Exploring the Kuniga Coast

The Kuniga Coast is one of the prime attractions of Nishinoshima Island in the Oki Islands in the Sea of Japan off the coast of Shimane.

The Oki Islands have been a part of the Daisen-Oki National Park since 1936, but their popularity as a tourist destination increased when they became a UNESCO Global Geopark.

This section of the coast has the nickname Tenjokai, the "heavenly world" and many of the rock formations have evocative names like Kannon Rock, Elephant Nose Rock, Frog Rock etc.

At the far end of the coast is a natural arch named Tsutenkyo, the "Bridge to Heaven".

Beyond Tsutenkyo Arch are the Matengai Cliffs, rising 257 meters out of the sea they are among the tallest cliffs in all of Japan.

It is possible to view the coastline from the sea aboard a tour boat.

Better though is on foot especially at low tide when you cannot wander over the rocks and among the tidepools.

A footpath runs 2.3 kilometers along the coast and all the way up to the high point on top of the cliffs.

The schedule for boats trips...  available from April through to October.

Another unique sight on Nishinoshima is a "squid" shrine. An unusual sight on many of the Oki Islands are free-grazing horses and cattle. The previous post looked at the Kuniga Coast from a distance.

The other islands that make up the Oki Islands also have some impressive coastlines and perhaps the most famous is what is known as Candle Rock off the coast of Dogo.

I am putting up new posts covering all parts of Western Japan on an almost daily basis so if you would like to be sure of not missing anything please subscribe by leaving your email address in the comments below. It will not be made public.

I will be posting much more from the Oki Islands in the future...

Kyushu Pilgrimage Day 63 Obama to Nagasaki

Friday February 21st 2014

The sun may or may not be up as I head out of Obama and take the road north along the coast of Tachibana Bay. Looming over the town the massive Mount Unzen blocks any view of the sun until later in the morning. Looking back, plumes of steam rise from among the buildings, a signature of an onsen town. Tachibana Bay is calm and a little darker shade of blue than the sky. A thin line of even darker blue shows the far shore dividing the two expanses of blue.

After half an hour I am able to veer off the main road and take route 201 which was once a railway line. I come to a fork just outside the first fishing village. My map says to take the right fork which starts to rise. My natural inclination is to take the lower road that will hug the coast, but I defer to my map. The road climbs gently and gives a nice overview over the village below and then passes through a narrow tunnel with the distinctive horseshoe shape of a railway tunnel

Coming out of the tunnel I come upon what I presume to be a local TV station making a travel program. An older man and a younger woman are both dressed in khaki shorts and wearing pith helmets. I resist the urge to shout out “Doctor Livingstone I presume!”. With only a cameraman and a sound man as crew, I am presuming they are a low budget local TV show something along the lines of “Lets Explore Locally”, because the next section of the road is a minor tourist attraction known as the Green Tunnel. The road, formerly the railway track, passes through a narrow cutting and the trees growing above have spread their canopy over the narrow cutting thereby creating a “green tunnel”. The road curves around the mountainside passing through several more tunnels.

At several points, there are great views down onto fishing villages below and along the approaching north shore of the bay. The road starts to descend as slowly as it ascended and I end up in Chijiwa where the main road now heads west towards Nagasaki. I find a convenience store to stock up at and sit with a coffee and check my maps. I want to avoid the main road if I can. I find a coast road that literally runs between the cliffs and the sea. Perfect. There is no traffic save for the occasional k-truck. The road comes to an end at a small onsen located right on the beach. From here there is no easy way along the coast so I head inland and join up with the main road heading to Nagasaki.

The road is fairly busy and at first there is a sidewalk, but as it leaves the village the sidewalk ends but starts again at the next village. The road is windy and goes up and down, though never steeply, and because of this the view changes often. I am surprised by the number of love hotels around. It is still about 30 kilometers to Nagasaki, but it is about halfway between Nagasaki and Isahaya, so maybe they serve both populations. Its a fairly uneventful afternoon with a couple of shrine visits, but as the traffic increases closer to Nagasaki it become less enjoyable.

