Day 45: Main Temple 66

We ended up “cheating” a little this morning. We had been planning to request a tsuyado (free temple stay) at Temple 66 as it is the highest temple along the pilgrimage and there are no lodging nearby, even after you get to the bottom. I had been in communication with Vincent whom we’d walked with the other day via Facebook Messenger. He had stayed at the tsuyado and let me know that there wasn’t much provided beyond an unheated room and a couple of yoga mats. It’s free, so you can’t really complain. He wasn’t set up for camping, so he’d spent a cold, miserable night trying to sleep. We weren’t set up for camping either, so I got the idea to search for a nearby store selling outdoor equipment.

While mainly a home improvement store, Kohnan was nearby and seemed like it might carry a small selection of camping gear. However, it wasn’t scheduled to open until 10:00 a.m. We made the decision to get a late start to see if Kohnan could keep us from freezing tonight and take a bus back to the trailhead up to Temple 66 instead of walking. There would be a possibility that the temple’s tsuyado room could already be taken by another pilgrim and we would have to quickly get down off the mountain to find other lodging before dark. It’s a bit of a gamble of what time you need to arrive.

After a leisurely 7-Eleven breakfast at the train station, we entered Kohnan just as they opened. While the camping gear selection was indeed limited, we found two cheap sleeping bags and an insulating mat. Together one sleeping bag and one mat cost about USD $36. That seemed worth the price to stay by ourselves in a temple compound on top of a mountain in Japan.

The bus didn’t leave until 12:01 p.m. and it arrived near the trailhead 24 minutes later. The path we had selected was another henro korogashi (“pilgrim falls over”) path to anther nansho (“difficult journey”) temple. We had food for lunch, dinner, and tomorrow’s breakfast, newly acquired camping gear, and half-full water bladders … and it was raining. It was a brutal first hour of climbing. The packs were heavy, the path was steep, and the rain and humidity kept my glasses fogged so that I eventually took them off. My vision without them is terrible.

After the first hour, the path evened out a bit and joined with a road. We stayed on the road almost the rest of the way to the temple. The trip took less time than we had originally anticipated and we got there after only two hours of climbing.

After performing our temple duties, we were able to secure the tsuyado room for the night. It’s small, clean, wood-lined room attached to the restroom facilities. I was drenched and cold from the climb, so laid under the sleeping bag on the reflective mat for an hour to warm myself up while Connor went out to take pictures. I was still feeling a bit chilly when I got up, but the vending machines up here also carry warm drinks. So I got a warm tea to sip and that seemed to chase away the shivers I’d been experiencing, allowing me to venture out to take my own photos.

One thing Unpenji is known for is 500 life-size statues (all men), so here’s a bunch of pictures of them.