Id found myself sleeping on an itchy wooden board in an old Tarumi teahouse. A stingy penny grubbers excuse for an overpriced guest house. I wondered how Yajirobei and Kitahachi must have felt all those years ago on the road to Kyoto, all of the misadventure but for me none of the lust, for i had trusted a girl who would never love me. My own. My own personal Shanks nightmare

Later that night i met with an old man from Mishima in Shizouka-ken. He was on his way south along the coast of Kii-Hanto, passing by Hiroyukis house in Owase city in the Mie Prefecture.
I had been amusing myself with the second part of book seven of the Thomas Satchell translation of Ikku Jippensha's Hizakurige, when the sliding door of the guest room squeaked open.
The old man from Mishima was on the 8th day and somewhere near his 700th km of a cycle pilgramage to Engyou-Ji in Himeji and had decided to take a nights rest at the teahouse by the sea in Tarumi. We chatted briefly and he left me with a dusty travel tale and returned quickly afterwards with four tall cans of local beer , something that turned out to be beef tongue and a packet of smoked cheese.
The two of us sat right there on the floor resting against our beds and shared what tales we could in a mixture of Japanese and English. We poured over maps and enjoyed sometime away from our daily lives. His generosity that evening restored something in me. It gave me back some confidence. I needed to remain in this strange yet cormfortable place. It reminded me i was only alone as i wanted to be.
After our second can he nodded slowly and in broken English mumbled more to himself 'so tired'. By the time i cleaned away the last of the mess he was snoring gently in his bed occasionally muttering something in his own language. I never got to see him again.　

I imagined he'd made an early start, as some travellers do, on his way to the ferry bound for Awajishima.