Day 16: a hospital visit, a botanical garden and 2 nice temples

Early this morning I went to a local hospital in Kochi in order to ask for treatment of the dog bite. The whole atmosphere in the institution was relaxed and no long lines of people were waiting to see a doctor. The physician who took care for me seemed competent and spoke good English. The first good news he gave to me was, that rabies is not existing in Japan. He then cleaned the wound again and put a local antibiotic on the potentially infected site. Additionally he provided me with a 3-day systemic antibiotic therapy. So everything should be fine now. For the whole service the hospital charged only 65 Euro.

So I started my walking day later than usual at 8:30 in the morning. On my defined working path I had the chance to see the botanical garden of Kochi, which again is a masterpiece in Japanese garden architecture. 

Koichi Botanical Garden

There is a good view from the Botanical Garden down into the valley

Botanical Garden Greenhouse

Chikurinji Temple (T31) lies adjacent to the Botanical Garden and therefore also has more visitors than I have usually seen

The following temple Zenjibuji (T32) was in contrast very quiet and had almost no visitors.

You can love historic stone steps up to the temples in the mountans when you see them, but you may hate them when you have to climb them up for longer period of times

Walking on the o-Henro trail 

My todays Japanese walking fellow is looking at the time table of the ferry boat, since we just missed it.

After I met Stephan yesterday, I met Corinne in the food court of Kochi this evening. I walked with her the first 3 days of the o-Henro trail

This is how "Katsuo no tataki" is prepared

Walking distance today: 23 km (total: 328 km), altitude: 360 m, temperature: 26 degrees Celsius, mostly sunny.