Temples 1 to 7, 22km
It’s been quite the experience on day one. After many many kilometers of pilgrimage in Europe where one can bumble along even with minimal grasp of the languages due primarily to them using the latin alphabet, here in Japan you are pitched headfirst into the cultural and linguistic mire. A training regimen of bowing might have been useful!
The weather covered the range of very damp to very wet, but the killer has been the humidity which was a bit unexpected. It has been hard to tell whether the soaking was outside in or inside out. As a result we didn’t use our rain gear, but relied on borrowed umbrellas from the hostel. We’ll be staying there again in a couple of days and can return them. The pilgrimage route does an elongated ‘U’ around the Yoshino River valley that incorporates Tokushima City and the numerous adjoining towns. After today’s experiment, we’ll buy our own umbrellas when we’ve completed the ‘U’.
We caught the train from Tokushima to Temple 1, traditionally the starting point. As the pilgrimage is a circuit, you could start at any temple – the benefit being that the stamp book is significantly cheaper at the subsequent temple stores. Each temple has its own deity, so not only do you get some fantastic calligraphy, but you gather a collection of deity drawings. The path/trail is primarily paved roads winding through villages and small scale farming, but with one fantastic wooded trail through a bamboo forest. The many spider webs were not so fantastic, requiring the horizontal deployment of afore-mentioned umbrella.
The temples vary in age, but the foundation of many are credited to Kobo Daishi. In most cases you can’t enter the temple proper, but the grounds are fantastic. The protocol is to bow at the entrance gate, wash your hands at the water fountain, ring the bell, then offer prayers at the temples (often there is more than one). Once you have completed the rituals you go to the Temple office and request the stamp – usually three stamps with additional calligraphy. Fantastic to watch them, but photography is not permitted (at least not in the first temples. At $5 a temple it makes for a pricey, but very unusual souvenir of the pilgrimage. We chose stamp books with sketches of each temple which adds to the keepsake
A rainy day is not conducive to photography, but here are some snaps taken along the way:
I’m writing this while Sam and Max are in the Onsen – the traditional Japanese bathhouse. Generally people with tattoos are not welcomed due to the association of tattoos with Japanese gangsters, so rather than causing an international incident I figured discretion was the order of the day. Post bath we’ll be enjoying dinner at the onsen restaurant, where menus with pictures have been taken to the next level:
2saunter 