Day 4: 88 Temples - Tokushima (13-17)

Mike continues to have trouble sleeping because of his knee and sleeping on the floor.  I'm sore from sleeping on the floor. too.  My hip gets a lot of pressure and there is not enough cushion from a futon.  I'm sure I'm over the recommend weight limit.


Traditional Japanese rooms with Tatami mats don't have much in them.  There is usually a seat pad, a low table, a neatly folder pile of bedding, maybe something to hang things one and a TV.  You have to sit or lay on the floor and when you're not used to it it is incredibly uncomfortable, especially after a long hike.  


Breakfast was a nice assortment.  Mike and I both passed on the raw egg and the nato.  Aside from sleeping on the floor, minshuku/ryokan guesthouses are a good deal.  Usually around ¥8000/person for the room and two very good meals.


Beautiful day up one hill first thing and gentle downhill to Temple 13.


I have been dying for coffee every morning.  The only sources are vending machines and  7-11 and the other conbini - convenience stores.  I had a hot can from a vending machine early on and just before the first temple of the day, an exceptional latte from a machine at 7-11.


We received several osettai today.  A bottle of water and a cookie, tangerines and tea.

We walked right past Temple 13.  Going by we acknowledged a temple but missed all the Henro indicators and kept walking.   We went half a kilometer before we realized and walked back. There we met a guy who was on his eigtht trip around, two walking.  His strips were not like ours.


Temple 13, 14, 15 and 16 were all pretty close to each other.  17 was a bit further from the others.  Leaving 16 we saw a sign pointing to udon so we had a very good bowl of udon with tempura.


We were both tired and sore from Day 3 and the hotel I had booked was 10km past 17 through the heart of Tokushima City.  We decided to take a bus from 17.  If we had walked we would have arrived well after dark.


The bus ride was about 25 minutes and it took us to Tokushima Station.  We had another 2km walk to the hotel but we were sore.  Sore enough to seek out a drugstore and get some ibuprofen.  My feet were sore and Mike's knee was bothering him.  The ibuprofen helped a lot.


Arriving at the hotel we declared we had a reservation.  There was a lot of looking and no finding.  I was trying to find my hotels.com booking but the merge with Expedia has made the site useless.  I looked at my credit card app and could see the charge and then an uncharge.  Hotels.com messed up.  They gave us rooms anyway.


We cleaned up and got dinner at a tonkatsu place next to the hotel.  Ordering was all done using a kiosk at the front door.  We fumbled around for a while in Japanese before noticing there was an English button.   A helpful lady deleted our order and felt bad about it and gave us some coupons for free sides.


The food turned out to be plentiful and good.  I did knock a glass of the table that bounced whole once and then shattered.  It would not have looked bad except for the 4 large beers on the table.


I've fallen asleep several time so I hope this makes sense.

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