I stumbled up the bell tower steps, grasped the rope and hauled the long wood pole back as far as possible in its cradle. Then I swung the rope forward and slammed the pole against the bronze bell. A loud "bong" rang through the courtyard of Shosanji temple and echoed across the mountain valley. It was, I thought, a most satisfying way to announce my presence to the presiding gods and, presumably, scare away any evil spirits lurking in the forest.

At the very least, I flushed a flock of pigeons from the temple roof, sending them flapping into the drizzling sky. As the bell's echoes faded and the birds returned to their roost, I lingered in the shelter of the shoro's gabled roof.

Across the gravel expanse of the courtyard, a flagstone walkway cut between a row of tall cedars to the hondo, or main hall, its grey-tiled roof shining in the rain. Ropes of incense smoke curled from the urn in front of the hall. Even at this distance the sweet odour permeated the damp air. Nearby, half-a-dozen bus pilgrims, dressed in traditional white robes and wide-brimmed straw hats, prayed at the daishido, the small hall dedicated to the Buddhist saint Kobo Daishi, their heads bowed as they chanted.

I caught snatches of the Hannya Shingyo, or Heart Sutra, the short prayer that is said to articulate the essence of Buddhism: "gyate, gyate, haragyate, harasogyate boji sowaka ..." I didn't understand the words but I had heard the sutra so often during the past three days they were beginning to stick in my head.

But that was as it should be. I, too, wore a henro's white vest, the hakui, as it is called in Japanese. I carried the kongo-tsue, or walking staff (although I had removed the annoying bell) and possessed the nokyo-cho, the book in which every henro, or pilgrim, has each temple affix its seal as a testament to his visit.

I even had a package of osame-fuda, or name slips, on which to write my name and address and deposit in special bins at the temples. And I, too, was intent on completing the Shikoku no Michi, the oldest and most famous Buddhist pilgrimage route in Japan.

What set me apart from most other henro, was that I intended to walk 1,400 kilometres, visiting each of the 88 temples strung out like beads on a rosary around the perimeter of Shikoku, the smallest of Japan's four main islands. By tradition, the route follows the footsteps of Kobo Daishi, the ninth-century ascetic and founder of the Shingon Buddhist sect in Japan, who is said to accompany all pilgrims.

The Shikoku pilgrimage -- the Shikoku no Michi, or The Way of Shikoku -- is only one of 100 or so pilgrimage routes in Japan and is immensely popular among the Japanese. During the late 1980s, about 46,000 pilgrims traversed the route each year. Today, various estimates put that number at 100,000, largely because during the last two decades, three huge bridges were built across the Inland Sea, linking Shikoku to the larger island of Honshu.

But the Shikoku pilgrimage, with its white-robed henro and picturesque temples, is also popular with the Japanese media. Television reports, newspaper articles and magazine features, as well as documentaries and plays, have embedded the pilgrimage in Japan's popular culture. Arguably, though, this popularity reflects something deeper.

"For many pilgrims," as British religious scholar Ian Reader says, "the pilgrimage has come to serve as a means of re-affirming cultural identity in a rapidly changing modern society."

It's a sentiment with which I would eventually agree. During the two months I hiked the Shikoku no Michi -- or the Shikoku Henro, as it is also called -- I heard many reasons for enduring the route's hardships. Some regarded the pilgrimage, in its evocation of ancient traditions, as a means to affirm their sense of being Japanese. Still others saw the route as a zone of meditation, a spiritual space that allowed them the time and place for reflection, a chance to slow down and enjoy nature's beauty. I tended to put myself in this latter category, at first anyway. I hesitated to ascribe spiritual or transcendent motives to myself. By the end, I wasn't so sure.

I had read that religion no longer plays a significant role in the lives of most Japanese. Yet they still turn to the local Buddhist temple to bury the dead, and most homes -- as I would discover -- have a butsudan, a family altar that contains memorials to ancestors and in which they set flowers, burn incense or place food and drink.

As well, millions of Japanese pray each day at their neighbourhood Buddhist temple or Shinto shrine before going to work or school.

"The Japanese definitely seem to have a sense of religious piety and spiritual yearning, although it is far different from that in the West," writes Scott Rutherford, a scholar of Japanese religion, in his 1998 book, East Asia.

Nevertheless, some of the major temples in, say, Nara and Kyoto, no longer seem to reflect or sustain a living religion. While they are beautiful, they have become tourist sites or, at most, a nostalgic reminder of Japan's past. I visited some of Kyoto's famous temples after my pilgrimage. Shuffling along with the other tourists, I felt I was seeing beautiful shells, forms without spiritual substance.

It was different on Shikoku. The temples have a decidedly lived-in look, perhaps because, as one of my guidebooks put it, "the 88 temples are still alive for the pilgrims themselves."

I had decided that if I was to undertake a two-month religious pilgrimage, I could at least participate in the formalities -- even if I didn't understand their meaning or significance or, for that matter, wasn't very good at being religious. But in going through the motions -- visiting the sacred sites, trying to recite the sutras, following in the steps million of others have taken for 1,000 years -- you are absorbed in and by the pilgrimage, and, as one traditional saying goes, "the form makes the heart."

It takes between 45 and 60 days to perform the Shikoku Henro. It took me 54 days, from the last days of March to late May, most of which I walked. Trekking through Shikoku's four prefectures, or provinces -- Tokushima, Kochi, Ehime and Kagawa -- I saw too much asphalt and urban sprawl and inhaled more exhaust fumes than was good for me. I hiked six to eight hours a day with an always-too-heavy pack, endured blistered feet that hobbled me, leg muscles so sore I whimpered by day's end.

