Category: Uncategorized

Here’s an update that has mostly nothing to do with hiking!

We’re at 4 known cases in Miyagi as of today, and I’m adjusting to staying at home whenever possible. I’m fortunate to be living somewhere less densely populated, so have been going out and run-walking once a day and crossing the street to get away from the very occasional other pedestrian.

The Japanese MCT thru-hiker/section hiker group has started to have the “you’re staying home, right?” conversation and most of us seem to be on the same page, which is “yes.” The English group hasn’t had that conversation, but I don’t think we need to. Anyone within Japan is probably following overseas media, has friends and loved ones in other countries and knows how serious this is already, and anyone outside the country is increasingly either not considering travel or not able to even consider travel because various borders are closing. It looks like Japan plans not to allow entry to non-citizens coming from countries including the US and Great Britain in the coming couple of weeks, which I’m honestly glad to hear. I’d hate to have someone stuck 0verseas in Japan during all this.

Anyway, enough of that. The real reason I’m updating this blog is because it is a place online where I can share my favorite recipes with whoever is interested while we’re trying to figure out what’s for apocalypse dinner. May update at some point.

Some of my favorite recipes in random order

****Nikujaga Stew****

Ingredients: 150 grams (5.3 ounces) beef, one onion, three potatoes, 1 carrot, 15 green beans, 1 pack of shimeji mushrooms

Half a teaspoon salt

A (broth): 1 cup water, 3 T soy sauce, 3 T mirin

Substitutes and notes: sub whatever handful of mushrooms you have available. Green beans can also be subbed with whatever green things you’ve got lying around that sound like they’d go well with ingredients.
If you don’t have mirin you can sub with sugar and water as explained here https://www.eatthis.com/mirin-substitution/
Japanese cups are actually a little smaller than US cups? Japanese cup is 200 ml and US cup is 240 I guess.

Cut everything up into bite-sized pieces/smaller slices (whatever you want) and get rid of the base part of the mushroom you’re not supposed to eat. Get a pot and put half the salt (so 1/4 t) in the bottom, then layer the solid ingredients thus starting at the bottom: mushrooms, green beans, then carrot, then potatoes, then onion, then beef on top. Then dump rest of salt (1/4 t) on top of beef. Add the mixture A broth above to the pot and put a lid on it. Heat on high heat until it starts boiling, then low heat and simmer for 15 mins. Food!

****How do You Spell Rattatooie?****

Ingredients: 1/2 a carrot, 2 welsh onions??, 3-4 bell peppers, 1 zucchini, two little Japanese eggplants, 2 tomatoes, 1 pack of eringi mushrooms

3/4 cups water, 3/4 t salt, a lil pepper

Substitutes and notes: Maybe this is too summery a recipe? It’ll be summer eventually. Welsh onions is what I guess you call naganegi, which are the long onions that I always thought were called leeks?? You can sub leeks or scallions I guess. https://www.justonecookbook.com/negi/
Little Japanese eggplants are smaller than US eggplants. I think you could sub with one eggplant, if you have it.

Cut everything into half-inch ish slices and get rid of the inedible bits. Chuck 1/4 of the t salt in a pot and layer ingredients thus: mushrooms, then tomatoes, then eggplant, then zucchini, then bell pepper, then welsh onions, then carrot. Sprinkle the rest of the salt on top of that. Add 3/4 cup water too (a scant US 3/4 cup) Heat on high until it starts boiling, simmer on low for 10 minutes, food!

****Lots of pork veggie stir fry****

Ingredients: 200 g pork (almost half a pound? a small pack), 1 bag of sprouts, 1/3 of a carrot, 10 green beans, 2 eringi mushrooms, 1 T of ground sesame seeds
Sauce: 1 T soy sauce, 1 T oyster sauce, 1 T mirin, 1 clove’s worth of garlic paste or finely chopped garlic, one chunk of finely chopped ginger or ginger paste (like 1 t)

Substitutes and notes: This is from our favorite cookbook and as long as the sauce is mostly there, it’s open season on what ingredients you decide to chuck in. Sub pork with tofu, green beans with anything green, etc. You can omit ground sesame seeds or sub with whole sesame. Mirin sub is in recipe above. Ginger: eh, toss in something ginger-y if it’s around, like powdered ginger, but otherwise you can omit. Still tasty.

