Day 12: Yoshida - Maisaka (28.8km)

I got up at 5.45am, showered, shaved and got my things together ready for a speedy getaway straight after breakfast. I had 28.8km to cover, but I also had two museums I wanted to see: the one at Futagawa with the Hiroshige exhibition and one at the old sekisho (checkpoint) at Arai.

As breakfast wasn't included in my accommodation package, I went downstairs to the station building just after 7am and quickly found a café that was open. I had a muffin set, which consisted of two muffins and a cup of coffee. Back in my room, I ate the yoghurt with fruit I'd bought the night before.

I checked out and was back on the Tokaido at 8.15am. I followed National Route 1 all the way to the next post town of Futagawa. Along the way I saw a big drug store and decided to pop in to get some more bandages for my toe. The automatic doors wouldn't open, but there was a woman inside who opened them for me and let me in. I looked at my watch and saw it was 9.25am. "Thanks," I said. "I guess you don’t open till 9.30." "Actually, we don’t open till 10," the woman replied, "but please come in."

I reached Futagawa at 10.05am and quickly found the honjin and museum. I left my pack at the reception area and went straight to the back of the museum where the Hiroshige exhibition was being held. The exhibition featured prints from the series Famous Views of the 60-odd Provinces. Many of the prints were accompanied by sketches of the scenes concerned. It was fascinating to compare the sketches with the final prints and see how Hiroshige took the main features in each scene and rearranged them to fit into the portrait (i.e. vertical) orientation of the final print. I could only marvel at his skills as an artist.


After viewing the exhibition I took a quick look around the rest of the museum. It was the kind of museum I like, with lots of models and dioramas. Among the exhibits was a huge 3D map showing the routes of all five Edo-period "highways", including the Nakasendo and the Tokaido.

I wanted to stay longer but was mindful of the distance I still had to cover. In the end I didn’t even have time to look inside the honjin, and had to be content with taking a couple of photos from the street as I left. It was spitting by the time I left Futagawa just before 11am, although not enough to warrant putting on my raingear. I soon began the gradual climb to the next post town of Shirasuka. I reached the lookout at the top of the pass at around 12.30pm and stopped to admire the view out over the Pacific Ocean. I then negotiated the steep climb down Shiomizaka, which features in Hiroshige's print of Shirasuka from the series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.


I was now at sea level just a few hundred metres from the coast following the Tokaido east towards Lake Hamana. There didn’t seem to be any restaurants in the vicinity, so at 1pm I left the Tokaido and found a convenience store right by the beach. I bought some food and ate it in the convenience store car park surrounded by a bunch of surfers.

I got underway again at 1.30pm and passed through another famous avenue of old pine trees along a stretch of the Tokaido known as the Hamana-kaido. It was now fine and pretty hot. I arrived in Arai at 2.45pm and had a look around the sekisho museum, the reconstructed checkpoint building, and the hatago (which I also gathered is largely a reconstruction as it looked surprisingly new). There was very little of interest in the sekisho museum, and I regretted not having spent more time at the museum and honjin at Futagawa.

Arai Sekisho

I continued on and reached my hotel (which was located part way between Arai and the next post town of Maisaka) just after 4pm. There was free coffee in the lobby, so I helped myself to a couple of cups before heading to my room. There were few places to eat in the immediate vicinity of the hotel and I was too tired even to walk down to the nearby convenience store, so I phoned a pizza place and had them deliver some seafood pizza, salad, and mango ice cream to my room. The pizza turned out to be the best seafood pizza I've ever tasted. The ice cream, on the other hand, was horrible.

My hotel was right next to a railway line. I knew this when I booked it, but figured that it wouldn’t be a problem as passenger trains stop running around midnight. I'd forgotten about freight trains, however, and was woken several times in the middle of the night by loud rumbling noises.

Day 11: Akasaka - Yoshida (13.7km)

I woke at 5.30am, read for a bit, then packed and went down to wash my face and brush my teeth.

