What Is Eriku's Ability?

Question

When I bought my copy of the Tokaido expansion "Crossroads", the shop had included a bonus player named "Eriku" in the box.

He's not part of the main game for either the original board or the expansion, and some Googling has shown that Eriku was a bonus character given away at particular conventions and events.

The catch is that Eriku's ability isn't easy to guess from the picture, and from what I can tell the rules for his character were only shown at the events where he was given away.

The most sensible interpretation I've found is this:

At each inn, including the first, Eriku can look at the first meal card and choose to buy it.

Is this the correct description? There are so many different variations of his ability floating around that I'm not sure which is right - can anyone help?

Answer 1

From Antoine Bauza (the designer of Tokaido):

Eriku can look at the first Meal card of the deck and choose to buy it instead of one of the regular cards. At the first Inn, He can also look at the top card and buy it (no regular hand here of course). So He can eat one more meal than the others... Official rules and wording will come on Funforge Website I guess...

So at the first inn, presumably before setting off, Eriku can look at the top card of the meal deck and choose to buy it. Then, on arriving at each subsequent inn, he may include the top card of the meal deck in his choices of what to eat.

Source: http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/1063646/what-is-erikus-ability