Had a wonderful sleep last night and woke up at 6:40am reluctantly. Set off at 7:50am from the lodging. Today was pretty much all tar roads straight ahead! The down slope made it much easier to start a dreadful morning. Very soon, I passed my 1st hour checkpoint. Then, I tried to follow the shorter path instead of going through the tunnel, and got myself into the “Pirate Ship” (A Chinese phrase to loosely mean, get conned.) Instead of saving 0.4km, the tough uphill in the jungle path (probably crossing over the tunnel) took me 5 minutes longer and a lot sweatier!
By the 26th day, my feet were already numb and I didn’t apply anymore tape on it. Passed by a very nice lake with the reflection of the clouds! Another hour of walk to the onsen was very smooth! As smooth as lubricated condom! I thought I would have a good seat at the onsen’s restaurant and probably a nice cold milk to go along with my tea break, but the place was very deserted and empty. So, I just sat outside the main road where the vending machine was, and had only my 2nd cocoteen. Cocoteen was a very delicious cocoa drink which was seldom seen. The dog next door kept barking although I couldn’t see it.
Then, it was a tough 3 hours walk to the small city, called Higashi-kagawa, where there were two famous places that I could visit. Along the way, I smelled cow dung all the time as there were many cow farms around. Early December, there were already some farmers who started to plant their paddies on the field. Passed by an astounding sign which I think it meant jail term of 5 years or below or 10 million yen fine!! For?! Throwing rubbish around the signage area!!
At around 1:30pm, I arrived and checked out where was the first place, Sanshu Izutsu Yashiki, on the local map. This was a restored merchant house founded in 1692 where soy sauce was produced! There was supposed to be an area where guests could make udon and refine sugar by hand! When I was finally there, I met two old men and other shop owners but the place was pretty empty. Chatted with them for a while and then one of them brought me to his shop and offered me a hot meat bun! It was very nice and I gave him my name slip. He later made an ice cream for me, and when I was done, he passed me another can of hot coffee! He said the place was usually empty on weekdays, and the udon making and sugar refining were only available during weekends when there were more guests. The shop owner was Okada Takashi-san. He was 78 years-old. After I got some guide on the direction to the Ooike Camp site, I thanked him very much and left to visit the 2nd place, Sanuki Sanbonto. The guide said I could witness cane sugar being refined in the traditional way using tools and methods that remain unchanged for the past 200 years! It was a short walk away, but when I was there, it was just a shop selling many cane sugar products in very nice shapes and packaging. I guess it was weekdays again! I bought an interesting cracker, that I thought was made of udon, because I saw the “u” and the “do” in the labeling, but did not see clearer that the characters actually didn’t match up as “Udon” but “dou” instead!
After that, I went to the nearby convenient store and so glad there was a public phone. I called the camp site to ask if there were microwave or hot water for my dinner. Unfortunately, there wasn’t any. So, I had my late lunch at the convenient store (bento again!) and bought my breakfast tomorrow. Then, it was a long 30minutes walk to the camp site. My shoulders were getting flatter! Luckily there were enough sign to find the place. It was a huge site and beautiful place! I thought it would only be a couple of hundred yen, but turned out to be 1250yen! The site with kitchen facilities cost 2500yen more! The owner brought me to my site and showed me where I could set up my tent. The toilet was just next to me. There was also a very nice lake. It would be really nice to lie down there at night and enjoy the stars and moon! But unfortunately not at this time of the year! Unless you were in Eskimo suit! The owner, Sato-san, then showed me the toilet and the coin shower which cost 100yen for 3 minutes! He was very nice to suggest using the 3rd cubicle since it was the closest to the heater and hence taking shorter time to heat up. I did my tent in 15 minutes and it was by far the best that I had done. And I remembered to take a picture!
Sato-san then offered to send me to the nearest Marunaka supermarket to get my dinner. I thought the bank was there too for me to change some yen, but it was just ATM machine. Since I already had a lot of bread, I just bought another bottle of milk for supper, and some rice to go along with my tempura. But then I saw a staff started pasting 100yen and 30yen stickers on many of the sushi and other boxes. I thought there were bargains since it was late and perhaps those were items going to expire. I quickly picked up one sushi box of 8 with the 100yen sticker and a vegetable box with 30yen sticker. When I was at the cashier, I realized there were just 100yen and 30yen offers respectively!
Sato-san drove me back to the camp. I went into the shower area and found a power plug there. Updated my blog for a while and planned my trip. Then I realized I could actually sleep inside at the shower area instead! The wind outside was so scary tonight. Roaring every now and then! I got all my things and left my tent alone in the dark! Thought I should leave it there in case the guard was wondering where had I gone to!
I was planning 300yen for a 10 minutes shower, actually 9min. The coin shower was just wonderful. The best was being able to pause it!!! As a result, I only needed 100yen to fully clean up myself with plenty of time to enjoy the hot water after that! Didn’t know 3 minutes could be that long! I love coin shower! How I wished they have it everywhere in Japan like she had for vending machines. If New Zealand has more lambs than her people there, Japan probably has the same for vending machines! They are drink, cigarette, beer, milk, hot food, chewing gum, condom and even rice vending machines!!
After shower, I had my dinner and finished my blog. My shoulders were really tired and I slept at 8:30pm. By now, it was raining pretty heavy outside and my tent were probably all wet!
Today, I just merely met the 20km target by 0.1km.
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