Art By Tali Landsman

    

Shikoku Japan 88 Temples Foot Pilgrimage; Walking to Kongofukuji, Temple 38, on the Ashizuri Peninsula  At the Nest West Garden Lodge, we asked to have breakfast at 7:00am, because we have planned a long day of walking from Tosa-Irino to Shimonokae, where we booked what we thought was a small rural hotel. We decided to walk at least 27 kilometers today. Our average speed while carrying our packs is about 4 kilometers per hour, if you include climbing steep hills, stone steps and forest paths. The advice that we were given, is to make sure to take a ten minute break for every hour of walking, or a five minute break for every half hour of walking. Regardless of this advice, we often have walked for hours with no breaks, because there are no shaded spots or benches to stop at on many roads, or because it is pouring rain. The walk today was into the southernmost peninsula in Kochi Prefecture. The landscape got greener and very beautiful, as we headed into the rural South. We found a quiet

Shikoku Japan 88 Temples Foot Pilgrimage; Walking from Tosa-Saga to Tosa-Irino After breakfast, we needed to take the train from the Nest West Lodge back to Tosa-Saga, where we had stopped walking the day before. The hotel manager looked very worried when I approached him at the front desk. Many Japanese people learn English, and understand it well, but feel quite nervous or shy about saying a single word or making a mistake and appearing foolish. He was SO relieved when I asked him in Japanese when the next train leaves to Tosa-Saga. He told me that it was in forty minutes, so we went back upstairs to our room and I changed out of my Yukata into my rain gear. The forecast for today was for a cloudy and rainy day with an eighty percent chance of rain, so we dressed in our rain pants and rain coats, covered our day packs with plastic, took our umbrellas and headed to the train. The hotel manager was waiting for us at the front door. He had already pulled the hotel's van to the front