Day 2, Temples 6-10, 24.6km

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We woke at around 5am when the sun started coming up. We’d had about 4hrs sleep. We were a stone’s throw from Temple 6 and arrived just after it opened at 7am. It was a large Temple and had a beautiful koi pond.

Temple 6, Anrakuji
Temple 6, Anrakuji
Temple 6, Anrakuji
Temple 6, Anrakuji

The trail started out on roads through a residential area and after a few hours we were walking through rice and vegetable fields. One section had about 10 posters warning you of the dangerous mamushi snake but we didn’t see any.

Temple 7, Jurakuji
Temple 7, Jurakuji
Temple 8, Kumadaniji

Lunch (sushi) was at a convenience store again. It has been quite amazing how few shops/restaurants/convenience stores there are along the path – I’m used to everything being at your fingertips from living and travelling throughout Japan and it’s really not like that here. The 2 restaurants we passed in almost 25km had both closed down!

Sushi and orange juice from a convenience store for lunch

It was another very hot and humid day which made walking with a heavy pack quite hard. (12 kgs plus food and water).We bought water and sports drinks at every vending machine we passed trying to keep hydrated.

Temple 7,8, 9 & 10 were all quite close to each other and we spent about half an hour at each, reciting the sutras and getting our book stamped. The path up to Temple 10 consisted of 333 steps; we left our packs at the bottom!

Steps up to Temple 10, Kirihataji
Temple 10, Kirihataji

Over lunch we planned where we would try to stay the night and agreed on a free hut next to a bathhouse – after 2 days of this humid weather we were desperate for a shower! We got to the hut around 5pm and it was perfect – it was literally next to the bathhouse, had a toilet nearby, had tatami mats on the floor, a washing machine and dryer outside and a table outside to sit at… I can’t believe it was free to stay the night.

Henro hut next to Kamonoyu bath, free

We went straight to the bathhouse (Dave’s first Japanese bath experience) and after washing (by sitting on a small stool outside the bath), I immersed myself in the ice cold  bath to cool down… I couldn’t face the hot bath after such a hot day! We planned out the next day, did our washing and then went to find some dinner.

We bumped into a Japanese ‘Henro’ (pilgrim) called Miyako who we had kept seeing over the past 2 days and we all had a lovely dinner together.

There’s a typhoon expected to hit tomorrow afternoon so we need to leave early tomorrow as it’s supposed to be the hardest day of the entire walk! Hopefully the typhoon will cool things down a little 🙂

Day 2, Temples 6-10

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