Hospitality and Public Transportation in Middle-of-Nowhere Iya Valley


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Asia » Japan » Ehime » Ochi » Kamijima
December 10th 2007
Published: December 21st 2007
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an open-air train at one of the stations in the mountains
Just before it started to get really cold her and winter came to stay, I took a three-day weekend trip to the Iya Valley region in Mideastern Shikoku. I had been there once before last summer when I went white water rafting in the beautiful Yoshino River. At the time I thought it looked like such a beautiful place for hiking, but I was with a group and we were on a time limit. So, I decided to return to this region by myself and hike around a bit.

Besides the surprisingly clear Yoshino River and the beautiful Iya Valley, there are a couple other interesting places to visit here. There is Mt. Tsurugi at 1,955 meters (maybe about 6,000 feet?), and three of the only remaining “kazurabashi,” or suspended vine bridges, in Japan. These vine bridges were made during a civil war in Japan long ago so that they could be crossed and easily cut down to keep the enemy away. Other than these attractions, there’s basically nothing here!

Of course since I don’t have a car, I rely on public transportation to get around, but this is quite easy considering that Japan has the best public transportation
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the biggest kazurabashi in Nishi-Iya
system in the world! Still, I was going to the middle of nowhere on this trip, so I was a little worried if public transport could take me all the way there. In total, I took one ferry, three trains and three buses taking six hours…but I got there! I have to take a one-hour ferry from my island just to get to the Shikoku mainland in the first place. After that I took two express trains across northern Shikoku, then one local train that goes south down the middle of Shikoku to a small town in the mountains called “Oboke.”

At the Oboke train station I learned that the buses that run all the way to my final destination at the base of Mt. Tsurugi had just stopped for the day. The farthest I could take a bus now would be to one of the kazurabashi, which turned out to be perfect since I wanted to see it anyway. So, I rode on the local bus for about an hour, and by the time I reached the kazurabashi area it was dark, and I wasn’t about to walk across a suspended bridge made out of vines in the
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people inching their way across the kazurabashi
dark! Luckily, there was a cheap guesthouse nearby. It seemed that the guests were only me and another couple. The owners were a woman and her mother who made me a delicious vegetarian dinner and breakfast. The best thing about staying at guesthouses is that it’s usually not a problem to ask for vegetarian food, as opposed to eating out at restaurants.

I was planning on taking the first bus the next morning at nine o’clock, so I got up early enough to walk down to the kazurabashi before I left. It was beautiful to look at from a distance and didn’t seem like it would be too scary to cross, although it was extremely high up in a gorge with a cold rushing creek below. I had to pay about five dollars to cross, so I thought I better get my money’s worth and not chicken out half way through. Before I started out across the bridge, I noticed that there was almost a foot of space between each board that you have to carefully walk on. Then, once I started making my way across, the bridge started swaying from side to side. I tried to hold on
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me at the kazurabashi
to the vines suspending the bridge for support, but because they are made from vines, they didn’t support me at all. When I tried to lean against them, they would just lean out right with me making me feel like I would fall off the side of the bridge to my death in the creak below. In the end, it took me about twenty minutes to get across the whole bridge because I was inching along so slowly. I was so scared I wasn’t able to take any pictures on the bridge.

I caught my next bus which drove a long way up higher into the mountains winding around narrow roads on the edges of the gorge which dropped steeply to a beautifully clear creek below. The villages we passed by were all built on ledges cut out of the steep mountainsides since there was no flat land around. Back in the town of Oboke and at the first kazurabashi, the leaves on the trees were beautiful autumn colors, but now at a higher elevation, most of the leaves had already fallen. The bus let me and a couple other mountaineering-type travelers out at a garage in the middle
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half way up Mt. Tsurugi
of nowhere. We waited there for a while until, to our surprise, a school bus came to pick us up and drive us to the final stop in the tiny village of Minokoshi.

When I say “tiny village” I mean only one family lives there. They own the small Shinto shrine with a guest house attached to it. Of course I stayed there. I seemed to be the only guest which made me feel like I was just a part of the family. Minokoshi is right at the base of Mt. Tsurugi and there is a chair lift there that takes you part of the way up the mountain. I wanted to start climbing the mountain as soon as possible since this was my last day before I would have to spend all the next day traveling back to Yuge. But, I had also noticed that we had passed the other two, more remote kazurabashi a while back on the bus ride. I asked the mother of the family if it was possible to get back there, but she said there was no more transportation there and it would take a really long time to walk. But, she added
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There was even a bit of snow on the path towards the top of Mt. Tsurugi.
that she would ask her husband if he would take me there.

