What a journey this has been.

I had a break of several years between the first part and the second one so my memories of the beginning are getting blurry. Still, two things made me enjoy this reading.

The first one is the description of the places, the people, their clothing, their way of life, and the atmosphere of the time. I knew nothing of history of Japan and this gave me a vivid, if not historically accurate, glimpse of the life then.

The second one is Musashi himself who you can really see evolve gradually from an excellent swordfighter to more than that. The author fleshes out throughout the book the idea that there is more to being an accomplished samurai than sword technique and I believe this is where the rivalry lies between Musashi and Kojiro.