88 Temple Shikoku Pilgrimage - Day 1

Day 1 - 2016-04-02 - Saturday

Tokushima

Got up early to pack our bags and go down to the restaurant for breakfast at 7:30, followed by an all hands meeting at for introductions and a short briefing. We will depart immediately after the meeting. Breakfast was buffet style, with both Japanese and Western food. I ate from both cuisines: cold cooked veggies, scrambled eggs and bacon. Delio got a hard boiled egg, and when he cracked it he discovered it was raw not the cold, hard boiled egg that he assumed it to be. The Japanese like to crack a raw egg on top of the rice in the rice bowl, mixing the two together, the hot rice warms the raw egg, but does not quite cook it. Guess they are not afraid of salmonella.

At the meeting the guides gave an overall briefing, described the walk for today and we all introduced ourselves. There are 12 customers and 3 guides.  Of the customers we have 6 men and 6 women, we are mostly middle-aged with two outliers, one in late twenties the other in early eighties.  There is a couple, a mother-son team, and two groups of friends. Five are from Australia, two from Brazil, two from Canada, and the rest from USA. We have quite a diverse group, but I guess we all like to hike, or else we wouldn’t be here.

After the briefing we got on a bus and took off to temple 1, today we are visiting temples 1-5. On the way we stopped at a convenience store to buy lunch. That's how we'll do lunch everyday. The store (Lawson) has a large section of prepared meals and sandwiches. we each choose what we want and the head guide pays for everybody. I got a "bento box " containing rice, pickled vegetables and breaded pork, and a bottle of unsweetened green tea. It took a while for us to make our lunch selection as we had to inspect the packages carefully to ascertain the contents by looking through the plastic wraps. Sometimes we could guess what it was, but most of the time we couldn’t, so the local guide was quite busy helping us out with translations.

Lunch bought and packed in our backpacks, we were driven to Temple 1, Ryozen-ji, but before entering the temple grounds we were taken to a store to buy the things the Shikoku pilgrims wear and carry.  Most people bought the white jacket and the conical straw hat, typically used by the Japanese henros, but Delio and I didn't. We bought the other stuff: candles, incense, a small stole and a book with sketches of the 88 temples and blank pages for the stamps and calligraphy you can get at each temple. This book is the equivalent of the “pilgrim passport” of the Camino de Santiago, the Way of St. James.

We then walked to the temple and were briefed on the ceremony described in the introduction one performs at each temple. It’s optional but is performed by all Japanese henro.

Below are photos of the Temple 1.

Delio ringing the temple’s bell:

A small altar:

Group of pilgrims reciting the Heart Sutra at the main hall:

A Pagoda style temple:

On Temple 1 there was a group of volunteers offering oranges and orange juice to pilgrims as osettai - small gifts to show compassion and support for the pilgrim in his trek:

At Temple 1 we also came across a small pilgrim:

She was visiting the temples with her grandma:

The first five temples are in the suburbs of Tokushima, so today’s hike was mostly on sidewalk or  pavement along narrow streets. Most of the neighborhoods had simple houses, many with small plots of vegetable gardens. There was something being cultivated in any available space. But there were a couple of nice neighborhoods also, with houses like the one below.

Small Shinto shrine by the side of the street:

Gate to Temple 2, Gokuraku-ji:

Temple 2 garden:

Gate to Temple 3, Konsen-ji:

Temple 3 main hall:

A pilgrim Buddhist monk praying at Temple 3:

After visiting the Temple 3 we took our lunch break. There was no trash can at the temple, there were no trash cans on the streets, the houses can only put their trash can out on the day of the collection and the empty trash cans cannot be left on the street. In spite of this absence of trash cans, there is no trash anywhere. We had to carry our trash back to the hotel for disposal. This is quite different from the experience of the Camino de Santiago, where you find litter along the trail and toilet paper strewn behind bushes.

After our lunch break we continued on to Temple 4.

88 Temple Pilgrimage Trail marker:

Walking between small plots being prepared for rice:

We had a short break from pounding the pavement, before going back to walking on streets:

While walking from temple 3 to 4, we went by a house where there was a large family celebration and they invited us to stop, offered us tea, cookies,  beer and sake. We accepted the osettai of cookies and tea, but politely declined the liquor. It seemed that some of the celebrants were well into enjoying their booze. As in most Japanese celebrations, they had a karaoke machine going:

Temple 4 gate:

Fully decked out pilgrim leaving Temple 4:

Temple 4 main hall:

Temple 4 main hall altar:

Our cohort at Temple 5, Jizo-ji:

Temple 5 main hall:

We were back at the hotel in downtown Tokushima by 5 PM, with just enough time to hit the onsen and go to the 6:30 dinner at a private dining hall. Onsen is the hot spring baths. The hotel is in the downtown area, the mountains are several miles away, but the water from the hot springs is piped into the hotel. Baths from hot springs are prized by the Japanese. This onsen was located on the top floor, with separate baths for men and woman.

As everything in Japan, there is a protocol to be followed at the onsen. First you must take your shoes or slippers off before entering the changing room, usually a tatami covered raised floor. After taking all of your clothes off you proceed  to the pool area carrying only the small hand towel/washcloth provided to you. Along one of the walls there is a row of washing stations, each with a low stool, a mirror, a handheld shower-head, a bucket, soap, and rinse cream. You take a seat at one of the stations and proceed to completely wash yourself, scrubbing with the provided soap and towel. Rinse yourself quite thoroughly, it's not acceptable that you leave a film of soap as you enter the hot pool! Do the same with the hand towel. 

Thoroughly clean and rinsed, fold the hand towel and put it over your head, you are now free to immerse yourself in the hot pool. Why the folded towel on top of your head you may ask? There is no place to hang it, even if there were, they all look alike, it would be possible to mistakenly take someone else’s towel when leaving, what a horror that would be! Additionally, due to condensation, drops of cold water may came down from the ceiling, the towel protects you from being startled by a drop of cold water while you are peacefully relaxing in the hot water.  Oh, under no circumstance let the towel touch the pool water.

There is also a cold shower and a tank filled with running cold water that you scoop with buckets to pour over yourself to cool your body down before repeat immersions in the hot pool. Clean, relaxed and refreshed, you use the same little towel to dry yourself off, twisting off the excess water.  The onsen was fantastic.

We had a fantastic kaiseki, the traditional multi-course Japanese food dinner. Afterwards  we went to a folklore dance show, the Awa Odori (“dance of Awa”), at the Awa Odori Kaikan Theatre in Tokushima.