He didn't realize how expensive some of the post town inns were until he paid his bill that morning, and in an effort to stretch his travel budget he opted to stay at the cheapest inn he could find the following night.
He regretted this decision almost immediately.
Cheap inns offered only shared spaces where weary travelers spent the night with complete strangers on either side unless they traveled with a large party of their own. The few screens available to partition areas for a small semblance of privacy had been claimed by the time he arrived, and so he found himself on a futon of questionable cleanliness within an arm's length of a woman with a cranky toddler on his left and an elderly couple who were already snoring in unison on his right.
Tucking his swords underneath the covers with him lest they should be stolen in the middle of the night, he wondered whether sleeping in the center of the road outside would not have been both quieter and more comfortable.
When he was awoken by the bustle of people readying themselves for the next part of their journeys in the morning, he felt like he hadn't slept at all. He did have a vague memory of waking up with the child's foot pressed uncomfortably against the side of his face, so he supposed he'd at least slept for a short while.
He groggily dragged himself and his belongings over to the well for a quick wash before moving on, and found to his great dismay several fleas jumping away as he stripped his upper body bare before dousing his face with cold water.
Just great, he thought sarcastically. I didn't get any sleep and I picked up fleas.
While he scrubbed behind his ears and then gathered his dripping hair back up into some semblance of a ponytail, he made a mental note to pick kujin grass from the wayside to keep pests at bay, and to try different accommodations going forward. He wondered if he could buy a map in this town showing the inns and temples along the road so that he could plan ahead for the remainder of his journey.