Day 44: 88 Temples (80-82) - Takamatsu

We were on the 7:40 high school special train this morning.  I have one thing to say to pretty young Japanese women on the train ... blow your nose!  We were crammed pretty tight and the sniffling was horrible.  Paper products in Japan must be made of gold because nobody uses them.  By the time we got to Kokubu Station most of the snifflers had gotten off and we had seats for the last few stops.


Temple 80 was only a few blocks away.  I thought it was a nice temple; had some charm but it was overloaded with new statues.  It was like someone decided to jazz the place up a bit by ordering a bunch of statues.


As we walked up the hill through the suburbs we had to dodge a few cars rushing to work or getting the kid to the train station on time.


When we got past the houses we started to climb.  It was about a 350m climb and it took us about an hour.  We crossed a road and continued on the trail across the road.  We should have taken the road.  The trail took us to the connecting trail between Temple 81 and 82.


This wasn't all that bad because we saw Joe walking toward us.  He informed us we missed a turn.  We had a chat and we will be in the same place near Temple 88 in a few days.  The miscue did add a kilometer to our day.


We walked in the direction Joe came from and immediately saw Taiwan Leo and snowy Henro hut guy.


It was up and down along a forest trail to Temple 81.  81 was nice.  It was multi-level with lots of stairs.


Leaving Temple 82 I ran into my Dutch friends Leander and Marion.  We chatted for a bit and then I had to catch up with Mike who had gone on ahead.  


We backtracked to where we met Joe and had a little break.  Someone had setup free drinks and snacks.  Apparently, this was a thing some guy did in honor of his daughter who died.


Temple 82 was another few kilometers.  We met Taiwan Leo and SHH guy as they left.  Temple 82 was a nice temple with more than enough stairs.  The sun came out for photos and the leaves were colorful.


As we left we ran into our Dutch friends.  We had a chat while some school outing was going on beside us.


The walk off the hill to the train station was long and we were getting tired.  Eventually we got to Kinashi Station and waited only a few minutes for a train.  When we got to Takamatsu Station we were tired and took a taxi to the hotel.


For dinner we went to the Indian/Nepalese restaurant around the corner.  It was a nice change but it was heavily Japanese influenced.



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