The last Obon during my stay in Japan I wanted to use to explore the island Shikoku, which is located south of the area where I live. Obon is a religous festival, happening in the middle of August. Most companies use this opportunity to give their employees some days off, which is used by those to make journeys all over Japan or to foreign countries. Shikoku is the smallest of the four main islands. It is less industrialised than Honshu (the biggest island with Tokyo, Osaka, Hiroshima...), the inhabitants main work is fishing as well as whaling although the latter is recently not done with harpoons any more. Instead there are many possibilities for tourists to do whale watching, if the weather is nice. Shikoku which is organised in four prefectures is also famous for Ishizuchisan, the highest mountain if Westjapan, the only natural river Shimanto, and a plurality of delicous foods and dishes which are mostly prepared from raw fish.

My first target was Kochi, prefecture capital of the prefecture with the same name. It is located at the islands south side, famous as a Samurai town and for it's castle, which is actually pretty young in comparision with other Japanese castles. After passing the many bridges of Shimanami kaido (Seto Inlandsea Expressway) I went through Shikokus mountains in order to get to the south. After arriving near Kochi I organised some dinner from a convenient store and set up my tent near a small river.

Next morning I was awakened by some bird's songs and after cleaning my teeth I went to Kochi City to meet Akiko, who is a friend from Hiroshima university and one of her friends. Together we took a nice breakfast, then we took a look at Kochi castle. Since the castle was build in a quite late period it was never witness of fights, which is probably the reason for the good shape and constitution. After visiting the castle we went to take lunch.

We ate Katsuo (the name of the fish) no tataki, a meal Kochi is famour for. It was a meal which is made from Sashimi, together with a lot of vegetables, a festival for the eyes as well as for the mouth. After lunch we did a little shopping, maybe this is unavoidable together with women...

In the afternoon we went to south west along the pacific coast. Our target was cape Ashizuri, the most southern point of Shikou, where one has an impressive view of the sea. At the cape's entrance is a statue of Mr. John Manjiro. He was rescued by an american whaling ship when he was a castaway in the 19th century, and brought to the United states where he learned the English language. Later he became one of the most important giudes of the government during the area of Meiji restauration, since he was one of very few Japanese with foreign experiences. Since the two girls had to go back to Hiroshima early the next morning we went back on our route, until we arrived in a village with a railway conection.

Therefore I was going into direction of Cape Ashizuri again in the next morning, after I watched some pilgrims doing their prayers in the villages' temple. There is a pilgrim's route in Shikoku where people are supposed to walk from one temple to the other - all in all they do 88 temples. Nowadays of course many people do not walk anymore but they use the bus to do this voyage. Since Japanese are very orderly, in Japanese maps one usually can find the temples number next to the temples name. Since many people do the pilgrimage in legs during their holidays, there was a lot of people in the white pilgrim's dresses in these days.

I learned the reason why people do this pilgrimage from a Japanese friend. Here are Miwo's own words: In Japan, Shikoku is one of the famous Buddhist sacred sites. Pilgrims visit 88 temples and cover 1200 kilometers. The way involves joys and orrows. The way involves meeting and parting. That is like a life. So when pigrims cover 1200 kilometers, they can think deeply about their lives and purify their spirits. Thank you Miwo!

On my way I stopped in a small fishing village, since I wanted to do whale watching. Unfortunately the former whale hunters, who now make their living from showing whales to tourists, explained me that it is not possible, because the sea is to wild. So I continued by car. While I took some pictures of the wild sea a wave hit me and I lost my camera and also my mobile phone, since not even Japanese electronic articles are salt water resistant. Nevertheless I had to buy a new camera in order to take more photographs of the nice landscape. As you can see from the pictures I got a camera and I hope you enjoy looking at them. Again I went to Cape Ashizuri where I again watched the wild sea together with a crowd of Japanese people, I also visited the temple there and continued my way on very narrow district roads where I could see Japanese people, who are living in the countryside. Their behaviour seems to be very different from the imagination one usually has from the Japanese. They were sitting in the sun and having a good chat, there was no sign of hurry due to any dutys or other liabilities.

Since also this beautiful day approached his end I finally chose a campsite, after I bought some dinner in a local super market. Please note that there was no sign of any convinient store in the whole area, so it was actually a little troublesome for me, to find some already prepared food. While I was enjoying my dinner, my tent neighbours invited me to join them. Of course I joined them at their camp fire, which was a very wise decision, since they had a lot more of beer than I brought myself. The later the evening the better got the communication, and finally I was convinced about my perfect Japanese skills I also think and the other two people were convinced about their English skills. These two were medical Doctors from Sendai and did a motorcycle tour during the Obon holidays. Nevertheless it was a nice evening which led to another nice day with the only pitty that I already had to drive back to Hiroshima.

Also I experienced that my Japanese is not that good as I thought it was the evening before, at least I realized that I have still to improve my reading skills when I got lost somewhere in the middle of the mountains, although there were lots of indicators there. Finally a friendly pilgrim helped me to get back on the right way, which lead me back to Shimanto River. I enjoyed marvellous views on the only still natural river in Japan and also I took a very nice and refreshing swim.

©gp