Kumano day 1 : Takiji to Hisohara Oji

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9/29/24

It was not the greatest night before we started our first day of the pilgrimage. Apparentely our location was the site of a well known fishing competition to take place on the first day of our hike. Men and women arrived from far away the evening prior to be ready for the competition, and of course they drank and laughted well into the night. I slept about 3 hours and started to get a sore throat. But when breakfast finally arrived, the tide started to turn. We had a beautiful breakfast and enjoyed chatting with Mo-ee who apparently could take as much time chatting as desired and her boss did not care. We were impressed with her adventuresome nature, and that her parents let her take on these adventures.

We “chatted” if you can call it with entrants in the fishing competition.
Breakfast is served.

With everything packed, we stopped at the initial passport stamp station and shrine and started!

Alice takes the first steps on the Kumano Kodo, passing the shrine. She’s wearing a traditional Japanese bamboo hat typical for religious walkers of the Kumano.

The path turned treacherous immediately, very steep with jagged rocks requiring large steps upward. It was poorly marked and we took several false directions starting back down the mountain. Someone yelled to us, “the Kumano is this way!”. We were a little discouraged. We had only gone 1/2 km in the first 1/2 hour and the energy output seemed unsustainable. But soon we figured out the little blue and white markers pounded into the path and other subtle clues. The mountain continued up steeply but at least we were on the right path.

Alice tackles the roots the stabilize the mountain soil and form large steps.

We found our rhythm and started to settle into a pattern of stopping about every hour. I found that with very steep uphills I neede to change my trekking pole technique to place both poles on the next level up at the same time and form a stability tripod for taking large steps up.

Little shrines dotted the path, this one with a twin theme, but we did not get the full story.
We came to one of the only hamlets on our hike today, called Takehara, and enjoyed a beatiful view of the nearby mountains as well as iced coffee and snacks.
In Takehara, a beautiful coffee is made for us.

We continued on up the mountain with lots of steep ups and downs, and aimed to get to a nice place for lunch by noon. Our hostel had packed us a lunch since there are no towns or grocery stores

Heading up along a babbling stream out of Takehara.
Our packed Bento lunch is balanced on my knees. Yum!
As we climbed higher into the mountain the forest became an increasinglydense forest of cedar.
At least 6 and maybe 10 species of ferns were seen along the side of the path.

As we started to descend the mountain we started to parallel a babbling brook

Crossing the brook back and forth was delightful

After 18 tough km and 1000 + meters of vertical climb we arrived at our beautiful hostel where we were warmly welcomed by an older Japanese couple. We delighted in a warm shower and wait with anticipation for a traditional Japanese dinner, which we will share with two other hikers from Australia. By the way, most of the hikkers we meet are Chinese and speak good or perfect English. It seems that today is a part of Chinese national day, which gives workers 10 days of vacation. Almost all of the other hikers are Chinese!

8 thoughts on “Kumano day 1 : Takiji to Hisohara Oji”

  2. Hannah

    What a wonderful recap and photos that capture the beauty of the kumano! Great to meet you both and best wishes for the remainder of your journey.

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