The previous day I'd requested breakfast at 7am but was told 7.30am was the earliest it could be provided. In the end I was called down to the dining room at 7.15am. I seem to remember a similar thing happening at Daikokuya, although on that occasion we wanted to get away even earlier. Plus breakfast at Daikokuya was a real treat. In contrast, breakfast at Ohashiya was pretty uninspiring, although thankfully there was no meat, and no raw egg! There was also no coffee, so shortly after leaving the inn at 7.45am I popped into a convenience store and bought my favorite packaged iced coffee: Mt. Rainier Caffé Latte (Non-Sugar).


The next post town (Goyu) was only a couple of kilometres down the road (the distance between Akasaka and Goyu is among the shortest between post towns on the Tokaido). Along the way I passed yet another avenue of old pine trees, this one stretching for 600 metres and consisting of 350 trees planted over 300 years ago. According to a sign in English on the side the road, these trees are "listed in the register of the 100 most famous pine trees in Japan".

While reading the sign another walker arrived and we chatted for a bit. Like me and Aki, the young walker I'd met in Kuwana, he was walking the entire Tokaido in a single go. Again I noticed how small his pack was compared to mine.


The road was fairly flat and straight for the rest of the day, and the scenery grew more urban as I approached the city of Toyohashi, which incorporates the old post town of Yoshida. At 11.15am I reached the Toyo River and stopped for a rest on the stopbank. I then crossed the bridge into the city on the other side. A reached Toyohashi station at 12pm and lunched on tuna spaghetti and coffee at a restaurant inside the station building before checking in to my hotel at 1pm. It was a nice hotel, and I'd been upgraded from a single to a double room on the 12th floor. I had a lovely view from my window of the nearby port of Misaka and the ocean in the distance.

I hand-washed my Gore-Tex hat (which after ten days of constant use was beginning to smell a bit), a pair of trousers, and a shirt. Seeing as I still had the best part of the afternoon left, I then went down to the information centre in the station to find out if there were any art exhibitions on in town. I quickly spotted a brochure advertising an exhibition of Hiroshige prints. Great, I thought! But my excitement turned to disappointment when I realized the exhibition was on at a museum in Futagawa, several kilometres from Toyohashi station. The thought of catching a train there and back didn't really appeal to me. Then I realized that Futagawa was the next post town on the Tokaido. I'd be passing through it the following morning. The museum in question was in fact right next to the Futagawa Honjin.

I still had some time to kill in Toyohashi, so I went for a bit of wander around the station area, stopping at an Excelsior coffee shop for coffee and cake. I considered heading over to look around the castle, but in the end decided I'd done enough walking for the day and went back to my hotel instead. For dinner I bought some salad, cheese and bread at the supermarket in the station building and ate them in my room. Remembering my "no alcohol while walking the Tokaido" policy, I bought a bottle of peach juice to go with my meal.

Day 10: Okazaki - Akasaka (20.9km)

I woke at six after a sound night's sleep and went down for breakfast just after seven. It was a beautifully fine day outside. My groin felt OK, so for the first time since starting the walk I began the day without taking any pain medication.


After checking out, I walked across to the station and caught the 8.45am train to Naka-Okazaki from where I walked to nearby Okazaki Castle. I wandered around the grounds taking photos, eventually rejoining the Tokaido at about 9.30am. As mentioned previously, the Tokaido often doglegs as it approaches strategic towns. Okazaki must have been the most strategic of all these towns, because here the road famously doglegs 27 times within the space of less than five kilometres. This really tried my patience, and I have to confess that I cut a couple of corners as I left Okazaki, one of only a handful of occasions on which I knowingly strayed from the original route of the Tokaido as shown on my walking map.

At 10.30am I took my first break beside the Ohira Ichirizuka. I'd finished the Snacking Scroggin the previous day, so I tucked into the Scrummy Mix for the first time. I couldn’t believe how delicious the Scrummy Mix was. The two were as different as chalk and cheese.

