Adventures with Tye!: Day 11- Ehime and Kochi Prefectures!

5/9/2017

That morning we woke up and hurried out the door so we could fit in all the things we wanted to do that day. We swung by a MacDonald’s for a breakfast sandwich (MacDonald’s in Japan is much better quality than it is in the U.S., but it is probably just as unhealthy) and ate them on the road.

We arrived at our first stop, Iwaya-ji temple in Ehime Prefecture at about 9 am. Iwaya-ji temple is the 45^th temple along the Shikoku Buddhist Temple Pilgrimage. 

It had a steep, paved hiking trail that was lined with flags and banners nearly the entire way up. Even though it was paved, it was still quite difficult to hike up. Maybe we are just more out of shape than we realized.

There was a small hill off to the side of the main path that was surrounded by a small path that had irregular steps that raised and lowered around the small hill. The steps were also quite narrow, so much that it is difficult for an averaged size person to stay within the confines of the rope that lines the steps. 

The point where you enter the small path, there is a stone pillar with little metal plates on a bar. I recognized that they were meant to keep count of something, but I didn't' know what. At the time I didn't' know the purpose of the small path, but later I found out that if you have a wish or a desire to do well, like do well on an exam for example, you come to this shrine and walk around this narrow path 100 times, and you move one of the plates on the pillar. and on the 100th pass around this path, you make your prayer/wish and it will be granted. 

You can see the small stone pillar with the metal plate in it on the right.

The pillar is meant to keep count of how many times you walked around the hill. The act of circling the hill is supposed to be a sacrifice on your behalf. In addition to the time and effort spent circling this hill, the path is so small and the steps are so irregular that you have to be mindful of every step. This keeps your mind focused on the task at hand and will help you visualize your goal more clearly. The difficulty of the path is meant to keep your mind from wandering and keeps the act of circling the hill from being "easy."  When I was there I circled the path once and called it good. I didn't know the purpose at the time, but I recognized it's difficulty and didn't circle again. 

There were small shrines and monuments dotted along the trail on the way up.

It also had this entire wall/hill section that was just covered in small Jizo statues, with some larger Buddha and Kannon statues mixed in.  I later found out that if a family does not have time to keep coming to a temple to pray for the spirits of their ancestors, like you're supposed to, a family can purchase a small stone statue and carve the person they're praying for's name on it or their family name. Then it is given to the shrine and set upon a hill much like the one below. The monks and priests of the shrine then will pray for the spirits of your family on your behalf. I never knew that was the purpose of the hillsides of small statues before. I think that's pretty cool. Outsourcing your responsibilities as a descendant...

We found this cave behind a small shrine, and it was a shallow cave, but it still got pretty dark on the inside. It had a Kannon statue inside. Pretty par for the course in this area of the world; caves with statues inside.  This is how it looks as you approach the small cave.

Not an obvious shrine entrance. Kind of hidden off to the side.

This is how it looked to the naked eye. Not easy to see inside.

This is when you use the flash on the camera. 

The is the view of the shrine and Jizo statue wall from the entrance of the small cave with the Kannon statue.

After hiking up the trail, we finally made it to the temple at the top. It is about 1/3 of the way up the mountain, and you can continue past the temple and continue hiking up the mountain, but we did not have time for that. You do see an inn just below the temple itself.

Before you reach the temple and climb the final set of stairs up to the temple, there is a cave which has a shrine in the entrance and a tunnel that has been dug back into the mountain and underneath the temple itself. We decided to skip this at first and come back to it before we left.

From the entrance of the dark cave beneath the temple, If you look up towards the temple, this is the view. You can see a ladder leading to a loft above the temple. 

The temple itself is beautifully carved and preserved. It was wrapped in a colorful cloth on the outside and there were other people there praying.

Once we went up the stairs and got to the temple itself, we walked around for a short time looking around. There is a big gate that is on the far side of the temple, and you can pass underneath it to continue hiking the trail up the mountain.

Looking to the right of the temple there is a ladder propped up on the side of the mountain. If you look up you can see the ladder leads to a ledge up above the temple.

Tye and I climbed the ladder and made it up to the platform up top.

It is a small wooden platform with a wooden altar/statue at the top. It is supposed to be a Buddha, but it is not shaped like a person and it is more abstract. It is covered in red cloths and baby bibs. The platform, the cliff walls and the statue itself are just covered and littered with Japanese coins that were left as offerings and prayers.

The abstract Buddha as well as the cliff-side walls were just covered in coins! The walls glittered in the light and it was so cool!

