J³ (James, Joel, Japan)

Japan uses the abbreviation “ATM” for ATMs, same as English – pronounced “eh tii emu” – despite not using the full term “automatic teller machine” at all. They also use the English words “cash point” too. Near as I can tell, while there is a Japanese term for the things, it’s not in particularly common usage.

The town of Nikko, in Tochigi Prefecture, was built up around Rinno-ji, which was established in the year 766, and then Chuzen-ji in 784 – Tosho-gu didn’t arrive until 1617 – and it’s long been a popular destination for visitors from Edo, and later the rest of the world. Like I mentioned yesterday, if tourists in Tokyo take a day trip out of the city, for the most part it’ll either be to Nikko or Hakone (which is near the foot of Mount Fuji). And this place certainly had the foreigners to show for it. In 2006, Nikko was merged with the much larger city of Imaichi, but since Nikko was more famous, the new larger city was named Nikko, and Imaichi City Hall became Nikko City Hall (which has the slightly annoying effect that if you ask Google Maps where Nikko is, it’ll plonk the marker about ten kilometres away from what you’re actually thinking).

Right up until the moment I checked in to this hotel, I was unable to determine whether or not it offered breakfast. If it didn’t, it’d be the first hotel I’d stayed at in Japan that did not. Fortunately, I was informed while checking in that it does. So this morning, I headed down to the breakfast room for breakfast as early as I could (instead of having to head out to the nearest convenience store). Similar sort of foods – including curry, again – but with French onion soup instead of miso. Many foreigners in the room with me.

Today I had a big day planned, heading up into the mountains of Okunikko – Inner Nikko – so I wanted to get the earliest bus I could manage so I’d have the most time. With the issues buying a ticket yesterday (and the festival at Toshogu), I almost swapped my plans for today and tomorrow, but as I’m leaving Nikko tomorrow, that’d leave me with a long day of sightseeing followed by travel, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to do that. Also, in one of those nice coincidences, my visit to Nikko happens to be right at the time the Okunikko area saw peak autumn colours for the last two years – and my October visit was supposed to be for autumn leaves – except… according to the Japan Guide autumn leaf blog, unusually warm weather has delayed the start of autumn leaves this year, so while it’s beginning to turn now, it’s not quite at peak yet. So I also pondered swapping today and tomorrow to give them another day to change, buuut… see previous justification for not swapping.

So I decided to just head for the station early and hope the office opened before the posted time.

It didn’t. So I ambled over to the ATM to get some money out so that I could afford to pay for the buses, then ambled back over… suddenly noticing, with mere minutes to spare before my bus arrived, that the ticket office had machines which sold the two-day free passes. So I hastily stuffed money into the machine, grabbed my ticket, and scuttled over to the stop, just in time… to join the line for the bus.

Hopped on when it came a couple of minutes later – but so full I had to stand the whole way – and off we went, up through the town of Nikko. At the top of the town, the bus started climbing into the mountains, up the quite famous Irohazaka Road – almost guaranteed you’ve seen pictures of this before in lists of “amazing travel pictures” or something. It’s a road with a long series of switchbacks – the uphill and downhill roads are separate, and between the two roads, there’s precisely forty-eight corners, which is also the same number of characters in the hiragana syllabary, and the poem Iroha has every hiragana character precisely once each, hence the name. The “-zaka” means “hill”, so an equivalent English name might be Quick Brown Fox Hill, though as Iroha is also used as an alternate “alphabetical” order for hiragana, ABC Hill probably works just as well. Each corner is numbered, and named with the corresponding hiragana character from the Iroha poem.

At the top of the road was my first stop: Akechidaira, a mountaintop plateau accessed by a ropeway from the bus stop, which gave a great view over the surrounding countryside – including the Kegon Falls, regarded as one of Japan’s three greatest waterfalls, along with Nachi in Wakayama (visited in 2017) and Nunobiki in Kobe (visited in 2018)… depending on who you ask. I actually wasn’t expecting the ropeway to open until 9, and my bus arrived at 8:35 – since the next bus wouldn’t arrive until ten past nine, though, arriving at 8:35 and queuing for the first ropeway trip would maximise my time… except it was open when I arrived, so I was able to go straight up. Along with a full load of people.

I figured I could stay up there twenty minutes, and come down in time for the next bus, so I did – coming down with just one other person, so much more breathing room – but a family from Europe who had also been up there with me came down on the next ropeway trip, and still made it in time for the bus, so I guess I could have stayed longer.

Back on the bus – a much more comfortable coach-like bus, which was also much less crowded, so I got a seat – I headed right to the end of the line, Yumoto Onsen (the European family got off en route). (Weird thing – the bus stops on the way in the nearby town of Kotoku Onsen, except it stops only in the main driveway of the Nikko Astraea Hotel, and nowhere else in town – I wonder how the hotel managed to wrangle that.)

Yumoto Onsen is a town deep in the mountains, where hot water springs up out of the ground, like in the middle of a marsh. It’s very deep in the mountains – according to a sign outside Tobu-Nikko Station, the main town is at an altitude of 543 metres above sea level, and though I didn’t see a sign at Yumoto, according to my phone compass app, I was at an altitude of 1490 metres. As previously mentioned, I’d hoped to stay here – partly because it’d be in the middle of prime autumn colours, but yeah, there was no availability for me. And it’s not prime autumn colours. I was commenting yesterday how everything was nice and green – now I’m lamenting that it’s too green.

First, I went to see Onsen-ji. It’s a temple, in case it’s not clear from the name. A temple with an onsen, so after seeing the temple, of course I had a bath there. Had to buy a towel from the temple because I didn’t have the foresight to bring my own. It was only a little square bath, with maybe enough room for four, but I was fortunate enough to have it on my own for most of my visit. They suggest you stay at most half an hour to (a) let more people have a go, and (b) avoid getting hydrogen sulfide poisoning, but with no clock up, I had to guess. The water actually comes out at about 62-74°C, so there’s a cold tap so you can cool it down, but I didn’t want to overuse it in case I made it colder than others would have liked.

After the bath, I was shown to a tatami mat room and given a cup of tea and a senbei, so I spend some time relaxing and sipping. I bought a goshuin from the little old lady running the place – on paper, because there’s just the little old lady, no priest, and it’s somewhat larger than my shuincho, so it’s gonna need trimming too.

Then I went to see the hot spring marshlands, and in the process ran into a whole group of who I’m pretty sure were elementary school kids, from the matching coloured hats but lack of uniforms otherwise. Every now and then, one would say “hello” to me, and I’d say “hello” back, and then I said “konnichiwa” and got a whole chorus of “konnichiwa” back. One asked me if I was American – he was strangely impressed that I was actually Australian.

I left them behind to start my next activity: hiking. Yumoto Onsen is on the shore of Yunoko (“hot water lake”) which flows over the Yudaki (“hot water falls”) and into the Yugawa (“hot water river”), except… none of it is hot. Oh sure, there’s part of Yunoko where the hot water from the springs flows into the lake, so the water’s slightly warmer – enough that it’s the only part of the lake that doesn’t freeze in winter – but yeah, the rest of it is just regular water. Point is, I was going on a hike around the lake, down the waterfall, and along the river.

But first, on my way out of town, I stopped by Onsen Shrine. It was quite a cute little shrine, though with no onsen. No goshuin either, but according to a sign, it’s actually available from Futarasan Shrine, where I was yesterday. But yeah, then I went off on my stroll. And a nice stroll it was, through the alpine forest, with occasional yellow and red trees here and there, and a lovely view out over the lake. A lot of it was also along the roadway, which was not awesome, but it was still pretty. Munched on the chips I got from the supermarket yesterday as I walked.

Then I arrived at the Yudaki, and they were seriously impressive. I arrived at the top, naturally, and walked down the stairs leading to the bottom – and at the bottom, there was a viewing platform right in front of the falls, giving a spectacular view of them. And also a convenience store (playing Queen over the speakers, for some reason), and a restaurant, and a guy roasting ayu and dango over charcoal. I bought some Calorie Mate (it was the main reason I went to the supermarket yesterday, but couldn’t find it) and a drink, then got some dango – with a yuzu and miso sauce. At which point, the kids caught up. A different group of kids – I could tell, because they had different-coloured hats – but clearly related (I’d seen several different hats in Yumoto).

After my little rest, I continued on my walk – I was going to walk across the Senjogahara Plateau all the way to Ryuzu Falls. The first part of the walk was through the forest below, mostly along a boardwalk, over and across the river, and it was most pretty. But, when I reached the turnoff to start across the plateau, I discovered a sign saying the path was closed due to a landslide. *Shakes fist* Hagibiiiis! I mean, I don’t regret the walk, but it would have been nice to know beforehand.

Instead, I completed the loop path I was on, and headed back up the road to catch the bus, waiting with a pair of ladies. Waved at all the kids as they left on their bus, then hopped on mine. I hopped off again at the Akanuma stop (the name means “red marsh”) – it’s at the bottom end of the Senjogahara Plateau, and I’d hoped to get onto the plateau from that end, but… nope. A little bit sad, I decided to continue my intended walk – it was only a half hour’s walk from there to the Ryuzu Falls, where I’d originally intended to wind up.

(Researching now, if I’d really wanted to see the Senjogahara Plateau, I should have gotten off at the Sanbonmatsu (“Three Pines”) stop, because there’s a lookout platform, but I wouldn’t have been able to continue walking from there – I’d’ve had to continue by bus. I did manage to get this photo of the plateau from the bus on the way to Yumoto, though.)

