Walking: 88 Temple Pilgrimage in Shikoku, Japan - October 2023

Mike and I had breakfast and then I headed out to catch the 7:34 train back to Gomen.  The train was packed with high school kids.  One thing we have not seen between Tokushima and Kochi is young people.  Didn't understand why the were going from the city to the country for school. Out of the station they all disappeared and I was walking in a quiet suburb-farmland-rual area.  A few hundred meters and I was on the Henro trail.  It was few kilometers to Temple 29 which was a nice temple. The walk from 29 to 30 was one of the nicest so far.  It was well marked - I only missed one turn that would have put me on a quieter street but I need up in the same place.  This whole day there was clearly effort made to get us off busy roads and on to quiet ones or through farm fields. At Temple 30 I s...

Last night when we got to the Ryokan, the host was a young guy who didn't look very Japanese.  His mother was Spanish and his parents had met in Spain. After dinner we wanted a conbini to get some stuff for breakfast but went to a liquor store for a few supplies.  In the morning I wanted coffee and walked outside.  Looking to my left 50m away at the beep-beep-beep intersection was a Family Mart conbini.  They had good coffee and I brought some back.  I noticed the had a banner for the Go-Go promotion we had a book of tickets we got from the Ryokan. After packing up we stopped at Family Mart 50m into the day's walk and used some for a ¥500 discount each.  We still had 9 ¥500 tickets each.  We could only use them for another 20km. Walking today started out on a very busy road with lots of traffic in both directions.  There were also a lot of kids on their way to school.  It wasn't great walking but we were kind of resigned to it....