Gorogoro-ishi

The black dots in the water are surfers. 

Gordon:  This is our first trip in Japan and we didn’t do sufficient reading in advance, so we truly don’t know much about the country.  To provide some background information we are taking a course in Japanese cultural history through a series of video lectures.  Yesterday we spent part of the rainy afternoon watching a lecture on the Japanese language.  Among other things, we learned that Japanese is richly endowed with onomatopoeic words.

We encountered the onomatopoeic term “gorogoro-ishi” today.  This is the name given to the long, lonely stretch of coast that we traversed.  Before the construction of the highway, pilgrims walked along the rocky shore, listening to the sound (gorogoro) the stones (ishi) made as they were jostled by the surf.

It was a flat, easy walk today, with the sea at my left hand and the forested mountains at my right.  I did hear the gorogoro of large cobbles on one beach, but there was also the clackety-clack of smaller cobbles, the swish-boom of dumping breakers and, most commonly, the swish-crash of breakers hitting the rocks.  I walked a total of 33 kms, my longest day thus far, so I was a bit tired by the time I reached our accommodation.