Day 11: Temples 24 and 25

I should have brought larger shoes. I had read that long distance hikers should buy their shoes from one-half to a full size bigger. I bought one-half size bigger and the only place I’m getting blisters is between my toes because my feet are expanding to the sides and have nowhere to go. They’re on the inside pinky toe and inside ring-finger toe on both feet. They did’t make walking painful, but I did feel a bit of pressure while walking. Three of them have subsided and are callusing, but the furthest right blister ripped when I attempted to take off the Leukotape coving it before bathing. The skin is still tender and raw, but I’m covering the spot with Neosporin and a bandaid before walking.

I didn’t sleep particularly well last night because I was stiff from the long walk yesterday. I did a lot of stretching and massaging of my legs and back which seemed to help a lot. I added Vitamin I (ibuprofen) to breakfast this morning and that seemed to help with some of the swelling.

It was a three-and-a-half hour walk to Temple 27 from Lodge Ozaki and we got started a little after 7:00 a.m. Within 30 minutes we came upon Meotoiwa (“Couple Rock”) – two large rocks connected to each other with a rope and are said to be married. While there, Connor made several attempts to call home, but was unsuccessful. (Connor’s mother, he is sincerely trying to call you. Maybe we can arrange some FaceTime through my iPhone?)

We continued down Prefecture Road 55 much the same as yesterday – mountains on the right, ocean on the left.

After two-and-a-half hours, we came upon a giant statue of Kukai looking out over the ocean from the temple complex of Raieiji. There is a mini map of Shikoku under his sandaled feet showing the (very loosely approximate) location of each of the temples in the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage.

We took our pictures and another couple hundred yards to the next location on our itinerary. My nephew actually asked if we could go there as it wasn’t written in my printed schedule. It suddenly occurred to me that it was so mind-numbingly obvious that we would be stopping here that I never even bothered to write it down. The site is Mikurodo – a pair of caves where Kukai lived and meditated until finally achieving enlightenment.

One hundred yards or so after starts the climb up to Temple 24 (Hotsumisakiji – “Cape Temple”). At 165 meters above sea level, the climb wasn’t too difficult.

At 1:00 p.m., we started descending west side of Cape Muruto to begin our trek back north toward the city of Kochi, the largest city in Kochi Prefecture. We attempted several restaurants for a late lunch, but they were closed. We finally found a okonomiyaki shop about 20 minutes from Temple 25. We stepped in, asked for a menu, and the proprietor pointed us to the wall. I was all in Japanese. There was a kanji character I didn’t recognize starting almost every item, so, whatever it meant, that was probably what we were going to be eating. I was able to read the hiragana characters for soba noodles and udon noodles and I recognized the Kanji character for “meat” and “enter/insert”. We were getting something with udon noodles with meat and another something with soba noodles with meat. It turned out fine. I think the first Kanji meant something like “fried”, but I don’t remember it to look up right now.

We got to Temple 25 (Shinshoji – “The Temple of the Illuminating Seaport”) at 3:00 p.m., performed the rituals at the Hondo and Daishido, and headed to our lodge (Minshuku Urashima) for the evening. We had toyed with the idea of going Temple 26, which is only about a a 30 minute climb near the minshuku, but our lunch break had eaten up some time and I didn’t relish the idea of another climb today. We’ll do it first thing tomorrow.