Slice mushroom into fatter slices, boil the green beans if you’re using those (or if you’ve subbing with something else that can be pre-boiled, like broccoli), slice carrot into long thin strips. Add a little oil to a frying pan and start cooking the meat. When its color starts to change, add sprouts, carrot, green beans, mushroom. When the oil distributes to everything, add the sauce ingredients and cook until the veg are at the texture you like. Put the 1 T of sesame seeds on top and you’re done. Food!

****Pork miso veggie stir fry****

Ingredients: 250 g pork, 1/4 cabbage, 1/3 carrot, 1/2 onion, 6 snap peas, veggie oil
Sauce: 2 T miso, 2 T mirin, 1 T cooking sake, 2 cloves of garlic, a little ground sesame seeds

Substitutes and notes: As above, our favorite cookbook and you can sub out a lot of the veg, the protein. The miso is pretty important.

Chop up the cabbage into larger bits, cut the carrot into half-moons, onion into slices, leave the snap peas whole and remove the inedible stemmy bits. Heat up a frying pan, put a bit of oil in there, start stir frying the pork. When the pork starts to change color, add the veg, mix around a bit. When the veg starts to get cooked (gets softer) add the sauce and stir fry some more. When the sauce gets thicker and the veg is totally cooked, it’s done. Food!

****Easy Dry Curry****

Ingredients: 300 g ground meat (I dunno, 2 cups?), 1 onion, 1 clove garlic, 1 nub ginger, 5 T ketchup, 3 T curry powder, 1 T flour, 1 t sugar, 1 t salt, 2 T oil

Substitutes and notes: You can sub ground meat with TVP, worked great. Also I think I might have just not put in the flour and sugar and that was fine too? But I’m not 100% sure about this.

Dice the onion, mince the garlic and ginger. Add 2 T oil to a frying pan, heat it up, add the garlic and ginger and the onion too. When the onion gets softer, add the ground meat. When the ground meat’s color changes, add all that ketchup (5 T) and mix it up. Then add 1 T of flour to the mix and also the 3 T curry power. Mix. Next, add 1/2 cup of water, 1 t salt and 1 t sugar. Let it boil for 5-8 minutes while mixing. Food! Put it on rice of pasta, plonk a boiled egg on top if you life.

***Various Recipe Links***

Pumpkin soup from “The Vegan Stoner” You don’t have to be vegan or a stoner to use these recipes, and the illustrations are cute! With this, you can use up the can of pumpkin puree hanging out in the back of the cupboard. OR you can sub some fresh squash or pumpkin by pre-boiling and maybe pureeing if you like. I’ve subbed with kabocha pumpkin before.

Crispy Potato, Onion and Mushroom Rosti Got some potatoes, got some onion? Use with your favorite non-stick pan. That’s a lot of oil, but it’s olive oil so it’s healthy something something, and it’s a non-stick pan so maybe you could reduce the # of T if needed, and also thyme is delicious.

Shakshuka (North African–Style Poached Eggs in Spicy Tomato Sauce) This is super tasty, use non-stick pan. If you’ve got eggs, canned tomatoes, and something pepper-y or onion-y hanging out, this is your recipe. If you don’t have those spices, sub spices from the other 15 bazillion shakshuka recipes that vegetarians of the world have concocted. I love with parsley especially.

Play This Game, Plan Your Dinner Figure out what’s for dinner, Mad Libs style! Some of the recipes call for far more cheese than exists in all of Japan, and a little more detail on what spices are suitable for each recipe would have been welcome, but great otherwise! I think tomorrow’s dinner is probably going to be the lentil soup or the chili.

Day 4 ended up being my last day, unfortunately! The weather forecast for day 5 was dangerous levels of wind. My plan for days 5 and 6 had been to walk partway into Mt. Ishinage, camp for the night, and then come down to Onagawa Station the next morning. That way I could split the 28 kilometer distance into two days, since I know from experience Mt. Ishinage is pretty steep (at least steep for me) and I didn’t feel confident about covering all that in a day.

On day 4, I woke up relatively well-refreshed at my makeshift campsite overlooking Nagatsuura Lagoon and had a leisurely breakfast of dried soup reconstituted in water and cold coffee sitting on the concrete lining the dock. I started trekking up the trail at 9 or so and didn’t emerge on the other side of the woods until around 11. It doesn’t look too far on the map, but it turns out there are some ups and downs involved and that takes time! There was a gentleman right at the trail marker showing the entrance on that side, getting ready to hike the opposite direction. We had a brief discussion about how long it took, how many toilets he could expect on the other side (zero) and how many sources of water (zero) and how many vending machines (I think I saw one somewhere way deep in a construction area?) I’m not sure how far he was planning to hike and maybe should have given him a few more details, but his bag looked like it had almost nothing in it so I don’t think he must have been planning to go that far.

