I headed into Kochi today. I would take my luggage to the hotel, which was in the middle of town and then head out to all the temples. First part of the plan worked flawlessly. The Hotel took my heavy bag and kept it waiting for me until checked in later that night. What did not go as planned was the distance of travel to the temples and then the walking distance between them.
The first day in Kochi will be just a story. When I stashed my luggage at the hotel my main camera goes with it. The only things that I have on me is my hat, staff and henro bag with all the essentials (english guide book, stamp book, candles and etc) I started off by heading back to the east side of Kochi.
Temple 29, Kokubunji, seems like it is out in the fields in the middle of nowhere, but as you start to get closer you start noticing some cute little restaurants around and then you encounter a fortress of tall shurb like trees. Out of the blue there is this green wall. I followed it around and in the sun stricken fields of crops was a oasis of shade. It was nice for a bit to relax, but I knew I had ton of temples to get through that day, so I said goodbye to the shade and started out among the fields again.
Walking to temple 30, Zenrakuji, was a bit like going from the country side to the tight knit neighborhoods. The fields fell away and thin streets spun their way around houses. The pilgrim route takes you into some of the temples sideways or at least not through the front gate. For this temple I entered through the side and at first it was a standard temple, but as I left there was a large entrance path that sunk into the ground. You stepped down into this wide long gravel road with trees canopied above. This was the entrance of the temple that I was looking for.
I would like to say I enjoyed getting to temple 31, Chikurinji, but most of the way was through the city. Once you have seen a store front or apartment building, you have seen most of them. The amount of time it took me to get from temple 29 to 30 plus the travel had taken around 4 hours. Now I had another 2 hours to walk down to temple 31 and I figure another hours and a half to temple 32. The route to temple 31 isn’t interesting till you get to the end. You cross a river into a little neighborhood that is being overlooked by a massive hill.
As I looked at it I knew I was about to climb it.
Yes, I climbed it.
The path takes you into the Kochi Botantical garden which you wouldn’t really know till crawl out of the woods onto a paved path with very beautiful lighting everywhere. It is very short lived as the henro path leads you off the nicely paved roads and into the woods and onto pure jagged rock paths. While getting through this I actually got my foot stuck in between the rock path which scrapped my whole side of my foot. I would of liked to enjoy the stride through the park, but being in pain sorta puts me on edge. My tolerance is pretty high, but when everything sort of hurts and then add more pain to it, I lose focus.
Once you get out of the garden you follow a path down the hill you are on to a three way cross road. To the right is the temple which stands past some long stairs.
This was the first temple that I saw with a giant pagoda tower in it. I would see a few more temples like this through out my trip, but not many. There were long flat steps that had these lanterns laying on the ground. Which was different, usual lanterns are hanging on something or elevated by being on some sort of staff, but these sat on the ground almost guiding you to where you were supposed to go. If I reached the temples near the end of the day it is getting pretty dark already, which I noticed that I lose a lot of what the temple looks like in my mind. By 5 o’clock the sun is pretty much behind any sky scrapers or tall building that are there. For this temple which was covered in trees, it made it pretty dark inside. After getting there and realizing that I would not be able to make it to the last temple in time, I resided to head back to my hotel for the day.
If one thing that day taught me is that I underestimated the time it would take to actually get to all the temples in Kochi. I knew from my experience that day that I would no be able to actually walk to all the temples the next day. So I researched the buses and which ones I should take that night to get prepared for the next day.
Kochi - Missed Options
The next day started early. I called a tax, as I was to return to pretty much where I was yesterday and made my way to temple 32, Zenjibuji. Now I didn’t expect it, but from the ride to this temple, again I looked at the map and saw that it is in the city, no problem. But as we neared a large steep hill approached and we soon climbed it. Sadly even though I had my camera with me, I didn’t take any pictures of this temple with it, not sure why. Next was to head to the west to temple 33, Sekkeiji.
