The 88 temples pilgrimage of Shikoku - Day 4

I really slept well, what a nice place! I even had a toilet - no, not the green one without the flush, a real water closet in a small rest station with tables, benches and running water. Just when I left after brushing my teeth at the wash-basin, a local farmer (maybe) entered, so we had a very brief small talk. When he came out I was still busy getting my stuff into the backpack; he gave me 300 yen and said "buy yourself some juice or coffee on the way.", smiled and went to his car. Then he suddenly came back (maybe he wants his money back? What should I do - run? *lol), gave me some crackers and sweets and said "that's also for your next break", again smiled and again walked away.

Things like this are not really rare when you're a pilgrim in Shikoku, the island has a tradition of more than 1000 years to host pilgrims and ever since, people supported them. It's also said that when a pilgrim died on the pilgrimage, the local people gathered and preyed for him to give him a worth funeral. (Maybe that's not longer necessary, also I think the number of people dying on the pilgrimage have reduced dramatically over the last 150 years.

Yoshitsune in the morning light

Looks bad, is nice - Buddhist deity (esoteric Buddhism)

Temple 18 was close and located nicely in the woods, but temple 19 was quite a bit away. Again a long walk between rice fields, small villages and rice fields.

Temple 19 was placed in the middle of a small town, also a really nice location. Even though it's pretty quite on the way, the temples are always a place of ease and peacefulness. Some more, some less. This one more...

That doesn't mean that you cannot find a vending machine within the temple walls of course, so I spend the 300 yen on what they were meant for.

As every pilgrim travels the same path, you tend to meet the same persons more than once and start to greet each other, sometimes chat a bit and so on. In this temple, I chatted with a lady who was travelling by car, a white CL500... :)

Temple no. 18

Temple no. 19 with vending machine

Nice place for a break...

14km between temple no. 19 and temple no. 20 were rather a big distance. Some of the distance had to be walked along a big street with fortunately not much traffic. Sometimes, a car passed by - and one time, a car made a rather harsh stop on the other side of the street. I wondered why, no obstacles were in sight.
A young guy jumped out of the car, walked quickly across the street towards me and... handed me a bottle of coke, saying "please drink this and good luck on your voyage!". He quickly entered the car again, and the driver, possibly his mother, shouted out of the window "good luck and don't give up!" before they drove away.

The goal for today, temple no. 20, was located on a mountain. When I say mountain, I mean 500m difference in altitude had to be conquered, what equals "quite a few" stairs. Of course it was really hot, of course my backpack was much too heavy, of course it was exhausting. But after having a small rest, drinking the coke, it all was easier... ;)
It was a nice path through the pine forest, and I thought that the harder the climb is, the nicer it will be to finally reach the top. I would have been nice, well but as a result of really bad timing I arrived simultaneously with a bus of elderly Japanese ladies (and the word lady refers to the individual. When in group, there is nothing like lady-like behavior...)

Kumquat tree

 

rice before planted on the field

nice house, isn't it...

Let's call it a day (also that's where I camped this night...)

supper (I'm just cooking it on the picture above!)