Im officially a pilgrim!

The pilgrimage route

So I had a great past few days with my friends for my birthday Friday and Saturday which led up to today, my actual birthday.  WHOOT I'm officially 25!!! I had a more laid back day today, I slept in till 1pm and got dressed and Jessica and I realized it actually wasn't raining.  A miracle it seems these days, so we decided to do temples 1-3 of the 88 temple pilgrimage on Shikoku Island (where we live).  After packing for our bike trip we headed out.  I stopped in the gift shop at temple 1 and bought the pilgrim's stamp book.  Jessica refrained which I think is a pity, even if I don't get to all 88 it's a great suvenior!

Temple 1

The first temple took us about 40 or so minutes to get to, we stopped at Lawson's for a few onigiri and drinks after our ride and ate on a bench right in front of the temple.  It was really funny, we ran into one of the students from Seiko who was doing the pilgrimage with her parents.  I didn't recognize her and neither did Jessica, but she recognized me...makes me think she must be a kindergarten student, but I know all their faces...if not names, and she wasn't one of them.  Though she could have been one of the K5s that I had only been working at Seiko for a month before they graduated.  I only learned names and faces of a handful of them, and not all of them went to the Elementary School.

Temple 2

 After getting my book from Temple 1 we got back on our bikes and headed to the 2nd one, which was only 1.7km away.  Riding a bike around is fast becoming a favorite way to travel.  I miss the speed and convience of driving, but you get to see so many awesome things by biking....for example we saw wild monkeys~!  I almost missed them being on the bike, but managed to see the movement out of the corner of my eye and stopped to look and spotted them.  Jess was completely oblivious until I said something.  It was great.  Might have to go back out that way just for the monkeys!!! 

Once we got there Temple 2 was nothing really special, though I did get some great shots of their garden bridge, one of which I might paint in the future.  I'll have to wait and see about that one! 

Temple 3

Temple 3 was about 3km from the 2nd one so it took a bit longer to get to, it too wasn't as exciting as temple 1, but then temple 1 was a lot of fun because of the statues Jess and I kept climbing up on and taking pictures with.  I found only one to do that with here, and it wasn't even that creative.  Is it bad that I judge how good or bad a temple is by if I could find stuff to climb on that will result in amusing photos.  Somehow I think the answer is yes....boo I feel uncultured! 

once done with Temple 3 we briefly contemplated continuing on to number 4 but it was getting late and 4 was over 6km away, we decided to leave that one for later and headed home.  It started raining briefly on the ride back.  Thankfully it stopped after only about 10 mins of a mild rain or heavy sprinkle...depending on how you look at it.