A Walk to Mine

 

Where I grew up, December 26th is known as Boxing Day. On Boxing Day, 2014, I began my 26th day walking along the Chugoku Kannon Pilgrimage.

This was a symbolic point in the journey as I had been moving primarily west for the previous 25 days, but now I turn north and then start to head East.

I had started in Okayama, then headed west through Hiroshima and then into Yamaguchi. Though there had been many detours, it was primarily along the coast of those prefectures. Now I head to the Japan Sea coast of Yamaguchi and then head east, primarily along the coast, through Yamaguchi, then Shimane, and then Tottori.

I had just visited the 19th of 37 temples, the 33 main temples plus 4 "extra" temples, so I had passed the halfway point in that regard. My route now would be much straighter than the first half, so I am well over halfway in terms of kilometers and days. The next half of the pilgrimage will be far less populated.

The next temple was in Hagi, and on this day I would get as far as Mine.

My destination was to the NE so I started out walking up the Koya River, passing under the Shinkansen Line, before crossing over to the Hara River which ran into the Asa River heading into Mine.

Not sure what kind of bird this was that was unfortunate enough to have been hit by a vehicle.

It was fairly typical rural landscape, with plenty of paddies and plenty of dilapidated buildings...

I stopped in at a couple of interesting shrines, and will cover them in the next post in the series...

I would have thought that the small, unmanned, rural buildings that sell porn and related products through vending machines would be dying out with the prevalence of online shopping and online porn, but Pink Joy seems to be very new, so obviously still worth investing in... I have noticed that the ones I have encountered in Chugoku have much more advertising on the exterior. The ones I came across in Kyushu usually just had a small nameboard.... no flags nor bright posters like here

Two of the most common birds I come across in the countryside are the heron

and the egret...

The previous post was on the fascinating Imimiya Shrine I visited the day before.

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