Day 51: 88 Temples - Kyoto

I slept all the way to 6:30am!  After going to bed before 9 and waking up at 5 for so long it was nice to sleep in.  I had a pretty lazy time to check out at 10.  Fortunately, the hotel has a coffee space they let you sit and drink coffee as long as you like.  They also have baggage storage which I took advantage of while having lunch with Mike.  He brought my backup stuff bag.

My body enjoyed the rest but was also kind of restless.  I could almost feel things healing.

I met Mike, his son and daughter-in-law for some very good ramen and fried rice.  We then went for coffee at a Blue Bottle cafe.

The next two nights will be spent in Kyoto, the city of my ancestors.  I was last in Kyoto in 2015 with Laurie and the boys for three nights.  I have less planned and less energy this time.

The 14:07 was 3 minutes late.  It was a special rapid service train with very few stops to Kyoto.  I was in Kyoto in 50 minutes.  Mike took the local version one track over and was at his station in a few minutes.  There seemed to be a train to Kyoto every few minutes.

In Japan the same tracks are used for multiple trains.  In Shikoku all the tracks were singles.  Trains in opposite directions passed at stations where there were splits, sometimes into three tracks.  Not only were there local trains passing all the time, there were expresses going in both directions.  There were also some trains that only stopped in main cities.  All these were running on a single track.  Scheduling must have been crazy.  In Sannomiya Station a few minutes before my train stopped a cargo train blasted by my platform.

So what did this pilgrimage mean?  I'm not sure.  Certainly it was a physical challenge.  Walking 20 to 30km day after is easy to do for a few days but it does wear on you.  I feel good but a little beat up for having done it.  The emotional and spiritual components are a little harder to quantify.  Those things could take a while to process.  The temples themselves became pretty meaningless as we progressed through them.  Interestingly, finishing the Camino came with a sense of completion arriving in Santiago de Compostela while completing the loop was more a sense of continuation.  Christianity versus Buddhism?  Above my pay grade.

In Kyoto I walked to the Blossom Hotel ... it's kinda fancy.  On the way I passed by Higashi Hongan-ji Temple and was a little in awe.  I've seen a few temples but this was like The Vatican compared to village churches.

I didn't have a lot of ambition when I got to the hotel.  Some time around 7:30 I forced myself to go walk around.  I walked over to and along Teramachi a covered street I have many fond memories of going back to when I was 10.  I walked up by where I remember the house my Dad grew up in was.  Pretty sure it is long gone.  I also may be blocks off.

On the way back I felt I should get some food even though I wasn't that hungry.  I was looking at the menu on the street and one of the waiters encouraged me to come in.  It's kind of nice to be pulled in off the street versus the oh-no-foreigners look we often got.  A bleached blond kid spoke a little English and took my order.  He asked why I was in Japan and when I said Shikoku Henro he said he was from Matsuyama.  It was an Izakaya restaurant which was perfect; I had several small dishes and a couple of beers.