September 29

September 29th...a long walk in the rain

We walked 18 miles today, and at first it was dry but it started slowly to drizzle at 10am and then it came down in earnest. It wasn't a downpour (ooame), just a steady moderate rain. There were no temples today, only the long walk. We have 5 more long walks with one shorter day thrown in. I must admit that I was a bit tired by the time we got to the minshuku, but a long hot bath, a nice nap before dinner and I'm ready to do it again tomorrow.

The day started with an act of kindness from the hotel that we stayed, the nice one. We wanted a taxi to take us back to the start of the trail (We had to walk in to the hotel and didn't want to walk back out the mile to the trail.) but the staff insisted that they drive us. They didn't have to, but they did. It was complete surprise.

Later in the day we were doing our thing, walking and talking when we past two boys about 7 years old. This trip the children that we run across is much less likely to say good morning or good afternoon, and neither did these two boys, and they passed us by without saying anything. We hadn't gone very far when they returned to say gambate (“Keep going; you can do it.”) and then added something like, “See you,” It was very cute.

And talking about kids, some days ago we saw a typical scene, a la Japanese style, where a mother had come out into the street to see her son, who was about 10, off to school. The son was trudging down the small street some 20 feet away from his mother when we saw them. She was still lovingly watch him walk away from her after saying good-by, “ittterashai”, and we clearly heard his audible response, “hazakashii” (embarrassing). At that point he saw us, and I smiled a smile that I hope said to him, “That's the way it is kid, and be thankful that you have a mother that loves you.”

Today we went through several tunnels. The path through them varies from elevated sidewalks with handrails to a 3 foot lane with a painted white line separating you from the cars. The worst tunnel was fairly long, about a 10+ minute walk, and devoid of lights in the middle. At that dark point Emi slowed down because she couldn't see, and I was shouting to her to run because no one could see anything else, especially not two pedestrians in a tunnel.