Almost all of the rest of my hike to my minshuku just down the way from Moriumius Lusail (closed for winter) was paved, but that didn’t exempt me from more ups and downs. There were quite a lot of them. The course basically dips down to each little fishing port so you can see the ocean, only to climb back up, and then maybe up further so you can get over some ridge that’s in the way. It’s really a beautiful course, though. The map warns of narrow roads in many places, but there really weren’t that many large trucks going through (at least when I was walking).

I was hoping that the Arahama Swimming Beach restroom was open, but like the other swimming beaches I’d passed through, it was locked: still too close to winter. Finally the gods of public restrooms had mercy on me at Osu, down at the fishing dock. The sentry building had my first real unlocked restroom, with a real toilet, since the day before. Plus I could fill up my water bottles from the tap. Also in Osu, I saw two little shops selling food and alcohol, for the first time since way back up in Cape Kamiwarizaki. At no point did I ever see a cafe or a restaurant, by the way. Food: you need to bring it.

I was getting tired and it was sorely tempting to skip the short trips to Osuzaki Lighthouse and Shirogane-jinja Shrine. I knew that was defeating the point of the course but my legs were getting pretty persuasive. Both times I managed to talk myself out of it. It was easier when I remembered that the pack wasn’t actually attached to me and I could just plonk it somewhere before trekking up to see the sights. Both were very pretty, and in fact you shouldn’t skip them.

I made it to my minshuku at around 5:40 and proceeded to have the most wonderful hot bath, followed by the biggest, most gorgeous dinner I’ve seen in quite a while. I was hungry: I’d been eating reconstituted stews and chilis soaked in water for the past 5 meals, which tasted good but didn’t have a lot of carbs. I almost managed to eat it all, with the exception of the rice which came last. Mr. and Mrs. Konno were very kind: Mrs. Konno did my laundry for me, chatted with me during dinner, and even made me two delicious miso onigiri to take home after delicious breakfast! She was the one who told me the weather forecast the next day was projecting 30 meters/second wind and warned me the buses wouldn’t be running the next day because of the national holiday, so I wouldn’t be able to try to get back home that that way.

My husband, an angel among men, agreed to use a good part of his day off to come pick me up at Ogatsu Takonoya Mall. Mr. Konno was kind enough to drive me over in his little white truck. He took me down to see Namiita Community Center (Namiita Lab) and the little house displaying a fishing boat that had washed up in Hawaii and been returned to the community. Mt. Ito, who was heavily involved both efforts, was around and kind enough to tell me about the boat (and how many piles of paperwork it took to get the boat back) and the community center. Every time the road dipped down close to the shoreline, he pointed out where the community had been, and where the houses were now. They too used to live right in front of the ocean, but their home was carried away. I remembered my walk the previous day: no homes near the ocean, but that didn’t mean there never had been.

This section of Ishinomaki has been one of the most challenging hikes to plan, but I can say without a doubt it’s worth it. It’s a waste this area isn’t more accessible by train and bus lines that connect to the main city. It’s a shame that there aren’t more places to stay and places to eat. I’m so glad this area is on the course and hope it’ll get more well-deserved attention from hikers.

I still haven’t walked the last 28 or so kilometers of the last day I’d planned. When is that going to happen? I’m not sure. I wanted to squeeze this trip in while it seemed safe, but now I think the best thing I can do is wait to see if another shoe isn’t going to drop in Japan, Covid-19 wise. Then I can go on another couple trips to finish the whole thing.

Hey! I’ve made it to my minshuku with wifi and electricity, so here’s a tour of day 3 before I pass out in this bed. I think day 4 is going to have to wait until tomorrow.

On the night before day 3, I camped at Kamiwarizaki Campground. It was cold but I managed to keep warm by wearing lots of layers, including my winter coat. For some reason I had trouble sleeping that night, dozing off only to wake up again. It didn’t help that, at one point I felt something touching my back through the tent!!? Of course I went “aaaaahhhh!” and flipped over to see what it was, and I’m reasonably sure it was a cat. A resident cat had come in the middle of the night to sniff me over. I tried to get cat to maybe come into the sleeping bag, but cat was all business and uninterested in cosleeping and wandered off.

