Image from Neojaponisme.

Today’s fun link is “Two Views of the Shikoku Henro Pilgrimage” on Néojaponisme. In the article, W. David Marx interviews two American writers who hiked the 88-temple henro route in Shikoku (separately) and wrote about their experiences.

Tucked between the very end of Honshu and the top of Kyushu, Shikoku is the least traveled and least familiar major island of the Japanese archipelago. There are few famous sites or tourist attractions, and most guidebooks recommend the location as a way to “experience rural Japan.” Shikoku does, however, attract a constant stream of visitors every year to walk, bus, bike, or drive through its famed 88-temple Buddhist pilgrimage route.

While most pilgrims in modern times are retirees moving through the course easily with the aid of tour buses, we wanted to get a sense of what it was like to do the course by foot as a young explorer with modern travel expectations. So we caught up with two American writers who have turned their Shikoku foot journeys into books: literary memoirist Gideon Lewis-Kraus and former travel writer Matthew Firestone.

Full article: “Two Views of the Shikoku Henro Pilgrimage”