I slopped ankle-deep in mud, waded in streams that filled my boots with water, staggered soaked through several downpours, and panted through humidity that made me wish for rain. There were times as I clawed my way up some rock-strewn slopes that I thought I was going to blow a heart valve.

I also had a wonder-filled time. I met friendly, helpful people -- from hairdressers to postal clerks -- who, surprised at the idea of a foreign henro, treated me with great generosity, tolerating my fractured Japanese phrases and my ignorance of their customs. I acquired friends who shared much of my journey and made it more enjoyable -- and, indeed, do-able.

I wandered deep into Shikoku's verdant valleys, trod paths cut deep by the feet of millions, stood on mountain ridges that offered a timeless panorama of sea and sky and landscape. The solitude and silence of sun-laced bamboo forests entranced me. I trundled across farm fields rich with rice and lotus, lounged on sandy beaches that seemed to stretch forever and scaled wind-swept headlands that left me swaying with vertigo at the sight of foam-streaked rocks far below.

I strolled through thatch-roofed villages that hadn't changed in their essentials for centuries. I fell in love with things Japanese -- sashimi, or raw fish, so fresh it melted in my mouth, ryokans, the traditional inns, with their tatami floors and sliding wood-and-paper shoji panels that opened on to gardens of sculptured trees and burbling ponds.

But these phenomena only reinforced what became one of my most meaning-filled travel experiences, an encounter that I can only describe, borrowing from C.S. Lewis, as being "surprised by joy."

I started out thinking of my pilgrimage as little more than an adventure -- a "secular journey to sacred places," as one Japanese sociologist, Nobutaka Inoue, puts it. But walking 20 to 30 kilometres a day for two months changes you, physically and psychologically.

By the end of my trek, I was no longer able to dismiss the presence of Kobo Daishi as an irrational folk superstition. Too many serendipitous situations, odd circumstances and synchronistic events occurred for me not to at least wonder if someone, or something, was watching over me. I set out on one kind of journey, but ended up on a very different one.

I knew none of this as I sheltered from the rain beneath the gabled roof of the bell tower at Shosanji Temple. I was simply grateful to have reached Shosanji, the 12th of Shikoku's 88 temples. I had visited the first 11 temples during my first two days of walking. It had seemed easy. The third day, though, was a killer. I had walked -- staggered -- for nearly nine hours, covering 14 kilometres along a trail that climbs and descends three mountain ranges.

By late afternoon, when I reached the final steep staircase that climbs to the temple, I was trembling with exhaustion. My leg muscles burned and my back ached from the load of my pack. I saw spots in front of my eyes. Worse, the worm of uncertainty crawled around my mind: The prospect of two months on the road was suddenly daunting.

Rational or not, ringing the temple bell was my way of banishing the demons of doubt and saying thanks to whatever gods may have delivered me from my inadequacy. It was also an appeal for their help in the weeks to come. Standing beneath the shoro, looking across the temple courtyard to the distant mountains, my thigh muscles twitching in relief, I thought I would need it.

The pilgrim group was breaking up, its recitations complete. One by one, each henro climbed the steps to ring the acorn-shaped brass bell, or waniguchi, hanging from the eaves above the entrance to the daishido where, as in every temple, a statue of Kobo Daishi was enshrined.

Several paused to bow and roll the string of nenju beads between the palms of their hands as they recited sutras or offered homage to Kobo Daishi. When they finished, they tossed a few coins in the offertory bin and dropped their osame-fuda, or name-slips, into another. They then hustled to the temple office to have their stamp books and temple scrolls signed and stamped.

Most of the pilgrims were older women, barely as tall as their walking sticks. They shuffled past the shoro where I sheltered. Several glanced at me, startled at the sight of a mud-spattered, red-faced gaikokujin, or, literally, out-of-country person. I would get used to that look. During nearly two months on the Shikoku no Michi, I did not see another non-Japanese henro. The Japanese were surprised, even flattered, that a gaijin, or foreigner, would walk the temple route. I bowed to the women and smiled.

"Konnichi wa. Yoku omairi-deshita. Gokuro-sama," I said. "Good afternoon. Nice of you to come to offer a prayer. Bless you." I had memorized this and a few other phrases in preparing for my trip. I hoped I was saying the right thing.

My fractured phrases garnered a burst of giggles, smiles and a few respectful bows. One woman hauled out a camera and snapped my picture. I obviously did not fit into Japanese society. Yet as a pilgrim, I was welcomed without reservation.

When the women left, I retreated down the belfry's stairs, grabbed my gear, and made my way to the temple halls. I intended to carry out the rituals as best I could. Perhaps, after a month, the rituals and mantras, the words of spiritual power, would become meaningful. Content would follow form.

I performed the required ablutions at the stone cistern, filling a long-handled bamboo ladle with water from the spouting mouth of a bronze dragon. I spilled icy water over one hand, switched the ladle and washed the other. Then, I poured the rest in my cupped hand and rinsed my mouth. I spat into a drainage moat at the base of the cistern.

As I walked to the hondo, I realized I should have performed the ritual cleansing before I rang the bell. Next time I would do it right.

The day had taken its toll. My legs started to cramp as I stood on the veranda of the main hall. Thin needles of pain jabbed at my heels. A wave of fatigue washed over me. I curtailed my meditations, such as they were, and sat on the temple steps. I pulled two name slips from my pouch and wrote my name and address.

