Day 42: Bekkaku Temple 12

Today was a short, one-temple day. We are heading back into the interior of Shikoku tomorrow to reach Bekkaku Temples 13, 14 and 15 and there are not a lot of inns back there behind the mountains. I had wanted to get to a lodge called Moriso today, however I had delayed booking it as we were juggling our schedule over the past few days. By the time I was ready to book it, the small inn was already full. We have a space there tomorrow instead.

It’s probably for the best that we had an easier day today as the next three may prove to be difficult. A lot of distance and a lot of elevation changes. Three days from now, we should be attempting Temple 66 which is the highest main temple at 912 meters. That doesn’t include the walk to get there beforehand and the fact that we have to walk back down once again toward the seaside afterward. I had played with the idea of requesting a zenkonyado (free temple stay) at Temple 66, but there’s no guarantee we’d get one. We would then have to take the rope way down as it’ll already be getting late and then find lodging. I’ve seen YouTube videos of other people staying at Temple 66 and it is a remote temple, so there’s a possibility getting permission to stay won’t be as troublesome as I fear.

——————————————————————————————————
Kukai met a disabled man here while walking what would later become the pilgrimage. He gave the man a semmai-doshi with a secret letter written on it. (A semmai -doshi is a very thin slip of paper with one of Buddha’s names written on it. Devotees are to eat the paper with water to encourage good health.) The disabled man swallowed the semmai-doshi and was immediately cured. The temple is now known for sending semmai-doshi throughout Japan.
——————————————————————————————————

We finally got our hamburger cravings met today. We’ve been avoiding McDonald’s, but I had been wanting to trying the Japanese chain restaurant Mos Burger. I attempted to order a cheeseburger, but ended up accidently ordering a cheeseburger with chili on it. No complaints. Well … there was no ketchup for the fries … but otherwise no complaints.

We had plenty of time between eating lunch and when we could check in at Business Hotel Mild, so we decided to visit a local ice cream shop to eat up some of that time.

The business hotel wasn’t serving dinner tonight, so we set out to find some place to have dinner. Our hotel seems to be in a sort of restaurant desert. At least, for a Sunday evening after 6:00 p.m. So we settled with a stop at Family Mart for dinner.