As we set out along a relatively deserted back road that showed signs of imminent crowds, it was a pleasant and surprisingly tranquil stroll through autumn tones across a river valley and up and down the slopes on either side of the stream. Eight-thirty was, it seemed, a trifle early for the people who operated the various sightseer-oriented businesses along the way to be starting the day's business, but there were signs along the way that they'd be starting to set up in the not too distant future.
As I walked, in between stopping to enjoy the views while someone lagged along behind capturing the interplay between light and leaves, I meditated on something approximating Zen and the art of walking with sore feet.
If you walk long enough, I figured, you're going to end up with sore feet. It's part of the deal, and the more you think about your feet, the worse they'll feel, particularly in situations where you can use them as an excuse to get out of walking any further.
So the answer is to avoid thinking about the feet at all. Focus on the walk, the act of walking and the scenery you're walking through.
So I did, and a thoroughly enjoyable time was had up to the time when the riverside back road joined the main road just before Kozan-ji. That meant a few minutes' careful treading along the side of the road while the traffic moved past within army's length.
That sort of thing had worried me four and a half years ago when I'd been heading to and from the hotel in Hakone, but after two weeks of negotiating backstreets where the traffic comes and goes this time around I merely exercised a bit of caution and waited for a break in the traffic flow if it looked like things were getting a little too close for comfort.
In any case it was only a couple of hundred metres before we hit the entrance to Kozan-ji, another of those uphill tree-lined avenues completely bereft of vehicular traffic. I'd just settled back into Zen and the art of walking when a god almighty racket from over on my right cut into the tranquility.
A bus full of elderly Japanese sightseers had pulled into the car park and was busily disgorging its load. Fortunately, I thought, this would mean they'd have to go down to the entrance we'd used to get us off the road, so I could maintain a comfortable degree of separation between myself and the racket.
Of course, it didn't work out that way. I rounded a curve that brought me within sight of the booth where you pay your ¥500 admission fee, looked to my right and there they were, heading right towards the same point along a converging track.
I was pretty quick about paying the admission fee once Madam had caught up, and was pretty smart about getting comfortably ahead of the chattering mass.
The walk up to the temple complex itself, once they'd been left behind, was a pleasant ramble, and once I got there and we were comfortably removed from the clamouring crowd we were right into the full Zen monks in the forest ambience, hardly surprising since the mountains around Togano, which are justly famous for their autumn foliage, have a long tradition of mountain asceticism, and there have been many small temples among the ancient cedar and maple trees in the back woods.