Kumano Kodo Part 2: Hiking Day 1

Sorry, I haven't had time to update a lot lately, so now I'm four months behind on this bitch. I'll try to catch up.

Anyway, the areas where we went hiking are called Kumano Kodo, as I mentioned in my last post, and the whole area is trails scattered with Shinto temples and Buddhist shrines. I really hate shremples, but it's the price you have to pay if you want to enjoy nature (or anything) in Japan.

Here's the entrance to the temple at the beginning of our first hike. Shrines have these large gates called torii, so they're easy to find.

At any shrine there's going to be some bullshit in the form of souvenirs and fortunes before the actual shriney part.

Then you have to wash your hands and your dirty, dirty mouth out with this natural spring water.

Then you can go in and have a look around, light some incense or something, and pray. I don't know, man.

If you get a fortune, you're not allowed to leave with it. You have to fold the paper and tie it up here. I think the wooden blocks can be bought to write a prayer on, or just a message.

 This rock shows the  name of the trail we were on, but it's kind of hard to read.

This is a stamp station. Apparently you can use a special ink stamp at each of the Kumano trails as a souvenir, but I didn't bother with that.

Here are some shots from the trail. They're all kind of samey, but it was certainly a nice walk in the woods.

This is a blue-tailed skink. I thought when I took this picture it was some sort of salamander, but I just looked it up. Then I remembered that in Korea one of the animals featured in one of the textbooks I taught was a blue-tongued skink. Then I was like, yeah. That's cool.

 Here is a view from somewhere.

Part of our walk was on streets through neighborhoods and farms and stuff. In a couple areas there were these really freaky "people" set up to greet tourists and maybe to scare crows.

 This is a tiny shrine for people to pray for the health of their teeth. I guess it was started before dentists were invented.

This was the first time I'd ever seen tea growing, I'm pretty sure.

I also got to see the harvest and preparation of rice in various stages, which was kind of cool. Here it's drying.

Here's a little mountain cafe that we stopped at for an ice coffee and a cool-down.

Views from the cafe.

 And... more trees.

This area is also famous for crows, although there's been no shortage of crows anywhere in Japan so far. What's special about these crows, though, is their mythical third foot. Apparently this guy is supposed to be a symbol of divine will. You can buy three-footed crow junk at all the shops.

This was one last shrine before the end of the trail.

The cleansing fountain had some cool dragons in it, though.

After this one trail, we took a minor detour down to this torii in the distance.

Here there were some people harvesting rice. Some people were cutting it by hand. It looked backbreaking.

Beyond the torii was another sacred site with its own name and rock, but it mostly looked like a park.

This is pretty boring for me. I think I'll try and rush through the rest.