I started my hike from Kamiwarizaki at about 9 am. There was one small store on the course south of Kamiwarizaki selling some food—I saw crackers—and that was it for stores. I saw no other places to buy food the entire day. The course eventually reached where Kitakami River meets the ocean. Kitakami River is huge here, broad and powerful. It had started to rain and the wind was strong. I spent the long trek inland toward the bridge I was to cross looking out at the river and thinking about how much of this area had flooded from the tsunami. Many students at Okawa Elementary School, on the other side of the bridge, had died because their school had failed to evacuate them to higher ground. In fact, the school had failed to even have an evacuation plan specific to the school in place.

Okawa Elementary is now being preserved as a disaster monument. I looked down on it from the make-shift path I’d taken on the embankment along a smaller river next to the road: there are too many construction vehicles on the official route for now. It looks like there’ll be a resource center or museum to show what happened here. For now it’s a small temporary building across the way from the school.

After going north a bit I made it back to the official route from the embankment, and was glad to see that there was a sidewalk! Don’t know when the sidewalk begins, but it didn’t begin soon enough for me.

So, lots of walking along sidewalk with construction vehicles. Then I got closer to Nagatsuura Lagoon, which I’d envisioned as a quiet place, but actually the entire approach to the lagoon and a good deal of the course around the lagoon is a mass of construction, with the lagoon hidden behind a low wall. I didn’t feel unsafe and in many cases the large vehicles were on other roads, but I felt uneasy. I’d planned on camping here based on some info I’d heard, but this didn’t look ideal at all.

Finally, probably where the map is marked “Nagatsuura,” I turned a corner and there was no more construction and no more wall. There was one small excavator puttering around, but it started heading back as I was walking. The fellow using the excavator stopped and got down to talk to me. I explained truthfully: that I planned to camp there and hike over the pass the next morning. He was impressed. The path was apparently once used in everyday life—mothers hauling things to and from the next village over—but locals nowadays like himself have never walked it. He said he works along the shoreline most days and has a greenhouse up the way, but he doesn’t live there anymore because of the tsunami. It sounds like the whole area has been declared unsafe to live.

I found the “campsite” as soon as I found the entrance for the next day’s hike. It was a lovely flat grassy area with some shorter trees and a great view of the lagoon. I had a gourmet meal of reconstituted curry rice and some leftover sweet wine I’d snagged in Minamisanriku before it got too cold to stay outside the tent. From inside tent, I got to enjoy the area’s nightlife. First was the Eurasian Wigeons, which were for some reason excited by the dark. They were peeping and flapping at each other for quite a while. Then the peeping stopped, and it was time for a heron to have an extended crabfest about something. Finally, after the heron had said its piece, it was time for the deer to start shrieking in their weird little child voices. Eventually it was quiet, and eventually I went to sleep.

In my tent at Kamiwarisaki Campground now, not yet wearing all of my clothing but wearing more than half, including my coat. I hope the coat will fit in the sleeping bag, but we’ll see! I’ve got a hot pad for tonight as well as another for tomorrow night, and for now I’m pretty warm. It is still only 6 pm though…

I left Manabi no Sato at maybe 8 and made it to the campground a little past 4 pm, even though I’d spent time in Shizugawa eating an octopus cheese tart thing at San San shopping area and looking for the Brant Geese that are supposed to be somewhere around here. Didn’t see them, but saw a bunch of other ducks floating around. I also got to see a what a Little Grebe looks like swimming underwater for the first time, since one of the streams I saw today was really clear. They are surprisingly fast! The little guy was making a very enthusiastic beeline to the space under the bridge, so something very tasty looking must have been hanging out in there.

Today had a lot more natural paths and forest than I’d expected (need to look at the map more carefully). Yesterday’s walk plus today’s walk to the campground would make another really good model course for hikers. Those who didn’t want to camp could stay in the cute little cabins onsite, next to where I’ve set up my tent.

My only regret is this was another day of convenience store food besides breakfast. I might have been able to swing lunch somewhere on the way if I’d altered the course a bit to get on the main road, but I mostly just wanted to hike the course as-is and have food on me as a sure thing. Kamiwarizaki Campground‘s restaurant is also closed on Tuesdays, so dinner was out too.

The most dramatic point of the day was when I managed to trip over myself and fall over on flat, paved sidewalk. Most of the weight fell on my right knee followed by my right palm. It wasn’t fun and I expect an impressive number of bruise colors, but I could walk just fine after that with minimal pain. Of course will see how everything is doing tomorrow before I venture out into camping at not a campground in the great outdoors.

I’d written more here but the blogging app ate my text, so instead I’ll briefly say that the fishing coop on the course past Minamisanriku Marine Visitor Center (closed for Covid-19 precautions) was really friendly, kindly let me use their restroom, and even offered to let me rest there awhile. I didn’t stay longer, but I was really grateful for the thought.

