TSH, day 35
7:00 am — TSH, day 35
Yesterday I went to sleep quite late and thus I was unwilling to wake up early. In the end, I reached Mino-Tsuya a bit later than 7am, which is an hour later than my usual start time lately. Still, my biggest challenge for today, a 700+ meters altitude gain, starts right from the station and I hope to pass it before it is too hot.
Btw, in the morning mountains were all cloudy, thus I still believe it was a good choice of a place to spend a night.
Somehow I survived this mountain. It really helped that during the second half of my ascension a big cloud hid the sun.
The rest of the day went more or less uneventful. Actually, at the mountain pass I entered Mie prefecture and their version of trail signs is a bit obscure and thus I missed a turn several times. Once it led to taking a shortcut, just because I noted that I’m going off-trail near the half of the shortcut passed.
5:30 pm — Adventurer’s cookbook: Leeches
Leeches and how to deal with them. There are several ways to deal with leeches. First of all, one should protect themselves to prevent leeches from getting to bare skin. Like putting one’s pants into their socks.
Then what to do if a leech aggroed?
Leeches have high physical damage resistance and thus cutting and piercing them with stones and branches may take a lot of time and effort. With bare hands it is almost impossible to deal physical damage to a leech.
The recommended way is to use salt. As a monster with high water element affinity, it is said that with salt a leech can be defeated as easily as a mere slime. I have no salt and thus I haven’t tried it.
Then the spirit. If one possesses strong enough spirit they can literally melt leeches with it.
Weak acids (e.g. citric) are not really efficient yet still can damage a leech if used for a long enough time.
Fire. Leeches can be burnt. It is not as effective as salt or spirit, yet it is more effective than acids.
Sealing. A leech can be sealed into an appropriate container. I used a PET bottle.
7:00 pm — Wrapping the day
At the end of the day I came to a camping spot just to learn that it is closed. People I asked about a place to stop noted that there is a business hotel four km away, yet they only stated general direction without a specific map point. This way I spent two more bottles of vending machine drinks looking into the map.
With the rest and without a clue I decided to start moving anyway. And just a hundred meters away I met three locals who looked as if they were just swimming — they wore swimsuits and their hair was wet.
I asked yet again and they pointed me that I can set a tent at a river bank nearby. The spot they pointed to is great, with soft sand ground beneath my tent, clean river with swimming ponds (and crabs of the size of my palm) etc.
Staying here for a night.