 

By late afternoon I have covered 30 kilometers but there is still more than 10 to go and I think maybe 40k is too much. In the summer, with the longish days, 40k is doable, but at this time of the year it is just too much so I check the timetable at the next bus stop and finding a bus imminent I decide to take it. Tomorrow I head home. This leg has seen me cover 190 kilometers, making a total of 1,710 kilometers in total.

The previous diary entry was Day 62 Over the Shimabara Peninsula.

Wakaura Tenmangu Shrine

 

The steps up to Wakaura Tenmangu Shrine are steep and rough, but not as long as the stairs up to the neighboring Kishu Toshogu Shrine.

Wakaura Tenmangu is older than the Toshogu by about 7 centuries, although the Tenmangu was rebuilt about ten years before the Toshogu was built in the 17th century.

Enshrining Tenjin, the deified form of Sugawara Michizane, known as a god of poetry and scholarship, Tenmangu shrines are where students head to before taking exams.

It is said that Michizane himself was here in 901 when the ship taking hime to "exile" in Dazaifu dropped anchor here to await favorable winds. He is said to have composed two poems here.

Wakaura, or Wakanoura, literally means Bay of Poetry, and Michizane was adding to a long list of poems composed in the area since ancient times.

It is said that Naoki Tachibana stopped here on his return from Daizaifu, where Michizane's grave was, sometime between 964 and 968, and established the shrine.

The shrine was destroyed in 1585 during the invasion of the area by Hideyoshi. It was rebuilt in 1604 by Yukinaga Asano and employed the leading craftsmen of the day.

The painted carvings of animals around the eaves of the main building are particularly noteworthy. There are several sub-shrines within the grounds, and great views from the shrine over Waknoura.

The previous post in this series on attractions of Wakayama City was the neighbouring Kishu Toshogu Shrine.

Former Obama Railway

 

Heading north from the hot spring resort of Obama along the coast of Tachibana Bay I followed a coastal road, route 201.

It turns out it was formerly a railway line and passed through some very narrow cuttings and tunnels.

It must be somewhat of a tourist attraction as I passed by what I presumed to be a local tv station filming a segment.

The  Unzen Railway was formed by joining together 2 smaller lines, the Obama Railway and the Onsen Postal Railway, in 1930, and was closed down 2 years later and subsequently turned into a road.

The total length was 17 kilometers, with 9 stops.

The previous post in the series was Obama Snapshots

Along the River to Tazu

 

The couple of kilometers of road along the bank of the Gonokawa River from Kawado to Tazu has no settlements or houses.

On the opposite bank, there is a main road and plenty of settlements but on this side, the steep mountainside runs straight down to the river.

This bank is usually dark. Even in the summer the sun does not get above the mountain until late in the morning, and in winter the sun doesn't penetrate the tree cover at all. On the opposite bank, the sun continues to burn off the mist that fills the river valley at this time of the year (early October)

The narrow road and abandoned rail line run next to each other on a narrow shelf cut into the mountainside using very little machinery. At times the train line passes through short tunnels.

The Gonokawa is the longest river in the Chugoku region at 194 kilometers, but geologically speaking it is relatively new so the river valley is mostly narrow.

This used to be such a beautiful train ride, but is still a very pleasant walk as there are only 1 or 2 cars a day. Up ahead I catch a glimpse of the Tazu Bridge, a small affair unsuitable for anything bigger than small delivery vans.

The previous post was on the first part of this leg of my walk along the Gonokawa, around Kawado.

Across & Over Shimabara Peninsula Day 62 Kyushu Pilgrimage

 A Walk Around Kyushu 

Day 62 Shimabara to Obama

Thursday February 20th 2014

I'm up early to another fine day with clear blue skies, though the peak of Mount Unzen is draped with a cap of clouds clinging to the snow on the peak. I will be passing over that range today so I set off early. First I head a little south to the UnzenDisaster Memorial Museum that commemorates the most recent eruption of Unzen back in 1996. I had been here before, and it is way too early for it to be open, but near the museum proper is another site that I had missed before. Many of the houses that were buried underthe mudslide are on display, some outdoors, some in a covered building. They actually look very weird because they have no damage, they are just buried with roofs and telegraph poles sticking out. Apparently, the mudflow, formed out of a mixture of ash and the extra runoff from heavy rains falling on the fresh lava, was only moving at a slow rate by the time it got here to the coast so people were able to evacuate slowly and safely, and the force of the flow was not strong enough to demolish the houses, just engulf them. All a bit surreal.