It was a nice walk to the Ryuzu Falls, too, and a nice walk down them. The name means “Dragon’s Head”, though I’m not completely sure why. There was a souvenir shop and eatery built across the bottom of the falls, which gave a pretty nice view, but I honestly thought the Yudaki was more impressive.

By this point, it was getting on towards 3pm, so I decided to head straight for my next (and final) planned stop, and have something for… uh… linner later on. Dunch? Lunch-dinner, either way. At the bus stop, I encountered the same two ladies I’d come across back at Yudaki. From the bus, I saw a pair of monkeys crossing the road.

The final planned stop: seeing the Kegon Falls up close. There’s a viewing platform right in front, and also a second one near the base – you take an elevator to get there, though it costs money. I’d hoped to see the falls in sunlight, but with clouds rolling in, I’d feared it was already too late – but when I got there, I discovered it was even worse, as the falls were almost completely obscured in mist. Though, there was a litter of kittens playing on the hillside behind the platform that were fun to watch. Clearly strays, mind.

I considered not heading down to the lower platform, but TV screen at the elevator station – and it really looked like a station – showed the view from the bottom was comparatively clear, so I went down after all. The elevator goes a hundred metres straight down. The view was quite spectacular. No cats, though. But lots of people in matching New Zealand All Blacks jackets. And soon the colour-hat kids started turning up, so I decided it was time to surface again. (Looking at my photos now, I noticed that there were other colour-hat kids on the lower platform back when I was up on Akechidaira.)

At the top, I wandered back into Chuzen-ji town to look for some linner. I pondered visiting the Chuzen-ji temple itself, but all the reviews of it I’ve seen basically said “meh”, so I passed. However, the town of Chuzen-ji appears to be similar to the town of Nikko in that it’s basically dead already by early evening. There was nowhere open to eat, at all. That I could find, at least.

Instead, I decided to catch the bus back down the Irohazaka while it was still at least a little bit light – I was able to get a seat this time, so I could actually admire the view. Dim as it was that close to sunset.

Back in town, I decided to eat dinner at the yuba-crazy place I’d considered last night – I got yuba katsudon, which is basically katsudon with a breaded and deep-fried patty of tight-rolled yuba in place of the meat. It was very tasty, though the flavour of the sauce was a little weak.

Headed back for the hotel afterwards. Brought my umbrella today so that I could displace my raincoat from my backpack in favour of my puffy jacket, but I wound up not needing it at all. Or the puffy jacket. Or the waterproof pants I’d also brought. Or, really, the thermals I was wearing – I’d even decided not to put on the bottom half again after my bath. Speaking of the bath, though, I can still smell the sulfur on my hands now, although I’d washed them several times over the course of the day, and even used hand sanitiser. Guess that means the medicinal effects are working?

Today’s photo count: eight hundred and thirty-eight

Today’s step count: 18,060 steps – 13.5 kilometres – 32 flights of stairs

Today’s goshuin count: Just Onsen-ji

Today’s stamp count: One, the Akechidaira Ropeway

(One quick note, speaking in not-pretending-I’ve-written-this-on-the-day-of mode, now: tomorrow’s (by which I mean, Saturday’s) plans may last late into the night, so it’s fairly likely that I’m about to fall even further behind on my posting…)

You know how sometimes you’re not really listening and you suddenly hear someone say your name? I’m certain that I heard my name said twice during speeches at the Ryusei Matsuri. And in the Japanese pronunciation, so it’s not like I heard something that just sounded familiar. I’m not even sure of what Japanese words would sound close enough to my name that it’d sound like it…

Started with a good ol’ Toyoko Inn breakfast. Though curiously, it included curry as an option, which I’m not sure I’ve ever seen at a Toyoko Inn before, but which I did see every morning at Comfort Stay Miyabi. Not sure about curry for breakfast, though…

Then I left the hotel and returned to Utsunomiya Station. Today’s destinaton: Nikko, on the Nikko Line, which starts at Utsunomiya. The Nikko Line platform was quite packed, and with a great deal of foreigners, which is unsurprising, as Nikko (along with Hakone) is one of the biggest tourist attractions near Tokyo – since I’ve been to neither before, I thought I’d rectify that this trip. On the platform, though, I found one “queue here” marker with noone queueing there, despite every other marker being at least eight or ten people deep. Not wanting to look a gift horse in the mouth, but feeling a tiny bit guilty, I queued there.

Hopped on the train, along with everyone else, and it wound up quite packed. Had a bit of an entertaining moment when I somehow hooked my camera strap through one of the zippers on my suitcase as I was throwing it into the luggage rack, so I almost threw myself up there too. Then I settled down to enjoy the ride. I managed to snag a seat, and I was in the rear carriage, so not many photos of the view. I could tell that this is a more touristy train because the announcements were all given in not just Japanese and English, but also Chinese and (I think) Korean (which I’m not really sure I would know by ear).

At the other end, everyone hopped off – and it was several degrees cooler than it was in Utsunomiya. Almost considering now if I want to wear the thermals tomorrow. In any case, first things first: check into the hotel. Since there’s no Toyoko Inns in Nikko, I’m staying in another hotel I found on Booking dot com – the Nikko Station Hotel 2, a couple of blocks from Tobu Nikko Station, which itself is a couple of blocks from the JR Nikko Station. It looks fairly new, though they seem to have a weird concrete-and-chipboard motif going.

With the luggage safely stored, I headed out unburdened for sightseeing. But first, I popped into a supermarket I’d spotted to maybe buy a Tupperware  container or something for my paper umbrella. I quite like how it’s a normal-looking supermarket with a mountain right behind. No luck with the container (best I could find was takeaway food containers, which’d probably squash too easily), but I decided to buy some snacks, including some morning tea – what I’d initally taken to be some kind of bread roll with tsubu-an (chunky red bean paste) in it, it turned out to be a fist-sized lump of straight red bean paste. It kinda sat in my stomach like… well, a fist-sized lump.

Also, saw this sitting in the supermarket car park – it’s a rice polishing station. If you grow your own rice (or are given au naturel rice by someone who does), you need to use this to get rice you can eat – cleans the husk off… and more, if you keep polishing. I’d heard about these before, but never actually seen one. Or at least, never noticed that I’d seen one. You don’t see them in the big cities.

From there, I decided to walk to Nikko’s biggest attraction: the UNESCO World Heritage listed “Shrines and Temples of Nikko”. It wasn’t a bad walk. Nice mountains all around. Crossed the Daiya River a few times, and even here there’s evidence of some hydraulic excitement in recent days (though Nikko largely escaped being hit by Hagibis, fortunately – though the Tobu line tracks have been severed between Kurihashi Station and Tochigi Station, so the Tobu trains aren’t running).

Soon, I arrived at the entrance to the temple complex, the Shinkyo Bridge. Though, “shinkyo” means “sacred bridge”, so really it’s just “the Shinkyo”. According to legend, it was first built by a god named Jinja-Daioh in the year 766, but it was first built in its current form in 1636, and rebuilt to the same pattern as needed. Until 1973, it could only be used by messengers of the imperial court, but in that year, it was opened to visitors. It costs 300 yen to cross, though, and because it’s not open at the other end, you need to cross back again, and then use the modern bridge to reach the temples. Also, it has its own goshuin, which surprised me, but only on loose paper, which I’m going to have to glue in (and also trim to size, because it’s slightly taller than my shuincho, so that’s definitely waiting until I can sit down with a steady hand and a good pair of scissors).

Headed inside, and ran right into a crowd. I discovered recently that Nikko Tosho-gu, the primary shrine of the complex, has an autumn festival on October 16th and 17th each year – which is to say, today and tomorrow. Discovered today that it’s one of the two Grand Festivals of the year (the other one being in May) – the main event is on tomorrow, featuring a grand parade of a thousand samurai, bringing the three portable shrines back from the Sojourn Hall (where they were taken in May) back to the main shrine. Today’s event was shinji-yabusame – sacred archery on horseback. And it’s a complete coincidence that I happen to be staying here these two days. (Think I’ll stick with my original plans for tomorrow, though, and not go back to Tosho-gu for the parade.)

Anyway, it was still a little while until the archery would start, so listened to the taiko drums that were being played for a bit, then wandered off to see my first temple in the complex: Rinno-ji. It’s actually the Buddhist counterpart Nikko Futarasan Shrine, also in the complex (and yeah, its got the same name as Futarasan Shrine in Utsunomiya) – Futarasan Shine enshrines three mountain kami, and Rinno-ji’s main hall, Sanbutsu-do – the Three Buddha Hall – enshrines three Buddhas (specifically, Amida Buddha, Thousand-Armed Kannon, and Horse-Headed Kannon) that are said to be the Buddhist manifestations of the mountain kami. It’s also the largest building in the complex.

No photos were allowed inside, and the outside was under renovation, but it was very impressive all the same – you walk around the outside hall of the building, and you can see large gold statues of the three Buddhas in the inner sanctuary, and then you climb down a flight of stairs, and you’re suddenly underneath the three Buddhas, looking up at them – there’s a storey-deep chasm between the Buddhas and the screen dividing the inner sanctuary and worship floor. I wonder how many other temples are like that – I always thought it was basically flat. It cost a little more than I would have expected to enter, but you could pay by Suica, which was interesting.

Once I’d emerged from there, it was about time for the horse riding to start. Standing at the back of the crowd, I tried using the Canon Camera Connect app on my phone for the first time – basically connects the phone to the camera (by a wifi signal generated from the camera) which lets me use the phone as a viewfinder and remote control. Then I could just hold my camera over my head, like a human selfie stick, and see quite easily. Quite tiring, though. It started with a procession of all the participants and their attendants in full costume, then the archery started. Each rider gallops uphill, shooting at three targets in succession while on the move – I was nearest the third target. I tried shooting a few riders in drive mode, and I think I got some ok shots. The third rider almost didn’t stop at the end, and knocked over one of the horse wranglers (though she was ok).

