October 20, 2006

To sound like a broken record…. another long day on the road from Temple 26 to 27.  I have been traveling on and off with two other Henro’s, Hiro & Kamemoto, we are about at the same speed give or take.  Hiro-san speaks very good English while kamemoto-san knows a little bit but he mostly speaks Japanese to me and I speak English back to him and we actually understand each other pretty well, of course our conversations are mostly about body pain and how far it is the next temple, which is a universal language. 

Hiro & Kamemoto out in front

I’ll try to get a better picture of the lads from the front in the next day or two.  Hiro is from Kyoto and Kamemoto is from Fukuoka, which is on Kyushu Island.

This is the suffer-fest part of the walk as the last 4 hours of each day is nothing but aching feet, backs & other bodily appendages.  Today we did about 18 miles where the last 3 miles was 1.5 miles up to Temple 27 (1300 elev) and 1.5 miles back down again to sea level. 

I have been staying about every 3rd day in a Minshiku (kind of Inn) such as I am tonight,  I really needed a good shower and soft futon to sleep on.  For about $60 you get a room with dinner and breakfast. It’s all good.

HENRO TYPES

So I would say there are several general categories of Henro’s out on the trail.  The first group are people who drive their personnel cars around to each temple. Next group is the little old ladies, usually a group of 3 or 4, that take a taxi around to each temple.  Next comes the tour bus groups and they obviously the biggest organized groups you see at the temples.  After those comes the walkers, where there are two classes.  The first group is the ones who travel light with just a small pack with two or three changes of clothes and they stay at Inns every night and may or may not do a lot of mileage each day as opposed to the group I fall into, which is the hard core walkers who free camp at least 50% or more and are carrying all their gear on their backs and tend to put in mostly long hard days. There are also a few odd categories such as people who ride their bikes and a group I ran into today who are walking the whole way with a professional guide and have a support vehicle lugging their gear for them, which provides drinks and food along the road as they are walking.  I talked to one of the ladies in this group today and she said that their guide was a somewhat famous Henro that had been featured on the National Television station NHK.

Here are a few images from the past couple of days;

Pacific Ocean Below Temple 23

My camping spot for the night

Looking up the coast towards near Muroto

Sunset over the Pacific

Till next time,

Lou

October 16, 2006

End of another long day on the road as I have made it around to Temple 23, which is the last temple before leaving Tokushima Prefecture.  This temple is also the first temple that is near the Pacific Ocean and it was a beautiful site to see as I rounded a corner with less than 30 minutes to go before getting to the Temple.

 

Tonight I am staying in a old converted bus that a local restaurant lets walking Henro stay in for free. They also gave us a huge free dinner as well.  I say we, because there will be 6 of us sleeping in the old bus tonight and there will be little room for anything other than futons & sleeping bags.  I have met 3 of the others before while walking and that would be; Kamemoto-san, Showgo-san, HIro-san and I’m sure I will know the rest before the walk is over.

The bus thing is part of what they call Osettai, which is the custom of giving free gifts to Henros as they are walking along as it brings good luck to the giver as well as the receiver.  So far I have been given cold drinks, a little money, candy and actually two free nights lodgings.  There is the one tonight and one about two days ago.  As I was walking down from Temple 12 a taxi pulled over, which had 4 older ladies also doing the temples and they gave me some snacks and the taxi driver gave me his card and said something I didn’t quite understand but something about Temple 16, so I thanked them and went on my way.   I actually made it to temple 17 that day and as I was sitting in the temple courtyard trying to figure out where I would spend the night another gentleman sitting nearby asked me where I was from in Japanese and then said something I didn’t understand and then he said “free stay Sakai Taxi”.  So this Sakai Taxi was the same taxi company that had passed me earlier in the day and what the taxi drive, who was actually the owner, was telling me he had a place at his business where he let Henros stay for free.  So I pulled out the business card and showed it to him and he said “Yes, That’s It” more or less.  So I walked the 1.5 miles back into town and found the taxi company and sure enough he had pretty decent place over the taxi garage where me and another Henro stayed that night.

Here are some more scenes along the way between temples 12 & 23:

An old Lady who gave me money Osettai

 Taken from the bridge crossing the river

Discarded prayer beads & walking sticks at temple

 Morning Sunrise over the Pacific

I’ll try to get more pictures loaded up into Flickr next time I find a McDonalds as I have quite a few more of interest

So this is the end of the first week on the road and hit a bit of a milestone today as I just went over 100 miles. The next few days will be along he coast line and there won’t be any temples for a couple of days.  The weather remains very nice with high temperatures in the upper 70’s and not much humidity and hopefully this will continue for awhile.  It hasn’t always been easy to find the time to write in the blog as either I’m to tired or don’t have a very good place to get setup.  I have been able to “free camp” as they say for the last 3 nights and if I can put in a long day tomorrow I guess there is a place about 20 miles away that will let walking Henros stay for free as well.

Till next time,

Lou