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Life in Mihara |
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Mihara is a small town of roughly 2000 people in the southwest mountains of Kochi Prefecture. The area is actually made up of a bunch of hamlets set in mountain valleys. Mihara is remarkable in the way that all small towns are remarkable. There is something there, but it can take a long time to find. When you do, it often is not as universally exciting as you would like it to be, but you are quite pleased anyway.
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See the big red dot? Yep, that's Mihara. Click above for a larger map of Japan. Find the "S" in "Shikoku" and you are just about there. |
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Mihara at a Glance: No train service, no taxi service, no regular bus line, no bank, no supermarket, no convenience store, no bookstores, no places of lodging, no restaurants with regular hours, or anything approaching a place of leisure. There are a few cafes, or kisaten.
Mihara does have electricity, paved roads growing to include more than one lane on occasion, indoor plumbing with flush toilets, a hospital, and is within nine kilometers of towns and cities that can supply what the village lacks. Mihara also has a post office system that, for better or worse, always seems to know where I am.
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Pilgrimage Route marker cir. 1903 |
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Shikoku is known for an 88-temple pilgrimage route that runs primarily around the perimeter of the island. The route is significant not only for a storied history but also for the fact that it is alive and well with pilgrims walking the thousands of kilometers with surprising regularity.
Mihara is on one of the main trails between temples 38 and 39. By trail I mean Route 21 so don't get carried away with romantic images of wooded glens and bands of Merry Men. Like other towns that find themselves the victim of providence, serving as points of interest but never as destinations, the hundreds of years of wandering pilgrims have left their mark, but little more. Yet it is their consistent ebb and flow that has ensured a steady drone of tradition to an otherwise isolated and rarely historically important high mountain village. The route lends to Mihara's cultural environment a faded luster, adding to an otherwise quiet sense of unshakable perpetuality.
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Mihara's homepage (in Japanese) |
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Mihara has one elementary school and one middle school. Grades one through six hold one hundred amazingly resilient and well-behaved children. Hormones have sedated grades seven through nine to a pleasant state of moderation. Thankfully I pass them on to other teachers when they mutate into high school students and go certifiably insane.
High schoolers must make the journey down out of the mountains and endure a 20 to 40 minute commute. Unless you are from a family of privilege, this can mean riding your bike nine kilometers uphill at the end of a very long day. I'm not being melodramatic, it really is all uphill. I will talk more about my job in the JET section. |
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Jump to JET section - |
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Mihara Photos |
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