Japanese pilgrims describe a visit to a temple as an utsu ("to hit"). A temple is called fuda-sho (or card place), because pilgrims once nailed wooden cards to temple walls. Things are gentler now. Pilgrims scrawl their names or those of their families on osame-fuda, or name-slips, and deposit them in special bins. These papers hold prayers for happiness, health, prosperity or peace, along with a sketch of Kobo Daishi.

The idea is to gain help from the temple deities, who learn of the pilgrim's desires when the name-slips are burned in a ceremony. Most of the name slips in the bins are white, indicating the pilgrim has made between one and four visits to the temple. Green indicates five and six visits, while red demonstrates seven to 24 utsu. A silver card signifies 25 to 49, while gold conveys 50 or more. I saw several green and even a few red cards but I never saw a gold osame-fuda, and only once did I see silver, although I did read that one man had performed the pilgrimage circuit 279 times. I could only wonder at such devotion.

The only thing motivating me was the desire for a bath, some food and a place to sleep. I deposited my name slip and then found the temple office where my nokyo-cho was signed and stamped. Finally, I staggered along to the temple shukubo, or lodge, where I had a reservation.

Many of the Shikoku temples offer accommodations but I preferred ryokans and minshukus, the traditional inns and guesthouses, or even business hotels. Not only was it easier to obtain lodgings -- the temples are often booked by bus tours -- but the temples' regimens, with their set times for eating, bathing and lights out, were inconvenient. At Shosanji, for instance, I checked in just before supper was to be served at six o'clock. A grey-haired woman in a jogging suit greeted me. I assumed she was the lodge mistress.

"Irasshaimase." "Welcome, please come in," she said, smiling and bowing.

"Konban wa," I said, returning the bow. "Watakushi no namae wa Robert Sibley desu. Konya yoyaku wo shitan desu kedo." "Good evening. My name is Robert Sibley. I believe I have a reservation for tonight." It had taken me a long time to memorize those phrases.

She said something but I only recognized the word henro. Still, her gestures were plain: She showed me the basin in which to wash my walking stick and a rack for storing my wet boots. After I pulled off my boots, she handed me a pair of slippers and then led me down a hallway to my room. She stopped to slide open a shoji panel, glancing at me with a querulous "Does the foreigner know how to behave properly?" look.

I was careful to take off my slippers before stepping on to the tatami mats that lined the floor. I was also careful not to place my pack in the small alcove set aside as the room's shrine, or tokonoma. Presumably, I did everything properly because my hostess was smiling and chattering as she followed me into the room. I couldn't understand her, so I just nodded and grinned and said "hai" or "domo" repeatedly as she laid out the futons and prepared a pot of tea. Finally, before she bowed herself out, she handed me a folded and freshly laundered yukata, an ankle-length cotton robe.

I stripped off my wet clothes and wrapped myself in the yukata. Along with the end-of-day o-furo, or bath, the yukata would become my reward for a hard day's walking, a small treat I looked forward to as compensation for aching legs and sore feet. I was seldom disappointed, although there was one small problem I never resolved. I am taller than most Japanese men, which meant none of the yukata I received, nor any of the slippers, ever fit. I became adept at keeping a strategic grip on my robe while walking or, even trickier, sitting down. My predicament became a source of amusement for my pilgrimage companions.

I got the heater going, strung up my clothes to dry, re-arranged the futons so I could sit and lean against the wall and took my leisure with a steaming cup of green tea. It was sheer pleasure to be warm and dry and still. I would have fallen asleep but the supper bell rang. I staggered to my feet and hobbled down the hallway to the dining room, trying not to lose my slippers and gripping my dangerously small yukata.

The room was packed. Some 30 or 40 guests sat cross-legged on the tatami floor between long rows of low tables. They stared as I entered and paused to take off my slippers. I was heading for an empty cushion between two older women -- they looked panicked at the prospect -- when I heard my name.

"Sibley-san, sumimasen."

I looked up to see two pilgrims, a father and a son from Tokyo, Shuji Niwano and his son, Jun. The father was a 63-year-old retired telecommunications salesman; the son was in his early 20s. I had walked with them the previous day. They were sitting with two men I had seen on the trail that afternoon.

Niwano-san gestured for me to join the group. He waved to one of the women servers and ordered beer. She returned with two large bottles of Kirin, three glasses and a bottle opener. Niwano-san filled my glass, poured some for Jun and then himself. He raised his glass in the traditional Japanese toast, gesturing at the two men and myself: "Kampai."

The beer was cold and delicious. We finished one bottle before our food arrived. The other we drained as we ate, with Niwano-san topping up my glass. In Japan, it is bad form to fill your own glass. Instead, you fill the glass of the person next to you and wait for them to fill yours. The idea is that everybody is obligated to look out for others in the group.

We even managed to converse, sort of. Niwano-san knew some basic English, while I had the benefit of a few courses in Japanese. When we ran into difficulty, Niwano-san or Jun-san used a Casio electronic dictionary to translate Japanese words into English. It was slow and cumbersome, but between my minimalist Japanese, their modest English and the electronic dictionary, we worked out that Niwano-san and his son had been ahead of me all day.

Niwano-san explained that like myself he planned to walk the entire Shikoku route, visiting every temple. At least as long as his son kept walking. As for Jun, he certainly spoke better English than I spoke Japanese. He kept asking about Hollywood movie stars and pop singers and if there were lots of animals in Canada.

"Do you like Madonna?" "Do you have bears in Ottawa?" "Have you seen a moose?" "Do you know the French movie star Johnny Leno? You look like him."

"Jun is noisy," Niwano-san said by way of apology.

