Day 10 - In the town of Mugi

To get to Mugi, we had walked about 16 kilometers though a fairly hilly area on the main road. It was not at all scenic for most of the way and it just turned out to be a hard slog. By the time we got to Mugi the stores were open and we decided to stop at a shopping mall called Porto. We had seen signs for it for at least 10 kilometers. One reason for stopping was that Ian needed a battery for his camera and a second was that we were both hungry. The eggs and bread were not the large Japanese style breakfast, with two or three big bowls of rice, that we were growing accustomed to. In spite of all the walking, we both had gained some weight, if the hotel scales were anywhere near accurate.
In Porto, we had coffee, and then udon, noodles in chicken broth, and then more coffee. Ian searched around for a battery but came up empty. Asking around we found that there was a camera store somewhere in town, but no one seemed to know exactly where it was. We left Porto and followed a river for a little ways.
We then cut back into the town and took some back streets, stopping everyone we met to ask about the camera shop.
Just after passing along the above road, we were back on the main road、heading out of town.
Just after I took the above picture of the main road, we met a woman who said that she knew where the camera shop was located. Ian wanted to check it out, but I decided I needed a rest. So while Ian went to find the shop, I continued up the main road for a spot where I could rest. After Ian visited the shop, he was going to walk until he found me resting by the side of the road.
Following the smoothly paved sidewalk, I went around the curve that you can in the distance and stopped. I did not want to go much farther, because I could see a tunnel ahead of me, and we had agreed that I would not pass through the tunnel before meeting up with Ian. As I looked around for a place to sit, a woman came running up to me and asked if I could speak Japanese. When she found I could, she asked me to come with her. I followed her to the tunnel entrance and then we turned off to the right and went about 30 meters up a hill. At the top of the dirt path, we came to a tent with five or six people in it. This was a group of volunteers who were manning a rest area for Henro Pilgrims. They took my backpack, had me sit in a comfortable chair, and then gave me coffee and two different kinds of homemade sweets - a fruit called kinkan (a bit like an orange plum) and a purple cake-like thing made from purple sweet potatoes. Both were delicious. I pointed out that I needed to go back out to the road and find Ian, but they would not let me go. Instead one of the women when out and waited for him on the sidewalk. We waited and waited, but no Ian. Finally someone went and got a car and went searching for Ian. They also started telephoning all around town, including the camera shop, to find out where he had disappeared to. After a long time he showed up. He said that he had gone to the shop where he could not get the correct battery. Then as he started to follow me, he got a terribly upset stomach, so he went all the way back to Porto where he used the public toilets and then started walking again. Once he arrived, they called off the search and gave him coffee and sweets. When he finished, we thanked them profusely and hit the road again.

You can not image how nice people were to us, giving us settai and going way out of their way to help us in ways both large and small. Both Ian and I thought that his was one of the high points of our trip.