Our buddhist pilgrimage in Japan

Our 12-day Buddhist pilgrimage in Japan

It takes about 12 hours to fly to Japan from San Francisco, but only nine hours to fly back. I'm still trying to figure it out.

What can I say? The ten days we spent trekking to 33 temples in Japan was more rewarding than many of my travels to destinations with glass and steel buildings monopolizing the landscape. It was also cherry blossom season, and that added to the pictureisk beauty of what is Japan. Our group leader is a Buddhist priest, but we also had a local tour guide who spoke fluent Japanese with a sprinkling of English. My wife and I didn't understand 95 percent of what she shared with us, but her smile was worth a 1,000 words.

We walked 79 miles during the ten days. The first four days were really tough on my calf - climbing steep hills and stairways to heaven. My mind kept reminding me with the constant ache and pain that I'm too old to continue this madness, but it was mind over matter, and somehow always managed to reach the top before many of my travel companions. I forgot to mention that I was one of the young whipper- snapper of our group of 18. We had grandma, age 93, who managed to keep up with the group for the first couple of days, but ended up sitting in the bus for those tough 300-uphill steppers.

The scenery was beautiful; almost like a photo from National Geographic 90 percent of the time. Not once was I disappointed in the scenery. That remaining 10 percent was spent in Kyoto's Gion district and some smaller villages.

We said our prayers on the bus to the temple in English, and prayers on the bus in Japanese on the way to our hotel. We said prayers at each temple we visited, except for two when we were late on our schedule. Temples close at 5PM. We wore white robes, and some used wooden canes. My wife kept her cane, and it now sits in our family room. I didn't have enough hands to carry the cane, because I was always juggling two cameras and our prayer book.

All of the accommodations, food, and entrance fees were included in our tour price. This is the very first (and last) time I've spent less than $200 on vacation. Our only non-temple visit was to Himeji Castle, the most beautiful in Japan. This was our second visit for my wife and I, because we visited Himeji Castle back in 1982 during our first visit to Japan. We learned recently that Lucy's mother's great-grandfather helped the lord of Himeji Castle overthrow the shogun, Ieyasu Tokunaga (who ruled Japan for over 250 years) for the emperor, and their family crest with 19 others are hidden someplace on the castle grounds. The Buddhist priest tried to help us locate the panel with the family crests, but we were unsuccessful. Lucy said we're going to drag her brother and sister-in-law to Himeji Castle on our next trip, because they evidently know the exact location of the crest panel.

We traveled in what is known as the Kansai district (also known as the Kinki district) which includes Kyoto, Osaka, Wakayama, Himeji, Nara, Hyogo, and Shiga. We crisscrossed the landscape several times between the Pacific and Japan Sea, and never knew which direction the bus was headed. We must have gone through 100 tunnels - some of them were very long. As we transited one of the long ones, we were told that during the building of the chunnel in Europe, Japan helped the French with technical and equipment assistance. We were treated to one boat cruise on Biwa Lake, the largest in Japan, to visit a temple on Ikubo Island. We spent the last night at the "home" temple of the Koyasan sect of Buddhism which is staffed by Buddhist monks. Even saw a couple of Caucasian monks. We slept on the floor, and had our meals sitting on the floor. Ouch!

Finally, we visited a temple which we reached by tram where some scenes of the Last Samurai was shot.

Don't ask me to explain each photo, because I can't. I'm going to randomly select some photos and post them over the next several days. I took over 500 pictures.