Perhaps, but he was a good teacher. When the food came, we began what would become a mealtime habit of identifying food in our respective languages. I recognized some items: a bowl of steaming rice, miso soup with mushrooms and a block of tofu. There were vegetables pickled in vinegar. But I had no idea about others, including a spongy grey triangle of compressed mush and a bowl of greenery that reminded me of kelp washed up on a beach (which, as it turned out, was what it was, or, as Jun identified it, konbu).

A slice of crunchy, yellowish vegetable was takenoko, or bamboo shoots. The sour, pickled plums were umeboshi. The soya sauce was, well, shoyu. Two quarter sections of apple were ringo.

Politeness required I try everything and, to my surprise everything was, well, edible. I even enjoyed the grey mushy stuff, which was yokan, a moulded bean-paste cake. It was sweet.

The others at the table were Goki Sayama, a retired banker from Sendai, north of Tokyo and Murakoshi Takashi, a vacationing businessman from Hokkaido, Japan's northernmost island.

Sayama-san spoke reasonable English, having often traveled to Europe and the United States. He asked why I was walking the Shikoku Henro. I had stock phrases ready: I was a Canadian journalist and was travelling in Japan to walk the pilgrimage route. They seemed impressed, both at my intentions and my effort to speak Japanese. But then, as my Lonely Planet guidebook explained, a foreigner who tries a few sentences of Japanese "is likely to receive regular dollops of praise."

Takashi-san filled my glass. I remembered to lift it slightly off the table as it was being filled. I would eventually learn to put my hand over my glass to indicate I'd had enough.

Between the food and the beer and my fatigue, I was soon nodding off. Niwano-san had checked to see if I could still get a bath. I could. I excused myself and said good night. "Oyasuminasai," I said, bowing.

I'd been in Japan for about a week and already concluded that the o-furo had to be Japan's greatest contribution to civilization. The o-furo is where you relieve aching muscles and soothe jangled nerves and let your woes wash away.

Naturally, this being Japan, there's a ritual: You soap and rinse your body outside the tub, squatting on a low stool in front of a basin-and-tap and use the water from a bowl to rinse away soap, sweat and the day's dirt. Only when you were squeaky clean, do you step into the deep tub, submerging into the 40-degree water to soak as long as you can. Half-an-hour in an o-furo and you begin to think the world's a pretty good place.

I lowered myself into the hot water and lay back, letting the events of the past few days float across my memory. Unlike that day, the first two days -- and the first 11 temples -- had been easy. Like most henro, I had started at Ryozenji Temple in the village of Bando, just outside the city of Tokushima. Ryozenji is traditionally regarded as the first pilgrimage temple, although because the route is circular you can begin anywhere. At Ryozenji, pilgrims buy those items -- the white robe, walking stick, name slips, straw hat, stamp book -- that identify them as henro.

Japanese Buddhist temples are usually a cluster of buildings contained by a wall. Most have a gateway, or sanmon, that is normally two-storeys high with a tiled roof. Some temples have statues of nio, or celestial guardians, on either side of the gate, their faces stretched into snarls to warn those whose motives for entering might be less than sincere.

According to my guidebooks, one nio has his mouth open to say "ah," while the other says "um." The two sounds symbolize the beginning and end of the cosmos, alpha and omega. Combined they form the mantra "aum," a word of power that, according to Buddhist doctrine, evokes the sound of the universe.

Inside the compound is a bell tower, or shoro, often a pagoda, and, always, a main hall, or hondo, where the temple's main deity, or honzon, is enshrined. A multi-tiered tower -- a pagoda -- may contain relics associated with the Buddha or other precious objects. Lecture halls, administrative buildings, the head priest's home and, perhaps, a cemetery can also be found. The temples on the Shikoku route, most of which are attached to the Shingon sect, also have a hall dedicated to Kobo Daishi, the daishido.

Standing outside Ryozenji temple on my first day, I was conscious of the symbolism. As a would-be pilgrim, I was being summoned "from the secular realm to the sacred precincts within," as Oliver Statler, an American scholar who walked the Shikoku route in the 1970s, puts it in his book, Japanese Pilgrimage. I stared at the two fierce-faced nio flanking the gate. They glared back, as though doubting the purity of my motives.

According to Statler, tradition holds that once a henro walks through the gate, he is committed to completing the pilgrimage even if it means risking death. I had read of pilgrims dying, succumbing to heart attacks or falling down some steep slope. I would find numerous graves along the trail. In the old days, the pilgrim's white robe was used as a burial shroud, while the henro-kasa, the broad straw hat, was placed over the face. The pilgrim's staff became a grave marker.

I turned up the collar of my jacket against the rain and splashed across the street. Half-an-hour later, I was an official henro. I had signed my name in the pilgrim register, which I would sign again in two months if I could prove I'd completed the pilgrimage.

I was also dressed for the part. I had a hip-length hakui, a packet of five-inch by two-inch paper name-slips and a white, plastic shoulder bag, or zuda-bukuro, for carrying maps and guidebooks. I also carried a five-foot tall walking staff from which I'd removed the little bell. I'd go insane if I had to listen to its endless tinkling.

My most important possession, however, was the pilgrim's passport, the double-paged nokyo-cho, which would become filled with black-ink-and-vermilion temple stamps. At every temple, a clerk would write the name of the temple's deity in the centre of the page. The name of the deity is crucial. According to Shingon Buddhist tradition, the word or its written form contains the deity's essential spirit. Thus, henro carry the divine essence as they trek from temple to temple. In many Japanese homes, the nokyo-cho is placed in the household shrine. Some henro have their nokyo-cho buried with them.

