Walking O-Henro
In July 2008 I went to Japan for two weeks and spent a total of eight days hiking the Shikoku pilgrimage with my father, brother and a family friend. We visited 23 temples, stayed in bed-and-breakfasts, went to a natural hot-spring and saw some of the most beautiful views that still exist. I brought blank journals with me and filled them up with notes and doodles. You can read all about that adventure here.
Unlike a normal blog, the posts here are shown in 'correct' chronological order. The most recent post will be at the bottom, you see.
For those interesting in photos, check out the Japan Gallery.
May 7th, 2008,
Whan that Aprill, with his shoures soote
The droghte of March hath perced to the roote
And bathed every veyne in swich licour,
Of which vertu engendred is the flour;
Whan Zephirus eek with his sweete breeth
Inspired hath in every holt and heeth
The tendre croppes, and the yonge sonne
Hath in the Ram his halfe cours yronne,
And smale foweles maken [...]
July 7th, 2008,
I’m ‘blogging’ old school in a moleskin journal, however I’ve nabbed Dad’s laptop to assure the world that I am, indeed, alive. It’s muggy and beautiful. We leave tomorrow for Henro.
July 16th, 2008,
I’m still in Japan, still alive. We walked 23 temples on Shikoku and we’re reposing at Dad’s place for a couple days before I head home. I miss pizza.
July 16th, 2008,
I’ve always wanted to backpack in a strange land. When I was in high school, I read a book by a fellow who walked the Trail of Tears backwards and then hitchhiked across the Pony Express route, from St. Jo’s to San Francisco. It impressed the hell out of me at the time, [...]
July 21st, 2008,
I jokingly wrote ‘O-Henro - A gaijin’s journey that does not end in enlightenment so much as family peace’ on the cover of my first moleskin. At the time I intended to write about what it was like to be a Jewish, American woman in Japan. In the end, I came to realize [...]
July 28th, 2008,
Last year my father and brother did the Henro trail alone, and along the way they met Sone-san and his son. As Sone-san only has 2/3rds of a heart, his wife doesn’t let him do the hike on his own. In this weird way, we’re doing him a favor by doing this with [...]
August 4th, 2008,
On our second day, we had a trek of 14.2km, which is just under 7 miles, and really isn’t all that far at all. At some point I stopped keeping track of kilometers and millage and all that sort of thing. It stopped mattering. We started out our day at 7am, following [...]
August 11th, 2008,
The only Western food I’d had since the flight (which was Asian Kosher) were the Quaker Oats granola bars I’d packed. My father had mocked me, initially, but as we all have a tendency to get grumpy when we don’t eat, and Boone is a diabetic, I felt they were needed. In the [...]
August 19th, 2008,
In retrospect, I’m really glad that I hiked the 10 miles to Temple Twelve. By this point, we were doing 10-12 miles a day, so the distance was never the issue to me. The mountain was my issue. To tell a tale out of sequence, I’m currently in Physical Therapy to fix my [...]
August 26th, 2008,
If every other Henro from our hotel hadn’t been on the same bus, I might have felt a little guilty. But. We’d all had a shit-kicker of a hike, followed by a painful night with no AirCon (AC to me), a morning that started at 4am with a rooster I promptly named C’oq [...]
September 4th, 2008,
After the relatively easy day, traveling with a fun group and having entertaining conversations, there were only four of us at the Japan Rail (JR) station that morning. Instead of walking, we caught the rail to Choden station at from there walked to Temple 18. Though it wasn’t rush hour (as I understand [...]
September 15th, 2008,
Free again from the strictures and bindings of towns, we returned to the mountains for Temple 20. Kakurinji Temple of the Crane Forest was a far less arduous hike than the tripe up Temple 12, but it was no less tiring. We started on the road, would up around the base of the [...]
September 29th, 2008,
The last day was long and short. It was my least favorite kind of Henro-ing, being the kind on roads (in this case, I think we were walking along a highway) and we got lost a couple times. On the other hand, we only walked about 6km and the rest of the time [...]
