It wasn’t easy to leave my hotel room this morning. My muscles hurt and I woke up very late. As a matter of fact, I forgot to put my alarm yesterday night.
However, somehow I understood when it was 7.00 AM and got out of my bed only a few minutes late for breakfast.
After saying goodbye to Lieve, who was also at the same hotel, I started to look at different options for my upcoming day. Main goal: to reach Matsuyama.
Eventually I decided to take a bus and get closer to the next temple, in order to get rid of an ugly walk alogside a big road. I got enough fumes over the last month, I don’t need more.
Matsuyama is a big city, full of history. I want to take a day off tomorrow and go visit the castle and a few other places. It will give my legs and mind a good break.
Today I collected five stamps from temple #46 to temple #51. At the last one, I was invited by a buddhist priest to pray with him inside the temple. Lieve did the same before me. It was a nice experience, and I got to understand what some of the most common mantra mean.
I also adopted a personal mantra these days. It’s very simple and I repeat that very often:
Walk. Just walk.
One step after the other.
Just walk.
The funny thing is that I do actually think about and mentally recite it in English, for some weird reason. Being abroad is messing up my brain and sadly I’m losing more and more Italian “thoughts”.
I guess that when you talk to other people all the time in another language, you start at some point talking to yourself in that same language, instead of using your native one.
Anyways, I digress. The walk today was easy, just hopping from one temple to the other.
For lunch I had a corn-dog for the first time in my life. I didn’t even know it was a thing before playing a video game last year.
Furthermore, I made friend with a cat outside of one of the temples. Sadly, but predictably, he stopped following me when he understood I had no food for him. Sorry pal.
Now it’s time to hunt for dinner. I’m insanely craving for pizza, though I know it would be a suicide to get one here.
Should I do it? I think not.
I will go drown my hunger in some some sort of raw fish instead. Get it while you can, before coming back.
Cheers.