few traditional buildings left in Gotsu. A traditional confectionary-cake-dessert shop..... never actually been inside, though it does garner rave reviews....

The previous post in this series on day 37 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimge was on a couple of shrines in Tsunozu.

If you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published or made public. I post new content almost every day, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the last ten posts.

A Walk from Koshigahama to Nagato-Oi

 

Late March, and the cherry blossoms are in full bloom on the Sea of Japan coast in Yamaguchi.

This was day 30 of my walk along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage, and the for the next few days there would not be any pilgrimage temples to visit, but the route is along a spectacular section of coastline where the road is literally right next to the sea.

Koshigahama is home to a pretty large fishing port, but fish is not the only product harvested from the sea.

As well as squid hanging up to dry, there was a lot of wakame, a species of kelp, and widely eaten in Japan.

Spring is the primary harvesting season in Japan.

Looking up the coast at my route. The high mountain in the distance is Mount Takayama near Susa. I expect to be there in about 3 days.

have no idea what these tiny fishes are that are being dried.

Not a big fan of small, bony fishes, though I must admit i used to enjoy whitebait back in Cornwall.

I suspect this guy doesn't care less which kind of fish he gets to eat....

If its not cloudy or windy, then the sea here is usually clear and turquoise blue.

The train line from Masuda to Hagi also hugs the coast and so these views can be enjoyed from a slow train....

Oshima is the biggest of the islands visible most days. In good weather, Mishima, much further offshore, can be glimpsed in the far distance.

For the next few kilometers there are no houses or settlements until Oi.

The previous post was on the scenic Itsukushima Shrine on Myojin Pond in Koshigahama.

if you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published or made public. I post new content almost every day, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the most recent posts.

A Walk to Mine

 

Where I grew up, December 26th is known as Boxing Day. On Boxing Day, 2014, I began my 26th day walking along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage.

This was a symbolic point in the journey as I had been moving primarily west for the previous 25 days, but now I turn north and then start to head East.

I had started in Okayama, then headed west through Hiroshima and then into Yamaguchi. Though there had been many detours, it was primarily along the coast of those prefectures. Now I head to the Japan Sea coast of Yamaguchi and then head east, primarily along the coast, through Yamaguchi, then Shimane, and then Tottori.

I had just visited the 19th of 37 temples, the 33 main temples plus 4 "extra" temples, so I had passed the halfway point in that regard. My route now would be much straighter than the first half, so I am well over halfway in terms of kilometers and days. The next half of the pilgrimage will be far less populated.

The next temple was in Hagi, and on this day I would get as far as Mine.

My destination was to the NE so I started out walking up the Koya River, passing under the Shinkansen Line, before crossing over to the Hara River which ran into the Asa River heading into Mine.

Not sure what kind of bird this was that was unfortunate enough to have been hit by a vehicle.

It was fairly typical rural landscape, with plenty of paddies and plenty of dilapidated buildings...

I stopped in at a couple of interesting shrines, and will cover them in the next post in the series...

I would have thought that the small, unmanned, rural buildings that sell porn and related products through vending machines would be dying out with the prevalence of online shopping and online porn, but Pink Joy seems to be very new, so obviously still worth investing in... I have noticed that the ones I have encountered in Chugoku have much more advertising on the exterior. The ones I came across in Kyushu usually just had a small nameboard.... no flags nor bright posters like here

Two of the most common birds I come across in the countryside are the heron

and the egret...

The previous post was on the fascinating Imimiya Shrine I visited the day before.

If you would like to subscribe by email, just leave your email address in the comments below. It will not be published or made public. I post new content almost every day, and send out an email about twice a month with short descriptions and links to the most recent posts.