When I was at temple 32 I ran into this older henro who I saw again after I left, we were both heading in the same directions so we both sorta teamed up. I will tell you, this guy was moving fast. I thought I was moving sorta fast before, following this guy made me realized I was slow. We powered through the streets to the river which a ferry took us across. The ferry was pretty neat, free and you could ride your bike or motorcycle onto it and just chill as it took you across. Temple 33 was near a cute bend in a road that held a little inn and cafe.
A cute Tanuki Status
The Main Temple
The main entrance opposite of the main temple
The guy on the left is the henro that I power walked with to get here
The cool water basin to cleanse your hands at
My ended up leaving before my new henro friend and that was the last time I saw him. Off to temple 34, Tanemaji which was again more to the west. Now this temple was easy to get to, but rather hard to endure. The buildings fell away and all that remained were fields and long roads with almost nothing along them.
Even when I got close to the temple the buildings were very short and provided no shelter from the blazing sun that was raining down that day. For this part I intended to take the bus after this temple and by the time I got to the temple I had about 10 minutes to actually get to the bus stop. I can with out a doubt say I rushed this temple very hard. Not something I was happy about, but the next bus wasn’t for the next 3 hours. So I said the heart sutra faster then possible and got my book stamped and ran out towards the bus stop. I made it, I think, but no bus came. I stood for about 15 minutes after the time it was supposed to be there. I panicked a bit. I had really no idea where I was, there were no other bus stops or trains around.
I was pretty much stranded.
My next destination on foot was around 3 hours away, which is fine, but then I had another 3 hours to go to the next temple. Kochi was the place where I had to improvise a lot. And this came at me learning on how to call a Taxi. I normally don’t like talking on the phone in English, so calling to talk in Japanese was going a bit past my comfort zone. I walked back to the temple to have a place I could tell them and somehow, it worked, at least I thought it did. After I told them where I was, there was a quick exchange of words that I couldn’t quite make out and then they hung up the phone.
Jonathan, I hear taxis in Japan are pretty expensive, hell yeah they are haha. They are expansive, but they literally go everywhere. Up to the mountains, into the seas, the Japanese taxis are fearless. So I used them a little during my trip.
We acsended to temple 35, Kiyotakiji which on the way I saw an Udon shop that I would head back to down to eat at. So high above Kochi rested this temple. It over looked the whole western part of the city.
The view from the temple.
This truck that lay in the parking lot
Statues among the grounds
The main temple
After this I walked down the mountain and had lunch at the udon shop I had seen before. The last temple of the day and last temple of Kochi was temple 36, Shoryuji. Way down south on a peninsula this temple resided among some beaches and tropical scenery. There was high long bridge that connected the peninsula to the town just south west of Kochi. You wrapped around some mountains along the beach and then went inland a bit to reach the temple. At the base was a small shop then the main gate and stairs leading up into the main temple area.
The main gate
The main temple
A large pagoda inside
Kobo Daishi
On my way back I decided to stop by one of the beaches. In Japan I saw many stray cats just laying around or chilling. Here there were some as well.
The outdoor area sitting area
The walkway to the beach
I was taking pictures of the water and cats and this guy came over and gave me 10 dollars of O-settai (which is the most anyone gave me) he told me to be careful and walked off with his girlfriend. I was very grateful, but the way he said be careful made me a bit worried. It was so serious and sort of sad sounding. But I used that money to get back to my place that night so I was extremely grateful.
Kochi showed me that plans can sometimes not go accordingly and that looking at the map from above does not mean things are close. It also does not take in the account that there are other factors that will affect and slow you down as you go along. In reality I should of stayed in Kochi city another night and took a little bit more time, but I had the west peninsula to head off too.
My trip would start to move a lot faster in distance. I decided that for the long treks of following the road side I would take the train or bus. The next day I would be traveling to the western peninsula then back up to the west coast.
You can see the Kochi city temples on the south middle part of the island