I also noticed, as I was jostling for a spot in the crowd, that there’s a signpost by the approach road marking the point at which is the altitude is precisely 634 meters (which, if you recall, is the height of the Tokyo Skytree – actually, side note here, the Tobu Nikko Line connects directly to the Tobu Skytree Line, so it’s possible to get there from here with one train… if the rails weren’t out).

Moved on from there soon, though, because I was starting to get peckish. And my arm was tired. I ate at a nearby eatery called Kishino, which specialises in the Nikko food specialty, yuba. Yuba is tofu skin – basically, the skin that forms on top of soy milk when you start heating it (the first step of making tofu). For a long time, it’s been an important source of protein for the vegetarian monks of the complex. I decided to order the yuba meal set (the most expensive item on the menu, but hey, I’m on holidays) – fresh yuba with soy sauce and wasabi, deep-fried yuba roll simmered in soy sauce, yuba with ground sesame dressing, and clear soup with dried yuba, with sides of simmered fern sprouts, pickled vegetables, and rice. Also included my old friend, the sponge.

After lunch, it was back up the hill to Tosho-gu. To be precise, this is the Tosho-gu Main Shrine – shrines named Tosho-gu enshrine Tokugawa Ieyasu, the first shogun of the Tokugawa Bafuku, and he was deified after his death as Tosho Daigongen (hence the name Tosho-gu). There’s currently about 130 Tosho-gu shrines in Japan – including the one in Ueno, which I visited back in 2017 – but what makes this one in Nikko the main shrine is that Ieyasu is actually buried here. Ieyasu’s son Hidetada ordered the shrine built to honour his father; his grandson Iemitsu had it greatly enlarged and lavishly decorated, and it’s certainly largely great and decorated lavishly – Tosho-gu has some forty-two buildings included in the UNESCO listing. The shrine cost 1300 yen to enter, though, which was a fair bit more than I’d expected.

Heading inside, the first thing I saw – after admiring the buildings of the outer courtyard – was one of the most famous decorations: the Three Wise Monkeys. It’s the second of eight wood-carved panels displaying monkeys in various stages of life which surround the Shogun’s stables in the shrine, and pretty much the only one known outside of Japan. They have names: Mizaru (see-no-evil), Kikazaru (hear-no-evil) and Iwazaru (speak-no-evil). Tosho-gu didn’t invent the idea, but it certainly popularised it. (Side note, the three monkeys are sometimes accompanied by a fourth monkey, folding his arms – Shizaru (do-no-evil). Also, the fact that they’re monkeys is a pun – the ~zaru suffix is actually a negative verb ending form, but it’s also coincidentally a voiced version of “saru” which means “monkey”.)

The second most famous decoration is the sleeping cat, Nemuri-Neko, which sits atop the archway leading to the stairs to Ieyasu’s mausoleum – it’s apparently inspired a whole generation of artists. It symbolises peace – aside from the fact that it’s sleeping, there’s also two sparrows on the reverse side. Both the cat and the monkeys (and, I presume, other carvings) had actually been restored in 2016 for the first time in sixty years, and they certainly looked pretty pristine now. That said, everything I’d heard before visiting said that the sleeping cat was behind a second paywall… I mean, ticket booth, and you couldn’t even see it (much less pass under it) without paying more money, but there didn’t seem to be anything in my way – perhaps that’s why the main entry cost so much.

So, I headed through, and up the two hundred and seven stone steps leading to Ieyasu’s mausoleum at the top, and though it was quite a climb, I rather enjoyed the greenness of everything, from the trees all around to the moss on the bannister. And right at the top, of course, was the mausoleum itself. And a vending machine, filled entirely with one brand of canned tea – you can have any drink you like up there, so long as it’s tea. And also a booth selling goshuin, as I’d half feared there might – feared, because I’d left my shuincho at the main shrine office to get a goshuin there. Fortunately, she was selling them on loose paper (actually, I think that might have been all she was offering) so I bought one. It’s exactly the same size as the shuincho, and, for some reason, yellow. Might trim it down a bit all the same.

Way back down at the main shrine, I entered the main building proper – had to leave the shoes outside. Like Rinno-ji, this was also under restoration. And no photos were allowed inside. And also it was filled with children on a school excursion – they were all sat down inside the worship hall for a short service, and I took the opportunity to see the sights and scram for the shoe shelves before they all came out at once.

Tosho-gu seen, it was off to the next shrine: Futarasan Shrine, at the other end of a long, straight approach road lined with stone lanterns (which might have belonged to Tosho-gu, I rather suspect) this shrine was quite pretty, and also contains several extra buildings in a ticketed enclosure, though this one cost a more reasonable 200 yen. One building was completely shrouded in scaffolding, but you could climb a flight of stairs into the scaffolding to see the restoration works underway. There was even a cafe in there selling teas and other drinks made with water from a sacred spring that was next door (though sadly it had juuust closed when I arrived… not that I drink tea). You could also drink straight from the spring, too. I had a taste, and it wasn’t bad (though hardly as “super delicious” as the signage around it claimed).

Heading out the front gate from there brought me to my final temple for the day (as everything was about to close): Taiyu-in. Although it’s called “-in” (one of the suffixes indicative of temples), and administered by Rinno-ji, it’s technically a Shinto shrine, as it enshrines Tokugawa Iemitsu (Ieyasu’s grandson, and the third  Tokugawa shogun). First, I encountered Jogyodo, a hall where walking meditation (= jogyo zanmai, hence the name of the hall) is practiced – it basically involves walking around the statue of buddha in the middle while chanting. I was instructed in how to do it by signs inside, but elected to pass on the chanting – it was, however, very serene in there. (Also, there was a sign up saying that the fifteenth of every month is a special day for goshuin, but I couldn’t read the sign well enough to ascertain exactly why. Shame today’s the sixteenth…)

From there, I headed into Taiyu-in. Again, very grand – but not quite as grand as Tosho-gu, to show deference to the grandfather – but also very peaceful. And while most shrines face south (because it’s auspicious), this one faces directly towards Tosho-gu.

I kinda thought this guy looks like he just got out of the shower.

As I left, I discovered the temple’s gate was closed – they were waiting in the temple office to return my shuincho, which I’d left to be inscribed, which made me feel a little but guilty about enjoying the serenity so much. There was a sign pointing the way up a nice-looking road to one more shrine that could have been worth a visit, but the sign also said it was about a twenty-five minute walk, and the sun was already about to set, soo… next time?

Instead, I caught the bus back to the station. I wanted to see if  I could buy a two-day value pass that’d cover my bus travels for tomorrow (and Friday, considering it’s a two-day pass, but tomorrow’s travel covers the entire cost on its own), but tragically, the bus ticket counter had already closed. And even worse, it won’t open tomorrow until three minutes after the bus I want to catch tomorrow departs. Gonna have to ponder what to do about this.

Instead, I topped up my Suica card (used it a lot at all the temples today) then went to find somewhere for dinner… and came up almost completely empty. It kinda seems like Nikko turns into a ghost town at night, and there’s practically no restaurants serving dinner. I was tossing up between heading for the Gusto family restaurant up the street, getting something from a convenience store, and a small eatery that seemed to be serving every dish known to man, except with the meat replaced with yuba, but eventually settled on a ramen shop in between. I had miso butter corn ramen. Then it was straight back to the hotel for blogging and sleep.

Today’s photo count: Seven hundred and fifty two.

Today’s step count: 16,444 steps – 12.4 kilometres – 39 flights of stairs (that’s a lot of stairs)

Today’s goshuin count: Nine. Monday’s record is still secure. From the right, then: Rinno-ji’s Kuromon (yeah, the gate has its own goshuin – no idea why), Sanbutsu-do (Rinno-ji, again), Daigoma-do (Rinno-ji, too), Tosho-gu, Tosho-gu Okusha (inner shrine), Futarasan Shrine, Jogyo-do, Taiyu-in, Shinkyo. And that filled the first half of my second shuincho. Rinno-ji actually had a sign up listing six possible goshuin – looks like I missed one: Yakushi-do, which on the map looks to be somewhere inside Tosho-gu…

I was also given these along with two of my goshuin, but I have no idea even what they are (some kinda… textured sticker, I think), much less that they’re for. The text at the top reads “Congratulations – New Era Name “Reiwa””

Today’s stamp count: One – JR Nikko Station. I wonder if the Tobu station has one too…

Yesterday’s post is now complete, and has images. And I also proof-read it a bit and made some changes to the half I’d already written, if you can face re-reading all that to see what’s different. And yeah, it turned into a bit of a monster.

When I’m out sightseeing, I use the camera to quickly record things to recount later – signs, objects, events, anything that serves as a mnemonic later, even if the photo itself is poor. According to the Readers Digest I read on the flight here, that’s actually bad for my memory, reducing my ability to recall things on my own later, presumably from lack of exercise for the little grey cells – and indeed, I often find myself forgetting the smaller things, like interactions with people, or amusing (or perhaps “amusing”) comments I’d intended to make. And ironically, I meant to say this as yesterday’s comment of the day, but forgot.

When I woke up this morning, I went out to my balcony, and to the left I saw low clouds sitting in the valley. One of the things Chichibu is known for is unkai – literally, the sea of clouds – where if you go up a mountain before sunrise, you can often see clouds filling the valley below, looking like a sea of clouds. It’s supposedly quite pretty. Also: a photo of temple eleven, as seen from my balcony.

