The Roads to Sata - A 2000-Mile Walk Through Japan

I bought this book from an overpriced stationary and writing tool shop, which everyone still visits cause it is so nice, and has a few books for sales matching the mood. I guess it's not that overpriced then as the values lies in the beauty of it but anyway.

It seemed like an excellent book to prepare for my journey to Japan. Sure it was set more than 40 years back, but I wondered if I could still relate when I visit myself. The author traveled through the west side, which I did not visit, but the general atmosphere, I'd say, did not change.

About the book - well, it's gonna be hard to summarize this one, as summarizing a 4 month long journey can be.

It took me a long time to read. Took it to Japan, then stopped reading it right in the middle. I got back to it though, which rarely happens with books I leave behind. I guess it was not a book to be read each day. Maybe, just like any lengthy trip (even so incredible as this one), it can get a bit tedious if you do it all in one go.

Alan Booth, who lived in Japan until his early death at 46 in 1993, spent ±120 days in the on-foot-only (no lifts at all) hike of more than 3000kms from the northern tip of Japans most norther island - Hokkaido, to the most souther one of the larger islands - Cape Sata. He took a route by the western coast, omitting Tokyo.

He describes the people, the incredible landscapes and rising industrial cities, the cool and weird customs, the good and the bad... The great generosity and the extreme racism (not always in a bad way though), the extreme indifference towards the rest of the world and the tremendous beauty of the rituals.

He does all that in extreme detail - a true talent for that. The key structure for each day is the same - start the day, somethig happens. Walk for some 30-40 miles, detail the roads, something happens. Drink a few beers, find a Ryokan (a traditional Japanese guest house), describe it and the evening. In between that, though, a lot happens, as one can expect on such a journey.

He also really knows his stuff - legends, poems, history, mythology is presented in relation the location described.

The book is truly like a journey. It starts fresh, but ends a bit tired, not that it's getting worse technically, but you can feel the author getting tired of it himself I think... I remember the middle, but not the ending at all.

Instead of trying to recount everything, I'll leave a few quotes I marked. It does not represent the book at all, but instead are some caricatures I liked, some small insights the author does not miss in his daily life, and includes together with the otherwise incredible descriptions of this beautiful country.

Describing an evening walk made an impression on me:

In the starlight the narrow road wound up and up into the hills, crossing dark streams on small stone bridges, winding past the last isolated buildings of the town and into the darkness of the forest. I stoped outside one lonely house and listened to a woman singing in her bathroom. The night air was warm, the stars bright silver, and by the time I reached the minshuku at Nakama the white moon had risen high over the woods. 

A family description instead:

... where I found a drive-in and had a lunch of noodles while the proprietor and his family hooked fish out of a filthy dirty tank and tossed them with unsettling, secretive smiles into a tin bucket to die. 

A discussion about why a sign "Open" is lit but hotel actually closed:

- But you've got a sign all lit up down on the highway
- Yes. We always keep it lit. 
- What for, for goodness sake?
- To make people feel welcome.
- But you're closed!
- That's right.

Later on that evening, to demonstrate the cosmopolitan nature of her family, she brought me a knife and fork with which to eat a bowl of noodles.

Quite a few useful notes in the book, like:

...shops selling rice and its byproducts are ideal places to make inquiries since they are often the oldest established shops in the district...

A few references to weird Manga:

There was also a pile of comic books to amuse the breakfasting customers; the one I galnced at (Eros) featured a naked woman tied up in an automobile body shop being assaulted with breathtaking variety of spanners, jacks and big ends.

The author closes the day, (almost every day), with some beautiful proze:

That night I chuckled myself to sleep, thinking of the sparks coming out of the old woman`s nostrils and hair, and as we slept, each plugged into our dreams, the first snow fell on Mount Fuji.

P.S. I also found a new way to read travel books with this one - not only marking stuff I like with my pencil, but also having my phone nearby in bed, looking up all the places mentioned. This gave entirely new process to the read, cause you still first imagine the place, then discover the real one in the real photos.