October 6, 2024 Today is a transfer day, mostly in the train, so this will be a short post. We awoke from our comfortable and quiet Kyoto hotel near the train station and went down for breakfast. Afterwards we packed up and headed down, walking 1 -1/2 blocks to the Kyoto trains station. We bought …
October 5, 2024 We caught some beautiful weather for our day of touring classic and favorite tourist spots around Kyoto today. We started the day with our hotel breakfast as usual, this time without the drama from poorly behaving foreign guests. Today we jumped on the train in the central train station and headed toward …
October 4, 2024 We arose from a deep sleep in the Henn na hotel, despite the room’s juvenile dinosaur theme, and headed down to the hotel breakfast in what was described as an Irish Pub, with memorabilia of the Rolling Stones in Kyoto. The woman in charge of the breakfast seemed to be struggling with …
October 3, 2024 We had to change our plan for the day. We had planned a day just poking around in this fishing village of Kii katsura before heading off to Kyoto tomorrow, but it was raining hard, and looked like the rain might last all day. We packed things up with all the layers …
October 2, 2024 We awoke to the sound of the rushing mountain river and the sounds of the forest. Alice and I got up and went for a little walk around the rural mountain property until 7:30 when breakfast was to be served. Just before breakfast, Seeichi could be heard getting his children ready and …
October 1 We spent the evening prior in the Watarase Ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. These typically include hot baths from natural hot springs and traditional food. Before eating, we bathed. We had a private open pool formed in the rock or cement filled with natural hot spring water. One has to shower briefly prior …
9/30/24 We slept a long time in the beautiful traditional guest house, hosted by a wonderful older couple. During the night I was aware of heavy rain and thunder, but in my exhaustion did not rouse to worry about having to hike in the rain. We awoke at 6 am after 10 hours of sleep, …
9/29/24 It was not the greatest night before we started our first day of the pilgrimage. Apparentely our location was the site of a well known fishing competition to take place on the first day of our hike. Men and women arrived from far away the evening prior to be ready for the competition, and …
9/28/24 Despite the unpredictable effects of jetlag, Alice and I awoke together at 6 am, fresh and ready to go. Today we would travel through a complex set of connections to the beginning of our pilgrimage route. We repacked our bags and backpacks to be ready for quick conversion to back pack only as we …
9/27/24 10p Surprisingly we slept through the night without waking and awoke bright-eyed at 6 am. Our hotel offered breakfast at 6:30 so we went down and placed our order at the service desk and enjoyed a simple and well balanced breakfast of salad, omelette, bacon and toast with coffee. As we emerged from our …
