20 April 2025 - Day 49 - Temples 79, 81, 82 and 80 - yes, in that order - 27 km, 777 m altitude gain, 992 stairs

The morning started with a good early breakfast and a very warm goodbye from my hostess. I left her my « new » hakui that I had bought only three days ago together with the usual Osamefuda and a stamp from Luxembourg, which I give to every host.

I then left just after 7, which gave me hopefully enough time to visit 4 Temples, two of which were set in the mountains. But my good time already slipped through my hands when it took me literally 20 minutes to dry the Tennoji (Temple 79) calligraphy on my scroll. I suppose the Monk who had just about opened his office at 8 o’clock didn’t have the right feeling yet for the perfect match of ink and water.

When a nice lady whom I greeted in her front yard on my way to Temple 81 asked if I had time for tea or coffee I unfortunately had to decline. I had no idea how much time I would need to climb up and down those mountains. She then gave me a bag with one bottle of tea and one bottle of coffee. I gave her an osamefuda with my name and country and we were both happy.

Temples 80, 81 and 82 are situated in a kind of triangle and, according to Oliver’s books, the easiest way to visit them is by changing the order to 81-82-80. This way you go into the mountains for the first two and then you trace back some of your route and have a long descent to Temple 80.

So this is how I did it. But nobody had told me the road to Shiromineji ends in a total of 525 stairs. Even though the sun was not completely out, I was drenched in sweat when I arrived. I had seen a Japanese henro biker on the way up and we arrived almost at the same time, the road was 4 km longer but without the stairs. So we gave each other a high five!

Shiromineji is another beautiful mountain Temple that’s built on several levels. It also represents the 12 animals of the Chinese horoscope.

The trail to Negoroji (Temple 82) was ok but with some quite steep passages. And as if I hadn’t climbed enough stairs already, here were some more. The Temple was set in a forest of maple trees, which had all just started to deploy their small light green leaves. A beauty! The Temple also houses 33’000 small metal Kannon statues donated by pilgrims, and the stump of a 1600 years old zelkova tree that died in 1975.

I also met my biker henro again, as well as a few other Japanese henro I have seen already several times along the way.

After my short lunch break during which I talked with a Japanese man who was also staying at Ryokan Miki last night, I started my descent towards Kokubunji (Temple 80). But first I had to walk back and up halfway to Temple 81 again and then the impressively steep downhill started.

Kokubunji is located in a beautiful parc full of pines and lots af statues. It seems that a lot of people just like to stroll around the parc, how else can I explain that they want to charge ¥200 for visiting the parc? Luckily this doesn’t seem to be applicable to Henro. After all they spend some money on the calligraphy and stamp anyway.

I then walked another kilometer to my inn, which is unfortunately probably the shabbiest I have stayed at so far. Well I will be going to sleep soon anyway and tomorrow will be another day.

On this note I leave you, wishing you a happy Easter (this is not celebrated here and I frankly don’t mind). Thanks again for reading and I hope you’ll be reading me again tomorrow.