Day 4: Bekkaku 2, Temple 13 – 16

After the grueling challenge of Day 3, I finally felt like I got some good sleep at Uemura Ryokan. I wasn’t just laying trying to sleep, but actually felt myself wake up. After breakfast with the other pilgrim guests, we followed the Akui River valley back to Tokushima. It was going to be a much easier day as there were no major elevations changes scheduled today.I

t started sprinkling lightly and as we passed the more talkative guest from the previous night sitting by the side of the road pulling out some rain gear, he turned to us, smiled, pointed to the sky, said, “Ame” [rain], and laughed. We decided to wait to see if it got any worse before breaking out our own rain gear when it started raining harder. We pulled over under an eave, pulled on our rain gear and then the rain stopped.

We continued through a very light stop-and-start drizzle 7 km until we reached the 641 meter-long Dogakuji Tunnel. I knew from previous research that Japanese tunnels “suck” to walk in. They’re dark, not well ventilated, and they can be long. Since I knew going in, I really didn’t mind because I knew going in, but halfway through the tunnel, Conner declared, “This sucks.”

After the tunnel, we cut over the Dogakuji Temple (Bekkaku 2). Connor and I both thought it was really a lovely, small set of temples across and open ground.

We returned back through the tunnel on our way to Dainichiji (Temple 13). Dainichiji is interesting as it has a Shinto shrine directly across the street which is consider its okunoin (“inner sanctuary”). We had already planned to go across the street to get some pictures before moving on.

We were making decent time, but we still had three more temples to visit before the 5:00 p.m. cutoff when temple offices close and you have wait until next day to get your nokyocho. We hit Jurakuji (Temple 14) a little after 2:00 p.m. and Kokubunji (Temple 15) a bit after 3:00 p.m.

Just a 2 km walk up to Kokubuji (Temple 15) which is the state run temple for the prefecture of Tokushima. I had a little confusion with the monks at the temple office as I was trying to collect beads from the Bekkaku temples to create a Buddhist-style rosary. There are only 20 bekkaku temples but 21 is considered a lucky number, so some temple has to provide the 21st bead. The woman at first bekkaku temple told me they would offer the 21st bead at Temple 15, but she actually meant Hashikuraji (Bekkaku Temple 15) and not Kokubunji (Temple 15). My mistake. They were very gracious about the confusion I caused them.

Through a misplacement of a pin in one of map electronic maps, we ended up at the wrong temple for Konnonji (Temple 16), but the correct temple was only an 8 minute walk away. However, if we had taken the correct route to Temple 16, we wouldn’t have run into the young man with a truck full of fresh tomatoes which he offered to us as ossettai. We both thought it was really nice, until we tasted the tomatoes. Then it became AMAZING! They were soooo good!

Afterward, it was a quick walk to our hotel for the evening.