So, I headed out to the chair lift, and up I went. The chair lift was just a single open-air chair with no handles. Although it traveled close to the ground, it took me up some pretty steep slopes which was a little unsettling at times. There were already some great views at the top of the lift, but it was another couple-hours climb to the top. The trail, although steep, was relatively easy compared to Mt. Ishizuchi which I climbed at this time last year (If you didn’t read that blog, the mountain’s special feature was chains bolted to the side of the mountain on which you had to risk your life). There was, of course, a shrine at the top of the mountain like all of the major mountains in Japan. I ate a snack of mikan citrus brought from the orchards on Yuge and enjoyed the view for a while. It was really quiet and the sun was beaming through some clouds into the valley below. It was pretty cold though, so I took several pictures and headed back down after a while. The
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summit of Mt. Tsurugi. There are no trees, but the top is covered with sasa (bamboo weed).
chair lift going down the mountain was even more unsettling than going up.

When I got back to the guest house, the husband was waiting for me to take me to the two more remote kazurabashi. His name was Umaoka-san and he told me some interesting things about the area on the way to the bridges. When we arrived at the bridges I assumed he would just wait for me at the entrance since he has probably seen them a thousand times. But, he said he wanted to show them to me, so we went together. There was a five-dollar fee for these kazurabashi too, but lucky me, since I was with Umaoka-san, I got in for free! I guess it pays to know the only family that lives there. These bridges were much prettier and not so high or long. There are two close to each other, and for this reason, people call them the “husband and wife kazurabashi.” It didn’t take me nearly as long to cross these two bridges. The other interesting feature here was a little wooden cart that goes across next to the bridges by a pulley. Supposedly it was used for pulling belongings
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view from the summit of sunshine beaming down on the valley below
across instead of taking them on the kazurabashi, but people can ride in it too. So, Umaoka-san pulled us across in it. What a nice guy!

After we left the kazurabashi, I figured Umaoka-san had things to do and would want to get back home, but he said he also wanted to show me a lake where he used to go ice skating when he was a child. When we got there it had just begun freezing up, but definitely was not ready for ice skating. Finally, we went back home. The mother had fixed me a vegetarian feast and the children ran around making sure my teacup was full. I took a hot bath and read my book in my futon until I fell asleep. The next morning I ate another feast made by the mother before riding out of the mountains on the first (and only) bus.

One thing that really left an impression on me during this trip (as it usually does with every trip I take in Japan) was the hospitality of people. I was traveling all by myself, and it probably would have been impossible for me to get to my destination if
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entrance to the shrine at the summit
it wasn’t for all the people helping me along the way. Upon entering one of the express trains going across northern Shikoku, I asked a man if it was the train going to the place I was headed. He said yes, but about an hour later I saw him searching through the cars of the train looking for me to tell me that I actually had to make a transfer at the next stop. At the train station in Oboke, a taxi driver helped me figure out what to do when I found out that the buses had stopped running for the day even though he knew I wasn’t going to take a ride from him. He even called a couple of guesthouses for me. And I cannot begin to write about all the hospitality the Umaoka family showed me in Minokoshi. The father drove me all around giving me a private tour and the mother cooked two feasts for me, brought snacks to my room, and made a hot bath for me. They really brought me into their home and treated me like a member of the family!

So, now I have climbed three mountains in Japan: Mt.
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This is a statue of Odaishi-sama at the Umaoka family shrine at the base of Mt. Tsurugi. Odaishi-sama was the man who started the pilgrimage of the 88 Buddhist temples, and is now worshiped as a god.
Fuji (3,777 meters), Mt. Ishizuchi (1,982 meters), and Mt. Tsurugi (1,955 meters). Thankfully, Mt. Fuji was the only one on which I cried.



Additional photos below
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On the smaller kazurabashi I got up the courage to take a picture. This is Umaoka-san crossing.
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This picture is difficult to see, but Umaoka-san took it of me on the "wife" kazurabashi.
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Look at how much space is between each board! It's a lot scarier when you are looking down through them than up through them.
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Umaoka-san and me in the cart after he pulled me across the gorge
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golden leaves!


21st December 2007

I am amazed!
Was that open-air train cold? Those bridges look so scary! I am glad you met the family who took such good care of you. Miss you alot. Mama

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