This was one of the hardest days of the whole trek - 11.5 hours of walking and two mountains. At the start is was flat and easy walking. We met some of the students who had interviewed us and they tried to get us to go have coffee with them, but we declined. We wanted to but realized that, if we did, we would not be able to stay on schedule and that would be a disaster because we already had reservations and might not be able to change them.
Also early in the morning we met one of the men who had stayed in the same place near Temple #20. He called to us and gave us each a bunch of mikans (an orange-like fruit that is very popular in Japan). He had bought a bag of them and then had realized how heavy they were. Not wanting to waste them, he passed about half of them to us. We were not very happy about the additional weight, either, so we ate them right away.
I described it before, but at Temple #21 a woman complained about the way we chanted the Heart Sutra. Ian and I were standing on the steps and she came up behind us and started chanting with us and then, once that it was clear that she was chanting with us, she tried to get us to go faster. Of course, we were already going as fast as we could. She started telling us that we should go faster and her voice got really loud. Ian turned around and gave her 'the evil eye'. She finally gave up and left but as we were leaving, I heard her complaining to somebody else about something new.
As I said, physically it was one of the most stressful days. I went to bed at 7:30 and slept right through the night.
We also met a woman who gave us settai - a tissue holder that she had made.
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