Day 14: Kochi City

Between the Yokohama Golf Tournament, train schedules, and mother and child reunions, we had fallen half a day behind our intended schedule. I had originally hoped to have two hard “push” days rewarded by a rest day in Kochi, but we were now about three and a half hours behind. There are no good places for pilgrims to stay near Temple 29, Temple 30 was too far and Temple 28 too near our intended beginning point for the day.

We had to revise our original plan, but I still wanted to walk the mileage between the temples. We ended at Akano Station in Geisei yesterday, so that was our beginning point today. Instead of proceeding directly to Temple 28, we would walk to Noichi Station, ride it into Kochi City, and take a half rest day. The next day we would walk a circular loop backward following Temple 30, Temple 29, and Temple 28, before going back again to Noichi Station filling in some missing miles of the henro michi (“pilgrim road”). There are no rules as to what order the temples are to be visited or at which you should start. Temple 1 is Temple 1 basically because it is closest for pilgrims coming from Osaka City and Honshu – the largest and most populated island of Japan.

It took us almost three hours to walk from Akano Station to Noichi Station and we arrived with plenty of time to catch the 11:54 a.m. train into Kochi.

Our first order of business was to visit Montbell, a French outdoor clothing and equipment store much like REI in the States. I needed a bigger pair of shoes. My toes were healing and toughening, but the pressure on their sides was still very noticeable and not particularly comfortable. Connor needed some new hiking socks to replace the pair he misplaced a few days ago and I had encouraged him to get some sort of lightweight day pack as the shoulder bag he was carrying wasn’t large enough to carry liquids on the days we had gone backpack-less.

At Montbell, the English-speaking clerk was very helpful and found me several options to try and we were out of the store in short order with our new shoes, socks and day pack. We dropped our bags off at our business hotel for the evening and headed out for lunch.

There is well known food court called Hirome Market that’s only minutes away from Kochi Castle. It’s a madhouse. Thirty or so small restaurants packed into a small building, each running about a half dozen tables with throngs of people sitting and eating, drinking, working or just passing through. Again, I was by far the tallest person in the entire place and Connor, while not second, was in the top ten. We did a loop around the entire market and settled on a place called “Bull”. The menu seemed manageable and we could sit inside a partitioned room rather than fighting for space in the table-filled hallways and central courts.

After we had ordered and sat for a bit, I noticed the smell of motor oil, looked over and saw a Kawasaki motorcycle that I had just ignored as part of the background decoration when we first entered. Connor and I agreed that the owner/cook likely rode it into work this morning.

After lunch, it was a calm afternoon at Kochi Castle. There was no way we were also going to fit in The Kochi Prefectural Makino Botanical Garden of my original planning, so we thought we may as well take our time. Don’t tell my nephew, but I found a nice secluded bench behind some bushes on the second tier of the castle grounds and took a 20 minute power nap.

After returning to the business hotel, we grabbed our sacks of not-so-gently used clothing and set out for dinner and a coin laundry. We found an Italian-style restaurant with a 24 hour laundromat nearby. Aside from me becoming a deer in headlights when the waiter barraged me, in Japanese, with questions as to whether I wanted my drink before or with my meal, which side dish I wanted, what kind of salad dressing I desired, and if we were going to be ordering dessert, that concluded the excitement for the day.