According to tradition, the Shikoku pilgrim walks with the spirit of Kobo Daishi as a guide and protector. Which is why the walking staff is inscribed with the words "Namu daishi henjo kongo. Dogyo Ninin." ("Homage to Kobo Daishi. We Two -- Pilgrims Together.") Each night a pilgrim must wash the base of the staff out of respect for his spiritual companion. I looked at the clear smooth wood, knowing I would become emotionally attached to it after weeks of depending on its support, whether for climbing in the mountains, fending off dogs or testing trailside foliage for snakes. I ran my fingers along the inscription by way of introducing myself.

"OK, Kobo," I said, banging the staff on the wet asphalt, "let's hit the road."

For the next two days, I -- we? -- walked inland, following the Yoshino River valley. The first 11 temples are scattered on either side of the river. I found them in small villages, tucked into the folds of green hills and protruding from rice fields and vegetable farms. It was the end of March, cherry trees were coming into blossom, winter camellias splashed the ground with splotches of red and farmers were starting to wade into their muddy fields to plant rice seedlings.

Every Shikoku temple, some 1,200 years old, has a legend about its origins, along with artifacts or monuments attesting to its significance or popularity.

A kilometre west of Ryozenji is Gokurakuji, where women pray for a safe childbirth. A huge cedar tree, which legends says was planted by Kobo Daishi, stands in front of one hall. If you touch the tree trunk while praying, you will have a long life. Dozens of coins were stuck in the bark. I gave the tree a big hug and a 100 yen coin -- about 77 cents Canadian -- figuring I needed all the help I could get.

I visited five temples that first day, covering about 15 kilometres before stopping at Minshuku Shoshokudo, a guesthouse off the highway a few kilometres from Temple Six. I was the only guest, except for a shaven-headed young man I saw at dinner. We nodded at each other.

The only spoiler to the day was the rain. My Gore-tex jacket leaked, as did my boots with their Gore-tex lining. When I emptied my backpack in my room, most everything was wet, including my passport, airline tickets, money and notebooks. Even my nokyo-cho was damp, causing some of the temple stamps to run.

After dinner, I spread the contents of my pack on the tatami floor to dry. I studied my gear: a sleeping bag and water-proof emergency shelter; two pairs of fast-drying nylon pants, two nylon shirts, a T-shirt and long-sleeved jersey, both made of Capilene that absorbs and wicks away sweat, three pairs of socks, three pairs of underwear, a fleece jacket for warmth and a hooded nylon rain jacket lined with Gore-tex. I have my medical-and-toiletries kit, including moleskin and tape to prevent blisters and needle, thread and iodine in case I got blisters. I also carried a special under-the-shirt belt for money and passport and other valuables -- all wet now.

I also had notebooks, pens, two cameras (digital and film) and a few books, including my sources of inspiration: Statler's Japanese Pilgrimage and one of my favourite travel books, Narrow Road to the Interior, which recounted the five-month pilgrimage around northern Japan by the 17th-century Japanese haiku master, Matsuo Basho.

I knew I was carrying too much. But I always started out that way and spent the journey whittling down to essentials.

The next day I was up at 6 and on the road by 7. It was cool and sunny. The route cut across farm fields and along narrow roads lined by wall-enclosed houses. Occasionally, I passed roadside shrines where locals had set water or an orange at the feet of a Buddha figure. The streets were clean and oddly peaceful. Sometimes I met an old man or woman slowly shuffling along. Many of the women were bent over, their backs bowed by years working in the rice fields. They greeted me with a nod and a salutation -- "ohayo gozaimasu" "good morning" -- often with a look of surprise when they saw I was a foreigner. Of course, I returned the greeting and the bow.

My second morning saw me all the way from Anrakuji, Temple Six, to Kirihataji, Temple 10. Anrakuji, the Temple of Everlasting Joy, is surrounded by a quiet village. The pagoda with its white walls and red pillars makes a colourful contrast to the green of the temple garden. Legend says Kõbõ Daishi founded the temple when he realized the hot spring’s rust-coloured water could cure disease.

The hondõ is dedicated to Yakushi, the Buddha of healing. According to my guidebooks, 23 of the Shikoku temples are dedicated to Yakushi. At temples with statues of Yakushi, the figures are rubbed smooth on the knees, hands and back. Worshippers touch the statue and then rub the part of their body that ails them, hoping for relief from arthritis, back pain or even cancer.

It wasn’t until I reached Temple Nine that I realized what was ailing me. I hadn’t had a coffee since two days earlier in Tokushima. I needed a caffeine fix. It was readily at hand. Stroll any street in Japan, even in the countryside, and you’ll find vending machines lined up like shrines, offering snacks and drinks — from water and juice to coffee, beer and sake. I couldn’t imagine them on a street corner in Canada; they wouldn’t survive the winter, much less the vandals. At Temple Nine, the machines offered several varieties of coffee-in-a-can, hot and cold. There was also something called Pocari Sweat — how did they come up with that name? — in the cold section. The name alone required I try it. The Pocari Sweat was icy and refreshing, tasting of limes. I’d discovered the drink of choice for my trek. Finding it and the coffee became a ritual, as though the day could not be satisfying without a hot can of Georgia coffee in the morning and an icy-cold Pocari Sweat at the end of the day. Pilgrimages are made of such modest rewards.

Kirihataji, Temple 10, was four kilometres — and two bottles of Pocari Sweat — away, the last temple on the north side of the Yoshino River. It was the first temple I had to climb to reach, offering a hint of what I would face the next day. I stopped at a small restaurant at the corner of the narrow lane leading to the temple to ask — or, rather, gesture — if I could leave my pack. Then I trudged up the lane past the souvenir shops and farmhouses to the temple gate at the foot of the mountain.