I reached the post town of Fujikawa at around 11.45am. Here there was another impressive avenue of black pines trees, consisting of some 90 trees stretching over a distance of one kilometre. I looked for somewhere to have lunch, eventually settling for a convenience store meal of fried squid, a cold piece of deep-fried fish, a slice of fruit cake, and an iced coffee.

I left Fujikawa at 1pm and arrived in the town of Honjuku at 1.45pm. It was a further 5km or so to the post town of Akasaka, my destination for the day. I arrived there at 3pm, and as I wasn't expected at the inn I'd booked until 4pm, I had coffee at a michi-no-eki and then looked around the town for a bit.


Like Daikokuya on the Nakasendo, Ohashiya started life as a hatago in the Edo period. Although the building has been added to and extended over the years, the oldest part of Ohashiya (including the bit at the front and the rooms above it where I slept) was built more than 300 years ago. According to several sources, Ohashiya served as the model for the building that appears in Hiroshige's print for Akasaka in the famous series The Fifty-Three Stations of the Tokaido.

I arrived at Ohashiya just after 4pm. I was shown up to my rooms and had some tea and relaxed before going down for a welcome soak in the (modern) bath from around 5pm. I had the three large rooms on the second floor of the oldest part of the building all to myself. There were two other guests staying at Ohashiya that night, but as it is the innkeeper's policy to have only one party staying each night, the other guests were put up in a newer section of the inn at the back.

The "stairs" (or perhaps "ladder" would be a more accurate description) up to my rooms

Two of the three rooms I had to myself on the second floor

Dinner was interesting. Despite having told the innkeeper once when I made the original booking and again when I confirmed it that I didn’t eat meat of any kind, one of the dishes had chicken in it. The rest was pretty nice, although I wasn't exactly blown away by the local delicacy, tororo (grated mountain yam), which looks like sticky porridge and is eaten spooned over rice or noodles.

Tororo!

Overall, I enjoyed our experience at Daikokuya in 2007 much more than I did my experience at Ohashiya. On the positive side, my toe felt good - better than it had for days, in fact. I was in bed by 8.30pm and asleep by nine.

Day 9: Chiryu - Okazaki (12.1km)

I got up at 6am and watched the rest of The Dark Knight while breakfasting on some things I’d bought at a convenience store the night before. I'd pretty much lost track of the plot, and continued watching despite not being that interested in the outcome. I have to admit, though, that Heath Ledger was mighty impressive. I'm a big fan of Christian Bale, too. Perhaps in different circumstances I would have enjoyed the movie a lot more.

Aware that this was my shortest day (as my brother Mark reminded me in an email sent to my mobile phone, in my jogging days I could have run the 12km to Okazaki), I took my time getting ready and didn't depart until 9.45am. Another reason for my reluctance to leave the hotel was that it was raining, although it was so light I only made the decision to put my raingear on at the last minute.


Soon after leaving Chiryu I came across an impressive avenue of black pines that stretched for nearly half a kilometre. According to a plaque by the side of the road, some of these were originals planted in the 17th century, while others were replacements planted following the Ise Bay Typhoon in 1959, which uprooted many of the old trees.


At 11.50am I stopped to rest by a shrine. Next to the shrine entrance I saw a large monument and so I went over to see what it was. According to the sign in front of the monument, this area had been the site of an Imperial Navy air base during the Second World War, and the monument was dedicated to the young pilots who had trained there, many of whom ended up being sent on suicide missions towards the end of the war.

An hour later I reached the Yahagi River, which in the Edo period was spanned by the longest bridge on the Tokaido. I could see the city of Okazaki on the other side. The rain had eased, so I stopped to take off my raingear before crossing the river and entering the city. Soon after reaching the far side of the river I passed the premises of the Hatcho Miso Company, where the famous miso has been produced for the last five centuries.


Okazaki was a lot larger than I expected, but as usual I couldn’t find a lunch place I liked the look of. After wandering through the streets for a while I found myself outside East Okazaki Station. There was a tourist information desk inside, so I went in and got a map and asked for directions to JR Okazaki Station, where my hotel was. I headed off in the direction of my hotel, nibbling on the last of my Snacking Scroggin as I went.

