October 25th Kii Katsuura to Yunomine Onsen
Should we go to Shingu and get the bus directly to Yunomine Onsen?
Should we stick with our original plan to get a bus from Kii Katsuura?
Given what we had found out through the Web, Tourist Information, and Sananda we decided to stick with the plan we think we had come to with Sananda on our first night in Nachi Kii Katsuura.
Get the morning bus to Hongu and figure out how we get to our bed for the night at Yunomine Onsen once we got there. In hindsight – good decision.
Fond farewells after our two days being guided around Nachi by Sananda. Japan seems to specialise in going above and beyond any AirBnB experience we had had!
Checked at the bus station and had it confirmed that there was a bus at 10am going straight through to Hongu. Time for a quick wander around the laneways alongside the station. Then travelling a part of the longest public bus ride in Japan A pretty ride through small villages and winding roads.
Once in Hongu we found coin lockers and after trying to use our translator app to no avail. We gave up and headed for the Information office at the Hongu Heritage Centre. Not only did we have the bus timetable for Yunomine confirmed we also got instruction on how to use the coin lockers.
Back we went. A slightly tense and substantial go at getting the locker to work. It continually rejected the first 100 of our 500 Yen. Finally Chris suggested trying a 500 Yen – about the only (yet obvious) strategy we had not tried. Bingo it worked immediately. I got the giggles – we had tried everything and not for a moment had we thought of trying a single coin.
Backpack-free we headed to a small café – Café Hongu – announcing ‘Coffee’ on the board out front. Cute little café – simple interior with light wood bench tables and stool with wood used throughout and simple decoration. The special dish was Mehari – sushi style rice with pickles in the middle, wrapped in pickled mustard leaves. Delicious, and apparently the local, seasonal October dish.
Back to the Heritage centre where a range of displays gave an overview of the Kumano Kodo region, it’s history in the context of the spiritual history of the area and of Japan. The Kumano Sanzan – three significant temples Hongu Taisha, Nachi Taisha and Hayatama Taisha (Shingu) This was illustrated in a range of ways: with ancient scrolls – one by Ippen Shonin an early Buddhist with extensive artwork depicting life. It included mandalas and intricate pictures of life in the temples.
Alongside the centre a path lead down to the original site of the Hongu Taisha. A flood in the 1800s had destroyed the original temple built on the curve of a sandbank. This site is now marked with the largest Tojii Gate in the world.
We had learned over the past couple of days that the Gate marked the separation between the ordinary world and the spiritual world. Further enhanced by a ritual cleansing before entering. The cleansing water was at each temple we had visited.
The ritual was to gather water in the scoop provided. Wash the left hand, wash the right hand, rinse out your mouth then let any water remaining run down the handle into the draining trough before returning it to the rack over the clean water. This ritual was performed at every sacred site we visited by the many visitors passing through.
The original temple site appeared to have the original stone foundations in place and small shrines throughout the site. A beautiful, peaceful, treed place.
We left the original temple and wandered through Hongu to the current temple site. No visit today as we plan to visit tomorrow. Instead we sat under trees and had a green tea soft-serve icecream.
Time to get our luggage and head for the bus. Another minor hiccup finding the right stop and the right bus but we got on a bus and it was the right bus. We figured out the fare – and it was the right fare AND we got to Yunomine Onsen and more Gaijin than we had seen in a long time.
Yunomine Onsen a small cluster of houses and guest accommodation seemingly in the middle of a mountain range. Strongly smelling of sulphur with a bubbling river running through it – spanned by small arched bridges.
Minshuku Yamane, our bed for the next 2 nights. Greeted by our host who showed us our room and the explained the things we needed to know with vigorous gesticulation, and an enthusiastic patter of Japanese – with a few key words of English throughout. The most important was that dinner was at … a ‘6’ drawn in the air and we would be notified dinner was ready by … miming of a loud knock on the door.
A bonus discovery (I thought) – no internet access. We settled into our room and went for a walk. A sign indicating the Kumano Kodo walk drew us up the hill a little and we found a large stone carved with a poem by Ippen Shonin who we had read about earlier.
Standing discussing this we were joined by two women from San Diego, one of whom was walking to Nachi tomorrow and wanted to suss the track. I walked a short way with her then headed back where Chris and her friend were on the roadside in animated conversation about work and business. Down the winding road was the Onsen actually listed on the World Heritage Listing: the Tsuboyu Onsen
Finally back in our room came the knock for dinner. And what a dinner it was. A tray of tastes each with a small ceramic cooker on one side alight and filled with stock, thinly sliced meat, a range of mushrooms and vegies. The other side of the tray a small selection of sashimi, a mandarin (seen growing throughout our train trip yesterday) and a pot of tea.
The tray itself filled with beautiful tiny pottery and china dishes that included a whole small salted fish, a pumpkin and cream cheese taster, an array of pickled vegies, a small dish of fish with pickles, and a small delicate egg custard. All this with a beer to accompany it. Heaven.
Onsens – public hot baths – are in each of the accommodations here. After dinner we headed off to our respective baths to find we were the only bathers. Following the bathing ritual I washed and lowered myself into the bath. Whoa – it was so hot we both came out looking like beets. Still it was lovely to run upstairs and crawl into our cosy futons for the night.