Also, I love this campground because it’s got a gorgeous view of the ocean and hot (coin) showers.

Saw three pheasants today, and they weren’t happy to see me.

I worried a lot about whether I should take this trip. The situation in Tohoku with Covid-19 appears to be nowhere near as bad as what’s happening in other areas in Japan and in other countries. As in, Miyagi still has only one case: a passenger on the cruise who returned to Sendai and has since recovered. (I’ve been monitoring this number daily before trip.) Do I think this means it’s never coming/hasn’t come to Tohoku? No. Do I wonder about the number of tests actually being conducted and whether there shouldn’t be more? Yes. But when I was living in Iwate after 3.11 and the nuclear plant disaster happened, I decided that I was going to believe the Japanese government, the US government, and organizations like WHO, because the alternative was trying to become an overnight expert in nuclear power and radiation. This time it’s infectious diseases, but my position on that sort of thing hasn’t changed. I’m going to just try to believe and follow official information.

I went on this trip because I know the Michinoku Coastal Trail. You can go hours or days without seeing another human being. I wasn’t anywhere near another person from when I started my hike at about 10:40 this morning to when I checked into Manabi no Sato (almost empty of guests) at 5:30 pm. It did take a train ride to Sendai and a bus ride to Minamisanriku, but I wore a mask and kept my hands to myself. I hope this wasn’t a bad decision; I did the best I could in making it.

So the hike! I was hoping the bus would have some minor sub-stops not listed on the schedule, because I was hoping to pick up right where I’d left off in the southernmost part of Kesennuma, but no such luck. The bus stop was closer to one BRT station north (Motoyoshi), adding a couple more kilometers to the beginning of my hike.

Before I got into the natural trail up towards Mt. Tatsugane, the weather started to hail mixed with rain. In good times it was just a sprinkle, but a few times it cranked up a lot of notches and got really vigorous and unpleasant. I’d been expecting something, though. The rest of this week is supposed to be sunny and just barely not cold enough for camping, in theory, but today was supposed to be colder and either rainy or snowy.

The highlight of the whole hike was the Gyoja no Michi religious path, which sounded ominous to me. I couldn’t remember the details but knew this isn’t “we’re religious so we’re going to take a pleasant stroll” kind of stuff, I had a feeling this was more like “we’re going to slog vertically up this mountain and suffer for religion” territory. And the vertical part is correct, and they weren’t having a happy easygoing vacation time. The map says that once “monks in training performed cold water ablutions” here in the several waterfalls along the way. Fortunately I didn’t have to do any of that, and the course was really beautiful. Mossy, lovely wooden stairs (with steel beams under them, fortunately), waterfalls, lots of places to hop over the stream and back again on the rocks. There were even wooden Moai statues pointing the way and—my favorite—a log in the middle of the stream with TRAIL carved out in a katakana scrawl and an arrow.

I saw more animals (4) than people. One raccoon dog, which had craned half of its body onto the path to look at something to its left, and completely failing to notice that I was approaching from the right (even though I was trying to sing at least semi-loudly to repel early rising bears) until I said “hey you” at it a couple of times. One Japanese serow, which stared at me for a second as I came up over a hill before it barreled off. Two kitties, neither of which wanted to be my friend.

Minamisanriku is charming as ever, with moai statues from its friendship with Easter Island and the red octopus mascot “Octopus-kun” who’s supposed to help people octo-pass their exams. (In Japan, hurl a rock in any direction and you will hit like five weird puns)

I’m staying at Manabi no Sato Iriya, which is perfect for hikers: hot bath, great service, delicious food, and free (!) laundry machines with free (!) detergent. They even have English info in their room booklet. I could have opted for a cheaper stay under 4000 yen with no meals, but I decided on the meal option and am very happy to have done so. Really good food, and free refills for rice and soup. Now lounging in warm room.

Tomorrow I go south through Shizugawa, Minamisanriku, stock up on food for the last time in several days, and walk to my campsite, Kamiwarisaki Campground. There, I will try to see how many pieces of clothing I can wear simultaneously for winter (early spring?) camping.

I am writing this blog entry while inside a very comfortable, very warm Sanriku Railways train to Sakari. I’ve got a cold beer open even though it’s mid-afternoon because listen: I did it. I walked the 10 ish kilometers south between Ryoishi and Kamaishi Station after walking 28 kilometers yesterday. I was really tempted to just hang out, but recently I’ve been thinking that I should take advantage of every day I have to walk a little more. Usually I can hike whatever it is, within a soundly researched time estimate.