Today after breakfast (with pasta), I checked out of my hotel. It was a pretty nice hotel, and I was actually quite surprised to be on the top floor. I booked this on Booking dot com, and while the hotel listing had a special category for rooms on higher floors, I hadn’t realised I’d requested one. Or rather, I didn’t think I had at all. In any case, I left my melted-and-reset chocolates on the table for the hotel staff, with a note saying “sorry about that, but… give them a try anyway?” (I mean, it was either that or eat them all myself, because I wasn’t about to hand melted-and-reset chocolates to someone actually standing in front of me, and I wasn’t about to eat twelve caramello koalas and ten furry friends).

Then it was off to my next stop – Utsunomiya in Tochigi Prefecture. Originally in my planning, this stop was going to be another case of this being just a place to break my journey – I was planning spend one more day in Chichibu squishing in as many more temples as I could manage, then I was going to head directly from Chichibu to an onsen town in the mountains, a journey of close to five hours, so I thought it best to stop somewhere in the middle for the night, and Utsunomiya was on my way, and has a Toyoko Inn almost on the train station’s doorstep. But then when I tried to book a ryokan in the town, I was informed that none of them were taking single guests right now, so I wound up booking a western-style hotel near the local train station, and I’d visit the onsen town as a day trip, which made the stopover less necessary.

But then I discovered that Utsunomiya is the capital of gyoza in Japan, and I lurve gyoza. So instead I dumped the Chichibu plans (I’ll be back, honest), get the first reasonable train to Utsunomiya, and spend the afternoon trying as many different gyoza restaurants as I could without exploding.

So, off to the train station I went. This time I was catching a train from Ohanabatake Station on the Chichibu Line (owned by the Chichibu Railway company). Weird thing is, its two platforms are served by different companies – the Chichibu Line trains only stop on platform 1 (in both directions), while some Seibu trains travel past Seibu-Chichibu Station and onto the Chichibu Line, and they stop at platform 2 (in both directions). Also, the name of the station is different depending on which platform you’re on – since 2009, platform 1 has officially been known as “Ohanabatake (Shibazakura) Station”, as it’s the place to get off if you want to see the shibazakura flowers bloom in spring. (And apparently the Chichibu Line is celebrating its 120th year – take that, Seibu Chichibu Line.)

It’s kind of a quaint little country-town station, though. Nice little eatery outside the station that might have been nice for breakfast if I hadn’t already eaten. I still want to try eating at an on-platform restaurant like I’ve occasionally seen in anime. Sadly, I couldn’t use my Suica card on the Chichibu Line, even though both ends of my trip are in the Kanto Suica zone, so I had to pay actual money (gasp!). Rode along, enjoying the view in any case.

I hopped off the train at Kumagaya Station, because there it intersected the Shinkansen line. I was almost tempted to stay on the train to the end, because there I could change to another train that’d take me to a temple with the cutest ever goshuin, except even though that temple is right on the straight line that connects Chichibu with Utsunomiya, doing the trip on surface trains would add four hours to my journey, somehow. (I also discovered that the Chichibu Line runs a steam train called the SL Paleo Express (SL for Steam Locomotive, I assume), but (a) it departs Chichibu at about 3pm on days that it runs, and (b) it only runs on weekends and holidays (which means it ran yesterday – kinda sad I never saw it go past, but I guess I wasn’t always that close to the tracks)).

But anyway, at Kumagaya, I changed to the Joetsu Shinkansen to Omiya Station (using the second day on my JR East Pass), where I switched to the Tohoku Shinkansen for Omiya. At Kumagaya, there was a huge line for the ticket office, so I remembered my hard-learned how-to-book-shinkansen-tickets lesson number 1: If there’s a huge line for the ticket office, there’s usually one inside the station with no line. So I headed inside the station, but there wasn’t a second ticket office. At which point, I remembered lesson number 2: If all else fails, ride the non-reserved cars. And it turns out most of the cars on the next train were unreserved. Didn’t have too much trouble finding a seat, though it was only about a quarter-hour ride.

At Omiya, I decided not to worry about looking for the ticket office – it wasn’t a very long layover – and just get on the unreserved cars again, though this train only had a handful of them, waaay down the other end of the platform. And then all the seats in the first two of them were taken (though, some were taken only by people’s bags), so I decided to just stand in the vestibule. For twenty-three minutes. But hey, I arrived in Utsunomiya.

So, Utsunomiya is the capital and largest city in Tochigi Prefecture… despite there being a Tochigi City after which the prefecture is named. Turns out there used to be a separate Utsunomiya Prefecture when the prefectural system was created following the Meiji Restoration, but it lasted barely two years before being merged with Tochigi Prefecture. During WWII, it was an important military training facility, and it’s thought that Japanese soldiers returning from China brought gyoza back home with them, and the craze caught on – today, there’s more than two hundred gyoza restaurants in the city. (Historians have raised some issues with the “brought the recipe home” story in that fried gyoza are extremely popular, but it would have been unheard-of for them to be served in China at the time – frying is what you do with the low-quality ones you couldn’t sell. ) There’s actually an annual gyoza festival in the city, but sadly it’s the first weekend in November – the weekend after I head home, naturally.

I headed to my hotel from there to dump my bags – like I said, it’s practically on the station’s doorstep; you could see the station from the hotel if there wasn’t a building in the way. And it turns out they’re building a new Toyoko Inn right next to the current one. And also, there’s a historical building on the other side, the Former Shinohara Family Residence (an old merchant family from Utsunomiya). Pictures of it look quite pretty, but sadly it’s closed on days following public holidays (and since yesterday was a public holiday…). The building in the second image, by the way, is a bicycle parking station. The whole thing, all three floors. Solid with bicycles.

Bags dumped, I headed out to execute Plan Gyoza. First stop, though: there was a Yaesu bookstore at the station shopping mall. And finally, on my fifth attempt, I was able to find a station stamp book. Didn’t even have to ask the staff – I managed to find the area with the train timetables, and the stamp book was right there. (Actually, there’s a whole section with magazines for train fans – incluing one magazine for train and anime fans, about trains and stations appearing in anime, and the cover story was all about the new movie by the writer of Anohana and Kokosake set in Chichibu. You can take the tourist out of the city…) I also grabbed a manhole card from the tourist information centre – before coming here this trip, I made a map of every manhole card available in the prefectures I’m visiting, and colour-coded them according to how far out of my way I’d have to go to get them; the one in Utsunomiya was literally right on my path.

Downstairs from there was my first gyoza place: Aogen, specialising in negi-miso gyoza (gyoza with miso sauce, covered in spring onions), so I had a plate of that, and a plate of regular pan-fried gyoza. Plus, I got to practice my gyoza terminology – “negimiso ichimai, yaki ichimai, kudasai” (one serve of negi miso, one serve of pan-fried, please). Other words you may want to learn if you want to sound like a gyoza town native: sui (boiled gyoza), age (deep fried gyoza), nimai (two serves), sanmai (three serves). It was quite tasty.

Headed out from there and down the city’s main road heading for the city centre. After a block, I crossed the Ta River, and it was plain from the grass wrapped around the fencing along the riverside walking paths that the river used to be running a great deal higher. Fortunately, the riverside walking paths were a long way below the road height.

But… as I continued walking, it was plain there had been significant flooding, even on the city’s main road – fences along the footpath were packed solid with grass almost to knee deep, the footpath and gutters were covered in dirt, and here and there were piles of sodden tatami mats and garbage bags filled with things waiting to be picked up. Everywhere were people with shovels moving slabs of mud, and mops, and hoses.

Along with what I’ve been seeing on the news at breakfast in the morning and in my room at night, it’s becoming increasingly clear to me that Chichibu got hit pretty lightly. My guess is that Chichibu’s surrounded by high mountains, but the river valleys are pretty deep, so the winds blew over the top while the floods ran by underneath, and in between all we got was the rain. Meanwhile, in Nagano Prefecture, a river broke a levee and flooded a stabling yard for Hokuriku Shinkansen trains (among other things), causing about thirty million dollars of damage, and shutting down the Hokuriku Shinkansen – I’m just fortunate that my intended train from Kumagaya to Omiya was a Joetsu train (they run on the same line at that point).

Anyway, the next target on my gyoza quest was a small side street called Miyajimacho-dori, colloqually named Gyoza Street, because of all the gyoza restaurants on it. I had a list of the top ten gyoza restaurants in Utsunomiya on my phone (according to some guy on the internet, anyway), and two restaurants on the list were on this street (Aogen, by the way, is an number six). Tragically, it seemed like every shop on the street was closed – I was following another couple from shop to shop, and they looked about as dejected as I felt. Though, the manhole cover that my manhole card related to was on this street, so it wasn’t a complete loss.

Fortunately, I’d read about another place nearby – a Don Quixote with a place in the basement with five gyoza restaurants all together, so I headed there next. Basically the deal is you order and pay at each restaurant’s counter, tell them your table number, and then they hand you a numbered tag, and then bring you food to your table when it’s ready. There was a big sign on the wall in English explaining it, but even so, one of the restaurant guys – from a place called Satsuki – came out and explained it to me in pretty good English, so I decided to order there first, even though it wasn’t on my list. Plus, they had an “all star set”, a plate with seven different gyoza with different fillings: the restaurant’s specialty, kimchi, a traditional regional specialty from the old Yashu Province, yuzu, shiso, green tea, and wagyu beef.

