Day 22 -- Just because cars can use them...

Distance traveled: ~50 km (but a good half of that was walking over a mountain)

I’m bushed.

Temples 44 and 45 are fairly close to each other (well, about 10k apart), and the way the routes work out you have to backtrack a bunch after 45 back to 44 and then continue on from there. I booked a place near 44 with the intention of maybe going to 45 and back after checking in.

Temple 44 大宝寺 Daihōji (~50 km)

So as I’m planning my route in the morning I’ve gotten pretty good at avoiding walking paths. The map is usually quite consistent in labeling which roads are suitable for cars and which ones aren’t. What I didn’t forsee is that a good 5-10k of the mountain climb, while suitable for cars (I guess) could really be described better as a gravel driveway rather than a road, which means I had to push my bike over a mountain without any opportunities to ride it, even on the downhill portions.

It was absolutely exhausting and I was worried for my tires the whole way through, since they’re not really meant for that sort of road. Luckily, I think they came out unscathed.

I got to the place I’m staying just before 4 o’clock, so I relaxed for a bit, and then decided to ride out to 44 and back because it’s seriously only about 5 minutes away by bicycle. I didn’t go to 45 though.

Daihōji was nice. Felt a little old and run-down, which I always like in a temple. The lady in the stamp office seemed to be so unenthused with her job. She could not tear herself away from her cell phone line conversation, even as she had the brush in hand to draw in my book.

Lastly, I wanted to mention that I bought a little notebook today to keep track of the strange thoughts that go through my head. I actually brought one from day one, but it went through the wash sometime near the beginning of the trip and I never bothered to get another one. But now I’m back. I just use it to write about things I wonder about.

For example, Daihōji was started by a group of hunter brothers who found a statue of Jūichimen Kannon Bosatsu in the woods and decided to build a temple around it. But there’s absolutely no way that they made the temple in its current form. All of these temples I’m going to have the same sort of architectural style and very high levels of craftsmanship.

So… I wonder what the original temple looked like. I mean, did they put any effort into it at all? To build a big temple it seems like you would have to dedicate years of your already pretty short life to do it. It’s not like they had construction equipment or anything. And they’re hunters, not carpenters.

I bet the original temple was a shabby lean-to with a statue in it. I’d like to have a time machine to go back in time and see how these temples changed over time.