It was after 2pm when I eventually passed a restaurant that took my fancy. I went in and ordered the salmon cream spaghetti set which came with a bottomless cup of coffee. It wasn't much further from the restaurant to my hotel, so I stayed there until just before 3pm. After checking in and did a load of washing. I'd planned to go to a jazz club that evening, so I then popped across to the station to check the train timetable.

It was raining again by the time I set off that evening for the Satin Doll Dining and Jazz Bar just north of Naka-Okazaki Station, two stops from JR Okazaki Station on the Aichi Loop Line Railway. I arrived at around 7.30pm to find the band going through their final practice session. I was the first patron to arrive. I ordered a gin and tonic and a cheese platter. A few more patrons drifted in before the quartet took to the stage shortly after 8pm. But there was something wrong; there were only three musicians! There was a drum kit in the middle of the stage, but no drummer. This wasn't the first time this sort of thing had happened to me in Japan. A couple of years ago I went to a concert at a jazz club in Shinjuku where the bassist failed to turn up. What made me feel doubly robbed on this occasion was that I liked the style of music the "quartet" was playing and thought the saxophonist and pianist were pretty talented. If only the drummer had been there I might have had a really good time. As it was, I nursed my drink and cheese and crackers to the end of the first set and then left, arriving back at my hotel shortly after 9.30pm.

Day 8: Miya - Chiryu (19.8km)

I got up at 5.30am and breakfasted from seven. I then checked out and headed across to the Meitesu railway station where I caught a train to Jingumae, a journey of around ten minutes. I was afraid the train would be crowded with people heading to work, but there was plenty of room. From Jingumae I walked the few hundred metres to Miya, the point where the ferry from Kuwana once landed and the starting point for my day's walk. There was a monument there and some modern reconstructions of the original port buildings, included the one below, which I presumed was a lookout tower.


I left Miya at about 9.45am and some 45 minutes later, as I was climbing a slope just before the Kasadera Kannon temple, I heard someone call out to me from the side of the road. I looked over to see a middle-aged man standing in front of a tea shop. After a brief chat he invited me in for a cup of tea. As well as selling tea, Mr Hata bought and sold antiques, and his shop was full of old porcelain and other bits and pieces. I mentioned that I liked Imari ware, and he showed me a couple of pieces from his collection, including a nice little soba bowl. Mr Hata also knew a lot about the history of the area. He told me to look out for an ancient shell mound further up the road.


Before I left, Mr Hata reminded me of a Japanese proverb I'd first heard when I was a student: Sode suriau mo tasho no en (Even the brushing of sleeves is due to karma from a previous life), meaning we should value even the briefest of encounters.

I left Mr Hata's tea shop at 10.45am and soon passed the Kasadera Kannon temple and the Kasadera Ichirizuka. I noticed the site of the shell mound (called the Hokonoki shell mound) Mr Hata had mentioned but as it was off the road (and up a slope!) I didn’t take a close look. An hour or so later I reached the post town of Narumi. Just past the town I came across this interesting billboard outlining plans to build two ichirizuka beside an overpass.


A little further on I noticed several distinctive buildings on either side of the road. I was in Arimatsu, a town famous for tie-dyeing. Although I'd done lots of preparation for this walk, I'd read nothing about this place and it came as a complete surprise to me. I love kura (traditional Japanese storehouses), and Arimatsu was full of them.


It was 12.30pm and I was getting hungry. Next to Arimatsu station was an Aeon shopping mall, so I wandered in and found a restaurant where I had a nice shrimp gratin, a salad, and a coffee. I took a whole hour for lunch, making sure I was completely rested before setting off again.

From Arimatsu I followed National Route 1 all the way to the post town of Chiryu, arriving at about 4pm. I had no trouble finding my hotel as it was right on the Tokaido. Although not as nice as my hotel in Nagoya, it was better than your average business hotel. In fact it must have been the best hotel in town, because the mayor of Chiryu was having a meeting in the coffee shop in the lobby.