While I was eating that, I noticed that a table in my eyeline just ordered everything from every shop at once, so that’s what I did next, ordering one thing from three different shops, all of which were on my list (the fifth and final shop in the place was closed today): hanetsuki from Men Men (it’s fried gyoza joined together with a sheet of starch – the name means “wings attached”), prawn moneybags from Ryumon, and age and sui (and a serve of pickled veggies for a palate cleanser) from Min Min.

That… was a lot of gyoza. Overall, today I ate forty two gyoza, and a plate of pickled vegetables (how much gyoza must a man eat, before you can call him a man?). This might have been better to do with more than just me, so we could share each plate between us. In all honesty, despite Min Min being named the best restaurant in several lists I consulted, I’d honestly have to say my favourite was the Yashu from Satsuki was my favourite, even to the extent that I was considering asking if I could order another plate of just that. Second favourite has the hanetsuki from Men Men. Fortunately, I completely failed to explode.

I waddled out of there and headed over the road to visit one place I wanted to see: Futaarasan Shrine. (Or possibly Futarasan, it wasn’t entirely clear. Technically the first two kanji in the name are read as “futa” and “ara”, but it seemed to be written on most (though not all) signage as “Futarasan”.) Anyway, the shrine used to be the principle shrine of Yashu Province, and it was quite impressive – big ol’ torii gate, huge flight of stairs up to the main buildings. To be fair, the stairs almost did me in after all that gyoza. Admired the buildings at the top. Very nice buildings. There were also some kids dressed up for Shichi-Go-San a festival for girls aged three (=san) or seven (=shichi) and boys aged five (=go), though I rather thought that didn’t happen until November.

Sadly, it started to rain at this point, despite Apple weather saying it’d only be cloudy. Left the shrine out the back, intending to head back to my hotel via another temple, Jiko-ji. It was quite a nice temple, though the goshuin office was closed. Weirdly, the main entrance road seemed to be the back driveway of a pair of houses on the corner.

I decided to walk the rest of the way back to the hotel down some back streets, and here I could see more effects of flooding without the cleanup efforts on the main road. Footpaths and car parks were covered by a thick layer of mud. I’m probably gonna have to declare my shoes at customs when I fly back into Australia…

Back at my hotel comparatively early, I nevertheless still only had time to finish up yesterday’s post. So yeah, this post wasn’t written today, in fact I had written it tomorrow. My tenses aren’t confused, your tenses are confused. I had a light dinner of a pair of choc-chip biscuits I’d brought from Australia for snacks, though if memory serves, the best before date was last Friday…

Today’s photo count: three hundred and twenty-two

Today’s pedometer count: 11,673 steps – 8 kilometres exactly – 13 flights of stairs

Today’s goshuin count: One, Futarasan Shrine (I’ve also left my new bookmark on it, so you can see what it looks like).

Today’s stamp count: Two – JR Kumagaya Station and Utsunomiya Station. I neglected to see if Ohanabatake Station had one (or Seibu-Chichibu, for that matter), and while the Chichibu Kumagaya Station did have one, it was in use, and I didn’t have the time to wait.

Today’s manhole card count: One.

Japan has many convenience stores – that’s part of what makes them so convenient. I discovered recently they they’ve actually got more dentists than convenience stores – in fact, almost twice as many, with 103,000 practicing dentists, but only 56,000 convenience stores. I’m… honestly not sure what that implies.

So, today after breakfast…

I headed out of the hotel to do the activity I’d originally come here to do, the Chichibu 34 Kannon Pilgrimage. This is going to take a bit of exposition – this is the reason why I visited Jigen-ji yesterday, and you’ll shortly see why I deferred on posting the full explanation at the time.

In ye olde Japan, doing pilgrimages was a thing (I mean, it still kind of is); by travelling from temple to temple, pilgrims gain physical and mental wellbeing. Pilgrimages focused on Kannon in particular became quite popular. Kannon is also known as Avalokiteśvara in Sanskrit, Guan Yin in Chinese, sometimes written as “Kwannon” in older English texts, and often translated as “Goddess of Mercy”, although a direct translation of “Kannon” is “hearer of cries”.

In the 12th century, the first official pilgrimage course was established in western Japan – comprising thirty-three Kannon temples (because Kannon is said to appear in thirty-three forms – though you won’t find that each temple enshrines a unique form), it was known as the Saigoku 33 Kannon (Saigoku = west country). In actual fact, I’ve already been to two of the Saigoku temples: Seiganto-ji at Nachi Falls (visited in 2017) is temple number 1, and Kiyomizu-dera in Kyoto (visited in 2010) is temple number 16. The Saigoku 33 temples are spread out over seven prefectures, and takes about a month to travel the route on foot.

At the end of the 12th century, this was followed by a new pilgrimage, the Bando 33 Kannon, which is in Kanto, starting in Kamakura and ending in Chiba (“Bando” is an old name for Kanto). Again, I’ve already visited two of the Bando temples: Hase-dera in Kamakura (visited in 2017) is temple number 4, and Sensoji in Asakusa (also visited in 2017… actually, the day before I visited Hase-dera) is number 13. Again, this is quite a long route, and takes quite a long time to walk it.

Given the length of the courses, it was often quite popular to create miniature versions of the pilgrimages – for example, a temple priest could do the pilgrimage, and bring back, say, a rock from each temple to his own temple, where he’d set up these rocks on the temple property, and people could visit the rocks in sequence to gain the same spiritual benefit, but only take a single hour to do so. Or, for a slightly larger scale, the town of Chichibu set up a pilgrimage with its own Kannon temples, forming the Chichibu 33 Kannon.

But wait, I said 34 earlier. Well, yes – one extra temple was added later on, which resulted in the sum of the Saigoku, Bando and Chichibu pilgrimages to be precisely 100. The Chichibu Pilgrimage has long been popular for the people of Edo, because it was close enough to get here in a day. Not all of the temples are particularly large –some of them are even just Kannon halls within larger temples – and about half are actually staffed by volunteer locals rather than actual priests. But even today it’s popular to come up as a day trip, do a few temples, and then return to Tokyo.

The usual procedure is to visit a temple, make a donation, pray at the image of Kannon (or its substitute, if the primary image is not out on display), maybe light incense or a candle, then get a goshuin in your little book. Traditionally, you’d receive the goshuin as reward for reciting a sutra or some other service, but these days you get it in exchange for a monetary donation – usually 300 yen, but sometimes 500. This, incidentally, is why the priest at Tennoji back in 2017 initially refused to give me a goshuin – because I’d asked if I could buy one, when I should have asked if I could receive one. The pilgrimage is traditionally done on foot, naturally, but there’s a lot of people these days who drive the route, and there’s even bus tours that take you to each temple, with a priest on board to perform services. It’s also traditional to stick a piece of paper with your name in calligraphy somewhere on the temple gate or main hall – the more protected from the elements, the better, so you’ll frequently see them stuck to the ceiling. Originally these were just paper and paste, but these days you can buy ones which are actual stickers, but there’s some objection to these, because they’re harder to remove without damaging the temple. Though, it could be worse – the original version were wooden tags that pilgrims actually nailed to the temples.

Which brings me to me. I’ve been kind of interested in perhaps doing the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage, entirely on foot, for a while. Considering that it’s 1200 kilometres long, though, I thought it might be nice to get some practice in. Cue Chichibu. The total length of the Chichibu 34 Kannon is just 100km, but of those 100km, the last four temples in the route represent 40 – the first thirty temples have an average separation of just 1.8km, making it quite feasible to just do a few temples and then stop. My original plan was to spend three days in Chichibu, and hopefully get all the way from temple 1 to 30. Then I discovered the Ryusei Matsuri fell on the Sunday, so I’d do pilgrimaging on Saturday and Monday, and maybe get 20 temples visited. I mean, I skip some of the Buddhist worship aspects, to be fair, but…

Though, that was going to require some discipline – the last time I attempted any sort of pilgrimage, the Kamakura Shichifukujin, I only got half of it done, because 5km of walking (which should have taken an hour, according to Google Maps) wound up taking me all day. This is kinda why I was fretting a bit about this part of the trip.

The plan was perhaps temples 1-9 on Saturday, then 10-18 on Monday. Then Hagibis forced me to swap my Saturday and Monday plans, and then cancel Saturday outright. But it turned out that temple 33 – one of the later, more spread-out temples – is just a half hour’s walk from Muku Shrine, where the Ryusei Matsuri was. To do the Chichibu pilgrimage, you need a special kind of shuincho – well actually, these are called nokyocho, because it’s a book (=cho) for nokyo, but I honestly can’t work out the difference between a nokyo and a goshuin – which is a bound-on-one-edge book with a double-page for each temple. Which is why I visited Jigen-ji on the way to the train station – it’s temple number 13 on the route, and one which (according to the internet) most certainly sold nokyocho (not all of them do). But then I wound up enjoying the atmosphere of the festival too much to disappear for an hour – plus, I didn’t want to leave my stuff unguarded for an hour or lug it all with me.

But look at me, ten paragraphs in and I’m still doing exposition. I’d figured out what time I needed to catch the bus to temple number one, so I could do the route in order, but when I checked Google Maps one last time, I realised that today’s a public holiday – Health and Sports Day – and under the Saturday, Sunday and Public Holiday timetable, the next bus would be leaving in just six minutes, so I hurriedly packed my stuff and scrambled out of the hotel to the bus stop a couple of blocks from my hotel… only to discover that the road the bus should have travelled down was closed, due to a landslide. Guess there were some actual effects from Hagibis around here. And also, I’d left my camera in my room.

