Eleven students and one faculty member, Professor Kazuma Momoi, will walk the world-famous Camino de Santiago, a Catholic pilgrimage route through northern Spain that is inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage list. The group will depart on February 22 and plans to walk the route until March 31. On February 15, the group was given a warm send-off at Keikandō, the chapel on J. F. Oberlin University’s Machida Campus. The send-off began with a worship service, at which the university’s president, Reverend Takayasu Mitani, delivered a message of encouragement titled, “Life is Like a Journey,” and singer-songwriter Yōko Toriyabe performed a song she had composed to commemorate the trip. The eleven students in the group one by one spoke of their determination to complete their difficult undertaking and then formed a circle around a pile of the backpacks they would be carrying. The send-off was covered by Yomiuri Shimbun in its morning edition for the Tama area. There will be regular updates from the group on both Facebook and Instagram.

• To hear the song Yōko Toriyabe wrote for the trip, click here.
• To follow the group on Facebook and Instagram, use the QR codes here.