Today was a day of osettai. Last night I was able to meet with friends I met during my last ohenro pilgrimage. I stayed at their temple in Fukui. We went to a nice Japanese restaurant and was presented with osettai, a bag of candy, tissue holders and some matcha (powder green tea). What a wonderful gesture they remembered I like matcha green tea. As well, they gave me a picture of the scroll I had made as osettai that is hanging in their temple.
It has all of the 88 temple 1200 year anniversary slips that I collected from my last two pilgrimages. We met for breakfast and took a photo with Bob outside the hotel before we headed off for Temple 65.
It was very nice to see them again and I hope they get to visit me in Canada someday.
At the hotel we were able to wash all our sweaty clothes from our 2 day climb of Mt Ishizuchi. It is nice the hotels and minshuku have laundry machines.
While at Temple 65, we met a couple from British Columbia. What a small world. I had a nice chat with them.
Here are some of the rest of my Temple 65 photos.
On the way to Temple 66, we saw a couple trimming weeds. We said our normal “Ohio gozaimasu” – good morning greeting in Japanese as we walked by. Then we heard them yell ohenro-san and called us to come for a drink. We went back and they gave us a couple drink containers and could speak some English. Bob gave them each a Canadian flag pin. What another wonderful gesture of osettai.
As we walk along the country road we passed some beautiful Japanese gardens and I like how the use pop cans to make wind spinners.
We passed by one of the other 20 temples called bekkaku that are along the pilgrimage route. I stopped and did the heart sutra with a bus group of pilgrims that were there and got my booked stamped. Because we were walking pilgrims she said no charge for the book stamp and gave us each a can of coffee as osettai.
One of my favorite ohenro statues is there, so I had to take another photo of it.
As well I took some of the other statues.
On the way to minshuku Okada we had to walk thru a tunnel, which is always a bit scary, especially with large trucks passing by and you only have a walkway (sidewalk) the width of your body. The noise of the vehicles is so loud and the air suction as they pass by. I said to Bob just concentrate on one step at a time and we will make it to the other end. It was nice to get out of the tunnel back to peace and quiet.
We stop at my favorite udon restaurant and had tempura udon. At the end, the waiter gave us a small piece of cake and orange slice as osettai. Since there is no tipping in Japan, we gave him a Canadian flag pin and ohenro crest.
It was a wonderful day of receiving osettai.
The weather was perfect for walking, cloudy with sunny breaks and cool.
Finally a couple flower pictures for my Auntie from today’s walk.
Tomorrow we will do the big climb to Temple 66, a 900 meter climb.
88TemplesBlog 