This doesn’t mean I felt super good about the hike the entire way through. Going up a bunch of steep switchbacks connecting the logging road with the hiking course, I briefly considered trying to turn around. I was very sure I wasn’t going to make it in time and had started the hike too late.

Today’s hike was the section south of the peninsula I hiked yesterday. It goes from Ryoishi briefly south on a sidewalkless road with heavy traffic, heads east to a quiet seaside park, meanders around part of the peninsula on a logging road and then cuts across the low mountains and ridge of the peninsula on a hiking course. This bit is annoyingly not on the map title page, but I did find a hiking report about it and estimated the whole hike might take about three hours. It actually took about closer to four hours total, but I always try to leave cushion time, so it was fine. Since I should have enough time, I opted to use a slightly later Iwate Kotsu bus getting off at Mizuumi Kaigan instead of the train (bus) at Ryoishi. This enabled me to skip most of the scary sidewalk-less road walk from Ryoishi.

The mother at Sato Inn was convinced she’d used the road I took today as a child to get to Kamaishi. At least part of that was by car so I’m not sure she meant the hiking course, but the logging road I was on continues on past the hiking course and appears to connect to Kamaishi as well. She mentioned a hotel, and sure enough there was a small hotel on the way. The old gentleman who emerged from the hotel entrance while being pulled along by his young dachshund for their morning walk said that they had closed the hotel over 10 years ago because not enough people came to stay anymore.

Speaking of Sato Inn, I was saved today by their generosity: the mother gave me two rice balls and a boiled egg for lunch. I foolishly thought I wouldn’t need it and could wait to eat lunch when I arrived in Kamaishi, but I was ravenous by 12.

It’s been an amazing trip, I’ve pushed myself and hiked a lot, and I’ve reaffirmed how much I love this area and this part of the trail. It’s time to go back, regroup, and plan the next trip.

Well, I did it! I walked from Ryoishi to Unosumai Station for a total of about 28 kilometers. I started my hike at about 8:30 and got to Unosumai at 5:00 pm. There was a 30 minute break in there and the rest was just walking for 8 or so hours. I was so concerned about time I was consciously picking up the pace on flat and downhill parts.

I’m exhausted, but I loved this course. I love that it’s mostly unpaved, albeit gravel, and that it’s basically not possible to get lost once you find the entrance. For those who have more time, there are so many pretty extra spots to explore: Sankanjima Shrine and the path down to the spot marked on the map as having a great view on Sankanjima Island. The extra adventure that was the most impossible time-wise, as well as the thing I miss doing the most, was the extra 8 kilometers round trip to the very tip of the peninsula, to Ohakozaki. I’d walked out there once with my husband the last time I hiked part of this peninsula, and after the distance we’d hiked to get there it was brutal, but so so pretty. There’s no way I could have taken at least two extra hours walking out there this time around, but I wanted to. Maybe sometime when I bring a tent.

There are so many small villages in such remote areas. While these are connected with a minimal network of roads, most of which I didn’t use during my hike, I wondered how many villages had been cut off from damaged roads after the typhoon. There were lots of newly repaired gravel patches around. Everyone had put a lot of effort into making the trail course OK for hikers. There are still a handful of spots that are varying degrees of heavily damaged. Most were no issue whatsoever for hikers. The sketchiest was a fully washed out road, but even that was actually OK to hike since I could use the inner part of the collapse, which was relatively not sunken, then take a little ridge to the other side.

I didn’t meet any people during most of my hike, but a construction worker offered me a ride between Hakozaki Shirahama and Hakozaki and the gentleman at the register at one of the shops in Unosumai Station gave me two Kamome no Tamago sweets and two senbei crackers to go with my sake purchase. My hosts at Sato Inn were beaming to see me back at the time I’d promised. And I’d passed through Nebama Beach today, where my husband and I did the open water swim, the triathlon relay, the full triathlon. It was the starting point for our biking journey to Tono, and a place where I’d practiced swimming in the ocean for one of the first times. So many nice people and so many wonderful encounters.

I passed through Hakozaki Tunnel and thought, this is the tunnel where I always sneak in a walk break. Since I’m walking, should I sneak in a run break?….Reader, rest assured I did no such thing, because I was exhausted. And now, on that note, I’m going to now melt further into this futon and make eventual feeble attempts at brushing my teeth and turning off the lights.

