Post by Ella Grubb grabbed my title “shrine hopping” but that’s what the day entailed. No climbing treacherous mountainsides, no slip sliding, no cursing because the up kept on going. We left that all behind. Today was bus, shrine, train, bus, shrine, temple, sacred waterfall, bus, boat. Topped off by a soak in an Onsen…
Author: Ella
Complicated and simple
Post by Ella How to ride a bus in Japan. We’ve successfully decoded the procedure for riding a bus now having taken about a dozen rides. One enters from the rear door and grabs a numbered ticket from a little dispenser. The number on the ticket represents where you got on the bus. If the…
The art of bathing
Post by Ella We are staying at the Fujiya Mae Ryokan, a traditional Japanese hotel in the town of Kawayu Onsen. Grubb is busy working on a post about our final hike yesterday. Onsen indicates hot springs. You can get a scoop at the front desk, walk down to the river, dig yourself a little…
Finally, people!
Post by Ella I’m finding it hard to keep this blog up to date. So many experiences on the Kumano Kodo portion of our trip. The first two days of our walking, we met no one else on the trail. Yesterday our hike took us onto a more popular portion of the Kumano Kodo and…
Shinto pilgrimage
Post by Ella I’ve not said much about the pilgrimage aspect of the Kumano Kodo. The trails we are walking are part of the Kumano Kodo and were developed as a way to get to the most revered shrines. The rugged mountains of the Kii peninsula are a spiritual haven where deities reside. By the way,…
The thigh burning continues
Post by Ella Yuasa to Hidaka Hike #2 went considerably better than Hike #1. No rain for starters. The ascent was paved (gravel in concrete) and not slippery even though we’d had a drenching storm the night before. Howling wind, rumbling thunder, flashing lightning. So all was wet but no mossy rocks to slide on….
Guesthouse Moriamon in Adiragawa
Post by Ella Maki, a vibrant woman in her 30s, fetched us from the Yuasa train station for the 20 minute drive to her guesthouse in the small village of Adiragawa. The Adira region is famous for mikan (mandarin oranges) and the area is chock full of steeply terraced mikan orchards. Guesthouse Moriamon sits nestled…
Shoyu
Post by Ella After our hike yesterday we took a train from Kainan to Yuasa. We had about an hour to kill before the owner of Guesthouse Moriamon cane to pick us up so we wandered around the town. Yuasa is the birthplace of Japanese soy sauce (shoyu) and has been designated as a historical…
On the trail
Post by Ella We finished our first day on the trail. Steep up, steep down, rainy, lots of slippery rocks. Guess who fell twice? Not me! Are you asking what trail? Where the heck are you? To answer…The Kumano Kodo, the trail of the Emperors. It is an ancient trail, or rather set of trails…
A dazed breakfast
Post by Ella Time: We are 15 hours ahead of New Mexico. Who knows what time our bodies think it is. Breakfast: our hotel offers a choice of Japanese style breakfast and western style breakfast. We went Japanese of course. Picture below. Tomorrow maybe I’ll remember to take the tops off before taking the picture. Like…
Silently in Japan
Post by Ella. Silence? That’s what we hear. Hmmm. We will get to that. Japan is a place full of natural beauty, shrines (Shinto) and temples (Buddhist), and superb public transportation. There will be crowds to navigate – especially the big cities like Osaka and Tokyo. Mountains, active volcanoes, earthquakes, tsunamis (hoping we don’t have…
The French road to Barcelona
Post by Ella We are on our way back to the States. Reluctantly. Waiting in Atlanta for the final flight. I usually try for a wrap up at the end of each trip. Grubb describes the trip as a medieval to modern Gothic journey crowded with ghosts. I describe it in bits. The French love…
Barcelona photos
Post by Ella Some random photos.
Sagrada Familia
Post by Ella Perhaps Gaudi’s finest. A giant of a basilica. Construction begun in the late 1800s and is ongoing today with a target completion of 2026. The largest unfinished Catholic Church in the world. On the outside, the most distinctive and creative interpretation of Gothic architecture ever, anywhere. Every curve, every line flows. Sculptural…
Atop Las Arenas de Barcelona
Post by Ella On our way to the Museo Nacional d’Art Catalunya the other day, I noticed an elevator going up to the rooftop of the distinctive Las Arenas de Barcelona. Now shopping complex, it was once a bullfighting arena but was reconstructed in 2011 for less violent activities. Who doesn’t love a glass elevator…