walkabout-japan

Day 30
It's as simple as that
GPS: N 33°, 45.845' E 134°, 01.769'
Altitude: 537 m
Place: Befu Onsen
Etmal: 22 km
Total: 674 km
A bloody cold night with marauding critters in the forest next
to me is followed by the first really warm and sunny spring
day. My ascent to the pass ends with a nasty black hole in the mountain wall. A tunnel, 1,860 m long with many, many even nastier tears of all earthquakes Japan has ever seen, with parts without light, water inleakage and of course (I love it!),
no footway. Some hours later: I'm relaxing under a cherry tree with frostbitten blossoms and drink a litre of coke (dehydrogenated and suffering from a lack of sugar). I'm watching the life on the opposite side. There are small stores and many grandmas who are standing chattering around a pickup truck to buy fish. On the right of it water is running out
of the rock face into a basin filled with koi carps. Damn, I can only buy schnapps in the store, no food. Well, anyway, on the right side of the koi basin a grandpa hanging half on the
street is sleeping in a seat taken out of use. In a kind of garage, living room or junk room, there's a tube in front of
him. You can watch the strange game from the country of unlimited possibilities, you know, this funny game where someone throws a ball and another tries to catch it with a
kind of stick, where only zeros are counted and many people run in a mess. The fish truck leaves, the grandpa wakes up
and a grandma comes over to my tree and simply gives me one of these small suspicious looking bottles with something
in it. Anyway, I'm immediately awake - this would be also
good for the grandpa. Well, it's a pity; it was so nicely comfortable here under my tree. I have to go on ... it's a
simple as that.


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