I get back to Fukui after Eihei-ji, locate my (modern)(business-class)(impersonal)(dirty video channel on room TV available via key from automat next to lift therefore incognito on payment of £2.50) hotel.

Next morning, I leave on the Thunderbird Express. The train sweeps into Ogaki, the end-point of Basho’s long trip. He wrote:

Rotsu came to meet me at Tsuruga and accompanied me to Mino Province. Thus I arrived at Ogaki, my journey eased by a horse. Sora came from Ise, Etsujin galloped in on horseback, and we all gathered at Joko's house. Zensenji, Keiko, Keiko's sons, and other close friends called day and night, rejoicing and pampering me as though I had returned from the dead. Despite my travel fatigue, I set out again by boat on the Sixth of the Ninth Month to witness the relocation of the Ise sanctuaries.

hamaguri no
futami ni wakare
yuku aki zo

off to Futami
loath to part as clam from shell
in waning autumn

(trans. by Helen Craig McCullough)

My train stays all of 2 minutes at Ogaki, then rumbles off to Nagoya.