After a bit of a lie-down in my room I walked down to the station area and found a Mister Donut where I had a coffee and a chocolate and coconut donut. One thing the hotel did lack was a coin laundry, so when I got back to my room I did some hand-washing. Later I returned to the station area and had dinner at an izakaya, including takoyaki, fried potato, and a tomato salad, all washed down with a large glass of beer. Back in my hotel room, I began watching The Dark Knight, but fell asleep well before the end.

Day 7: Rest day

Nagoya isn’t exactly a tourist Mecca, but having lived there for a couple of years in the 1990s I'd grown to like it and I was looking forward to spending my day off looking around the city. Unfortunately circumstances were such that I got to see very little of Nagoya during the two nights and one full day I was there. In fact my movements over that time were confined to the immediate vicinity of my hotel, the farthest I ventured being the hospital on the other side of the station.

My day began as usual at six, when I was woken by my watch alarm. After breakfast I went to withdraw some more money from a nearby ATM. I had no idea how much my hospital visit would cost, and didn’t want to suffer the indignity of not having enough cash to pay my bill. I then walked to the Nagoya Central Hospital, arriving shortly after the opening time of 8.30am.

Nagoya Central Hospital

I explained my predicament to a receptionist and after filling out a form was given a number and told to wait. There weren't many patients around, so I was hopeful that I'd be seen by a doctor before too long. A while later I was called back and given another number and told to report to the surgery department. There I filled out another form and waited some more. I was then given a third number and told to wait outside one of a row of about half a dozen small examination rooms. I was informed that as I hadn’t made an appointment I would be at the end of the waiting list for that morning. I sat and read while patient after patient was called in to be diagnosed by one of the doctors on duty that morning.

At about 11am my number finally came up. I entered my cubicle and was greeted by a friendly young doctor by the name of Dr Ono. On the desk in front of him were two huge computer screens, one of which displayed a blowup of one of the forms I'd filled out a couple of hours earlier, which included a diagram of a human body on which I'd circled the left big toe.

I showed Dr Ono my toe and told him of my desire to continue walking if possible. He seemed skeptical, but on the positive side he told me the toe wasn't actually infected. I decided that as long as the infection didn't return, and as long I could put up with the pain and discomfort, there was nothing to stop me continuing on to Tokyo. Dr Ono prescribed some antibiotics which I was instructed to take if the toe showed any signs of infection again. He was going to subscribe some painkillers, but I was worried about the cost and told him I'd make do with the medication I'd brought from New Zealand (Nurofen and Panadol).

I paid the hospital bill (3549 yen) and went to a pharmacy to pick up the prescription (2646 yen). I then had lunch at a curry place in the underground mall by the station followed by coffee and cheesecake at a Tulley's coffee shop. After looking around Tower Records for a bit (I'd left my iPod in New Zealand and was starting to miss my jazz music), I went back to my hotel room and slept for a couple of hours.

Later I went to the big Meitetsu department store across from the hotel and bought some sushi, yoghurt, and beer. Back in my room, I ate the sushi and drank the beer. I left the yoghurt for the morning. I watched TV for a bit then went to bed.

Day 6: Yokkaichi - Kuwana (15.9km)

I woke at 4am and dozed until 5.30am when I turned on the TV to watch the news and weather. The forecast was for another fine day. At 7.10am I went down for breakfast. The "buffet" was a bit disappointing compared to the one at the last Super Hotel I'd stayed at in Kyoto, with the only Western-style offerings being toast and pastries. The coffee was from a vending machine (the Super Hotel chain have vending machines in the breakfast areas of their hotels which you can use for free at breakfast time), but it tasted surprisingly good.

I left the hotel at 8.30am and while walking through a shopping arcade soon after rejoining the Tokaido I met a group of four women who were walking the Tokaido in the opposite direction and who had just left from another hotel up the road. Further on, after crossing a couple of rivers, I came across a lone pine tree, one of many that were originally planted along the Tokaido more than 400 years ago to provide shade in summer and shelter from cold winds in winter. Quite a lot of these original pine trees still survive, some still in the form of avenues that extend for hundreds of metres. Many of these stands of pine trees have names. Oddly, this single tree bore the name Nihon no Matsu, or The Two Pines. As you might have guessed, there were once two old trees here. One of them died, but the original name remains.


