Day 1 went pretty much according to plan. I had arrived in Tokushima the previous evening by ferry from Wakayama, and had chatted with a fellow who lived in Tokushima while we were both out on the deck smoking. He was getting a cab from the ferry landing to close to the train station, and he dropped me off at my hotel on the way. My first o-settai!

After getting up early and using the bathhouse on the top floor of the hotel, I set off and caught the train for Naruto. From the station there, it's a short walk to Temple 1. I bought a map book at the store—I later wished I'd bought the good map book, and finally did so at Tairyūji.

The only alteration to the above plan was that I decided it was senseless to walk from Anrakuji to Jūrakuji was senseless, so when I made it to Temple 6, where I'd be spending the night in the shukubō, I just stayed there.

The shukubō itself was lovely. I was greeted by a fellow wearing a jogging suit and a furoshiki wrapped around his shaven head who greeted me, as I walked in the door, “David?” I don't think they get a lot of gaijin. He introduced himself as Suzuki, asked if I needed to do laundry, and got me settled into my room. It turned out that he was the temple's senior priest.

Dinner was terrific, much more sumptuous than I would have expected, and beer was available as well, which surprised me a bit. There were probably a total of 20 or so other o-henro-san staying at the shukubō that evening, and it was nice chatting with people, even if I had trouble understanding everything that was being said.

People were a little surprised to see me there initially, but that didn't last long, once it became apparent I had a clue about what I was doing, and spoke at least fair Japanese.

After dinner, there was a service, including a sermon, by Suzuki-san. I was very impressed that, as a part of this, he took us into the hondō and encouraged us to touch the Buddha image there, something I found surprising, but was very happy to do. He talked about the reality of the Buddha in the real world, and was kind enough to ask me afterwards whether I had understood what he’d been saying (I did, mostly).

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.