walkabout-japan

Day 28
... And another priest with sake
GPS: N 33°, 36.751' E 133°, 42.923'
Place: Tosayamada
Etmal: 23 km
Total: 626 km
The quiet and dry night allows me to hope for the next day
and really, the sun is glowing from the cloudless sky. You
know, the early bird catches the worm…. After a good breakfast in a store called O-Bag, I'm walking through various forests and towns along a pale green river to the mighty mountains. Just coming around a corner, I see a priest
wearing traditional clothes (mauve culottes, white wrapping coat, white Tabis and Getas) who tinkers with a buffet (of course with a 2 litres bottle of sake). We are looking at each other in the same moment and must laugh so much that we can't say any word. We are both chuckling for a while,
before I can present myself and he explains to me that he's preparing a ceremony in the street, very officially with a white board, white garlands and of course sake. I want to move on, but he's running after me giving me 3,000 ¥ for sake tonight, because it's getting cold. This time I cannot refuse it. If I had turned the whole amount into sake I would have been comatose for two days, so that I decide to invest the money
in food for dinner: Sashimi with raw garlic, then rice with soy beans (red rice), furthermore small fresh water morays
pickled in honey with hazelnuts, afterwards sweet potato crotons filled with little pieces of octopus and strewed with
dry and rasped tuna (feels like heaven, in the truest sense of the word a "divine dinner"). The algae pickled in a honey-sesame sauce have to wait till tomorrow (maybe for breakfast?), but there's still enough place for the carrot and
the grapefruit. Now it's almost dark and I'm having a little
drink with the "white sake" (just like wheat beer, but sake).
So, Cheers and as I have already mentioned yesterday, today's a sweetmeat day.


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