April 4
When we finished this day, we realized that taking a relaxing day yesterday was very important. Today had so many experiences! Yesterday when talking to Amy she told us about a Shinto shrine that we would pass before arriving to Temple 64. She said that it is not to be missed. The cherry blossoms caught our eye as soon as we started walking today.
This next week I have a feeling we are going to be taking lots of photos of the blossoms. We quickly realized what Amy was talking about when we saw the large Tori gates leading into the Shinto Shrine.
There were two of them, One being orange and one being stone. The gate had two stone lions at the entrance.
And a different deity than we have seen before.
As we continued to walk into the temple grounds, we were surrounded by waterfalls, fish ponds and forests. It set the atmosphere of being peaceful.
There were steep steps leading up to other buildings.
One of the buildings appeared to be used for meetings.
As we were checking out some of the other buildings here, we noticed monks with different colored bottoms and white jackets approaching this building.
There were also females walking into the building who had red colored bottoms. Shortly afterwards a drum began beating and then chanting began interspersed with drumming. There were seats outside of the building that we sat in and listened.
This is so fascinating . As the chanting continued we walked towards a wall surrounding the area and saw the city of Saijo.
Notice the red Tori gate in front of the shrine entrance.
As we were heading back down the stairs a group of monks holding platters of food left the building and walked to some of the different memorials. They were leaving the food in front of memorials.
At one of the buildings closer to the entrance we met Lisa. She also had been drawn in to check out the Shinto Shrine.
As we were leaving the Shrine, a monk who had delivered the food was in front of us.
I doubt with all the rain that fell yesterday we would have spent much time here if any. On to Temple 64 which is right next to the shrine.
This temple is spread out and we had to follow different paths to find the different halls. There were different tour groups here so we just followed them.
There was a statue under a water fall perhaps for waterfall meditation.
So many different statures.
As we were leaving this temple we encountered Jean Pierre Louis and Anne.
They were hiking with a woman from Israel who they had met last year when they were doing the first part of the route. She lived in the United States for 34 years and had retired to Israel. Her goals in retirement were to walk as much as possible and learn new languages. We did some catching up and then said our good byes. We thought that we were done with temples today, but that was not the case.
We had couple of route options and we opted for one that seemed to take more back roads. We are intrigued by all the rice fields and the different stages of growth that rice fields seem to be in.
As we walked along a pathway we noticed that cherry lanterns were lined up on both sides.
Then we saw why, there was a cherry festival going on. It was time to go check it out.
Our biggest challenge was to figure out which food to try. Couldn’t decide on just one, so we tried several.
Crepes, strawberry treats, fried cheese sticks, chicken nuggets and ice cream
Back to walking to walk some of those calories off.
Always enjoy the daffodils blooming.
After leaving the cherry festival, we thought that our next destination was our campground for the night. As we were walking down the street we noticed a young man who was walking on the other side of the street. He was walking parallel to us then he crossed the street and was walking next to us. He was typing on his phone and then handed it to us. He told us that he was going to visit a temple that wasn’t on the 88 temple route, but he thought that it was a very important temple. We said that we would like to go with him. We were camping tonight so didn’t have any obligations to be at the campground at a certain time. It wasn’t very far from the street. In fact we could see the roof of it from the highway. As we walked towards the temple, he told us about some of the difference between Shinto and Buddhism religions using his phone. As we got closer we could see the eyes on the top of the temple.
We walked thru the gate.
And saw the large statue of Kobo Daishi
Next stop was the basin to wash one’s hands with this description.
Nearby was this sculpture of Kobo Dasishi feet and this description.
After we had walked around the grounds looking at various things. Our friend went over to the office and knocked on the window. There was no response, but in front of the window was stamps that you could stamp your book. We asked our new friend to please do that for us.
He very carefully applied the stamps to our book. Just as he was finishing the last stamp, the Monk appeared and came out to talk to us. He wanted to know about us and why we were here. We told him and then he said would you like to see the inside of the Hall. Of course we said,” yes. “We took off our shoes and he led us into a room with a large sand mandala. He showed us the procedure for creating this masterpiece.
The white circle in the middle is from the light hanging above the mala. It is a form of meditation to build this sand mala.
Around the room were many different things. Some were about the Dalai Lama who had visited this temple. In fact this temple is known as patterned after Tibetan Buddhism.
The Monk who was showing us around had met the Dalai Lama several times.
A book from the Dalai Lama was displayed here. As we returned to where our shoes were, the Monk asked us again our purpose for being here. When we answered , he said follow me. He led us down a flight of stairs that went under the temple. The room was dimly lit, but enough to see the figures going around the wall. The monk explained that the figures represented the 88 deities of all the temples that we will or have visited. There were also more representing the deities from Koyasan. We felt fortunate to experience this unexpected event. We went back outside and as we were saying goodby, the Monk said that he wanted to go to Yellowknife to see the northern lights. We gave him one of our stickers of the Aurora Borealis from Alaska. He then went to his office and gave us a pen and a sticker of the temple. Then it was picture time.
Our new friend.
Don and I with smiles, what a day!
What a blessing to meet this man.
We said goodby to the young man and headed to the campground. We thought it was going to be direct, but as we passed a small store, we saw that this was where they made tatami mats. One of the employees saw us looking and invited us into the store. He showed us the process of how the mats are made then gave us little pockets made our of the material as ossettai.
By this time we didn’t have much daylight left so we had to keep moving as not to set up our tent in the dark. Perhaps if we had more time we would have checked out this coffee house.
It would have been fun to check the inside out. but not today.
Soon we saw the turnoff to the campground. When we arrived the office was closed, but the bathrooms were open. There was a sign showing us where to camp and soon, the tent was up and we were asleep . What a day.
Our campground
Accommodation Shiminnomori Park
Miles hiked 17.5