Tag: henro
The Longest Day
September 29th, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
Mother, may I take five giant steps?
September 15th, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
Space Pen: Lost
September 4th, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
Reflection of Self
August 26th, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
Masters of the Understatement
August 19th, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
A Dainty Japanese Girl
August 11th, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
You will always walk with me
August 4th, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
Organically OCD
July 28th, 2008, 1 Comment
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 [...]
A Gaijin’s Journey?
July 21st, 2008, No Comments
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 [...]
Introduction
July 16th, 2008, No Comments
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, [...]
