On our second day, we had a trek of 14.2km, which is just under 7 miles, and really isn’t all that far at all. At some point I stopped keeping track of kilometers and millage and all that sort of thing. It stopped mattering. We started out our day at 7am, following a lovely breakfast with iced coffee. Normally I hate iced coffee, it tastes wrong and the sugars are screwed up. In Japan, the sugar comes in a syrup, laced with agave to keep it liquid. It’s genius and simple and someone at the coffee chains here needs to pick up on that.
Again the hike was more of a walk. When we got to the mountains, a few days later, the real hike began. The adventure always begins in a town, though, and so did ours. Travelers who met in a bar or in (or a train station) pack up and begin their escapade on the streets and roads of the town. The paths are easier to follow this way. Even The Wizard of Oz began on the Yellow Brick Road. But while the paths are marked, sometimes a fork in the road proved bewildering and comical. There were easily identifiable route markers of a little Henro in red, stuck on poles and roadway guards. The problem with them was that they marked both the Walking Henro and the Driving Henro. These stickers later were differentiated by a Henro in a car sticker and a Henro walking sticker, which helped. Also, the stickers were the ‘New’ Henro trail markers, and the older counterpart was far more helpful. Eighteen inch tall, or there about, these stone markers listed the temple number, the name in Kanji, the distance, and an arrow or hand pointing the way.
Most of the Old Henro markers were on the more natural trails. On those paths, we walked through woods, on the packed earth tamped down by millions of Henro over the generations. Sometimes we walked in between rice parries, where many people warned us about the one poisonous snake in all of Japan. Naturally I found it many hours later. My brother the naturalist knew that the snake was related to the cobra (he said you could tell by the head). Boone also said that any allergic reactions you have to bugs and plants were often worse than in the US or Europe. I was later able to confirm this as fact, as we all were, when the no-see-ums attacked us en-masse.
Our walk quickly became introspective. Boone and I led the charge until 11 or so, when the heat became soul sucking. The daunting difference of Japan had started to wear off, I now I was able to see it as a country and not as ‘not home.’ In the snake, the 2cm frog, and the birds singing, I began to see the real Japan. It will make Manga and Anime different to me, in the same way that a live concert makes your love for a band even sweeter. As the temperature climbed into the high 80s and the humidity convinced the Holland-made weather sensors that it was raining (it wasn’t), we stopped for a lunch of cold udon noodles across the road from the temple.
The more temples I saw, the more I found each temples differences were rooted in the same core of Buddhism. Some where ancient and rough around the edges, while others were concrete odes to modernity. Many had giant straw sandals hanging in the gates, but every single one had a gate and a shrine and the feeling that you were in a special place. Even though most temples had vending machines and air conditioning for the priests, you felt like you stepped out of the TARDIS into a different time. The way that Bladerunner showed us the neo-cyberpunk future with crusty back alleys contrasting the glittering golden downtown, so did the temples marry a layman’s belief in the simplest of holy things with the organization that comes with almost all modern religions. At the same time, you had a precise order and method to follow, but you were free to pray as you liked. There was no one, right way.
As we walked, people directed us through paths that they thought were more interesting (they were usually right). They also gave us things, gifts called O-settai. You can not refuse these gifts, even if it’s a food you hate or are deathly allergic to. You just take it, thank them, and figure it out later. A woman sold me a coffee on discount, and Dad told me about a fellow who got a six-pack of Coke. Like me, this guy never touched the stuff. Normally you’d shove the give into your pack and sort it out later, but a six-pack is heavy stuff. He had no fellow Henro to share the bounty with, and he really didn’t want to schlep it up a mountain. So the fellow found a roadside shrine and left the cans there.
Later that afternoon, a 79-year old man made us come inside, a mere 500 meters from our hotel, and have a cake with bean paste inside. He also gave us a shot of Apple Juice that was, of all things, CRC approved. In the notebook of people who’d visited, there was a thank you written in Quebecois (which I pointed out was not French, and the authors were not using some special private language, but Dad didn’t believe me). This couple had been traveling with their 9 month old baby, only a few weeks ahead of us. The baby was fine. Just around the corner, quite literally, was the hotel where the owner not only knew my father, but adored him. He has that schtick.
They took our clothes to do our laundry, brought us lots of water, insisted on treating my sunburn, discussed how to handle a painful knee, and then took us to the nearby spa. I had assumed it would be a rustic sort of spa, but really it was a modern bathing center built atop a natural spring. Still, the boys went their way, I went mine, and for the first time in Japan, I felt lonely. It wasn’t the lack of English that did it, but the fact that I no longer had a traveling companion. I was the only Gaijin there, none of the women spoke much English, and I felt like Mary Livingston sister, Babe. Go look it up. Outside of the two little old ladies who demanded to know why I was in Japan (O-heno oshimasu), where I was from (Chicago, USA) and why I was alone (my male family were in the other side), I spoke to no one. Mind you, my ‘speaking’ was done with a lot of pantomime.
I soaked alone — no one shared my tubs while I was in them, and I caught the hint and went to the smallest ones — and I dwelled on my lack of spiritual movement. It was only the second day, however, and I’d be rather presumptuous to expect epiphany or nirvana after only seven temples. Still, I felt good. While I was walking, I forgot about being in pain or the weight of my backpack, or even that I was tired. I was lonely without my girlfriend, but I wasn’t said because just like how Kobo-Daishi walked with the Henro, so did she. She always walked with me and she always will.
A wise man said we all walk O-Henro for our own reasons, and only one is enlightenment. That night we talked over Sake and a chicken/egg dish we named ‘Mother and Child Reunion’, a yellow watermelon, and ‘Ice Cold’ packs on various sun-burnt body parts. My brother and I re-connected on our shared loves and I started to hear Japanese as a language. What I was hearing began to shift from sound into words, and while I couldn’t tell you what anyone said, I began to understand the feeling behind the meaning.