Day 21: 88 Temples (none) - Otsuki

Outside my window it was looking like a nice day.  My breakfast arrived exactly at 7:00.  The woman handed me the tray and then said several times, "Ayu".  I didn't get what she meant.


After she said ayu to me I was confused, so I said it to Google Translate and it said the Japanese and English for ayu was ayu.  I was confused.  There was a definition - only in Japanese - which I used Google Translate in Google Translate to translate.  It said ayu is a fresh water fish.  That made sense, she was telling me the type of fish in my breakfast.


After breakfast I got ready to leave my home for the last three nights.  It was nice to be in the same place for a few days.  As I left, I thought it's great to be back on the road.


Because I was unable to get any accomodations on the other Henro routes to Temple 39, I found a resort hotel on the coastal route.  This seems to work out really well as it is another short day to Sukumo where I can stay for two nights and day hike out and back to Temple 39.


Down the road there was stunning view after stunning view.  After a while I stopped taking pictures because they were all amazing.  I got tired of going around corners and yet another stunning view.



At one point, I knew I was getting near the only conbini on the route.  After not looking at my watch all walk, I thought it's probably 10:30 and I must be about 10km.  It was 10:30 and I was at 10.2km.  Walking like this you develop a sense of time and distance.  Of course, when things are getting hard, your fuel or water are low and everything hurts ... you check every minute and only 10 seconds have gone by and you've only moved 10 meters.


It was a pretty easy day.  The total to the hotel was about 35km and I didn't want to walk that far so I planned to catch the bus that passed around 1:30.  Busses around here seem to come about once every two hours.  I caught the bus and got off about 10km later for ¥400.


My hotel was 5km off the bus route so I wasn't done for the day.  It was a nice walk on a quiet road.  Did I see two cars or was it only one?  I descended back to coastal level and then climbed to the hotel.  


I booked this hotel on rakuten.co.jp which is extremely unfriendly to non-Japanese.  You need to provide an address in Kanji and a Japanese phone number.  I used friend's information and cut and pasted into the right fields.  With my name and email address it works great.


After doing laundry, my underwear was still a little damp so I put it on a lamp.  Oooops ... I burnt my underwear on the light bulb.  Burned a hole right through it.


This is a very nice hotel:  Hotel Bellreaf Otsuki.  It is from a previous generation, like most things around here, but is well maintained.  Back in the day this was quite a fancy place.  My room is big by American standards.  I have a deck with an ocean sunset view.  Dinner tonight was the best I've had in Japan this trip.  This route was a great decision.


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