The 88 temples pilgrimage of Shikoku - Day 6

By chance, we had the same timing and started together on the way to the next temple. It turned out that the next temple, no. 23 - the last temple in the Tokushima prefecture and also the last one for my newly found friends - was still quite far away. So maybe it was good to have some company. The temple was located in a bigger city with some tourism (famous for the sea turtles who come to lay their eggs in the sand here); must have been pretty strange for the tourists to see us coming out of the woods...

The temple itself also was a bit different, it had a pagoda with some extraordinary form and by its position, it looked like it ruled the city below it. And it was the temple that took longest from being nearly there to being finally there - once in the city, first we thought the castle might be the temple (and were lucky that it is as it is located on a hill - extra climb? No thanks, we're already served). Than, after spotting it, it felt like hours to finally reach it on the far end of the city...

On top of the pagoda

We celebrated the successful accomplishment of the journey of my 2 friends with an opulent meal - cold noodles and sashimi in combination with an all you can eat Japanese buffet. Hopefully, they don't have too many pilgrims like us as customers, this would really spoil their business case.

 

Again with the train. I decide to not go until the final stop but to stop by in a city on the line that seems to be a nice place to take a look at. By the way, with final stop I don't mean only for the train, for the railways in general. From there for the next 200km, there are no more trains. And finally, I reach Kochi, the next prefecture. Devil's land (this part of Shikoku is barely inhabited and the temples are spread out very far what makes many pilgrims give up here...).

I follow the coastline through different kinds of woods (trees and bushes, bamboo - all very dense and a bit spooky), I cross lonely beaches with sand or rocks and impressive blue water, I pass small fishing villages.

I hardly don't meet anybody, except for and old pilgrim who looks like he is on the journey since 40 years now. Long white beard, long hair, pushing a sort of wheelbarrow with (apparently) all his belongings. When we meet, is just about to build his shelter for the night (he has a quite modern tent, he must have bought it on the trip or my assumption about the 40 years must be wrong...) so I give him some of my food - as I got several presents I have a surplus of e.g. instant noodles. 

Finally also I find a place to stay, a small forest on the harbor. I don't want to walk back into the village so I stay and have some instant noodles, too. A few meters from me, the fish are jumping out of the water, up to half a meter. And there are other animals too who prefer to remain unseen by me, but I hear them around my tent. I wonder what they are.

Later I find out that there are a lot of apes in this part of the country...

The 88 temples pilgrimage of Shikoku - Day 5

The 88 temples pilgrimage of Shikok - Day 5

A well known phenomenon: if one thing interrupts you, others will follow. Even though it feels like ages ago, I still don't want to leave the report of the trip to Shikoku unfinished, even though in the meanwhile many other things happened.

As always, it is about balance: if I go out to experience new adventures, but I might not have time to do so - if I stay at home, I have time but nothing to tell. In this case also a third factor interfered: work. Of course I love my work and I'm always happy to be busy and work a lot with the highest motivation! (My boss is reading this as well...)

Day 5 started right on the way to temple no. 21, also on the top of a mountain. Actually, the second highest mountain (second in hight only to the mountain with temple no. 12, which I climbed by car...). When I say right on the way, I mean it - I actually camped on the way, in a curve where the road was wider. Anyhow there is only one car passing by. (Picture see day 4!)

The climb is steep, but I'm still fresh and finally I reach the temple - beautiful building spread out in a wide areal. My expectations, that it would be overcrowded like the last one, did not become true, even though the temple can be reached quite comfortable by cable car. As in all temples, how deep they might ever be in the wilderness, they have vending machines here too, so I take a rest. The mushroom tea they give out as free samples is really nice too, however (fortunately? unfortunately?) it is not a tea from mushrooms that might help the monks to get enlightenment. ;)

Look out for funny details!

Down from the mountain again the path leads first along a road, than into the woods again. This time for a change: bamboo. As I'm not used to it quite spooky (much denser than the woods made of "real trees"...). After that, endless rice fields again, when I'm about to give up I finally reach temple no. 22.

Entrance to the woods, very well signposted. Try to count the signposts for the pilgrim's path on this picture!

 

This citrus fruit is called "Konatsu". I wanted to buy some, but not a whole bag of it.
The answer was: "Sorry, only whole bag - but you can eat one or two here" (without charge...)

The next temple is far again, so I choose to cheat again and take the train to the coast. So I left headed to the station. 2 pilgrims on bicycles left shortly after me, and as they passed by they gave me a can of coffee and a red bull for my journey... :)

I had been really looking forward to reaching the sea, as for me this is always linked with vivid promenades, seafood restaurants, beaches... I found none of this, only a harbor for small fisher boats, but the fishers where already home.

I continued my way, passing a rough coastline with cliffs and woods to the next village. By now, I was pretty hungry. This village was even worse: it looked like they were all expecting the zombies to come out as soon as the sun sets, so nobody was on the street, all doors, windows, everything was closed, no sign of people living here. Finally, I found a small store where I could buy something to eat and leaving Racoon City behind, I found a nice wooden resting place which I could use as shelter for the night. Again, vending machines were not far so I bought some water to cook the ramen noodles I bought some 15 minutes ago.

cute! :)

I just had finished my meal as I heard some strange noise - like plastic wheels on pavement, approaching. Do zombies use bobby cars? No, but I was curious anyhow.

Finally 2 pilgrims arrived, one pulling a trolley that made that sound. They decided for the same shelter and as I had some water left, I decided to give back some of the friendliness I have received and make one more miso soup for them. They really liked it so they invited my to their join them when they made some fire at the beach, baking potatoes and they even had some beers! Sharing miso soup turned out to have been a great idea! :P