A thousand steps to spiritual

When I first heard we were headed to a shrine with a thousand stairs, I imagined the scene from The Simpsons where Homer eats extremely hot chili and goes on some sort of psychedelic trip where he ends up in the desert and climbs to the top of a pyramid-esque platform to talk to a fox formed god.

Of course, the true trek to Konpira-san was nothing of the American animated sort, but something had to beset my imagination for the duration of the two hours car ride to Kagawa prefecture.
After heaving up a few patches of steep concrete stairs, the small souvenir shops that accompanied the climb began to thin out, and ahead lied only more stairs dampened by the drizzle of an ongoing light rain.
My surrogate Japanese grandmother said if I could barrel up the last patch of steps in less than a minute, I was promised good marriage by the fate of Konpira. I didn't even hesitate to assume complete gullibility while she took her time behind me, laughing all the way. My knees were so wobbly they were laughing from the exhaustion of the many flights. I was happy to see even the fog-filled view of the forestry below. And behind me was Konpira-jynja, which even in a biting cold and dreary afternoon, seemed to glow with a presence of greatness. Or maybe it was just having to travel so far to get here, it felt so welcoming and warm.

There was a mixed level karate class practicing in the forum of the shrine's gravel ground. We stood and waited, watching the martial experts of men, women and children alike do warm up exercises in the pitter-patter pings of sporadic rain drops. As gaijin, special permission for our admittance into the shrine was requested and fortunately granted. We sat in a waiting area and warmed ourselves until our group was called into the shrine where the Buddhist priest chanted unknown words of good fortune for the year and blessed us over the head with a special sheathes of leaves attached to a bamboo pole. We then drank from a saucer a thimble full of sake and walked back across a wooden walkway to where our shoes were waiting for us.

We then got to choose our fortunes and I chose one somewhat in the middle. The short scroll told me that my health would be in pristine condition this year, but my business and money would be lacking in growth. In the realm of love, I would need to open my heart more to a man, but of course, all of this was haphazardly translated by granny and her husband, so I caught some significant bits and pieces, enough to make me believe in a fortune at all.

The descent was actually more difficult than the first attempt. My laughing knees remembered the strain from an hour past and had trouble keeping a straight face as I tried not to slip on accumulated rain that had started to amass in larger puddled as the day dripped on.

Udon for breakfast and lunch sandwiched our summit to Konpira-san. I was gastronomically and spiritually satisfied. If only I could've kept my feet warm enough not to catch a cold. I guess my fortune may have predicted the opposite after all.