NY 2025 D6 Seven Lucky Gods Pilgrimage

Route: 7 Lucky gods Kyoto pilgrimage
Bicycle: 50 km
Total ascent: 357 m
Average Speed: 14.2 km/h
Riding time: 3:30 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, cold, 6 C

A few days ago while reading Japan Times, I saw an article on a New Years pilgrimage to the 7 Lucky gods (Shichi-Fuku-jin), which seems to be a tradition to do in the first week of the new year. The one in Kyoto is specially spread out, so well suited to be done by bicycle. 

These seven gods come from 3 different religions (shintoism, buddhism and taoism) and all seem to be quite fun loving and good natured. One of them, is even a female god. (And yes, I know the collage above only has 6 of them... read the whole blog post to find out why).

I started with the most outlying temple: Manpukuji in Uji. 

Manpukuji is a famous temple in itself, regardless of the Seven Lucky Gods. Famous for it's Chinese style architecture. I had come here in Golden Week a few years ago. But today, I only had eyes for Hotei-son, characterized by his round belly and full sack of presents he received for doing good deeds. 

For such a famous temple, there were few visitors there today. It isn't a real Hatsumode temple, so the locals didn't come and the tourists just all go to the same places. 

The next stop was back in Kyoto right in the middle of the tourist nightmare of Higashiyama: Rokuharamitsuji. This temple actually isn't on the normal tourist route, but today there was not only the pilgrimage to the Seven Lucky Gods ongoing, but also normal Hatsumode and this in an area that is already full of tourists. Most visitors though were Japanese who were buying new lucky charms for this year. There was even a rather long queue to pray before the goddess Benzaiten. So I didn't get a good look of her. 

The funniest of them all, as always, was good old Ebisu, the only originally Japanese of the 7 gods. Always ready for a joke. 

His shrine was close by and while there were also a good number of visitors, things where more relaxed and fun driven. With people trying to through a coin into a basket on the torii. 

BTW, the lanterns and the sentence below to the foreign observer might seem to be nice festive decorations, but actually it is publicity It says "For shopping, go to Takashimaya". 

From there I went over the river to an other mid sized temple, Gyoganji, which is hosting Jurojin a taoist god of old age. 

And on I went to Northern Kyoto to Matsugasaki Daikokuten, where Daikokuten an Indian buddhist god is venerated (and well bathed with cold water). 

The next temple was Sekizan Zenin with what seems to be the wisest of all the gods. At least judging from his enormous brain capacity. 

Here they were also selling small versions of him to be then exposed probably with your wish at the temple. Similar to the cats at Gokokuji in Tokyo (which will be pretty close to my new house). 

The most disappointing of them all was Bishamonten at Toji temple. Simply because he wasn't there. His statue is in the adjacent museum but only on display on some days of the year. Not today apparently. 

Toji temple itself is a very spread out affair and has it's charms... but that wasn't my objective for today so I just snapped a picture of the pagoda from afar and went back to my hotel making an early return and checking on some work emails before now writing this blog post. 

What was interesting in this pilgrimage is that these 7 gods are at 7 very different locations. From major temples such as Toji and Manpukuji to a small neighborhood shrine of Ebisu. Temples right in the center of Kyoto, such as Rokuharamitsu-ji to temples in the forest like Sekizan Zen-in. 

But all places were joined by flags announcing them as one of the Seven pilgrimage locations. 

NY2025 D5 - small mountain roads in the North of Kyoto

Route: Kyoto - Arashiyama - Mizuo - Sugisaka - Kyoto
Bicycle: 76 km
Total ascent: 977 m
Average Speed: 16.4 km/h
Riding time: 4:37 h
Weather: Sun and clouds, cold, 5C

After the somewhat dissatisfying ride yesterday, the tiger temple was great... but the ride afterwards to Ikoma and onwards was just riding through built up area, today I went to the North of Kyoto into what feels like very remote mountains. They aren't actually that remote, but all roads are really small, a few small villages and a lot of up and down. 

