Day 18: Entered the 3rd prefecture, Ehime!

The view of Sukumo city

The henro route to Matsuo pass

Pretty old jizo statue

Same as yesterday, I could find very few pilgrimage sign posts in Sukumo city, so it was hard to follow henro route. Today, I once again lost the route to Matsuo pass… 🙁 The road to Matsuo pass had a steep uphill slope at first, but it was flat for a while. I thought the route would be uphill all the way to the pass, but it was not the case.

The route to Matsuo pass is not complete mountain trail

The last 1.7 Km would be tough trail !?

Finally, I reached the entrance to Matsuo pass. Seeing that sticks are offered, I expected the steep uphill from here. However, lucky enough, it wasn’t that hard.

“West side from this sign post is governed by Uwajima-domain of Iyo”

There is a monument at the top of the pass that reads, “West side from this sign post is governed by Uwajima-domain of Iyo”. Yes, I finally finished to walk through Kochi prefecture, and entered Ehime, the 3rd prefecture!

The henro route of the Ehime side seems to be well maintained

There’re more sign posts than Kochi, so easy to track the henro route

The henro route on the Ehime side is clearly well maintained than the one in the Kochi side, which was a bit surprising. Also, the number of pilgrim sign posts on the route suddenly increased, making it much easier to follow the route.

There seems to be a lot of fireflies around here

I also noticed that there’re more toilets available than in Kochi. I remembered that the landlord of Lodge Camellia told the need for toilets on the Kochi pilgrimage route.

Tai meshi lunch – a specialty of Uwajima

The last two kilometers or so to No.40 Kanjizai-ji was a walk on the river bank. I felt like I was going to catch a cold after being exposed to so much cold wind here, so I thought I should eat something and drink my medicine before going to Kanjizai-ji.

I searched and found that Uwajima is famous for its Tai-meshi (sea bream rice) so decided to have it for lunch. Indeed it was really good, and I could drink my medicine and change my clothes. Now I’m ready to go.