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We awoke early this morning to join the monks in their 6 am prayer service. The service was basically the monks chanting a set of devotional mantras. It was about 40 minutes long, but Kent only stayed for about 15, as the smell of the incense was giving him a bad headache. Christine stayed to the end and enjoyed it.
After the service, breakfast was served and again, it was a vegetarian meal. Kent struggled this morning as none of the food was tasting very good to him. Perhaps it's been a little too much rice and tofu for meals this trip.
After breakfast, Christine decided that she wanted to take part in a ritual called Shakyo, which is the art of copying a Sutra. She worked on copying the "Heart Sutra of the Perfection of Wisdom" for about an hour and it came out beautifully. While she was doing this, Kent was taking a nap on one of the benches next to the Zen Garden of the monastery, as he was still quite tired from the day before and having to get up early.
After a quick exploration of some of the monastery that we hadn't seen the night before, it was time to meet up with the group and head back to Tokyo for our farewell dinner.
It took us 1 cable car, a bus, 3 regular trains, and a bullet train (from which we had a quick preview of Mount Fuji), and then 1 more train to get us back to Tokyo and the Shiba Park Hotel. Walking back to the Shiba Park Hotel felt like coming home for us a little bit as we had spent a few days there at the start of the trip.
After a brief period of relaxing at the hotel, we headed out for our farewell dinner with the group. Mari took us to a restaurant that served Okinawan cuisine. It was pretty good, with lots of delicious pork dishes. It was a bit sad to know that this was the last meal with our group together, as both Christine and I felt very lucky to have had such a great group to explore Japan with. After dinner we headed back to the hotel to go to bed.
We are heading down to the Tsukiji fish market early tomorrow morning and then we are off to Mount Fuji.
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Mom & Rick Rick says your room is almost too good to be real!Wow!! I would love to go to a place like that for a few days. It most have been so peaceful.Christine, did you know what the english translation of the Sutra was? Do you get to bring it home?Love you, Mom/Rick