Luckily it was not snowing today, however, the walking pilgrim that I met at the Ryokan Yoshino said that there’re still much snow between Ippon-sugi (一本杉) and No.12 Shozan-ji. After a while I found this sign post with “Henro Korogashi (A steep trail letting the pilgrims rolling down)”. 1/6… so I’ll see this 6 times… …
It is still more than 20 Km walk from WEEK Kamiyama to No.13 Dainichi-ji. I could enjoy beautiful scenery in local small villages and the mountains during walking. Sometimes the henro route is split to different routes (and of course, it will merge again). Between each temples, there’re sometimes “Bangai-reijyo (番外霊場)” which also have strong …
It looks unique because Jyoraku-ji is built on rocky place as you can see in this picture. There is no tour pilgrims, and it’s crispy fine today. There’re also some cats walking around this area, so I can enjoy quiet atmosphere very much. It turns out that they’re just stray cats according to the lady …
It’s obvious that the main temple is under construction, even though magnificent main gate welcomed me at No.15 Kokubun-ji. By the way, there’re actually 4 Kokubun-ji in 88 temples along the Shikoku Henro Pilgrimage, and this is the first one (Awa Kokubun-ji) located in Tokushima prefecture (Awa-no-kuni), while other 3 are located in Kochi, Ehime …
I didn’t expect myself to be such hungry… indeed I realized that I need energy to walk 🙂 I found that Tomiya which is famous for its Tossaka-ramen (Tossaka seems to be the name of the area) is located along the route. I’m bit afraid that it might be closed already, since it already passed …
This big red Chinese style Nio-gate appeared in the residential area, and the precincts of the temple is also large. After finishing reading the Heart Sutra, a young man who seems to do pilgrimage by bicycle approached me and started to talk various things. Then he says some bad things about the chief priest at …