Seiyo to Ozu, 26 km
Given that it is the rainy season, I guess we can consider ourselves fortunate that we had 19 days without getting wet. Today was not one of them, and although it started out as drizzle which AccuWeather promised would end in 13 minutes, it became progressively wetter as the day wore on. We escaped from the damp briefly when we took the 1100m tunnel option instead of tackling the steep (and likely very slippery)trail over the pass. However once through the tunnel we were in the cloud bank as the weather system was coming from the northern side.
Temple 43, Meisekiji, was on the fringe of Seiyo, and was a tranquil setting made less so by the haste being shown by some of the ‘henros-on-wheels’ folks. Maybe they had a lot of temples on their list for the day. Seiyo itself is a very prosperous town, and seems to continue to the very head of the valley – although it’s likely that multiple town have merged over the years.
Ozu looks like an interesting place, but unfortunately we didn’t get to see too .uch, as upon arriving at our accommodation we discovered that check in is not until 1800hrs. Being wet and having 3 hours to kill was not ideal. However the tourist office had lots of cover, so I stayed dry with our backpacks while Sam and Max backtracked to the onsen. The alternative was to carry our stuff back there, but there was no guarantee that we’d be able to store our bags while being in the onsen. I filled in the time by doing some accommodation research and booking – an endless process it seems. It’s certainly not like the Camino Frances where you can just show up and find somewhere to stay!
At about 1730 a car stopped at the tourist office, and despite the language barrier, it was obvious that it was our host for the evening. She was most apologetic, loaded all three soggy backpacks and me in her car, and drove the two blocks to the very old cafe/Henro accommodation. Ozu is a very popular tourist destination, with several streets of very old buildings, the mentioned Samurai house, and a castle. Due to the weather and the late check in time we didn’t get to see too much of it, but enough to get the general idea. We had a superb dinner at a restaurant in another very old building – being served a regional specialty of sea bream on rice. Here are the instructions:
