Wow, what a hike. I’m not sure I’m going to be able to walk tomorrow.
I got my sleepy body to Kakogawa, meeting Mr. Hayashi at the station at 6:30 in the morning. He drove me to the starting point of the big hike, and I walked into a huge crowd of people. There were about a thousand people doing the 40k hike, and everyone was doing exercises led by people in animal costumes on a stage. Talk about a weird scene.
We left in small groups at 7 a.m., and my group was one of the last to go. The first leg went just fine, but it was really crowded, and with my long strides I often found myself behind slower people with nowhere to go. After a mile or so, things opened up a bit. The sky opened up and we had to walk through rain for almost an hour. The jacket that I had invested in before coming to Japan did a great job of keeping me dry. It was a lifesaver.
After about two hours, I felt a twinge at the back of one of my feet, every time I stepped down. It turned out that this was the start of a couple of blisters that would come back to haunt me later.
Every so often there were stops, called “comfort stations”, where you could get tea, food, and other goodies. Since it was raining for the first one, I made just a brief stop. I made a longer stop at the next one, and by then, I was starting to feel pain in both heels of my shoes. I took off my boots, and sure enough, there were blisters starting to form. Something I hadn’t noticed before in my boots, there is a small gap just behind the heel, and apparently it was rubbing on my feet.
I decided to tuck my sock into the gap to try to fill it, and walk on. I walked for another 10-15 kilometers before it became painful again.
Meanwhile, there were plenty of interesting things happening. Some people walked with me and practiced their English. At every intersection, there were two people to make sure that cars didn’t come by and run us over. These people were at even tiny intersections. I took a picture of a group of guys just standing around – the intersection looked like a car comes by maybe every week.
Most of the people I was walking with had been hiking the previous day, and they were in great shape. I passed a lot of people, but every now and then, somebody would pass me, which was pretty impressive. It was interesting that as soon as we hit a hill, I would zoom by everyone – the flat walkers had real troubles on hills.
The course went through a Shinto shrine on a mountainside – kind of a treat and a good place to relax and rest your feet. We went by a sports coliseum that I didn’t know existed, and an opera house that was tucked into the hills.
At one of the “comfort stations” I bought a hot dog on a stick, and the lady who was helping me asked me to marry her. I don’t think she was joking, so I just pretended that I didn’t understand. I’ve never been proposed to on a hike before.
Near the three quarter mark of the trip there were scarecrow type things on the side of the road. I couldn’t read the signs next to them, but there were whole families of scarecrows to watch you walk by. It was kind of creepy, especially if you don’t know the idea behind them.
On the last leg of the trip, my feet were killing me. I won’t go into details, but it was painful and messy. I walked across the finish line at 3 p.m., an eight hour hike. I yanked off my shoes and did some quick first aid, and then just relaxed for a while. Mr. Hayashi said that he would meet me at 4:30, so I had an hour and half to kill. I struck up a conversation with some locals, and practiced my Japanese for a while.
Finally, I saw Mr. Hayashi around 4:00 p.m. Miss Kageyama was driving, and together they took me home to take a shower and clean up a bit. They wanted to take me out for a beer to celebrate my survival. They sat out in the car while I showered and then I went out and jumped in the car. We went to Chinese food, and I finally had some great Chinese food in Japan. The cost wasn’t too bad, but we did have to sit Japanese style on tatami mats, and my legs were screaming.
After dinner, they dropped me off at my apartment, and I was able to clean up my wounds a bit more. Now I’m hoping to get to bed early, but I have the bad feeling that I’m going to have a painful walk to school and back tomorrow.
