The ageless wisdom of Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke the Elder (suitably updated) applies with special force today. For, seconds after the efficient clerk issues me with the series of tickets that will take me over to Shikoku, it’s announced that the train to Kyoto will divert to avoid high winds.
Trying to make up the lost half hour, I abandon the Thunderbird at Maibara and hop onto a Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka. The next westbound connection happens to be a battered pink stopping train dedicated to Hello Kitty.
Yet, by the time we reach Okayama, we’ve somehow caught up with the efficient clerk’s original schedule, even though this had called for a ride on the high-speed Nozomi. How is that possible? Well, thank you anyway, Hello Kitty…
From Okayama, a diesel train runs over the world’s longest truss bridge to Japan’s fourth largest island. I watch the tiderace swirling and foaming scant metres below while sipping a coffee that promises to deliver a “full-bodied bitterness”. We’re welcomed to dry land by the sight of Mt Ino, the “Sanuki Fuji”. And by mid-afternoon, a local train drops me at Sadamitsu, the jumping-off point for Shikoku’s Tsurugi-san, one of the island’s two Hyakumeizan.
It doesn’t take long for the plan to derail again. Calling in at the Sadamitsu Taxi Company, I ask if they can drive me to the mountain’s foot tomorrow. “Hmm,” is the reply, “we never go up there in winter, but let me discuss with the drivers and we’ll let you know tomorrow morning.”
There’s nowhere to stay in Sadamitsu, as everything but the supermarket seems to have been shuttered for the season. Except, that is, for the cinema, which must have closed decades ago: it’s still promoting 203 Kōchi (Hill 203), a film about the Russo-Japanese War that came out in the mid-fifties of the Shōwa era. This really is a town that time forgot.
After holing up in a business hotel in the next town, I consult the Sensei by phone. After reporting that my transport arrangements are in disarray, I remark that the Hyakumeizan author himself had to make two attempts to get up Tsurugi-san. But that was because of a rainstorm, points out the Sensei, while with you it’s your lack of planning…
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