This inn is run by a husband wife and daughter in law team, and before departing this morning I got to chat with the wife during breakfast. We talked about how I’ve actually stayed there before, about 8 years ago now. I came with my research advisor, his students and my husband to help conduct interviews with people living in temporary housing. Here’s an account of what I learned from an old blog I was writing during my post-disaster volunteering years. (Ignore the dumb way I’m spelling “Otsuchi,” it took a little longer for me to learn how to spell words with long vowels in English) I think I went along for surveys in Otsuchi at least twice. The only thing I knew about Otsuchi at the time is it had burned. Large portions had caught fire after the tsunami. My second major piece about Otsuchi after that was Kirikiri Beach. When we went to the temporary housing area in Kirikiri, it was summer. There were so many apartments with open doors, but no one actually inside to answer our questions. As we headed for the parking lot, groups of wet-headed adults and children strolled past, and we realized: this was Kirikiri Beach. Everyone had been out swimming.

I had never known that both Namiita and Kirikiri had been basically right in front of their respective train stations. The Otsuchi I knew was remote and only reachable by car. Now there are stations again, but the line is down from the typhoon now for a little while longer. Everyone at Sato Inn is eager for the train to recover because the substitute bus service doesn’t run as much, and it hurts business.

I started my hike at 8 from Sato Inn. It was my first time hiking from Namiita into central Otsuchi so I missed the sudden turn off the road into a hiking course that was part of what appears to have once been a national park. I didn’t want to miss my little patch of natural hiking path so I turned back and walked back up when I found it.

According to my plan the 16 something kilometer first portion of today’s hike from Namiita to Shiroyama Park, was supposed to take, and I quote, “like four hours.” It did not take like four hours, it took like six hours. I’m not sure how I was that off. Maybe a combination of wishful thinking and abusing Google Maps time estimates? The good news is this section still has a lot of dining options now. Otsuchi Station’s cafe had finished its lunchtime hours at 2 pm, but there was a curry and pasta shop right in front of the station that was cheap, tasty, and served unlimited free coffee.

The unexpected extra two hours kind of spooked me so I pushed the pace for the rest of my walk, from Otsuchi Station to Unosumai Station. This walk was supposed to have taken around two hours and 20 minutes, but I made it in less than two and managed to hitch an earlier “train” (substitute bus) at 4:30. I’ve actually walked the course between Otsuchi Station and Unosumai Station twice already: once with my husband, and again with two very good friends. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to skip it. Why would I, when I’ve got an excuse to walk it again?

There’s a whole bunch of other things I should be saying. Horaijima Island was visible and lovely for a lot of today. The island was the model for the setting of an intriguing children’s show with puppets, and Otsuchi Station is still decorated with statues of those characters. Unosumai Station still has great stores and places to eat with a tsunami memorial museum right next door. I saw more Long-Tailed Rosyfinches, got a rare long look at a Copper Pheasant male and his harem before they all panicked and fled, saw a friendly neighborhood Daurian Redstart and lots of both Willow Tits and Coal Tits. It’s hard to believe I actually walked myself through as many locations as I did today. The scenery in the distance around me wasn’t just scenery: I had either just been there hours before, or I would be there within hours.

Tomorrow will be interesting. It’s the same distance as today but will very likely take longer. Time to sleep now.

As I mentioned a couple posts ago, I’d discovered that there are deep discounts to stay in many areas hit by last year’s typhoon, including Iwate’s coast, so that was enough to inspire me to hike more in Iwate now as opposed to a little later! Thus this trip. I stayed last night in Owatari Pension near Kamaishi Station after taking the bus up from Sendai. It was cheap at a little less than 5000 yen per night (without the fukko-wari discount, they weren’t on the list), the older fellow manning the front was friendly, and there was a washing machine and shower/bath for joint use between the two rooms on my wing (other room empty), so it looked like a good spot for hikers and long term stays.

For today’s hike, I took the train to Iwate Funakoshi station and walked south up Mt. Kujira and back down the other side to Namiita Beach to Sato Inn (Minshuku Sato), where I’m staying the next three nights. I say “the train,” but it was actually a bus. The railway was damaged by last year’s typhoon and while Fudai to Kuji is back to normal, the section between Kamaishi and Rikuchu-Yamada is running with buses instead until March 19. The buses don’t seem to have actual marked bus stops or an online guide, so you have to find out where they are by showing up early and hoping there’s a paper somewhere in the station showing where you’re actually supposed to go. Anyway, I think I saw all the stops I’ll use on the way north today, so that’s good!

