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These Walking Dreams: Day 39 (May 21, 2017)

Hachiman, Tokushima City → Naruto, Tokushima → ⛴ Naruto Whirlpools → 🚗 Great Naruto Bridge → South Awaji City, Awaji Island, Hyōgo

Map of Tokushima Prefecture and Awaji Island with route between Tokushima City and Naruto highlighted. 🗺 Open map in GaiaGPS (A,B,C) ⇝

Manhole cover with the Great Naruto Bridge and the Naruto Whirlpools on it. 📍 Naruto, Tokushima

The churning water of the Naruto Whirlpools as seen from a small boat right under the Great Naruto Bridge.

The bridge with the whirlpools under it. 📍 Naruto Whirlpools

Isfahan may be half the world but the Pacific Ocean is surely the other half, and at Naruto its gargantuan mass squeezes through a gap barely a kilometer wide. My walk across Shikoku over, I sailed into this Japanese Charybdis on a small boat, the dark water a protean horror show. The ocean rose out of itself in patches the size of tennis courts, smooth as a high-end ice cube, the edges churning into the depths. Across the strait, the fields of Awaji smelled of sun and sweet onions.

Looking straight ahead out of a car at the halfway point of the Great Naruto Bridge.

Looking back on the bridge from Awaji Island in the evening light. 📍 Great Naruto Bridge

Next → Day 40, May 22

Prev. ← Day 38, May 20

These Walking Dreams is a visual field diary of a 4,300-kilometer walk from one end of Japan to the other, in the spring and summer of 2017.