Day 40: Temple 59

Temple 59, Kokubunji, was about an hour walk from the hotel. It has a statue of Kobo Daishi that you could shake hands with for good luck.

It was very busy as a few busses full of ohenro-san showed up when we were there. You can do the pilgrimage on foot, bicycle, car, or tour bus.

To get there we walked along a walled in stream that had koi in it.

Then we walked over a small hill and could see the mountains surrounding the area of Nyugawa. Tomorrow we are hiking to a temple in the mountains of the first picture below.

It's really amazing how high the mountains are on this island. They range from 1000 to 2000 meters and seem to float over the city.

On the way to the mountains we saw this ohenro-san who we have seen on and off for several days. This is his 7th time doing the pilgrimage. He is 78 years young.

We also saw the machine they use to put down plastic in fields to keep the soil warm and weed free for plants.

We got to our Minshuku early, so we had ice cream we some other ohenro-san who are staying there with us.  They have done the part we are going to and gave Sawako many good ideas. The shop owner gave us cold green tea as Osettai.

We all went out to an Izakaya for dinner and drinks.

I walked 20.7km today. You can see a map of my tracks here (you may have to refresh the page after a minute to get it to show).  If you have Google Earth, it is faster to download a Google Earth file of my adventure from here.