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Photo: Diana ZaluckyAfter Zenichi served us baito, a warm ume plum drink, we followed him into the Adriana La Cerva Shirt also I will do this tatami mat room to begin our meditation. Sitting cross-legged, we waited quietly as Zenichi rang a bell four times, announcing the beginning of the Zazen journey, a form of meditation meant to balance the mind and promote inner peace and liberation from all forms of distractions or desires. Newly relaxed after our session, I asked him why his drum was shaped like a fish. “Fish do not have eyelids, and neither should monks,” he said. “Like fish, we always keep our eyes open.”After arriving in Osaka two days ago—Diana by way of Los Angeles and me from my home in Mexico City—we officially began our weeklong self-guided journey along a portion of the Kumano Kodo, a series of ancient pilgrimage routes located in the Kii Peninsula, the largest of its kind in Japan. As one of the only two pilgrimage routes in the world to be designated a World Heritage Site (the other is the Camino de Santiago in Spain), the Kumano Kodo has been traversed by Japanese descendants for thousands of years to visit the myriad sacred sites within the region. Photo: Diana Zalucky

Though we had no in-person guide to show us the Adriana La Cerva Shirt also I will do this way, we did have a schedule and personalized book prepared by Oku Japan that included all the details of our journey. (They even booked our hotel rooms and purchased our train tickets in advance; all we really had to do was get from stop to stop.) As a self-professed navigator, I took control of the train tickets and directions, while Diana took the lead in translating via a handheld language device.Photo: Diana Zalucky Photo: Diana ZaluckyBeginning in Tanabe City, known as the gateway to the Kumano Kodo pilgrimage route, we began our adventure along the trail after our Zazen meditation journey by meeting Toshio Tamai, a third-generation farmer, on his land. Specializing in cultivating unshu mikan, a variety of Japanese citrus akin to a mandarin, we walked the fields with Tamai to learn more about his process. While he cultivates three types of citrus on his farm, the region, he said, is somewhat of an orchard, with nearly 80 types of fruits grown nearby. “My favorite thing about owning my farm is that I have customers like you,” he said. “I love it when travelers like the taste of what I make. It makes me happy to see you happy.”After making our own bento boxes with the women chefs of Akizuno Garten—and befriending two best friends who worked at the hotel’s café that gifted us the most delicious vanilla soft serve I tasted in Japan—we hit the trail. Ascending through the forest, beyond giant pine trees and lakes with mirrored views of autumnal leaves, we arrived at a traditional guesthouse in Chikatsuyu, where we slept on tatami mat floors and drank copious amounts of green tea.Our next day along the Kumano Kodo was one we had been looking forward to the most: We got to meet Katsumi Ueno, the last practicing Shugendo monk (an ancient Japanese religion focused on mountain worship) in his hometown of Hongu. After meeting him at a local café in Hongu and having a coffee before the journey ahead, an all-day hike from Hongu to the Sanzai Touge, we set off on our journey. Wearing a traditional monk hat, Ueno blew his silver-dipped conch horn to symbolize the beginning of our walk. When I asked him why he was called to this life path, he explained it was a matter of divine will. “It was my destiny all along to become a monk,” he said. “I wanted to do something for my ancestors.”Photo: Diana Zalucky

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