Rather than do some ridiculous convoluted route to reach temple number one by other means, I decided to just switch my Saturday and Monday plans back again, and start from temple 10, in easy walking distance from my hotel. So, camera in hand, I started out again – first heading down the road the bus would have gone down (it wasn’t closed to pedestrians). This part of the route – temples five through ten – is actually in the adjacent town of Yokoze (not Chichibu), and winds through rice paddies and other farm plots. A lot of the paddies still had racks up which harvested rice is dried on before being threshed, and one paddy still had the rice hanging on the racks. There was also quite a nice view of Mount Buko, but sadly what I suspect is the best view ever is at a spot between temples five and six – I’m gonna have to finish off the route on a later trip.

So, temple number ten: Daiji-ji, literally “The Temple of Great Mercy”. Finally, I’ve gotten somewhere. It’s not a very big temple, but it actually features quite prominently in Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda, the anime movie I mentioned yesterday, (and that’s really annoying to type, so I’m just going to abbreviate it to Kokosake, like everyone in Japan does), so they’ve got a whole lot of character goods for sale, including ema (wooden plaques that you write a wish on and tie to a rack). There were even several ema with hand-drawn pictures of the characters. They also had a poster up for a new movie by the same author, and it was one stop on a stamp rally where you apply stamps of different colours on top of each other to make a colour image of what appeared to be the Kokosake film poster. This was stop 3, though, and I don’t know where the other stops were (Yokoze Station, might be one, possibly? It also featured in the movie), so I didn’t worry about stamping it. Also, there weren’t any papers to stamp it on (they needed to be a precise size to fit in the guide so that the colours land in the correct positions).

Headed back over the road into Chichibu again for temple number eleven: Joraku-ji, the Temple of Common Comfort. In actual fact, I can see temple eleven from my hotel balcony. And I can certainly see my balcony from the temple – it kinda looks my hotel and the Route Inn are amongst the tallest buildings in Chichibu. (My hotel is the one with the pink balconies on the right – my room is on the top floor, second window from the left.)

On top of the mountain behind the temple is an Inari shrine, and considering how much I love those, I decided to climb. There were only a few torii gates, though, but a whole series of concrete bases where gates quite obviously used to be, and at the shrine itself, I found a whole pile of gates in pieces. Kinda sad. Walking back down again, I realised that the gates that were standing had actually been placed there this very month – possibly it’s a tradition to replace all the torii gates when the emperor changes? Maybe? Also, it was made of plastic, not wood…

From there, I walked down a tiny back street until I reached an underpass under the Seibu railway line next to a small graveyard. I realised upon checking the timetable that a train would be passing through in just a few minutes, so I waited for that artistic photo. At least, I think it’s artistic.

Just on the other side of the tracks was temple twelve: Nosaka-ji, the Temple of the Sloped Fields. Nosaka-ji is also the name of that area of town, but I’m not sure if the temple is named for the area or vice versa. The temple also has a steeply-sloped graveyard on the hill behind, and someone once suggested that if a temple has a steeply-sloped graveyard, then if you walk up to the highest grave, you’ll never be disappointed by the view. And yeah, it wasn’t bad. There’s a story behind the founding of this temple – supposedly, a traveller was set upon by bandits when his figure of Kannon gleamed with light, blinding all the bandits. Most of them fled, but their leader stayed behind. Later, the traveller returned and found the former bandit leader living in religious austerity, and he paid to have the temple built, with the bandit installed as the first priest.

By this point, it had three hours since I left the hotel, and I was only three temples in – at that rate, I’d be lucky to even reach temple sixteen. And writing this now, I’m fifteen paragraphs in, and I’ve still only done three temples. But at Nosaka-ji, I dunno if I suddenly discovered the Zen of it or if I just decided to stop being distracted, but I finally had that moment like I did back in 2017 when I remembered why I wanted to visit Japan again so much, and after that it was much smoother sailing.

But first, I stopped for lunch – though it was just noon, I was passing Nosaka, the miso pork bowl restaurant my friend had suggested. According to reviews, it’s quite popular, often with a long queue outside, but when I arrived, there was no queue. Or to be more precise, after I arrived, then there was a queue – which is to say, I and a couple that arrived at the same as me became the queue. But we weren’t queueing up too long, and soon went in. It was most delicious (though I accidentally pushed the wrong button on the machine originally and had to ask to get it changed – whoops).

Unfortunately, when I came out from lunch, it was starting to rain – though not quite the torrential rain we got on Saturday, fortunately. Moving on again, I passed Seibu-Chichibu Station, and there seemed to be some kind of event on in the car park, which I suspect was celebrating fifty years of the Seibu Chichibu railway line. There were a great deal more people in the station food court than there had been last night.

In any case, I passed by temple thirteen on the way to fourteen – thirteen being Jigen-ji, the Temple of the Eye of Mercy (the ji in Jigen being the same as the ji in Daiji from temple ten). Describing yesterday’s visit, it’s a smallish temple with  fairly large grounds – and what appears to be a school building on the premises. I bought my nyokocho here. There’s also a traditional pilgrim’s outfit consisting of a white coat, pants, shoulder bag, a walking stick, prayer beads, and a conical straw hat – I was tempted to just buy the coat and the hat so I at least slightly looked the part, but I decided to pass in the end.

Nearing temple fourteen, I first passed Imamiya Shrine, a nice little shrine filled with several sacred trees and statues. And statues in trees.

A little further along was temple fourteen: Imamiya-bo, the Residence of the New Shrine. This is the first temple I’m visiting that’s just a hall of a larger complex. Or rather, that was. In actual fact, Imamiya-bo and Imamiya Shrine used to be unified as one, but after the Meiji Restoration, they were forcibly separated, and now Imamiya-bo is just the hall and nothing more. Imamiya-bo isn’t too large, but they’ve got a fairly new-looking building with the offices and reception.

Moving on from there, I crossed over the Chichibu Railway lines and immediately arrived at temple fifteen: Shōrin-ji, the Temple of the Small Forest. Shorin-ji is actually a comparatively recent construction, made in the style of a traditional storehouse, thought quite pretty – the original temple fifteen was named Zofuku-ji, but during the Meiji Restoration, the head priest sold their statue of Kannon to a temple in the western part of Chichibu, and converted to Shintoism. After public complaint, Shorin-ji was inserted as number fifteen, but the Kannon statue is still located at the other temple.

Crossing back over the railway line (like, it’s practically on the temple’s doorstep), I headed towards the next temple, but first I encountered Chichibu Shrine. It’s got fairly large grounds, but apparently they used to be far larger. There’s a new building for the shine offices which apparently also includes a coffee shop, but I didn’t go inside. The main shrine building apparently faces directly towards Mount Buko, but I didn’t check at the time whether that was actually the case.

The shrine is the location of the Night Festival on December 3rd each year, which is considered one of Japan’s three biggest festivals. A big part of the festival includes a parade of huge floats, one per district – during the rest of the year, these floats live in large store houses, again one per district, and I saw several of them during my walk today. There’s even one about a block from my hotel.

Leaving there, I headed for temple sixteen: Saikō-ji, the Temple of the Western Light. This temple actually had a long, dark corridor running around one side of the inner courtyard – inside the hall is a miniature version of the Shikoku 88 Temple Pilgrimage; eighty-eight statues and eighty-eight electric candle lights. Along with my nokyo, I was also given a gift of a small paper umbrella – I’d heard I might receive small gifts from some temples. It doesn’t seem to fold up, though, so I’m not sure how I’m getting it home. I took photos of it straight away, because I just know that the moment I’m sitting somewhere comfortably, I’m going to lean on my bag and squash it.

I headed out the side entrance to continue north for the next temple, I crossed a new highway with a large and impressive cable-stayed bridge crossing the Arakawa. Soon, I reached temple seventeen: Jōrin-ji, the Temple of the Established Forest. Jorin-ji is little more than a hall atop a pretty small plateau (though pretty pretty, too), but like Daiji-ji way back at temple number ten, it’s also of some importance to the anime community, because the characters in Anohana frequently hung out here. And so they’re selling character ema (though there seemed to be a lot more printed ema and fewer hand-drawn ones than there were at Daiji-ji), and posters, and various other goods. Interestingly, this temple used to be temple number one on the pilgrimage, as it was (at the time) the closest to Chichibu Shrine, which was considered the centre of the town, and the pilgrimage spiralled out from there. At some point, they were renumbered so that the temple closest to Edo was number one, making it easier for visitors from Edo to reach.

I headed from there to the next temple (descending from the plateau by a rather incongruous set of metal stairs), I crossed the railway line again (at a tiny crossing in a grassy field) but soon got stuck for a long wait by the side of a busy road with no traffic lights. The crossing did have a box filled with small yellow flags reading “now crossing” (in Japanese) on each side of the road – I’ve seen them at several crossing, and it was clear you were supposed to take a flag and cross with it, and leave it on the other side. I never tried it out, though – I wasn’t sure if the flag was supposed to signal cars to stop, or just to make me more visible, and I also wasn’t sure if they were just intended for kids to use, so instead I waited for a gap and dashed across.

On the other side of the road was temple eighteen: Gōdo-ji, the Temple of the God’s Gate. Another pretty small one. Actually, the main hall was quite similar to the previous temple, but where that temple had a veranda running all the way around, this one had a low-ceilinged passageway running across the back, and inside the passageway was a collection of small statues – I’m fairly sure it was another miniature Shikoku 88, but I’m not entirely certain.

I was quite pleased to have reached temple eighteen, because it was my target for the day – if I could manage ten to eighteen in one day, I could probably also manage one to nine in one day. But since it was only half past three, I kept going. First, walk right back over that major road, then back over the tracks, then down a fairly steep slope.

