The Henro- 88 Temples around Shikoku Japan

​Well, I’m happy to be off on another walk and equally appreciating doing it somewhere foreign to what I’d typically see.  Initially my plan was to walk the entire Henro trail, (750 miles) but it just isn’t in the cards to complete it this year.  Between transit, weather, and maybe a couple days off I might squeeze in 4 full weeks of actual walking.  Depending on how things go, I’m hoping to at least finish half of this adventure 

On our first day of walking, we made it to Temples 1-7.  We covered a little over 14.5 miles which wasn’t bad considering we landed in Tokushima at 8:45am.  Like the Camino, following the trail is straightforward with signs and an app if you take a wrong turn.  At the time of writing, I just finished taping up a few spots on my feet where I am expecting a blister here soon.  As seen below, I met with Philip from Australia to walk the Henro.  He is a friend I made walking the Camino (Spain) a few year back.  

Japan has got to be the vending machine capital of the world. These things are everywhere and they are also proving to be very useful on this walk.  I’m unsure if this is going to be a very quiet/secluded walk, or if us starting a little late today at the beginning (Temple 1) restricted us from seeing other pilgrims.  When we were at the temples, we saw quite a few people being schlepped in and out on a bus, but almost no one out walking in-between. Maybe because it is Sunday that everything was so quiet and closed up, but our food options today was a split between vending machines or 7-eleven. 

So far the start of this walk is feeling very different to the Camino. Having a good understanding of Spanish versus a zero understanding of Japanese is adding its challenges.  I don’t feel many would understand this thought, but I get invigorated by being in an environment where it’s a challenge to do or understand anything. As everything is written in Kanji and you can’t even make an attempt at what something might say, I’m accepting that things will definitely be a little harder.  

As we were leaving temple number 7 and looking for our accommodations booked long ago, we realized that they were almost 2 kilometers away from our trail. I guess I shouldn’t complain since I committed to going for a long walk, but it was a little frustrating when we finally arrived to see a shock on the face of people (who acknowledged they had our reservation) that we actually showed up. 

After a lot of commotion and language barriers, they said they were full and didn’t have room. The other concerning aspect was, I didn’t see one lodging option before we arrived to this place as well.  As you see in the photo below of me and the lady who ran the accommodation, she drove Philip and I to a 7-Eleven and bought us dinner.  I didn’t even realize she was paying for it until it was too late.  After about another 10 minutes of driving even further, she dropped us at another place to stay.  Unlike her (small) accommodation that didn’t have any more room, there wasn’t even somebody around here to let us in. There was food in the refrigerator here, and a jar on top to leave money for what you ate.  Fortunately for us, we just came from 7-11. She then advised us she would be back at 720 am to take us back to our trail.  Let the adventures begin.

The trail sometimes doesn’t feel like I’m on the trail.  

Definitely enjoying the Japanese Gardens around the temples and in peoples yards

We were really thrilled to find this.  It had been quite a while since we had something to drink.