Up The Mountain

The relief legend in my guidebook makes the trip between Temple number 11 and the Shosanji Temple number 12 resemble the scaling of Mt. Everest. I was really prepared for the worst and planned my hotel stay around having the ability to leave my backpack in my room. It was much more enjoyable without the burden of extra weight and extra straps that manage to entangle themselves in my camera strap, money holder, Wagesa stole and my Zudabukuro, the white shoulder bag that carries my stamp book, candles, incense and usually my lunch. I did enjoy walking without it.

Even though the trail was often quite steep and did climb about 2400 feet on at least three occasions, it was extremely well maintained and one of the most beautiful nature walks I have ever done. The cherry blossoms were in full bloom as well as the dogwood and numerous other flowering trees. It was just as I had always imagined Japan to be in the spring. The forest was filled with numerous varieties of birds and there were other odd sounds made by creatures that I never saw. Although yesterday a huge monkey ran across my path and later a pretty little auburn weasel scooted by a few times. I knew I wasn't alone even though most of the time I did walk alone. I did run into a small group from Singapore who were with me on the train to the first temple. There were several other small groups of two or three, but for the most part the trail was practically empty.

I managed to lose the pilgrim trail at the very end and added several unnecessary kilometers along the driving road. I knew it had to be wrong because there were no longer any of the familiar pilgrim signs. But the road signs pointed to the temple so it did lead me to the right destination.

I had to hurry down to the bus stop 4 kilometers down so I could catch the last bus back to Tokushima. It turned out to be a much longer bus ride than I had anticipated so tomorrow night I have a reservation near Temple 19, my goal for tomorrow. The forecast for tomorrow is rain but at least the route is very flat. I hope that my phone conversation really did make a reservation for tomorrow night. I can see that I could use a few more years of conversational Japanese. I'm getting quite good at apologies however. Now I just hope I can find the place tomorrow!