For most of the morning I was walking through the suburbs of Yokkaichi. I was following a narrow street just off the main highway which was flat and dull and lined with small factories of all kinds. Hardly the most uplifting of surroundings, and to make things worse, when I stopped at 11.30am after crossing yet another river to have a rest and send a couple of emails from my phone, I got my first mosquito bite (I'd get a further eight before my journey was over). I moved away from the river and continued my break next to a large joyato, one of the giant lamps that burned throughout the night in the Edo period. Along with the ichirizuka, the avenues of old pine trees, and the occasional stretch of ishidatami (stone paving), these lamps are among the most common remnants of the original Tokaido the modern traveler is likely to come across.


The last few kilometres into the post town of Kuwana were tough. It was hot and muggy, and as I neared my goal I had to follow a series of doglegs (a common feature of the original Tokaido as it approached strategic towns, supposedly designed to confuse invading enemies). About a kilometre from the finish I passed a young solo walker heading in the opposite direction. His name was Aki. We stopped and chatted. He was covering about 30km a day and sleeping rough at night. I expressed surprise that his pack was so small. He in turn expressed surprise that mine was so big. "What on earth have you got in there?" he asked. Another walker had said the same thing, and so I was beginning to think that I had far too much stuff, which is ironic considering that at the start of the walk I was pleased that I'd managed to restrict the weight of my pack to under 10kg. Aki was thinking of walking the Nakasendo back to Tokyo once he arrived in Kyoto, and so I gave him a few tips based on my experience of walking the same route back in 2007. Before parting I took his photograph, something I tried to remember to do whenever I stopped to talk to people along the way.


A few minutes later I reached the point in Kuwana where Edo-period travelers caught the ferry across the bay to Miya on the other side of the modern city of Nagoya. Having reached my goal for the day, I headed in the direction of Kuwana station, thinking I'd find a nice place for lunch along the way. I didn't, and so I ended up buying some hot chips, a banana, and some iced coffee at a convenience store and having lunch in front of the station. At 1.50pm I boarded a train for Nagoya, arriving there at about 2.20pm. From Nagoya station I walked to my hotel, which was meant to be in front of the station but which was a bit further away than I anticipated. Along the way I passed a couple of Westerners. I realized I hadn't seen another Caucasian since leaving Kyoto. I resisted the urge to greet them.

The hotel was quite new and my room larger and better equipped than those in the business hotels I'd been staying in so far. I would have looked forward to my two nights there and the rest day in between if it wasn't for the fact that my toe was starting to really hurt. I did a load of washing then went out to have something to eat at around 3pm. I also withdrew some cash, thinking I might need a bit to pay my doctor's bill the following day. I took it easy for the rest of the afternoon and evening before meeting a friend at 7pm. Before going out for dinner we spoke to one of the receptionists and got details of the address and hours of a nearby hospital. We then went out to an izakaya where I drowned my sorrows in beer and sake. Back in my hotel, I watched some TV and went to sleep at around 10pm.

Day 5: Shono - Yokkaichi (15.4km)

I woke at three or four but managed to doze off again without reading my book and slept through to six, when I was woken by my watch alarm.

I was expecting another buffet breakfast, but when I went down to the hotel restaurant at 7.10am I was greeted with an old-fashioned Japanese "Western-style" breakfast of toast, a boiled egg, and cold spaghetti (or pasta salad - I'm not sure there's a difference).

I left the hotel at 8.20am and headed back across the Suzuka River to rejoin the Tokaido at Shono-juku. From there I followed the Suzuka River to the next post town of Ishiyakushi, arriving at 10am. My toe felt good. After a short break, I pushed on towards the city of Yokkaichi.


