24 March 2025 - Day 22 - To Kongofukuji Part 3 - 26 km, 1,6 of which through a big tunnel

Today marked the start of my 4th week of walking. Yohann was waiting for me and we got going around 7:30. For me it was a normal day but Yohann had some 8 km more to walk as I, so we decided to make only a few breaks.

But today was a good day for toilet breaks. When we stopped for one and found there was no “Golden coffee” in any of the 6 vending machines next to said toilet, we decided to make a real coffee stop as well and entered a coffee place. Two Ladies were about to leave when we got in and asked us whether we were going to Temple Kongofukuji. So we answered yes but only tomorrow. The Lady then insisted on giving us ¥1000 as ossetai to pay for our coffee!

So we had our coffee and the hostess wanted to know where we come from and so on. Yohann asked if she could call for some Hotel accommodation, which she did and when we left she even gave both of us a bagful of candies as ossetai! What a nice person!!

The road we walked passed through a long tunnel, 1620 m in total and I dreaded the moment we had to walk in there. As the time came, I asked Yohann to put my red LED light on my backpack so that we could be seen from the back, Yohann was leading the way but three more Henro had entered the tunnel shortly before us. It was very loud, cold and rather dark in spite of good lighting but the sidewalk was wide. Still I was glad when the Tunnel spit us out at the other side after 20 long minutes.

Our next toilet stop (yes, with the coffee we drank we needed to stop a few times) brought us to a beautiful beach where we decided to also take our short lunch break.

During the whole route we saw Sakura trees starting to bloom and with the good weather and higher temperatures, they should be in full bloom soon. And Sakura trees are literally everywhere!

At the Minshuku, I ran into Josée from Quebec whom I hadn’t seen in about two weeks and we sat together for dinner and had a good talk. Cyril also turned up at our Minshuku but didn’t stay for dinner. All in all this was another eventful happy day!

Tomorrow there should finally be News from the Cape. See you there! Thanks for reading and for your messages.