The previous day I'd requested breakfast at 7am but was told 7.30am was the earliest it could be provided. In the end I was called down to the dining room at 7.15am. I seem to remember a similar thing happening at Daikokuya, although on that occasion we wanted to get away even earlier. Plus breakfast at Daikokuya was a real treat. In contrast, breakfast at Ohashiya was pretty uninspiring, although thankfully there was no meat, and no raw egg! There was also no coffee, so shortly after leaving the inn at 7.45am I popped into a convenience store and bought my favorite packaged iced coffee: Mt. Rainier Caffé Latte (Non-Sugar).
The next post town (Goyu) was only a couple of kilometres down the road (the distance between Akasaka and Goyu is among the shortest between post towns on the Tokaido). Along the way I passed yet another avenue of old pine trees, this one stretching for 600 metres and consisting of 350 trees planted over 300 years ago. According to a sign in English on the side the road, these trees are "listed in the register of the 100 most famous pine trees in Japan".
While reading the sign another walker arrived and we chatted for a bit. Like me and Aki, the young walker I'd met in Kuwana, he was walking the entire Tokaido in a single go. Again I noticed how small his pack was compared to mine.
The road was fairly flat and straight for the rest of the day, and the scenery grew more urban as I approached the city of Toyohashi, which incorporates the old post town of Yoshida. At 11.15am I reached the Toyo River and stopped for a rest on the stopbank. I then crossed the bridge into the city on the other side. A reached Toyohashi station at 12pm and lunched on tuna spaghetti and coffee at a restaurant inside the station building before checking in to my hotel at 1pm. It was a nice hotel, and I'd been upgraded from a single to a double room on the 12th floor. I had a lovely view from my window of the nearby port of Misaka and the ocean in the distance.
I hand-washed my Gore-Tex hat (which after ten days of constant use was beginning to smell a bit), a pair of trousers, and a shirt. Seeing as I still had the best part of the afternoon left, I then went down to the information centre in the station to find out if there were any art exhibitions on in town. I quickly spotted a brochure advertising an exhibition of Hiroshige prints. Great, I thought! But my excitement turned to disappointment when I realized the exhibition was on at a museum in Futagawa, several kilometres from Toyohashi station. The thought of catching a train there and back didn't really appeal to me. Then I realized that Futagawa was the next post town on the Tokaido. I'd be passing through it the following morning. The museum in question was in fact right next to the Futagawa Honjin.
I still had some time to kill in Toyohashi, so I went for a bit of wander around the station area, stopping at an Excelsior coffee shop for coffee and cake. I considered heading over to look around the castle, but in the end decided I'd done enough walking for the day and went back to my hotel instead. For dinner I bought some salad, cheese and bread at the supermarket in the station building and ate them in my room. Remembering my "no alcohol while walking the Tokaido" policy, I bought a bottle of peach juice to go with my meal.
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