10-Jan-2023 -- On a visit to Japan I told some Japanese friends about the confluence point project. I showed them some of the places I had been to and told them a bit more about some of the visits. We then realized the closest confluence point was only 26 km from where my friends live.
Next day, after a brief visit to Bidiyon castle, we set off. Google maps brought us straight to a gate of a golf club. The gate was open and as the distance to the cp was just a hundred meters or so, we all walked along a paved road. Halfway we were challenged by a woman in a small car telling us to get out of the area. One of my Japanese friends explained to her, without much success, the purpose of our visit, while the rest of us hurriedly continued towards the cp.
As the cp turned out to be in the middle of a thicket and among big trees it was difficult to reach the zero point. We balanced on the trunk of a big fallen tree about 1,5 meters above ground. The woman in the car had rushed off to get reinforcements, so we had to be quick. That unfortunately affected the quality of the photos. Another thing was that my 25-year-old Garmin let us down by having a complete wrong date. The shiny surface of the Garmin also made it difficult to get a clear picture of the readings. But we got a clear reading of the coordinates showing that we were about 10 – 15 meters from the actual cp. We then rushed down to the road again and got off before the guards arrived. The visit was achieved in about 10 minutes,
My Korean friend, who has been with me to several confluence points earlier, and my Japanese friends were all thrilled and we may have recruited some new Japanese followers to the confluence point project.