Nishishinmachi

Up too early but did some more lodging research. Prachantam from Portugal and Antar from Ukraine, who are both advanced yogis were also up and we rode the train together. Prachantam told interesting travel stories, he lived here for 2 years and first came to Japan in 1974.

I start at temple 3 and I do a good job sauntering about. I manage to stand still look around and take pictures. I also managed to get off the track and find other places.

There was absolutely nobody on the trail and frankly the trail just ran through subdivisions so one might say it was not interesting but I was just happy to be and it didn't bother me at all, so maybe I'm making progress in finding inner peace.

At the last temple there were seven older ladies who had tables set up and provided coffee and plum paste dumplings. They were quite the animated group. Since I don't know Japanese I said Awaodori, the name of the dance, to break the ice and they were laughing and giggling and brought up the music and they were dancing. It was a good time.

Overall I did 33 km in about 11 hours, not a great average but considering that I purely enjoyed the day and the weather was impeccable.Read more