By chance, we had the same timing and started together on the way to the next temple. It turned out that the next temple, no. 23 - the last temple in the Tokushima prefecture and also the last one for my newly found friends - was still quite far away. So maybe it was good to have some company. The temple was located in a bigger city with some tourism (famous for the sea turtles who come to lay their eggs in the sand here); must have been pretty strange for the tourists to see us coming out of the woods...
The temple itself also was a bit different, it had a pagoda with some extraordinary form and by its position, it looked like it ruled the city below it. And it was the temple that took longest from being nearly there to being finally there - once in the city, first we thought the castle might be the temple (and were lucky that it is as it is located on a hill - extra climb? No thanks, we're already served). Than, after spotting it, it felt like hours to finally reach it on the far end of the city...
On top of the pagoda
We celebrated the successful accomplishment of the journey of my 2 friends with an opulent meal - cold noodles and sashimi in combination with an all you can eat Japanese buffet. Hopefully, they don't have too many pilgrims like us as customers, this would really spoil their business case.
Again with the train. I decide to not go until the final stop but to stop by in a city on the line that seems to be a nice place to take a look at. By the way, with final stop I don't mean only for the train, for the railways in general. From there for the next 200km, there are no more trains. And finally, I reach Kochi, the next prefecture. Devil's land (this part of Shikoku is barely inhabited and the temples are spread out very far what makes many pilgrims give up here...).
I follow the coastline through different kinds of woods (trees and bushes, bamboo - all very dense and a bit spooky), I cross lonely beaches with sand or rocks and impressive blue water, I pass small fishing villages.
I hardly don't meet anybody, except for and old pilgrim who looks like he is on the journey since 40 years now. Long white beard, long hair, pushing a sort of wheelbarrow with (apparently) all his belongings. When we meet, is just about to build his shelter for the night (he has a quite modern tent, he must have bought it on the trip or my assumption about the 40 years must be wrong...) so I give him some of my food - as I got several presents I have a surplus of e.g. instant noodles.
Finally also I find a place to stay, a small forest on the harbor. I don't want to walk back into the village so I stay and have some instant noodles, too. A few meters from me, the fish are jumping out of the water, up to half a meter. And there are other animals too who prefer to remain unseen by me, but I hear them around my tent. I wonder what they are.
Later I find out that there are a lot of apes in this part of the country...
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