day 13, 9:27pm, more biwa!

today went fairly well considering i pushed myself hard yesterday. my feet were a bit sore.

today i covered temples 30 through 34; 28.3km in all. tonight i'm staying at temple 34. they have a small room with a shower that they let out free of charge to walking henro. it's very nice.

i received more biwa today, about 2 kg of them. there's a bit of a story to it.
i had just finished lunch and i was heading over to the ferry to make my way across the port to temple 33. on the way, i met up with another henro, an older woman who i had met a few times on the trail earlier in the day. she too was headed to the ferry.

while we were walking, we ended up missimg a turn. no worries though, as a woman came out of her yard to give us directions. she started walking us back to the intersection, when we noticed an elderly man on a bicycle yelling at us from the intersection we had just missed.

he was something else. he looked like an 80 year old huckleberry finn; floppy wide brimmed hat, oversized overalls, no shoes.

well, the woman and huck finn start arguing over the directions to the ferry. it lasts well over two minutes. the other henro and i attempt politely to make an escape. but then there is a truck who wants to get past, because, of course, we're all in the middle of the intersection.

so we move, and what does old huck finn do? in his haste, he jack-knifes his bicycle. and what was he carrying on his bicycle?... a 10 kg. box of biwa he'd been picking this morning and they go spilling all over the intersection.

the two women scream and frantically start picking up biwa. old huck finn starts shouting "don't worry about them, just leave them". i stand stunned. traffic builds, the truck driver doesn't look impressed.

the other henro pulls out some plastic bags to help speed the clean up. old huck finn nearly dumps his bike a second time. he's still arguing about directions.
after all is said and done, i'm holding a 2 kg. plastic bag of bruised biwa and huck finn is saying he doesn't need them. they're a gift, osettai.
i end up carrying that bag around for the rest of the day. the ferry ended up being only 500m away from the intersection.

that's my biwa story. it's late, time for bed.

night