Temple nineteen: Ryūseki-ji, the Temple of the Dragon Rock. The temple stands on top of what looks to be a ginormous bare rock – perhaps that’s the dragon rock? I honestly like temples to have a few trees, but it was nice enough, I guess. Not, I admit, my favourite.

Heading down from there, I crossed the old Chichibu Bridge over the Arakawa River. Originally the main bridge over the river, it’s now been replaced by a new cable-stayed bridge that’s immediately adjacent – a different, and smaller, bridge to the one I passed earlier, incidentally. The taxi to the Ryusei Festival the other day actually crossed the new bridge, giving me a fairly good look at the old bridge in the process. Another pilgrimage location for anime fans, this bridge featured heavily an Anohana, and also made a few appearances in the live-action version of Kokosake. I was hoping to get some shots of the bridge pylons – it’s actually a brick arch bridge – but I couldn’t get a good angle on it, even following the path that went under both bridges. I did get a good look at the Arakawa, still frothing angrily, and all the bent-over trees along the river.

The next temple is actually quite close to the far side of the bridge, but Google Maps was giving me a ridiculous route looping up and around. I was hoping there’d be a shorter pedestrian path cutting across the loop, and there was… but it was closed, and looked like it had been closed for a long while (i.e. not just after Hagibis). So I had to walk uphill.

Temple twenty: Iwanoue-dō, the Hall Above the Rock. I actually liked this temple a lot – it’s on top of a cliff over the Arakawa, but it’s also surrounded thickly by trees. Very lush. The raging river was a little noisy, and detracted slightly from the serenity, but I still would have liked to sit there and take in the atmosphere. It’s thought to be the oldest temple out of the thirty-four, and is also the only temple that didn’t change its number when the ordering was rearranged.

The next temple was quite close, temple twenty-one: Kannon-ji, the Temple of… uh… Kannon. (It’s actually not the only temple named Kannon on the pilgrimage. Spoiler alert, temple thirty-one has the same name, though a different title – it’s Kannon-in.) I arrived just in time to see the temple attendant locking the doors to the temple office for the night, though I didn’t realise that at the time – first I went to see the main hall, then I tried the door, I found it locked. Sad face. I figured I had to come back here anyway so I could pick up where I left off on my next visit, so it wasn’t a huge crisis, but at that point, it also started raining, fairly heavily.

So, that was it for the day – it was just about 5pm, the temples would all be closed, and it would be sunset soon. I would have liked to reach twenty-two, if only because its name amused me (Doji-jo – geddit? Do-si-do?). I stood under the eaves in front of the office door researching how to get back to town (option (a) ten minute walk to a bus stop, ten minute wait for a bus, twenty minute bus ride; option (b) a forty minute walk to town – with the rain, that was a bit of a no-brainer) when the temple attendant saw my silhouette through the door, and opened up to offer me the nokyo. Honestly, I felt a bit guilty that she had to get all her stuff out again, but in all honesty, I kinda stood in front of the door with the expectation that she would see me standing there.

But, nokyo got, I headed for the bus stop. Fortunately it stopped raining before too long, so I didn’t have to wait the whole time in the rain. Hopped on the bus when it came, and the moment I was sitting comfortably, I leant on my bag and squashed the umbrella. Not very squashed, but still a bit squashed. I hopped off the bus at Chichibu Station (not Seibu-Chichibu; they’re not next to each other, for some reason) – I thought I’d give the Michi no Eki another shot for dinner, and Chichibu Station was the closest bus stop. Google maps told me it’d be open until 7pm, but when I got there shortly before six, I discovered that though the place was open until seven, the restaurant had closed at five. Also, it had started to rain again, fairly heavily, as I walked from the station.

So I decided to walk back to the Seibu-Chichibu food court again, in the rain. For dinner, I had another local specialty – soba noodles with pork soup as a dipping source. As previously mentioned, the Chichibu area is not well-suited to growing rice, but they would grow buckwheat, and so they made buckwheat noodles – which is to say, soba. Quite delicious. Dessert was another specialty, miso potato – tempura potatoes covered in a miso sauce.

It’s a specialty to the extent that the town’s mascot is Potekuma-kun, a bear (=kuma) shaped like a potato (=pote), with the top of his head covered in miso sauce. Here’s a photo of him. And also Menma (a character from Anohana) dressed as him – they’re both used in a lot of the advertising. And Fireman Potekuma-kun, on a manhole cover. (Green text on the right-hand image reads “Chichibu, the town that fulfils everyone’s wishes” which, as I said yesterday, was a fairly major theme in Anohana.)

After dinner, I decided to visit the onsen next door to relax and unwind. I decided to stay there an hour, but there were so many baths to try that it sometimes felt like I was just jumping in and out of them. Inside had a jet bath, and a “silk bath”, and a carbonated bath kinda like a weak soft drink, and a cold-water bath (which I didn’t try), and outdoors (yes, outdoor baths) there were two large baths I’ve forgotten the specifics of, two smaller single-person baths (which I didn’t get the chance to try), and a “lying-down bath” – a bath only about three fingers deep that you lie down in (though with a rock for a pillow). It was quite certainly the greatest number of naked men that I’ve ever taken a bath with – the previous record was the bath at the capsule hotel I stayed at in 2017. The outside baths weren’t too bad when you were in the baths, but changing from bath to bath was freezing cold. And rain on your face is surprisingly annoying when you’re in a hot bath – fortunately, part of each bath has a roof, a bit like a gazebo. Uh, it probably goes without saying, but no photos of any of this.

After the bath, I had a drink of milk – as is tradition – and even unconsciously adopted the traditional posture: chugging the milk down with one hand, other hand on hip. Then I went to try some of the other facilities. The place was quite impressive, with massage facilities, and private rooms, and a tatami-mat room, and a relaxation space. The floor looks like wood, incidentally, but it’s actually a padded surface kinda like lino. You pay for everything – including drinks from the vending machine – by waving a barcoded bracelet over a scanner, and you settle everything when you leave. I had a go in a massage chair, but I’m not sure I enjoyed it hugely – a bit too painful. No ping pong tables present, though, despite being another onsen tradition. Or perhaps those are just an onsen ryokan tradition…

Outside, the rain had largely let up, so I headed back to the hotel to start blogging, and then fall asleep in the middle…

Today’s photo count: seven hundred and eighty two. On a side note, this post contains one hundred and eight images, which I thought rather apt, as in Japanese Buddhism, 108 is the number of earthly temptations that one must overcome in order to achieve nirvana. (Or, at least, I had 108 images lined up to insert – didn’t count to see if I’d missed any.)

Today’s step count: 29,870 steps – 22.9 kilometres – 38 flights of stairs. That’s pretty impressive. The Chichibu 34 Kannon walk is basically in the shape of a huge back-to-front S which with a tail that doesn’t know where to stop, I walked from just before the first bend to just after the second. I did the Seven Bridges Walk a few years ago – that’s supposedly 28km, and I could barely walk by the end of it, but today I was perfectly fine. (Though, I’m pretty sure I was perfectly fine at the 23km mark of the Seven Bridges Walk too – it’s the last 5km, constantly clambering up and down from Barangaroo to York St and back, that killed me).

Today’s goshuin count: Thirteen. Well, technically only two goshuin – the rest were nokyo. Here’s the two goshuin, from right, Imamiya Shrine and Chichibu Shrine. Also, the woman at the Chichibu Shrine goshuin office gave me back my shuincho with a sort of origami bookmark on one corner – it’s been quite useful since.

Here’s a representative sample of nokyo, so I’m not posting all twelve that I have (i.e. temples ten to twenty-one inclusive) in separate photos. These are temples ten and seventeen. I haven’t gotten around to deciphering what the text on the right-hand pages read, but the text below the calligraphy is the temple’s name, principal object of worship, and (I think) a brief history. The text immediately to the right of the calligraphy is “Chichibu number [number]”, and a more formal version of the temple’s name called a san’in-jigo).

Today’s stamp count: One – the Chichibu Michi no Eki had a stamp in the still-open middle section.

I survived Hagibis. Now where’s my t-shirt? Actually, there’s not even a huge amount of visible damage around here, aside from the rivers running pretty high, and dirty.

There’s a band in the Philippines named Hagibis, who’ve been around since the 1970s – they’ve got a style that’s pretty reminiscient of the Village People, and in fact they’re sometimes called the Philippines’ Village People. According to an article in this morning’s Sydney Morning Herald, they’re suddenly seeing a new resurgence in popularity, thanks to Typhoon Hagibis bringing their name to peoples’ minds. They said they’d quite like to do a tour in Japan as a way of making up for some of the hurt caused by their namesake.

Chichibu is a city in Saitama Prefecture. It’s hardly large – it’s only the 35th largest by population in Saitama – but it seems to have quite a significant history. The Japanese Meteorological Agency divides Saitama into six regions, which I noticed while keeping an eye on Hagibis, and these regions are South-East, South-Central, South-West, North-East, North-West, and Chichibu. It’s nestled in a fairly steep mountain range – on a very clear day, they can be seen from central Tokyo – and the Arakawa River runs through the center – which runs to the north, turns right, and comes back down on the eastern edge of Tokyo. Chichibu was first mentioned in written records in the 8th century historical record Kujiki, in which alone out of the 137 provinces mentioned, it’s described with a special note, suggesting that even back then it had some significance.

