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I Love Wasting Ink · Aug 12, 2026

Field Diary: Day 14 (Uwajima to Yoshida)

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Uwajima, Ehime → Hōkyō Pass → Yoshida, Ehime Map data © OpenStreetMap · Open map in Gaia GPS → 📍 Uwajima, Ehime Out before the shops opened, past the fish market where three men were hosing down a floor that already looked clean. The road climbs almost immediately and then pretends not to, which is the particular cruelty of the coast here — you gain two hundred metres without ever once feeling…

Uwajima, Ehime → Hōkyō Pass → Yoshida, Ehime

Map of Tokushima Prefecture with author’s route between Kawai and Nagoro highlighted.

Map data © OpenStreetMap · Open map in Gaia GPS →

Several small yellow flowers, likely coltsfoot, rise on short stems through a ground-level scatter of decomposing brown leaves, bare soil, and sparse new grass, shot from an extreme low angle that makes the blooms appear at eye level. The shallow depth of field keeps the foreground texture sharp — curled leaf edges, dark clumped earth, and thin green shoots — while the background dissolves into soft bands of pale grey water and blurred brown reed stems. Flat, diffuse overcast light falls evenly across the scene with no visible shadows, and the wide horizontal frame stretches the low ground across its full width.

📍 Uwajima, Ehime

Out before the shops opened, past the fish market where three men were hosing down a floor that already looked clean. The road climbs almost immediately and then pretends not to, which is the particular cruelty of the coast here — you gain two hundred metres without ever once feeling that you have started climbing.

Two goldeneye ducks float on calm, grey-toned water, separated by a few feet of open surface. The larger bird on the left faces right in profile, showing a rounded dark green head with a small white facial spot, a white breast, and boldly patterned black-and-white flanks; a cluster of dry reed stems angles behind it. The smaller, darker bird on the right faces directly away from the camera, its rounded back and sparse white wing markings visible but its face hidden. Sparse dry reeds appear at the lower edges of the frame, and the flat, diffuse light casts no strong shadows on the rippled water.

A small brown frog sits tucked into the curved junction where two flat metal surfaces meet, its body hunched compactly with splayed hind toes visible beneath it and its face turned slightly toward the camera. The metal surfaces — likely painted steel or aluminum panels — are scattered with fine water droplets, and a dark wet patch surrounds the frog where moisture has collected in the seam. The frog’s warty, mottled texture contrasts with the smooth brushed finish of the metal, and the embossed corner-bracket symbol in the lower left of the frame suggests this is some kind of manufactured structure or signage.

📍 Hōkyō Pass, Ehime

Wind from the southwest all morning, straight off the water and into the left ear. By the top of the pass I had developed a theory that a headwind is more honest than a hill, because a hill at least ends.

Mandarin terraces on both sides of the descent, cut into the slope in steps barely wider than a person, held up by drystone walls that must be older than the trees. Someone has run a monorail up the hillside — a single rusted rail on short legs, threading between the rows, with a little flatbed cart parked halfway up and left there. Whoever farms this slope is not young, and has thought carefully about not being young.

📍 Above Yoshida, Ehime

Into Yoshida by three, which is early, and I could have gone on. Did not. Sat on the seawall for an hour instead and watched a heron fail to catch anything, repeatedly, with enormous dignity.

📍 Yoshida, Ehime

23.4 km. Legs fine. Left ear still ringing from the wind.

Read on ilovewasting.ink ↗

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