I added a coin of my own to the cliff walls.

The view from this platform overlooking the temple and the surrounding mountains is breathtaking.

After we got down from the platform we returned to the cave underneath the temple. We entered and walked past the altar at the front and started walking down the dark tunnel on the way to the cave in the back.

The tunnel is dimly lit with small lanterns, but the big cave at the end of the tunnel has no lights (although I told Tehya about this later and she said that the cave was illuminated when she went there.) Tye once again used the flash on his camera to illuminate the space and take some photographs.

I was used to dark underground caves filled with creepy Buddha and monk statues by this point, so while I don’t especially enjoy going in these caves, I was not nearly as bothered as I was previously. I do believe they are meant to be slightly difficult to get to, and meant to be unsettling if not scary so you have to be determined and courageous to reach the end and pray.

We left the cave and got back in the car so we could drive to Kochi City in Kochi Prefecture.

The restof the day was rainy and wet. But it was still warm, so I wasn't bothered. 

An hour or so later we arrived at the Kochi Botanical Gardens. It had been raining all day and was currently drizzling. So I brought my umbrella into the gardens.

The grounds of the botanical garden had a large building that was a warm greenhouse with many different types of plants and flowers, obviously. There were so many beautiful plants, so I’ll make a few collage pictures of my favorite flowers and plants.

The inside of the greenhouse was filled with so many cool ponds and trees, I was amazed at the size of the plants that could fit inside this building!

Once we left the greenhouse, we were outside walking around in the light rain. There was a big, sprawling garden. There were many different types of trees and some flowering plants outside.

I really liked these vine-y trees. They had big purple pitcher-flowers all over these vines. They seemed like they could crawl over other trees and we saw them near the entrance climbing over a path archway.

On one side of the gardens there was a fairly large pond with a bridge winding halfway through it. We stopped to take a few pictures.

There was another building at the far end of the garden, and it had a gallery and exhibition of nature pictures, but we decided to skip that. Instead we walked around the outdoor gardens and took many pictures of the amazing trees outside!

There were a couple of statues as well. Some serious and some silly.

There were some beautiful views from the gardens that looked over the surrounding valleys.

After that we left the botanical gardens we walked across the parking lot to another popular Buddhist temple. This temple is the Godaisan Chikurin Temple and it is #31 on the Shikoku Buddhist Temple Pilgrimage.

The view of this pagoda from the botanical gardens.

The main focus of the temple grounds is a large five-story pagoda. It is pretty nice。

It had quite large grounds with many nice statues dotted around.

There was another hill side covered with Jizo statues.

There was a nice pond with lots of frogs in it. I never saw any frogs, but they were so loud!

There were also a couple of shrines dotted around, but they were kind of hidden and out of the way. There was nothing special about them so I didn’t bother getting a closer look.

There was also a shrine to one side of the pagoda that had a large Kannon statue that was enshrined in a small building and surrounded by little kokeshi dolls and figures.

Tye was feeling weak from lack of food, so he sat down for a few minutes while I took a look around and snapped a few photos. After that we left to get him some food.

As we were leaving the rain started coming down pretty hard and didn’t let up for the rest of the evening.

When he had some protein in him and his blood sugar levels were on the rise, we left to go to a shrine on the coast of Kochi.

This Shinto shrine is called Katsurahama Ryuogu Shrine also known as Watatsumi Shrine. It is dedicated to a dragon god, Watatsumi, who is said to live in the ocean nearby.

You park in a small lot near the road and you can walk for about two or three minutes along a small trail that winds its way down the seaside cliffs and onto Katsurahama Beach (Katsura Beach.)

From here you can choose to either go to the beach or to continue following the path over a small bridge and to the shrine that sits on top of some tall rocks out in the ocean.

We went up to the shrine. The area around the shrine is quite small so the pictures are small and tight right next to the structure. 

You can continue on the trail up another rock and take a beautiful picture of the shrine, the rocks and the beach.

Panorama photo from above the shrine.

It is definitely one of my favorite spots in Japan. Even though there is not a whole lot going on there, the shrine is pretty small and offers no ema or omamori, it is still a gorgeous view!

We saw this crow hanging out on the rocks close to the water. He was getting splashed with sea water, but he didn’t seem to mind.

After enjoying the gorgeous view from the shrine we walked down the path and started walking along the beach.

Katsurahama beach is not sandy, but it is a pebbled beach. The stones are small and smooth and there are a lot of shells to be found on the beach in all different colors and sizes. It is a tradition for people on this beach to try and find five different colors of sea shells. I think I succeeded. I really liked these shells that were bright red when I found them. I took them home, but once they dried out the vibrant color left them, now they’re more of a dull reddish color.

