Day 16 - Ever upward

As I said the mountain trail was really steep. Going up it was the only time I saw Ian huffing and puffing. I huffed and puffed quite regularly. About three quarters of the way up we met an Australian man who was traveling with a Japanese man and a Korean woman. They had stayed in the same lodge as we had, but they had not gotten meals and we never saw them. We had heard about them, however, from the owners. It turned out that they had heard about us, so it was almost like meeting old friends.
While we were talking, a Japanese pilgrim came up and stopped to join in. He wanted his picture taken too, so Ian grabbed my camera again, and took the following picture.
Just below the temple grounds there was a parking lot with a gift shop. They had coffee so we, of course, stopped for a cup. They also ice cream whose flavor was called "Ryoma no Umi". Ryoma is a famous Japanese historical figure who helped get the Emperor back into power, if I remember correctly. "Umi" means ocean. I had no idea what flavor that made the ice cream. After eating it, I still did not know. Maybe it was just salt flavor. In any case it was strange.

After resting we headed up into the temple grounds. There were two flights of stairs. The one on the right went to a Shinto shrine and the one of the left led to the main gate of the temple.
The guardian kings in the spaces on each side of the gate were quite impressive. They were so well kept up that I suspect that they were new.