Day 2 started with my first alteration in plans and ended with my second. As I’d decided, I headed on from Anrakuji to Jūrakuji in the morning, and proceeded from there to Kumadaniji, Hōrinji, and Kirihataji.

While resting and drinking some water after my prayers at Temple 10, I fell into a conversation with two other o-henro-san, a woman in her 40s named Yamada and a man about my age, early 50s, named Irie. I would run into Irie-san several times over the course of the rest of the week in various places.

Again, there was a lot of interest in what I was doing, how it was going, and so forth. I had planned to take a cab from Kirihataji to Fujidera, but Yamada-san after hearing my plans offered to drive me there, and to my ryōkan, if I didn't mind stopping at Temple 12 with her first.

This seemed fine with me, although I had to give some thought to “missing out” on the day-long, entirely uphill climb to Shōzanji, the highest of the temples in Tokushima-ken. I decided to take Yamada-san up on her offer, since it constituted another o-settai, and since refusing would be impolite.

We chatted as we drove, and it turned out that Yamada was from Kyushu and came to Shikoku every year to do o-henro. She'd walked the entire thing a few times, but was now happy to do it in her van, which she said was both much faster and saved her a lot of money as she could sleep in the back while on pilgrimage.

We stopped and prayed at Fujidera and then headed on to Shōzanji. The parking lot is only about halfway up the mountain, as it happens, and the walk to the top is long, but very beautiful. Shōzanji is clearly a very well-supported temple, and is surrounded by incredibly beautiful sculpture, both new and old.

After finishing up there, Yamada-san drove me to my ryōkan, which took a little doing. We managed to miss it twice, but finaly got good directions: it turned out we were only a block away. I said my goodbyes there to Yamada-san, and she went on her way.

The Uemura Ryōkan is small, traditional and very pleasant. Again, I was expected, which pleased me. Uemura-san, her mother and her daughter run it, and I was quite comfortable there. Uemura-san expressed some concern over whether I could eat Japanese food, use chopsticks, etc., but she was pretty quickly reassured.

Another o-henro-san was also staying at the ryōkan that evening, a fellow in his early 20s. He had decided to do a walking o-henro in-between graduating from university—his degree was in international studies—and looking for a job. We had a long conversation about all sorts of things; I explained some things about bonji to him, and we ultimately decided—since I was now a day ahead of schedule—to walk together into Tokushima in the morning, where he would be meeting up with a friend at one of the temples.

This would effectively put me an entire day ahead of schedule, so I arranged to drop my reservation at the Kamemiya Onsen Hotel and return to the hotel in Tokushima City a day earlier than planned and have a “rest day” to do some laundry and explore a little bit.

I had a couple of enormous blisters at this point, one on the ball of each big toe. I dealt with them using the traditional Japanese remedy of piercing them with a pin, letting the liquid out, putting a dot of sumie ink where I'd pierced them and then covering the whole thing with a good, water-resistant bandaid. They weren’t especially painful, but they were a lot more comfortable after I’d “deflated” them...

First thing in the morning of Day 3, my friend and I set off on the long walk back to Tokushima-shi. It took us pretty much the entire morning, in drizzling rain, to make it, with a couple of stops for coffee, cigarettes, etc., on the way.

In spite of the weather, it was an extremely enjoyable walk, through beautiful and heavily-wooded countryside most of the way. The path was pretty completely alongside a highway until we got into Tokushima-shi proper.

We stopped together at Dainichiji and proceeded on from there to Jōrakuji, where my friend met up with his friend, who was also doing o-henro but had gotten a little bit ahead. The two of them went their way and I went mine at this point, but not before I was given a nice bag of rice crackers as o-settai.

I found Kokobunji easily enough, but had a lot of trouble finding Kannonji, and wandered around for a while before I found someone who could direct me there. It wasn't far from where I'd been looking, but it's a smallish temple, so it wasn't as obvious as some of the others.

After Kannonji, I proceeded on to Idoji, where I got into a conversation with a group of “basu henro”, pilgrims who were doing the entire pilgrimage in about a week, traveling by bus from temple to temple along with a professional guide. These sendatsu, as they're called, carry red shakujo to distinguish them from other pilgrims. The conversation continued as I followed them back to the parking lot and their bus. After they'd left, I found myself thoroughly confused, since going to the parking lot had gotten me off the henro path and I had a lot of trouble finding my way back.

I finally managed and made it to the train station, where I caught a quick train ride back to Tokushima Station and checked in at the Sunroute Hotel again.

I was very grateful for the onsen on the top floor of the Sunroute. The murky, mineral-laden water was just the thing for my sore legs and feet—and I was extremely tired at the end of the day—and also had the nice effect of hardening up the skin on my blisters, which were very much improved (although still nothing to look at).

I went out in the evening to a restaurant on the square in front of the station, a place called Men-Ō, i.e. “Noodle King”, and got myself a big bowl of Tokushima “chūo-soba”, “Chinese soba”, which is what they call ramen in Shikoku. Fabulous stuff! It's got a thick tonkotsu broth, and the pork is very thinly sliced and marinated in some sort of sweet sauce before it's grilled. It was terrific.

Day 4 turned into a rest, laundry and sightseeing day in Tokushima-shi, which was very nice. After sleeping in a little and taking a long soak in the onsen on the top floor, I got some coffee at the Tully's in the lobby and got started on doing my laundry.

I don't know what it is about laundry machines in Japan. The washers are always just fine, but I have yet to find a coin-operated drier in Tokyo or anyplace else that’s actually capable of getting clothing to a drier state than “moist”. I let the clothes go two entire hours. It's not the first time, either.

Most of the shopping in Tokushima-shi is in the square right around the

Day 5, headed out from the Sunroute again (having again left most of my luggage with them) and caught the train south to Awaakaishi. Once I got there, however, I had an awful lot of trouble figuring out how to get from the station to Onzanji. After a couple of false starts, I finally asked a woman who was loading up her van for directions.

She thought about it for a moment, and started to explain how to proceed, then stopped, thought about it some more and began again. Finally, she said, “It's too complicated, let me just drive you over there.” Happily, I accepted. She left me at the bottom of the hill leading to the temple at its summit.

About a third of the way up, I discovered the temple parking lot, which was—amazingly—filled with a crowd of four- and five-year-old children. I was equally surprised to see my aquaintance from several days before, Irie-san, as well.

It turned out that this was a local preschool class, who were all learning about o-henro and o-settai by coming out and providing breakfast for any pilgrims who happened to come along. The children weren't at all sure what to make of me initially, but they warmed up after hearing me chatting in Japanese with their teachers.

I was offered my choice of tea or coffee (I was very happy to have a cup of coffee in the morning!), rice crackers, oranges, juice and a variety of other treats, as well as some souvenirs that the children had made.