Even though it was raining I wanted to go down and touch the water. I found the water to be amazingly warm! I could have swum in that water all day and not been cold or uncomfortable! It was so amazing! I had no idea that ocean water could be so warm!

The texture of the “sand” was interesting. It is just a pebble beach, but it was quite wet, because of the rain in addition to the normal ocean waves. As you walked along your feet sank into the rocky beach and it was such a strange sensation.

I was standing along the edge of the surf and watching the waves come in. The placement of the surf on the beach had not changed in a couple minutes, so I was not worried about getting my shoes wet. But all of a sudden a really big wave came up onto the beach and was definitely going to get me all wet! Tye was standing next to me, he turned around and started running. I was surprised and started running backwards. The mooshy, wet, overall texture of the beach was not good for running backwards. I stumbled and fell over with every step but was scrambling to get back up on my feet. As a result I looked like an especially retarded crab. I finally fell down on my butt and the ocean waves covered my feet and got my shoes and the bottoms of my pants all wet! It was so funny!

As Tye was running away an old memory from the Boy Scouts ran through his head, it was the advice that they tell the Scouts when they are faced with a dangerous situation, “Get safe, then help.” He was also still holding the umbrella. After he was back far enough to not get wet he turned around and saw me sitting in a puddle of ocean water in the rain. He told me what had just gone through his head and we stood on the beach laughing at the absurdity of it all. It was such a fun time!

After taking our time walking along the beach and talking, the sky was getting quite dark. I hadn’t seen the sun all day, so I don’t know exactly when it started setting. So when the sky was nearly dark, we left the beach.

We decided to go eat dinner before returning to Tehya and Derrick’s house in Matsuyama, Ehime.

We were in the mood for Udon noodles, so we did a search on Google Maps. We found this restaurant, I thought it was a local chain, but it turned out to be a big, Japan-wide chain. Oh well. It would do. It was rush hour as well, so I didn’t want to spend the whole evening driving around in traffic looking for another place.

We arrived at the restaurant and parked the car. As we walked into the building we saw a man, he was staring at us and smiling. He seemed to be working security of some kind in the parking lot. It was still raining really hard, so he was keeping close to the building so he could stay under the eaves of the roof. I waved to him, said hello and walked into the restaurant.

As we were standing in line looking at the menu, I looked out the window and saw him staring at us and waving. I waved back, but he still looked like he wanted something. So I left the line in the restaurant and walked back outside to talk to him.

He was so excited when we came back outside to talk to him. We found out that he had been taking English classes for the last six months or so at his local Eikaiwa (independent English school.) He told us about how he recently went on a cruise and how he enjoyed talking with all the English speaking foreigners on the cruise. When we told him we were from Salt Lake City, Utah, he got the biggest smile on his face and told us that some of the people from the cruise were from Salt Lake City, so he was a little familiar with the location and appearance of Utah. He told us that he would like to visit someday.

After talking with him for a few minutes he let us go back inside the restaurant and eat. I was trying to talk with the woman at the ordering counter, but she was speaking quite fast and using vocabulary I was not familiar with. It was getting pretty hard. Luckily the man from the parking lot saw I was having a hard time and came in to help translate and get our orders placed. After we had finished, he went back outside and we were able to sit down and eat.

Tye got a curry udon and I got a normal udon, in my humble opinion, the curry udon was better. We also had various tempura fried foods on the side. We had some white fish and some vegetables like broccoli and lotus roots. My favorite part, though, was the tempura fried imo (sweet potato.) It was so good!

After we finished eating we went back out to the parking lot and talked with that man some more. He was so happy and excited, it was contagious! Before we said our goodbyes he asked us what we would “grade” him for his English ability. Considering he had only been learning English for about six months we gave him an A. He was so happy to hear that!  And as we were saying goodbye I asked him if I could take my picture with him. I won’t ever forget him, even though I forgot his name (I am so bad!) He restored my faith in humanity a little bit that day.

We returned to the car and drove back to Matsuyama. It was dark and rainy, but we were in good spirits.

When we got back to Tehya and Derick’s house, Derick had already gone to bed but Tehya was awake and reading a book. We spoke with her for about a half hour before she retired for the night as well.

I am so grateful to Tehya and Derick that they let us stay in their house for three nights. It was so kind of them, and they were such excellent hosts. I really hope we can be friends and see each other again in the future.