But to get there I first needed to traverse the touristic craziness of Arashiyama. Luckily all the tourists just concentrate in a few blocks around the famous bridge (what is actually so special about that bridge?) and the temples between there and the bamboo forest. But move away only a few blocks... and I stumbled upon a great temple complex: Seiryouji, with only a few visitors. 

After the last temple in Arashiyama a small mountain road starts. It starts relatively easy, but the last few hundred meter are like a wall. But that's where pushing the bike comes in handy. On the equally steep downhill one has this nice view of the Sagano valley. That valley is famous among tourists for a small sightseeing train. 

Only after that downhill the actual uphill starts. Which goes on and on, but at a nice gradient. Mid-way through is the small village of Mizuo apparently famous for it's Yuzu fruits. I have been here nearly 2 years ago... and looking back to that blog post I realize that I took today exactly the same pictures. 

The roads I was riding on, were mainly small or very small roads. Like this one. And just a joy to ride. It must be a great area also to ride when it is hot (or hotter) as it is all pretty much in the shadow of the trees and mountains. Although I wouldn't probably want to ride here when it is really hot, as there isn't an easy "escape" route back to a train station. Also with the villages being so small there is not a single conbini and around New Year all restaurants are closed. I say "all"... as if there were many. In Mizuo it seems there might be one or two and then much later in Hosono there is a ramen shop that does a very tasty boar ramen and deer dumplings. I tried the ramen in an other ride and it was excellent. But today also this shop was closed. 

NY 2025 D4 - Hatsu-Tiger-mode

Route: Yamatoyagi - Chogosonshiji - Mt. Shigi - Ikoma - Yodogawa - Kyoto
Bicycle: 82 km
Train: 60 km
Total Ascent: 811 m
Average Speed: 16.5 km/h
Riding time: 4:59 h
Weather: Very sunny and cold, 5C

As my first visit to a temple of the year, aka Hatsumode, I went to Chogosonshi-ji, the temple of the (paper mache) tiger. A bucket list item. 

This temple is on a crazy steep hill (in some parts it was even hard work to push the bike uphill, other parts are ridable). I had left my bicycle yesterday in the bike parking lot of Yamato-Yagi station. When I returned there the old men who run the bicycle parking lot knew exactly which was my bicycle. Probably not hard to guess when you see someone coming in with full cycling cloths into a parking lot that has only mamacharis. So much so, that they didn't check if I had the receipt. But hey, that's Japan. 

The first part of the ride was on bicycle paths along rivers. There are a lot of small rivers or channels in that area and many have bicycle paths. The surface in some of them is rather rugged... but still totally ridable. And then it went up the hill first through some satellite town and then further up. It was actually kind of the steepest in the town. 

When I made it up it was maybe around 12:30 and there were still free parking lots for cars. Apparently cyclists are not foreseen to make it up the hill... so there wasn't any specially designated bicycle parking lot, so I was allowed to park under a tree in the big parking lot together with a motorbike. 

The temple is a large, sprawling affair. 

Today with many happy visitors with family doing their Hatsumode (first visit of the year to a shrine/temple), buying good luck charms and bringing the ones from last year back to be burned at the shrine. There were some queues for people to pray, but nothing outrageous. 

Behind the temple a path with a lot of stairs and toriis started up to Mt. Shigi. And without thinking too much I walked up there... a LOT of stairs. ... to the view at the top and one more temple. 

Most gods had the same offerings, an orange, a mandarin, a small piece of cake, some sake and a rice cake. Only this one here, got some more healthy offerings as well. 

From there it was through the mountain range mostly downhill... although with some kickers until the mountain road came down the hill and ended up in build up area. From there... well, not such a nice ride. Just riding through build up area. I was able to find relatively small roads... but still not the same as riding through the mountains on small roads. Surprisingly though the national road that I took down towards Yodogawa didn't have that much  traffic. I had feared for the worst and actually made some alternative plans, but ultimately it was just a rather normal road. 

And then down to the bicycle path along Yodogawa that I road so many  times when staying in Osaka for work and cycling on the weekend to Kyoto or Nara. Uneventful.