You approach Zenkoji (or at least we did) along a street lined with shops that sell local specialties and souvenirs, through a couple of gates along the way. The outer Niomon Gate is guarded by a pair of impressive Deva guardians, which protect the temple from enemies of Buddhism, while the Sanmon Gate, which dates back to 1750, offers vies of the temple approaches from the second storey.
Zenkoji's main hall, rebuilt in 1707, contains various statues, and if you pay the fee it’s possible to enter the inner chamber, view the main altar, and enter the basement where a pitch dark underground passage holds the key to paradise, attached to a wall, believed to grant salvation to those who touch it.
Had I consulted my research notes before we set out I would have visited Yawataya Isogoro, just outside Zenkoji's main gate. A 280-year-old store specializing in shichimi (seven flavors), a condiment consisting of ground chili peppers, sesame, citrus, and other spices, commonly sprinkled on soba noodle soup, but I didn't so Hughesy's Chilli ingredient collection is one condiment poorer.
Predictably, the main item on the day's agenda before the long rail leg that would deliver us to Okayama was a visit to the Zen temple, an exercise that took us on an extended ramble past last night's dinner venue and on to the road street that runs uphill to the temple. It was a fair step from the hotel but I was up for the exercise and once we'd done the temple bit there was the prospect of oyaki dumplings for brunch.
With the temple visit out of the way, and a couple of oyaki dumplings consumed (I'd opted for a mushroom filling at the first place we tried, and mushroom with radish at the second) we diverted in search of croquettes to round off the brunch and waved our way back to the hotel through the back streets rather than retracing the route we'd followed on the outward journey.
Having reclaimed the Black Monster it was Ho! for the station and the Shinano Express. Since we were boarding at the point of departure there was a ten minute window before we started moving, time that I used to keep working on travelogue material, an activity that brought a fairly sharp rebuke from The Supervisor because we were in for a major scenic delight.
As a result, the iPad was slotted into the backpack and the iPod provided the soundtrack as we set off on what was, indeed, a scenic joy to behold. At first, running through Nagano Prefecture it was a case of fairly broad plains filled with the regular signs of economic and agricultural activity backed on both sides by majestic snowcapped mountains. Then, as the train climbed into the foothills things closed in on either side as we travelled through deep forest-clad gorges where rocky riverbeds were the order of the day and slopes that were closer to the vertical than the horizontal showed an impressive array of autumn leaves.