Tanabe, Wakayama

The pilgrimage roads diverge here — one route cutting inland toward the mountains, another tracing the coast — and Tanabe has held that crossroads position for centuries, known as the gateway to Kumano. At Kiitanabe Station, the pace already feels different from the cities to the north: unhurried, purposeful in a quieter register. Inland, the Kii mountains rise steeply, and the valleys between them hold a chain of hot springs — Yunomine, Wataze, Ryujin — each with its own character, each fed by sources that have drawn people through these forests long before roads were paved.

Yunomine Onsen sits in a narrow gorge and carries a history long enough that the spring itself holds World Heritage status, the only hot spring to do so. Ryujin Onsen, further north into the mountains, is known for its water's effect on skin, and the road to reach it passes through deep cedar forest. At Kumano Hongu Taisha, the main shrine of the Kumano Sanzan, the cedar groves close in around the stone steps and the air shifts perceptibly — not a performance of atmosphere, but a consequence of altitude and canopy. The shrine's annual festivals — the Reitaisai, the spring Taisai — mark time in this landscape in ways the calendar alone does not.

Down near the coast, fishing boats work out of Tanabe harbor, and the local markets carry isagi — a fish specific to these waters — alongside the dried plums and yuzu and shiitake that come down from the farms inland. The ume here is not incidental; the cultivation of plum defines the agricultural identity of the region as much as the pilgrimage roads define its spiritual one. Both run through the same land, and neither feels like a relic.