Shikoku Pilgrimage - Day 3

The plan was to go out and do Temples 4 - 7, stay and Shukobo (temple lodgings) at Temple 7 and then continue on to 8 - 10 or 11.
So, I got one of the girls from the Toyoko Inn to phone out to arrange the accommodations. I am not a big fan of the unexpected when it comes to sleeping!
And boy am I glad I did.
Let me preface this next bit by saying that yes, I know the Japanese have this strange inferiority/superiority complex (thinking that they are either much better or much worse than the rest of the world). They normally err on the superiority side. I watch NHK World all day, so I know this. So I was not suprised, just disappointed, when I found out we couldn't stay at Temple 7 'because we didn't speak japanese'. (now, seeing as pretty much only the Japanese speak Japanese you can equate this to being 'you can't stay because you're not Japanese'). Now, because of this inferiorirt/superiority thing I know that they justify this by saying that it is for OUR benefit they are refusing us. They wouldn't be able to communicate and therefore we wouldn't have a good stay. Or that the ground would be shaking and they would be running around yelling 'Earthquake!' in japanese and we would be thinking they were asking about dinner because of course we wouldn't notice the shaking. Or whatever.
There aren't too many civilized countries on earth where such discrimination would be tolerated, or even accepted. Especially from monks! But there you have it. Luckily for the Japanese such 'rules' don't exist in Germany or Spain or they'd be sleeping on the streets.
Anyway.
So that scuppered those plans and we decided to get out of Tokushima for the weekend.and, ironically, continue on numerically with the temples! The kind people at Toyoko Inn let us leave our bags there for 2 nights while we went off.
So - it was a bus to Temple 18. There is a bus that leaves from Tokushima station, as referenced in the Shikoku 88 book. This bus goes all over... so don't be alarmed! It takes 40 minutes to plop you down at the bottom of the hill from 18.

18 is GORGEOUS! It is what we had dreamed the pilgrimage would be. If you see one temple this should be right up there. Set in the woods up a hill (or small mountain as Marcie would claim) it is incredible.
From 18 to 19 you first walk for 20 minutes or so through a bamboo forest. Again - amazing. This decision to leave Tokushima was looking to definitely be the right one. You slowly walk into more developed areas and Temple 19 is in a small town.
We'd decided before coming over to Japan to skip 20 and 21 (and 12). The walk from 19 to 20 is about 18km, which is a looooong way when it is hot (again, 23c or so) and up hill. Also, there is no accommodation up there, or at 21 which is a further 6km.
19 is 5 minutes from a train station that takes you to within 2km of temple 22. So we hopped on the train and chugged down there. Speaking of chugging, we wanted to move on to Hiwasa - Temple 23's town - because we knew there were hotels there. So we raced, with packs, from the Aratano train station out to temple 22, did our praying, book stamping, etc etc (it was crammed with 4 buses of bus pilgrims as luck would have it) and raced back. The train came 10 minutes later! From there it was 2 trains to get to Hiwasa. There are direct trains, I think, but we had to switch through Anan.
We arrived at Hiwasa at 4:56. Temple's close at 5. Buggers.
We walked across the street from the station at stayed at Business Hotel Cairns. I assume that Business hotel is a classification, not a function, but who would be doing business in Hiwasa on a Saturday is beyond me. It is a SMALL TOWN.
But a word about the Cairns - clean room and great bed. Really nice.
Fishing village really. During the months of June/July perhaps more people are around because Hiwasa is also the site of the sea turtle egg nesting/laying. (Which funnily enough I had seen directly across the pacific in Nicaragua in November 2006).
But for now it was desolate. We found what is one of few restaurants and had a great meal. I had a sashimi platter. Nice!