Day 32: daily summary and greetings

 Here is my summary and my greetings from day 32.

A nice picture

Today I walked from Chochin-ya hostel right into the center of the big city of Matsuyama (about 500 000 inhabitants). The walk was mainly flat, but still 170 m of altitude was measured by the Smart Watch. After leaving the mountains it is getting warmer again, with a morning start temperature of 12 degrees Celsius which increased during the day up to 22 degrees Celcius. The sun was shining the whole day.

I passed 5 temples from which I can not report anything special. Temple 51, Ishiteji had been praised to be a fascinating one which I can not agree with. Unique was a cave which is part of the temple complex.

Cave at Ishiteji Temple (T51)

Cave at Ishiteji Temple

I had an interesting conversation (as much as this is possible when language barriers exist) with an older Japanese man who gave me his golden name slip (Osame-fuda), which means that he has done 88 temples 50-100 times. I guess this was not every time by walking and mostly with the car.

Anyhow he has now found a new purpose in life by talking to Henro pilgrims and asking them to write something for him and taking joint pictures. He has a huge collection map of all his interactions he had so far, including statistics on how many people he had met from which country. 

The man with the golden name slip

The man with the golden name slip is proud about his collection of international o-Henro pilgrims

When entering Matsuyama on the official walking route, you pass by the legendary Dogo Onsen, which is the oldest onsen in Japan with a history of 3000 years. The three story wooden building, people visit today is from 1894, but currently under renovation, so that only one side of building complex is visible. Luckily I had the chance to see Dogo Onsen fully in the past.

Dogo Onsen, unfortunately the big building is under renovation

Today I stay in the APA business hotel. For this weekend they only had smoking rooms left, which I hate (I wonder that they are still existing in current times). I have opened the  window as far as it was possible and the air in the room gets better.
At least the view towards the castle (which I will visit tomorrow) is good. In reality the castle can be much better seen than on the attached picture.

The view from the APA business hotel: right into the direction of the castle which is illuminated at the night

Todays walking distance was 25 km (total: 723 km).

Comments

  1. VeronikaOctober 28, 2023 at 9:49 AM

    Dear Eckhard, thank you for sharing your wonderful pictures and descriptions of your henro walk.Every evening, I am looking forward to read your posts. Your stay at Matsuyama reminds us of our visit to that place in 2012 where we had the great opportunity to enjoy the hot springs at Dogo Onsen. We are also visiting Japan once in a while because our son works and lives there with his japanese wife and two daughters. We got the link of your blog from the Wagner family, our neighbours. Many greetings, ki o tzukete, ganbatte kudasai

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