The first point of order is that I eventually realized that I didn’t show the other side (what I consider the front) of my goshuincho, my book of seals, in the previous blog post. The “front” looks like this:

It’s no swirling mass of sakura petals or anything but I do like it, it’s eye-catching with the mix of red and white set against the darker background, and samurai stuff brings to mind fond memories of Legend of the Five Rings.

The second point of order is that I also tried to take a picture of what the little bamboo side room in my Hotel Unicorn room looked like from my bed with the paper sliding doors open and its illuminating lights on. It was awkward but looked something like this:

What a weird thing to have next to a bed.

I had mentioned at the end of yesterday’s blog post that I tried to return to Zenkoji Temple at the end of the day to pick up their temple seal, but I was too late and it had closed for the night. Even though I was leaving Nagano today, I figured that I’d first pick up the seal in the morning, since the temple shop opened at 6:00 am and checkout wasn’t until 10:00 am. I got up and left the hotel at 8:00, went over to pick up a seal, and came home before 9:00, with plenty of time to spare. Mission accomplished!

Not so fast. Although I did reach the temple in good time, I was confused by the goshuin options here, because there was a shiny piece of paper for 1500 and then two stamps for 200 and 300, and the lady at the desk seemed to say that I could cut the shiny one and then paste it into my book… great, so I bought one of those and went back to the hotel, only to realize that not only did I not have anything to cut and paste it with, I didn’t actually want to cut it up anyway since that felt like it would be breaking something sacred/beautiful, so I decided to keep it as a separate sheet.

Which is great, except that that meant I still didn’t have a stamp for Zenkoji Temple after all that. So after checking out, I returned to the temple for a fourth and final time, lugging all my luggage with me, to finally get a proper, 300 yen stamp on the book.

I had also not donated to the temple up till that point because I figured that the stamp itself involved a donation, but apparently one is supposed to donate at the main altar and then go request/buy the goshuin, so I finally did things in the right order on this visit, my 4th trip to the temple. It felt like home at that point. Not that everything went right still, I took a picture of the person while she was putting the calligraphy into the book only to read later on that I wasn’t supposed to, but at least I won’t upload that picture here. This was their book on sale, which was quite nice too:

Was I supposed to not take a picture of that too? Who knows. I didn’t get it, but I might consider getting a second one at some point anyway, if I see a pretty one I cannot resist. Or I might get one just for Kyoto-area shrines or something.

All the first few traffic pedestrian lights turned green as I walked away from the temple from the final time, I’m not sure if that was the Amida Buddha (the resident enshrined deity of Zenkoji) wishing me a safe journey or wanting to get rid of me as soon as possible. I was feeling stingy and penitent and was still very early for my shinkansen out of there at 11:45 am, so I decided to walk there and carry all my luggage with me, a process that hurt quite a bit.

I still reached Nagano Station with plenty of time to spare, and this of course meant another ekiben.

I wanted to try one at Kanazawa Station too, as I’d have a 30 minute transfer window there, so I made sure to finish this one before my train arrived. It didn’t really have a formal name beside “Shinshu mountain rice, Aburi pork, soba miso” though. i also bought a couple omiyage, or gifts, from Nagano Station, two boxes of Raicho no Sato — one for the landlord in the next house I was going to, and another one for the person that would be accompanying my friend that I would apparently be meeting in Osaka next week. Raicho no Sato are wafer cookies, and they’re pretty darn delicious, as I found out later on.

I took the Kagayaki 1509 from Nagano to Kanazawa and it was pretty uneventful, except that this train only had reserved seats, there were no train cars for the choose-your-own-seat crowd.

Kanazawa Station was very packed, but I still had time to wander out, grab an ekiben from the huge pile that this 7-11 offshoot shop called Omiyage-sho had, and get back to the platform in time for the train.

This train was the Thunderbird 24, and although this was a 2.5 hour ride from Kanazawa to Kyoto, the train didn’t offer power outlets like the Asama and Hakutaka and even the Kagayaki did.

Whatever. There was no one in the seat beside me anyway so I stretched out a bit and whiled the time away typing on my laptop. I also had my ekiben, which was thematically called the Story of Echizen Asakura Clan and came with explanations for what was in each portion.

The train passed through many stations along the way, including at least two onsen ones. Similar to the other bullet trains, the glare from the opposite windows made it hard to take any good pictures.