I now turn inland and head towards the mountains. For the first few hours, it is a fairly gentle slope until I reach Ryusho-ji, the 64^th temple of the pilgrimage, and the reason for coming down onto the Shimabara Peninsula. Towering over the entrance to the temple is a huge statue, a brightly colored statue of Fudo Myo-O, and the main temple building is completely covered in blue tarps hiding the reconstruction. Piles of new roof tiles are stacked y the temple office. For a donation towards the rebuilding, you can have your name etched into a tile. From the temple, the road starts to become steep and then starts to wind itself into switchbacks. In the shadows piles of snow remain unmelted and the temperature drops. There is no sidewalk and a fair bit of traffic so that adds to the lack of fun in this part of the walk.

Eventually, I cross over the pass and start to drop into Unzen Hot Spring, a small resort little more than one street. Steam rises all around with the unmistakeable odor of rotten eggs. Even though it is out of season and most of the resort hotels seem closed up for the winter I find a bakery and settle in for a top up of caffeine and calories. Rejuvenated and rested I wander and find a boardwalk that meanders through the steaming andbubbling pools that have dozens of pipes snaking away from them to the hotels. The smell does not get any more pleasant. There may be more to see in the town but I need to get going as I am only a little over halfway to my destination, though it should be all downhill from now on to the shore of Tachibana Bay.

It turns out that the western slope of Unzen is much steeper than the eastern. There is no gentler slope as it gets further down, it is switchbacks all the way. I soon catch glimpses of Tachibana Bay through the trees, and there is less traffic on this side, so its a very pleasant walk. About three quarters of the way down I pass through a small settlement, the first since leaving the top. Some of the residents are out playing gateball, a Japanese variation on croquet and very popular with retirees.  

A little further and I come to something quite unexpected and not marked on my map, some sort of a miniature religious theme park with the name Inori no Sato. There are no religious buildings, just a small tea room, but scattered around the grounds is a veritable who's who of popular Japanese deities. There are large statues of the Seven Lucky Gods, an Amida Buddha, several Kannon, a dragon holding a giant golden sphere, a Fudo MyoO, a kappa, a giant red Tengu mask, a small Inari shrine, and several others.

20 minutes later I reach the coast and find my room for the night, a traditional onsen ryokan that has seen better days but is priced for my budget. I think I am the only guest as it is out of season. In the last rays of the setting sun I explore the onsen resort town of Obama.

The most notable feature is the longest foot bath in Japan. 105 meters long, one meter for each degree of water temperature. I soak my feet for a while before heading back to my room. The ryokan has recently refurbished the rotenburo, the outdoor bath, and I have the whole place to myself.

The diary from the previous day, day 61, is here.

Weeping Cherry of Senjuin Temple

 

Senjyuin Temple to the northeast of Matsue Castle is a hidden cherry blossom viewing spot.

The temple was moved here from Gassan Toda, the site of the original domain castle and rebuilt here when the new Matsue Castle was built. It occupies the strategic NE position to protect the castle from evil influences in much the same way that Enryakuji protects Kyoto.

It has some regular cheery trees but the pride of place is a shidare zakura, a weeping cherry, said to be at least 200 years old.

The venerable tree has its branches supported by a framework of bamboo and there were a couple of photographers there taking pics of the ephemeral blossoms. I did not know it was blooming before I visited.

I have visited Senjyuin Temple numerous times, and as a temple on the Izumo Kannon Pilgrimage I posted about it a long time ago.

The previous post in this series exploring Matsue was the nearby Togaku Zen Temple and its intriguing statues.