Kumano Kodo

Wayfinding to the trailhead

Kudoyama — The expectation is that we don’t speak Japanese. The expectation is we’re from somewhere else — always elsewhere, never nearby. We’re from somewhere else and we’ll barely be able to communicate. We see this manifest as fear in their eyes in the approach. Not fear of our approach itself, but fear of difficult communication. And so it begins with them shouting, worriedly, in broken English as we wa...