A few kilometres out of Ishiyakushi I got my first glimpse of Yokkaichi and the smokestacks of the petrochemical plants that have made it infamous. Shortly after this I descended Tsuetsukizaka, considered the steepest slope on the entire Tokaido. The slope is in fact very short, but I was still thankful I was descending it rather than ascending it. I passed a famous well half way down, and I rested there and took some photos.


I continued on and at 12.30pm reached Hinaga no Oiwake, the point where the Tokaido and the Ise Kaido (the pilgrimage route leading to the famous shrine at Ise) diverge. There was a small shrine and a spring at the point where the modern roads meet. There was no one else about, so I surreptitiously filled my water bottle. While reading a sign about the history of the spring, two people arrived with multiple water containers which they proceeded to fill with water from the spring. I thought at first there might have been some religious significance to their actions, but the man I asked said people came simply because the water tasted better than the city water.


A kilometre or so further on I came across a Saizeriya restaurant (another Italian restaurant chain) where I had lunch. I left there at 1.30pm and arrived in central Yokkaichi at 2.40pm. It was too early to check in to my hotel, so I killed time by having coffee and cake at a coffee shop. After checking in I rang a friend who lives in Yokkaichi and arranged to have her pick me up and take me to have dinner with her and her parents.

Day 4: Seki - Shono (15km)

I woke at 3am and read until 4am. I then went back to sleep until six. At seven I went down for breakfast. It was a buffet but there was no bread in sight. Instead, there was a large rice cooker, a big vat of miso soup, and an array of Japanese dishes. Not my ideal breakfast, but it was all so elegantly presented with lacquerware trays and lovely Japanese pottery plates that I ended up enjoying it. At least they had coffee. I would have been very annoyed if they didn’t have coffee.

My toe didn't feel particularly sore. I was too scared to look at it, though, and so I left the bandage I'd applied the night before on and set off at 9am on what was one of my shorter days.

Nomura Ichirizuka (the tree, a muku, is said to be over 400 years old)

It was already warm when I left and was unpleasantly hot by the time I reached the post town of Kameyama. Thankfully, however, there was a cool breeze blowing where I stopped by a river on the outskirts of the town for my first break of the day. My groin didn’t hurt (I'd taken a Nurofen before setting off), and apart from the odd twinge in my toe I felt in pretty good condition. Soon after setting off again, while passing through Kameyama, I came across a group of 15-20 elderly hikers coming the other way. I said "Konnichiwa" but none of them seemed interested in stopping to chat.

A route marker dating from 1690

I was away from the main road for most of the day, following the Suzuka River as it meandered its way east towards the coast. At 11.30am I started looking for a lunch place. My mind must have been on food and not on my surroundings, because when I came to a bridge and checked my map I realized I'd missed a turn. My map did show a bridge, but its orientation didn’t match that of the bridge in front of me. I took out my compass for the very first time and was able to confirm that I was indeed in the wrong place. I turned around and walked back a few hundred metres before stopping to ask a farmer for directions. He was very friendly (he mentioned that he'd recently been to Australia) and told me how to get back onto the Tokaido.

A traditional kura (storehouse) near Shono. Note the fancy windows.

I arrived in Shono at 12.45pm, having failed to find a lunch place along the way. I'd also run out of water, and was in two minds as to whether I should walk around trying to find a restaurant or a convenience store in Shono (it was only a small town and I couldn’t even see a vending machine) or cross the Suzuka River into the city of Suzuka, where I'd booked a hotel for the night. I decided on the latter option, and soon came across a convenience store where I bought a bottle of water and a slice of fruitcake, which I wolfed down. I continued on to the hotel, which was further away than I thought it would be. It was too early to check in, so I continued walking until I found a shopping mall and had lunch at a restaurant inside the mall. When I finished lunch it was still only 2pm. To kill more time I stopped at a Mister Donut where I had a donut and two glasses of iced coffee. At 3pm I went back to the hotel and checked in. The young receptionist was very friendly and eager to help me (I figured he was either new or hadn't dealt with many foreigners before, or perhaps both).