I didn’t get very far before my leg muscles twanged and trembled in protest. And that was only at the half-way point. By the time I reached the top and limped across the courtyard to the hondõ and the temple office, I was seeing spots in front of my eyes. I sat on a bench in the temple compound to rest and read a guidebook.

According to legend, Kõbõ Daishi founded the temple in honour of a beautiful young girl. Every day, while he performed his meditations in a mountainside hut, she interrupted her cloth-weaving — kirihata means “cut-cloth” — to bring him food. Eventually, she told him her story: Her mother had been a lady of the court in Kyoto and her father an officer in the court guard. Before she was born, her father had been exiled for his part in a rebellion and her mother, fearful of the danger to her unborn child, prayed to Kannon, the Buddha of compassion.

Her prayers were answered and she managed to flee to Shikoku where she raised her child until she died, leaving the daughter alone. Kõbõ Daishi was so moved that he carved her a statue of Kannon and, heeding the girl’s wishes, ordained her as a nun. She immediately attained enlightenment, or Buddhahood, and changed into a statue of Kannon joining the one Kõbõ Daishi had carved. Kõbõ Daishi took the two statues and enshrined them in the temple he built in the girl’s honour.

Kirihataji is understandably popular with Japanese women. Before Kõbõ Daishi, women were thought incapable of Buddhahood. Women had to be re-born as men to have that potential. Kõbõ Daishi’s teaching of Sokushin-jõbutsu — that every person has a Buddha-nature and is capable of attaining enlightenment in “in this very body, in this very life” — changed that attitude.

Arguably, it is these influences that have made Kõbõ Daishi “the most prominent and influential individual figure in popular Japanese religious history,” as Reader writes in Religion in Contemporary Japan. In 828, for example, he founded the first school for commoners, providing food, shelter and education. This was unheard of at the time: Only aristocrats could obtain an education.

At Temple 10, I had my first tickle of faith in Kõbõ Daishi, my first inkling that there might be something to the notion he walks with every pilgrim. I was parked on the bench, admiring at the statue of Kannon, trying to ignore my body’s whining at the prospect of the afternoon’s walk — nearly 10 kilometres across the Yoshino valley. That’s when I saw the shaven-headed young man with whom I’d shared the dining room at the Minshuku Sõshokudõ the previous night. He was walking toward me, accompanied by a thin-faced, middle-aged man wearing glasses and a ball cap and a younger man with long black hair. They bowed as a group. I stood to return the gesture. The shaven-headed youth rattled off something in Japanese.

“Gomen nasai,” I said. “Nihongo ga sukoshi dake dekimasu.”

“I’m sorry. I speak only a little Japanese.”

“Ah, you are American?” he asked in halting English.

“Iie, Kanada-jin desu,” I said. “No, I’m Canadian.”

The young man was Hiroshi Yoshida, a university student from Osaka. He was dressed as a henro with a straw hat and white vest. The others were Shuji Niwano and his son, Jun, from Tokyo. Neither wore pilgrim garb. Nor did they carry walking staffs. But they were the first fellow pilgrims I met on the Shikoku no Michi. They wanted me to take their picture. Niwano-san then asked if I would pose with his son.

The request had considerable consequences. Niwano-san and I struck up a friendship — he would eventually honour me by saying I should address him by his first name, Shuji — that would make my pilgrimage immensely more fulfilling, both in terms of companionship and the doors it opened on Japanese customs and attitudes. Thanks to Niwano-san, I would meet people, learn things and do things that would not have otherwise been available to me given my lack of language and knowledge of Japan.

After we performed our pilgrim duties we made our way down the long flight of stairs to the Fujiya restaurant. It was little more than a few tables and a half-dozen stools huddled around a counter. I couldn’t make up my mind if the floor was packed earth or hadn’t been swept in a long time. On one wall were faded pictures of henro and temples, along with dozens of name-slips. There was also a calendar, dated 1996, with a picture of the Toronto skyline, the CN Tower its centrepiece. The place was run by Takeko Hara and her daughter, Mayumi. They fed me my first udon, for which I shall always be grateful. Udon is a classic Japanese dish. The thick noodles are made from white flour and simmered in a broth with other ingredients — soft-boiled eggs, beef, shrimp or fish — and served in a large, heavy bowl. It is delicious and filling and no one objects to the loud slurping noises you make because they make the same noises, too. I remembered to say itadakimasu — the Japanese form of saying grace, meaning, literally, “I will receive” — as the bowl was placed in front of me.

My only difficulty was picking up the long slippery noodles with chopsticks. It earned laughter. Before we left, the mother had us sign our name-slips. Hara-san wanted them for her collection. She was going to tape mine next to the Toronto skyline picture.

We walked the rest of the afternoon as a group. We crossed the wide gravel bed of the Yoshino River and followed the path through the town of Kamojima and into the foothills. I asked my companions why they were walking the Shikoku no Michi.

Hiroshi-san said he was taking a break from university. Niwano-san’s English wasn’t good but he managed to explain that 30 years ago he lived in Imabari, a town on the north side of Shikoku where he had met his wife, Ikuko, and where Jun was born. They moved to Tokyo, but he had always wanted to return. When he retired he decided to walk the Shikoku pilgrimage with Jun. Niwano-san’s motives were, in part at least, driven by his concern for Jun, the eldest of his two sons.

