We had invited a lot of newspapers and TVs to come to the start from Fukui city-hall but nobody appeared, probably because it was Saturday early in the morning and raining heavily. Patrick ran the first 5km and when he got completely wet, Mr. Ito continued in the heavy rain and ran about 10km!

However, the weather pattern did not differ very much from previous days – as soon as the Sun realized that we were running, it peeped out announcing a hot day. The number of good runners in our team increased when Victor from New Zealand joined us at Takefu station.

We came to the mountains, where we met a 18-year old boy on a old bicycle who came all the way from Hokkaido and was heading in the same direction as we did. He was very nice and we met him many times later that day and even the following day in Kyoto and waved at each other.

When we came to the highest point of the road, we enjoyed the beautiful view of Tsuruga gulf and started descending towards Makino city at lake Biwa.

On the way there was a sacred fountain dedicated to Kannon (Avalokiteshvara) – we got refreshed with the pure water on the invitation of the supervisor who also held the torch.

After ending today’s running at Makino station, we went to Makino highlands to take a bath in Sarasa spa. Then we tried to find some open restaurant but ended up with McDonalds and a “konbini” (convenience store) – it was only a only a small city and it was too late.

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7月29日 （土曜日）