October 23

October 23...mountain temples

We Left our minshiku at 6:45am....but before we leave it for good first some words about it and the other places that we have stayed. Our lodgings is always a crap shoot. We don't know anything about them except the name, phone number and location, so sometimes it's good and sometimes you wish you'd never left home. Last night's lodgings was worrisome at first. The inn keeper redirected us from the front steps to the side, showing us the furo and the sentaki (bath and clothes washer) located semi-outside on the ground level. Our room was on the second floor above a car port, and so we immediately started to think “Oh no, we have to walk down the stairs to the outside to a toilet in the middle of the night in a yukata. What have we got ourselves into?” But our first impression was wrong; our room had its own sink and toilet, such luxury. Further, he brought our meals to us. All this for the cheapest cost of 5000 yen each.

In the morning we walked to the 2 mountain temples that we had done while a typhoon was in the area. First, let me do a flashback. FLASHBACK...4 YEARS AGO. We were here and we or I should say that I thought we could do the walk before the typhoon's full impact arrived, l thought (or didn't) no problem, just a little rain. I was wrong 100 %. Not acquainted with typhoons (aka as hurricanes) I didn't understand the possible dangers. When we left our minshiku it was already raining heavily and it only got more intense. So even though the worst was some hours away, it was already BAD. The rain got stronger until it was pouring, oo-ame, and the only reason the wind wasn't blowing us around like kites in a gale was because we were being sheltered by the trees. We were so dumb about the henro michi then that we took a mountain route that doubled or tripled our walk, the last thing that we needed. The trail had turned into creeks, puddles, and streams. I still remember the last section as a nightmare. It was about a block long descent to the temple. Through the mist and rain, all I saw was a river of water flowing down the hill. I don't know how we made it but we did. As soon as we emerged from the woods the wind tore Emi''s umbrella apart. We called it a day right then and there, phoning for a taxi that took us to the next temple and then to our ryokan. We checked in about 11am, wet through and through. The next day we surveyed the damage. The river, the ocean had crested the levees and people had waterlogged belongings lining the street. One home was halfway in the river, and a car was in the middle of the river. The path along the river was washed out in sections and we had to climb over debris. Yes I must admit we were dumb gaijin (foreigners). We had a map but didn't know how to read the Japanese writings; we had no concept of the dangers of a typhoon, and we didn't know where we were going. Today was so different. We could read the map and knew where we were going. We made the correct turn this time and shaved 45 minutes off the walk. This time it was just raining a bit (Ame ga botchi botchi futte iru.), more of a bother than anything else, just another long walk with some steep climbs.

By the end of the day I was again ready to crash. Emi made reservations at a place called Kirara. It turned out to be a furo place, a seto (public baths). I actually liked it. It was not a working man's type pf place. The baths were huge, clean, and invigorating. It was a bummer that our actual sleeping site was a short block away from the baths forcing us to walk back and forth twice in our yukata and getas through the rain. But hey it's Japan. No one gave us a look. Here we are the norm.