“Jun is not strong,” Niwano-san said in stilted English. He looked up the road toward Jun and Hiroshi. “He has a condition.”

I had already noticed that Jun’s behaviour was not normal for a young man in his 20s. While he was friendly and eager to talk — even now at a distance I could hear Jun chattering away — he was impulsive, almost desperate, in his actions. Whenever we met another pilgrim on the road, Jun practically leaped at them to talk and ask questions. He wasn’t aggressive; he just couldn’t summon much self-restraint or awareness that it was necessary on occasion. It was the same thing with dogs; Jun would inevitably run at any we encountered, wanting to pet them. The dogs, however, snarled and barked at his charging approach. He was always surprised, and hurt.

Over the next few weeks, walking together for at least part of each day, I heard more about Niwano-san, his hopes and fears regarding his son and family — confidences that both surprised and humbled me. Unlike North Americans, the Japanese aren’t given to discussing their private lives with strangers. For some reason, Niwano-san confided in me. Initially, I suspected he did so because I was a gaikokujin, an out-of-country person, who provided a sounding for things he couldn’t otherwise say. A pilgrimage invites intimacy. Your mutual aches and pains, the shared endurances of the trek, encourages an empathy you wouldn’t normally feel for those who aren’t friends or family.

I was told that Jun had suffered some kind of nervous or mental breakdown several years earlier, and, it seems, never fully recovered. He had had to leave school and was unable to hold down a job. And now he lived at home, largely spending his time in his room listening to music and watching television. Niwano-san hoped that walking the Shikoku no Michi would help Jun overcome his self-imposed isolation and regain his self-confidence and health. We reached Fujiidera Temple, Temple 11, a few minutes before the office closed at 5 p.m. Before we caught a taxi back to Kamojima, where we each had rooms in various hotels or inns, I walked past the main hall and looked up the path leading into the mountains. That’s where I would walk the next day on my way to Shõsanji, Temple 12. My guidebooks described the path as a long, hard climb.

Shõsanji is one of six nanshos, or perilous temples, that pilgrims find most difficult to reach. You’re forced to climb from an elevation of 40 metres at Temple 11 to about 700 metres just before Temple 12 — the second highest elevation on the entire route — following a path that is near perpendicular in places. Little wonder the path is referred to as henro korogashi, or “pilgrim falling.” You can see the gravestones of fallen pilgrims scattered along the route.

The day started pleasantly, sunny and cool again. I left the Central Hotel about 6:30. My feet seemed fine — I had wrapped them in moleskin just in case — and the stiffness in my legs disappeared after a few minutes. At a kiosk in the Kamojima train station, I bought a bentõ, an all-in-one-box meal, for lunch, along with a can of Georgia Café au Lait, two bottles of Pocari Sweat and two bottles of water.

The trail was a tease. It began with a slight incline that led gently into the shade of a cedar forest. The air was cool and damp and pungent. Nightingales noted my passing. Suddenly, a set of stairs cut into the ground and the trail climbed steeply into the trees. And kept climbing. And climbing. Until it reached a plateau that offered a view of the Yoshino River valley. I was huffing and puffing too much to appreciate the panorama. I dropped my pack and collapsed. I pulled out my map and looked at my watch. It had taken 30 minutes to climb one kilometre. I knew then I was in for a long day.

The trail followed a seemingly endless series of peaks and valleys. I’d reach the summit of one mountain only to drop to a valley floor and have to climb all over again. I filed along ridges that fell away in vertiginous drops. It was easy to imagine plummeting over the edge and disappearing in some tangle of dark wood. The path, slippery and soggy from spring rain, was so steep in places I practically climbed on hands and knees, my face only inches from the root-tangled earth. My boots were soon heavy with mud. I had to clamber and leap over boulders — no easy task with a 14-kilogram pack. I was grateful for Kõbõ Daishi, my walking staff, which saved me from twisting an ankle, or worse. After a few hours, my leg muscles whimpered and my heart hammered like bass drum. I envisioned a blood vessel bursting and my body lying at the edge of the trail.

It took four hours to cover a little more than eight kilometres. By the time I reached the small temple of Yanagi-no-mizu-an, nearly halfway to Shõsanji, I was wet, weary and wondering if I would make it. I flopped in the dappled shade of a camellia bush.

When everything seemed more or less normal, I pulled out the bentõ. Turning back the lid, I found three pieces of sushi, some tempura vegetables, several slices of kamaboko, a sausage-like fish-paste roll, slices of bamboo shoot and squash, and three onigiri, triangular chunks of rice wrapped in seaweed. It was gone in minutes. I drained a bottle of water and a bottle of Pocari Sweat.

I wanted to sit in the shade and listen to the buzz of insects and watch the sway of the cedars, and, somehow, without effort, get where I wanted. That’s when I heard the tinkling of a bell. I looked up from my self-pity. Two men came out of the forest into the temple clearing. Both wore henro robes and hats and carried the requisite walking sticks.

The taller man had a long, lean face and walked straight-shouldered like a soldier. I guessed him to be in his late 60s. The other had dark, grey-flecked hair. He looked to be in his 50s. They bowed and greeted me but did not pause. When they disappeared around a corner in the trail, I stood and stumbled in pursuit of the bells I thought I could still hear. If they could continue why couldn’t I?

The path started to climb almost immediately and I was soon back to wondering if my heart would hold out. But I received encouragement from another source. I had noticed little statues of Jizõ, the bald-pated deity who guards children, the souls of the dead and travellers, every few hundred metres along the trail. He has the power of salvation, and is known especially for helping the souls of children in their task of building a bridge across the river of the underworld so they can cross to find a happy rebirth.

