Yadoya Hiwasa

17/4/2019

It's a business hotel. Cheap and cheerful as far as hotels go. Fairly new and clean.

I had a single bed room with a bath. The room was small as was the bath. The domestic baths in Japan are shorter but deeper than those I grew up with. More for sitting up in, rather than laying down in. And a business hotel is for sleeping in, not really for doing anything else in.

The hotel is on the other side of the river and a little away from the busy area of the railway station, so the streets are as quiet as you are likely to get in a big city. There are plenty of options for shops and food in the railway station area.

I didn't take any pictures in the hotel, with the exception of their manga library, which is extensive. They had vending machines near the books and the next day the guy at the reception desk allowed me to fill my water bottle from a water cooler there before I left (if my memory is not too fuzzy)

---oooOOOooo---

The Scandinavian lady and I slogged onwards, along the hard bitumen of the back streets of Tokushima for what seemed like a very long time, but was probably only about an hour. Our trek only broken by a little old lady who spoke rapidly and totally unintelligibly to me, but the upshot was she seemed to want to play with my beard. We found our Korean companion in the railway station and, as a group, went to our evening accommodation which we had all booked separately online. It was a business hotel which catered for Henro as well.

After checking in to my room I curled up in the bath tub with the water as hot as I could stand. I couldn't move for a good while, but eventually the bath, or simply the relief from not walking anymore, allowed my muscles to uncurl and I was able to get out of the bath in a better state of mind. I knew there was a good selection of food places near the station, so I dragged myself the 500 metres to the square and had a quite nice katsudon near there.

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