The area is unsuited to rice growing, but they were quite well-suited to growing mulberry trees, so for a long time the silk industry was the primary source of income for the town – the name Chichibu became synonymous with high-quality plain silk. During the Meiji restoration, the new Meiji government tried to impose rapid industrialisation, causing the silk farmers to rise up in revolt, until the government crushed it, and the town’s silk market has never quite returned to its heyday since. Oh, they’re still famous for a type of silk fabric called meisen, but it’s not quite the same. The town also became a major source for limestone and cement – Mount Buko, to the south of the town, still bears visible scars, and concrete factories pop up all over.

So, woke up with brilliant sun shining through my window – yesterday’s dreary weather had completely passed, leaving blue skies and warm breezes behind. Quite lovely.

Headed down for breakfast in the hotel dining room. Even tried natto again – they had some – but I still found it merely unimpressive, not the strong dislike that foreigners are supposed to feel.

Then I headed out for today’s activity – the Ryusei Festival, held on the second Sunday of October each year at Muku Shrine in Yoshida town (a part of Chichibu city). The name means “dragon power”, and the main part of the festival involves launching rockets – called dragons – which are made from bamboo, pine and black powder by various neighbourhood associations, intended to thank the gods for a good harvest, and wish for more future blessings. Thirty rockets are launched, at fifteen-minute intervals, so it takes all day – while rockets are being set up, members of the group in question stand on a platform, give a speech thanking their patrons (who helped fund the rocket) and then sing/chant a prayer, and the rocket launches as the prayer finishes. Fun fact: Muku Shrine is also the location where the first planning meetings were held during the farmers’ rebellion.

Since the festival runs all day, people bring mats and low tables, and all sit around picnicking and barbecuing food and drinking and generally having fun. I thought I wanted to get in on that action, so I needed to reserve a space by calling them on the phone about five weeks ago – and pay a fee – so the moment I learned of Hagibis, I was very worried they’d be cancelling the festival. Fortunately, they announced on their website on Saturday morning that it’d still be on (albeit with a final call to be made at 6am today, but come 6am, nothing had changed).

So first I headed back to Seibu-Chichibu Station to get the special bus that’d take me straight to the festival – stopping en route at a nearby temple named Jigen-ji, for reasons which I’ll describe tomorrow. Tried not to get too distracted by the streets on the way, but at once point I saw an honour-system roadside vegetable stall, though there weren’t any veggies there at the moment.

At the station, I went to ask at the bus information booth where the special temporary bus stop was… and it wasn’t. Turns out I’d stopped reading the note on the festival website one line too soon – the festival was still on, but the special buses had been cancelled, for reasons that it doesn’t go into. And I’d just missed the last regular bus for the next three hours by mere minutes.

Extremely annoyed by that, and trying not to play a game of coulda, woulda, shoulda (I coulda not stopped at Jigen-ji, I shoulda gotten out of the hotel more promptly) I eventually decided to get a taxi instead – my only other options were to wait three hours for the next bus, or walk, which would take three hours anyway. It cost me 4250 yen. Not happy, Jan.

Well, I arrived, in any case. The taxi dropped me at the Ryusei Kaikan (the festival association hall), where the bus would have stopped. After my little excitement in planning when I discovered that Chichibu has a Michi no Eki quite close to the town centre – a few days before I flew here, I discovered that the Ryusei Kaikan is itself a Michi no Eki too. It’s got a large hall with a produce market, and also a museum of the Ryusei Festival. And also a stamp – as part of the Ryusei Festival, there’s a small stamp rally, and one of the stamps was here.

Stamp got, I strolled to Muku Shrine to find my reserved spot – I’m at the very front of A-block (probably because that’s where all the half-tsubo-sized, intended for one or two people each, areas are located (a tsubo is a standard sized area in Japan equivalent to two tatami mats (so a half-tsubo is one mat area), but what that standard is depends on where in Japan you are)), which gave me a nice view of the rocket tower (albeit slightly obscured by a high temporary fence which I hadn’t realised would be there). My space had a marker with my name written on it, which was quite nice.

I actually wound up buying quite a few things to bring on this trip which I’ll probably only use today on this trip – a low folding chair (because full-size chairs aren’t allowed due to blocking the view of others, and I just plain can’t sit on the floor all day), a groundsheet, an inflatable pillow to use as a cushion – so I set things up and settled in to watch a few rockets. I’d also brought a few Australian snacks to share with the people around me, but despite being marked with names, like mine, all of the reserved spaces nearest me remained empty all day. And also, about half of the snacks were chocolates (caramello koalas and furry friends), and they’d all melted before I realised how warm they were, despite my efforts to keep them shaded.

But anyway, rockets. The rockets are loaded with decorations that are intended to trigger when the rocket reaches the apex of its flight – parachutes, paper umbrellas, smoke bombs, flares or sparklers or secondary explosions. A rocket is considered good if it flights straight and true, and the decorations deploy correctly, but since it’s made of pine and bamboo, honestly anything can happen. Some flew well, some waited juuust long enough to make you think they were going to be duds, before suddenly launching, some jumped up but quickly dropped again, some decorations floated around for ages – one parachute carrying the main body of one group’s rocket even started drifting over the crowd shortly after I arrived.

One rocket even blew up on the tower, and I managed to get a pretty nice photo of it.

The shrine grounds themselves were filled with all manner of festival food and game stalls, and I went to wander through them – yakisoba, okonomiyaki, takoyaki, chicken and beef skewers, tapioca tea, churros, crepes, chocolate-coated bananas, drinks, even one stall selling mango and mandarin in tins (which I’m sure has gotta be a pun – “mandarin” in Japanese is “mikan”, while a tin can is just “kan”, so tinned mandarin is “kan mikan”).

I was going to try a bunch of things, but started with a Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, which just filled me right up, so that was all I wound up having. Didn’t even have a kan mikan, though I was sorely tempted.

So, I first learnt about this festival because it plays a major part in a 2011 anime I enjoyed named “Ano Hi Mita Hana no Namae o Bokutachi wa Mada Shiranai” (which means “We Still Don’t Know the Name of the Flower We Saw That Day” – usually abbreviated as just “Anohana” (“That Flower”), and officially titled in English as “Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day”) in which the main characters (who live in Chichibu) learn how to build a ryusei rocket because they believe it’s the final wish of a deceased member of their group. Somehow, watching the series gave me the impression that the festival occurs in summer – it was only midway through my planning that I realised not only does the festival occur in Autumn, it’d be occurring on my second full day in Japan. But in any case, Anohana put Chichibu on the map for a lot of Japan, and ever since it became famous, the festival has always launched one rocket in honour of the series – the speech and chant were given by women dressed as the characters from the series. Also, character images are used in a lot of the advertising, and they were all over the place.

(Side note, Chichibu is on the Anime 88 Pilgrimage twice, once for Anohana, and once for an anime movie by the same writer named “Kokoro ga Sakebitagatterunda” aka “The Heart Wants to Shout” aka “The Anthem of the Heart”. Sadly, neither entry is accompanied by a stamp.)

I managed to finish the Ryusei stamp rally – if I understand the description correctly, they’ll mail us a prize at some point, but I’d be a little bit surprised if they mail it all the way to Australia. The entire day, I saw three other foreigners, in a crowd of literally thousands. Or at least, three Caucasian foreigners. Also, while I was sitting in my space, the woman I spoke to on the phone when I reserved it walked past and saw me – she was quite happy to see me; even gave me a wooden tag on a lanyard (which she was selling) as a present. It reads “Important Intangible Folk Cultural Property: Chichibu Yoshida’s Ryusei” (it’s one of only eleven contests in Japan to be added to the list – many of the others are tug-of-war festivals).

Since I’ve basically covered all the description of today – watching rockets interspersed by wandering around the crowds, here’s some more photos of rockets, interspersed by photos of crowds.

Not planning to take the taxi back to the hotel again, I made a point of checking Google for when the last bus of the evening would be, and so just after the final rocket launched as the sun was setting, I headed for the nearest stop, which Google suggested. Concerningly, I was the only person at the stop – I would have thought at least some people took the bus. When the bus arrived, I hopped on. At which point, the bus headed to the next stop – the Ryusei Kaikan – and that’s where all the people were waiting, filling the bus completely. Good thing I went to the earlier stop – it was even closer to the festival, according to Google maps.

Back at Seibu Chichibu Station, I discovered that Matsuri no Yu – the food hall attached to the station – was open for business, so I decided to head in there for dinner. It’s got three areas – a big hall selling local souvenir snacks, a second big hall basically like an Australian food court (lots of little restaurants selling different foods, and collective tables in the middle for people to eat at), and an actual onsen. Think I might try the onsen tomorrow, perhaps, but for now I had dinner: a local specialty called waraji katsudon. Waraji are straw sandals, which these marinated, breaded and deep-fried pork cutlets (katsu) are figuratively the size of, and served on rice (the –don). Extremely tasty.

Strolled back to the hotel chatting with the family on video chat, as is our weekly custom. When I arrived at the hotel, the desk staff had my room key out all ready for me.

Time for bed. Tragically, rain is predicted to return – hopefully not the same sort of torrential rain we had yesterday, because I really don’t want to cancel my plans again. Or get particularly rained on…

Today’s photo count: seven hundred and fifty-nine. See? Told you I could accomplish much with some sun. Though I’m pretty sure a lot of those photos were taken in drive mode, trying to get the perfect photo of a rocket launching.

Today’s step count: 11,871 steps – 8.3km – 4 flights of stairs

Today’s goshuin count: Two – one at Jigen-ji (which I’ll probably show off tomorrow) and one at Muku Shrine (pictured below)

Today’s stamp count: Aside from the three stamp rally stamps, the Ryusei Kaikan had its own stamp, which I stamped in my book from last trip.