Day 9: 88 Temples (23) - Awa-Kainan

I woke at 6am and could see the light for an amazing sunrise coming through.  Just before I got up to take a photo Mike's phone rang and he got the news his mother passed.



We had a train day planned and after 6:30am breakfast we lazed around.  Looking for places to stay and planning ahead is quite time consuming.  Booking is required.  I've been figuring out how far we can go and looking for places to stay.  I give a short list to Mike which he passes on to Natsuko who calls them.  It seems many places do not want to deal with non-Japanese speakers.  The language you need to show someone a room and tell them dinner is at 6, is not a lot.  Most foreigners know how things work as Henro by this point.


We walked to Temple 23 and climbed the stairs.  The monks seemed to understand tsunami.  This whole area has warning signs and infrastructure for tsunami.  Buildings are marked with water height.  There are staircases going up steep hillsides and structures to get as many people as possible above wave level. 


After the temple we had some time to wait for the small train that came about once an hour.  It is the same line that we took several days ago.  We purchased tickets in a station store and sat on the platform.  The station allows you to walk between platforms across the track.  There are a couple little steps.

The were quite a few Henro on the train. We chatted with our Hong Kong friends from 2 nights ago.

There were some bad gaijin on the train.  Yes, it was us.  We were supposed to go in one door and out the other.  This was not how it was done further down the line which we had been on.  We also had our tickets and went in the out door.  People told us on the train we were supposed to have picked up a ticket at the other door.  


It was a pretty quick ride covering about 30km to Awa-Kainan Station.  We arrived at noon and since checkin was at 3pm looked for lunch.  We found a ramen place.


We took a bit of a detour to a seaside park.  Google said it was busier than normal.  There was one guy messing around with something in the trunk of his car.  It had some nice views and we sat around for a while.


We walked slowly to the hotel but managed to work up a sweat on the final steep hill the hotel was on.  Surprisingly, we recorded over 7km today.


The hotel is pretty nice.  It would have been fancy in 1985.


We saw the Brazilian girl at the laundry machines.  She had walked all the way here.  We admitted to taking the train.


Dinner was quite fancy and pretty good.  Now it's 8:30pm and I'm falling asleep trying to write this.  I'm calling it a night.


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