Stone Jizõ statues are everywhere — roadside shrines and temples, on the edges of farm fields, at intersections, in cemeteries and, as I discovered, along mountain trails. During those last kilometres to Shõsanji, I adopted Jizõ as my personal protector, the guardian of out-of-condition gaijin pilgrims. I marked my progress by how many Jizõ statues I saw, forcing myself to count three before taking a break. Each break lasted only long enough to let me catch my breath and allow my heart to return to a less hysterical beat.

I refused to look at my watch or calculate the remaining distance. You’ll get there when you get there, I told myself, remembering what my father said on Sunday drives. It didn’t help when I spotted the occasional grave marker — short, pillar-like stones on the side of the trail, often huddled around a Jizõ statute. They were covered with lichen, half sunk into the earth, nameless except for the word henro carved into the stone.

There were times when I was desperate for the sight of one of the little statues, peeping out from behind a tree or bush or hanging out on some wet trail corner. I stabbed the trail with my stick, putting one foot in front of the other, until, coming around a bend, I was confronted by a set of stone stairs. I looked up. At the top stood a six-metre-high statue of Kõbõ Daishi, behind a wrought-iron fence in the shade of a huge cedar. Had I finally made it? I looked at my watch — nearly 3:30. I had been on the trail for more than eight hours.

I re-checked my map. I had only reached Ipponsugi-an, a small shrine; I still had an hour’s walk ahead of me. But the trail was downhill for much of the way. The path dropped through orange groves and orchards of cherry trees. The pungent ripeness of the orange trees in bloom mixed with the sweet and softer perfume of the cherry blossoms. It was like a cathedral of scent. By the time I crossed a rushing stream at the foot of the mountain — elevation 422 metres — and began the final climb to Shõsanji, I was feeling more charitable toward the world.

But I was flagging, my steps leaden. My legs wobbled, thigh muscles twitched. Feeling faint, I almost fell several times.

I also heard bells. Normally, the sound was irritating, especially the bells attached to pilgrim walking sticks. But this was the sound of salvation, telling me a fellow pilgrim was ahead, and if he could do it, so could I. Except, I couldn’t be sure I wasn’t hearing things.

I stopped and listened and, yes, there it was again: Some pilgrim, bless his osame-fuda, was banging away at the Shõsanji bell, announcing his arrival to the gods. A few minutes later, I emerged from the forest to face a final set of stairs that led to the temple gate. Soon, I was banging that bell myself.

Two hours later, I nearly fell asleep in the o-furo. I was as relaxed as a soggy noodle. I might be stiff and sore in the morning, but right then all aches and pains had melted away.

Despite my fatigue, I was restless. Instead of returning to my room, I decided to stroll around the temple compound. Crunching along the gravel pathway toward the temples in the gathering dusk, I spotted the neon light from a bank of vending machines and bought a hot Georgia Café au Lait. I sat on a bench and stared across the valley. In the distance, the dark, sawtoothed peaks of mountain ridges rippled away to the southwest, turning from blue to purple to black. I sat nursing my coffee as the mountains became one black mass against a star-plastered sky.

The day had been hard and there would be others like it ahead. But I’d done enough long-distance hikes to know the first week is always the hardest. Your body needs time to adjust to walking for hours. More crucially, the mind needs time to adjust. Anybody in reasonable health can walk 20 to 30 kilometres for a few days. But knowing you have to walk that distance every day for weeks throws up a psychological barrier. You’re tempted to find any excuse to chuck it because you know it’s going to get worse before it gets better. So why was I doing this?

Certainly, the Shikoku no Michi offered the lure of the exotic and appealed to my sense of adventure. While much of Japan is covered by asphalt and concrete, the Shikoku pilgrimage offered a sojourn through a part of the country that still possessed some wildness and was little visited by foreigners. There was also the fact the Citizen was sponsoring my trek. But there was more to it than an expense-paid adventure. If all I was doing was visiting 88 Buddhist temples, why do it the hard way? Why not travel by train, bus and taxi. I’d walked 40 kilometres so far. I had more than 1,300 kilometres to go. What was I trying to prove? Come to that, to whom was I trying to prove what? I wasn’t a Buddhist, so I couldn’t claim a compelling religious motive. I even hesitated to ascribe spiritual motives to myself.

Sipping my coffee, I remembered a line from The Inland Sea, Donald Richie’s marvelous travelogue of a boat journey he made on the seaway separating the main Japanese island of Honshu from Shikoku.

“A journey is always something of a flight,” Richie wrote. “You go to reach, but you also go to escape.” What was I escaping from? Or to? I had hiked across northern Spain in 2000, walking the 800-kilometre Camino de Santiago, one of the oldest pilgrimage routes in Christianity, from the French border town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to the Galician city of Santiago de Compostela. It is there, legend has it, the bones of St. James were buried. Memories of that pilgrimage still come back — the peacefulness of a sun-splashed forest path, the empty early morning streets of O Cebreiro, the far horizon of the Spanish meseta. But what I most remembered were those rare moments when, after my body — and my mind — had grown accustomed to the walking, a deep sense of peace and detachment settled on me. My mind was no longer filled with the clatter and crush of everyday life. I took a last swallow of my now cold coffee and returned to my room. I prepared my pack for the morning, opened the window, turned out the light and crawled beneath the quilt on my futon. Just before I fell asleep I heard someone chanting sutras.

Follow Robert Sibley’s Japanese pilgrimage in coming weeks in the Weekly. Next episode, May 15: The road to Temple 18.