Day 2 Continued

During the day we continued walking on relatively flat roads that followed the river valley inland from Tokushima city. Temple #8, where the college students had interviewed us, had been up in the foothills but it was at an altitude of only 120 meters and the approach road had been relative long so it was not a particularly hard walk. Temple #9 was in the middle of a large flat area, but things changed when we arrived at the entry road to Temple #10. It was only a little higher than Temple #8, being at an altitude of 150 meters, however, the approach road was a long flight of stairs. Ian counted them and got to just over 300, just as the sign had announced. The following picture shows Ian at the top of the stairs.

The temple was quite nice and worth the climb. Immediately behind the main building was a very picturesque pagoda.

After leaving Temple #10 we proceded directly across the valley to Temple #11 which was in the foothills of the tall mountains to the south of the river. The Yoshino River was very pretty and provided a strong contrast with the down slope that we had been following. Although you can not see it in the picture, there was a ferris wheel off to the east that frequently showed itself above the other scenery. We used it as a land mark to estimate the distance that we traveled and to help maintain our spacial orientation. Also the first hint of the mountains began to break through the rain clouds.


As we started up the incline on the south side of the Yoshino River we discovered a series of signs beside the road. They had apparently been set up by a local farmer and were directed at the Ohenro-san, admonishing us to be careful of the traffic on the road. This group of signs says Ohenro-san Ogenki de which means something like Honorable Mr or Ms Henro, please be healthy and full of vitality. It certainly loses a lot in direct translation but most pithy Japanese does.
At point we found a truly amazing sight - what must be the world's smallest torii, the gate that appears at the entrance of a Shinto shrine. We searched around a bit but were unable to find a shrine to go with the torii. We were never able to find out the story behind this. It almost seemed like part of a miniture dollhouse or the scenery to go with someone's HO railroad model.