7 March 2025 - Day 5 - Temples 18 - 19 and out of Tokushima - 23 km

The night in my bunk bed in the ladies’ dorm occupied by 12 women was surprisingly quiet. Not a sound from any of the other guests. … Except the annoying clicking sound of someone writing on his cellphone with the keyboard noises activated.

So I was quite happy to finally get up and have a tiny breakfast of 2 pieces of toast with some jam before heading off to Onzanji, situated some 10 km out of Tokushima.

After a few kilometers I caught up with Claudia from Hamburg and we continued our way together and got acquainted. Somewhat later, we bumped into Cathy from the Netherlands, who I already had had contact with via one of the Ohenro Facebook groups, so the three of us headed on.

The temple was again a beautiful one and as the sun had come out we took our time. The ensuing walk to Tatsueji took us through an impressive bamboo forest, which could have come right out of the “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” film set. The noise of the wind going through the forest and the bamboo trunks touching each other was impressive.

Temple 10 (Tatsueji) was also really pretty and as we were going to leave, we bumped into Nicolas. I then decided to continue walking with him on the panoramic route for a while until we needed to separate as we were headed to different accommodations.

As this stage was much shorter than the previous ones, I unknowingly stressed my host and showed up shortly after three. Only after a while did she tell me check in starts at four. This was not the only stressful moment for the nice lady. She was expecting a party of 5 but they cancelled on very short notice. Which is considered quite rude, and I would dare to say: not only in Japan, considering dinner had been bought and partially prepared already.

At least my dormitory neighbour Andre from the Netherlands and myself enjoyed an excellent home-cooked Japanese dinner and had some good talks and laughs.

As always, thanks for reading.