Right after I started my hike at around 8:40, I was able to confirm two things: one, that my map was a little on the old side, and two, that I hadn’t checked the local detours as carefully as I thought. The unpaved road between my start point and Rikuchukaigan Seishonen no Ie, an outdoor education facility with the entry point to the trail up Mt. Kujira, is closed from typhoon damage and the “detour” is walking along aggressively sidewalk-less National Route 45. I’d walked for a grand total of 3 minutes before someone pulled over and offered to give me a ride, and I took it. The very nice woman had actually been driving in the other direction but had turned around when she saw me because it was such an unusual spot to be walking (no sidewalks, no bus stops). She was relieved to hear I spoke Japanese but had armed herself with some kind of translation app to figure out just what I was intending to do.

I’m sure this is the detour because there are no other candidates, but it’s not ideal and I was relieved not to walk it. If I’d realized I would have at least started at the bus stop a little closer to the youth facility, or maybe taken another stab at figuring out how to walk part of Yamada’s Funakoshi Peninsula instead.

The Mt. Kujira course was great, though! The last 20 minutes or so to the peak was a surprise: a steep climb up with lots of big boulders, aided by thick ropes to hang onto. Wonderful views of Funakoshi Peninsula on one side and Namiita/Kirikiri Beach plus the peninsula I’m hiking tomorrow on the other side.

It took about 4 hours, from 9 am to 1 pm, to get to Namiita from Seishonen no Ie. I’d planned on taking a hot bath at Sanriku Hamagiku Hotel while waiting to check in to my lodging at 4, but it turns out day use bathing starts at 4 pm, so that was out. Instead, I spent my time looking at the little shops in Namiita Village and walking along the shoreline staring in disbelief at the three surfers who, being I guess completely out of their gourds, were out there paddling around in the cold hoping to catch a big wave from today’s strong winds. I also established at 2:25 pm that all nearby establishments serving coffee were going to stop serving coffee in five minutes. I spent my last hour sitting in the little station to keep relatively warm, and now here I am being warmed to positively cozy levels by the heater in my room at Sato Inn.

I am super excited about staying at Sato Inn. The staff here is trying really hard to promote the inn by managing two Twitter accounts, one of them in English, and with some really lovely pictures of that day’s tasty meals and views of the ocean right in front of the inn. The staff member managing those accounts even left a message in English on my phone to ask when I wanted dinner today(!!!) and was like “I’ll call back”(!!!!!) That’s a first.

Looking very much forward to my meals. Usually a two meal plan is 6500 yen but with the discount it’s down to 3500 yen plus tax per night!!

I’ll need to eat well and go to sleep at a reasonable time tonight to keep my strength up! If everything goes to plan, I’ll be walking about 26-27 kilometers a day for the next two days.

It’s New Year’s Eve! and Futo is off for the holidays and clearly in need of adventure, so we went to walk the Oku-Matsushima Olle along with the tiny span of the Michinoku Coastal Trail that connects Oku-Matsushima to Nobiru station!

Those unfamiliar with the Miyagi Olle and what an Olle is can get caught up here. My impression from today is it resembles the MCT in a lot of ways, since it’s a combination of natural hikes and walking through villages. What was really nice, though, was the fact that the course is contained to 10 kilometers meant that there was signage everywhere, constant signage, so it was really easy to notice when we’d gone off-course. The estimated hiking time of 4 hours also only took us 3 hours, which means that Olle time is actually -1 hours, whereas Michinoku Coastal Trail time is maybe like +2 hours. Also, we got Olle buttons at the start/finish point for finishing the Olle, which was actually really nice (as was being able to just take extra maps as needed without any paperwork, though I understand there are reasons why the MCT needs to do that).

If you don’t have enough time to do the whole Olle, it’s still very much worth making the short trek up to Mt. Otakamori to see one of the “four panoramic views of Matsushima.” It’s about a 5.2 km, 1 hour walk (no sidewalk in spots, and careful of the construction) to the Olle start point “Aomina” and the entrance up to Mt. Otakamori is right near there. Aomina is a information center/tourism boat center which was even open today. Not a lot of options for hiking food: ice cream, some chips, various souvenirs. However, they did offer an all you can eat barbecue oyster meal (1 hour limit) and a foot bath!

Maybe this area has a little more options in summer, but you had definitely better assume that you’re only going to be able to eat what you brought in. We saw no convenience stores, no grocery stores, and no restaurants for the whole course, so stock up on rice balls and bentos.

It’s the last day of 2019. This year, I walked about 483 kilometers of the Michinoku Coastal Trail, which means that next year I’ve got a little more than half to go.