I rested for a while and then hand-washed a couple of T-shirts. My mind then turned to dinner. There weren't many places to eat in the immediate vicinity of the hotel other than izakaya, which are mostly for drinking, so I walked along to a big shopping mall I’d passed earlier in the afternoon. I wondered around looking at the shops for a while. There seemed to be a sizable Brazilian population in Suzuka, probably related to the fact that there was a big Honda factory in the city. I found a Cappriciosa where I ordered a Margherita pizza and a glass of white wine (my first wine since leaving New Zealand) followed by a cup of tea. I then went back to my hotel and watched TV until going to bed.

Day 3: Minakuchi - Seki (27.4km)

I woke ridiculously early, read, snoozed, and got up at six. Breakfast was a buffet again, and while more than adequate, it wasn't on the scale of the magnificent offering at the Boston Plaza Hotel. My groin and hips were still quite sore, so before leaving I swallowed a Nurofen tablet, which quickly took effect.


I left the hotel at 7.45am to give me time to look at Minakuchi castle before rejoining the Tokaido. It had started raining during breakfast and drizzled on and off as I looked around the castle grounds, but apart from some more light drizzle in the late afternoon it was dry for the rest of the day.

I rejoined the Tokaido and followed it through the centre of the old post town of Minakuchi-juku. Here the Tokaido actually branches into three separate streets that run parallel to each other for about a kilometre. I took the middle street. This part of town was practically deserted. There were quite a few old buildings. I noticed a swallows' nest with chicks in it under the eaves of a building. These nests would become a familiar sight as I continued my journey eastwards.


In Japan, swallows have a close relationship with humans, mostly nesting in built-up areas. They usually return to the same spot each year to build their nests, and people welcome them as to have a swallows' nest on your property is considered a good omen. People sometimes even build crude platforms to make the nests more secure. They also lay cloth or newspaper on the ground underneath to catch the droppings. I'd often stop to see how many chicks were in each nest, or to watch the adults dart back and forth as they brought food for their young.

The area beyond Minakuchi was very picturesque with lots of tea plantations and newly planted rice fields. There was a powerful aroma of green tea, and it took me a while to figure out that the aroma was coming from the tea plants. I could also hear frogs croaking in the rice fields on either side of the road, although as I got within a few metres of each one it would stop croaking. I thought that if I'd been traveling by car I would have missed out on the experience of both the aroma of the tea plants and the croaking of the frogs.


This occasionally idyllic scenery continued all the way to the next post town of Tsuchiyama, some 11km from Minakuchi. There, while walking through the middle of the town, a middle-aged woman, herself a visitor, came up to me and asked for directions to somebody's house. I would have thought it was obvious I wasn’t a local, but then strange things happen from time to time when you're walking through rural Japan.

At Tsuchiyama the old Tokaido crosses National Route 1, the modern highway that follows more or less the same route as the Tokaido between Kyoto and Tokyo. I'd planned on stopping for lunch at a michi-no-eki (literally a "road station") that was marked on my map. Unfortunately they only had noodles, something I wasn't in the mood for, so I headed for a restaurant on the other side of the highway called More where I tucked into some deep-fried fish with rice, salad, miso soup, and pickles. The restaurant was run by several very friendly middle-aged women, who were curious to know what I was up to and were suitably impressed when they learned I was walking to Tokyo.

I left Tsuchiyama at 12.45pm, and after passing through the picturesque wooded grounds of an old Shinto shrine I began the steady climb up Suzuka pass. For most of the climb I followed National Route 1, which was very busy with trucks at times filling all four lanes, but occasionally I left the highway and passed through small hamlets on either side of the main road. For the last several hundred metres of the climb I followed a track through a pleasant wooded area (with the odd tea plantation) above where the road goes through a tunnel. I then climbed down some very steep steps before rejoining the highway for the remainder of the descent into the post town of Sakashita. After passing through Sakashita (which is very small and seemed deserted) I met two women walking the Tokaido in the opposite direction. We stopped to chat and take photos of each other.

It was almost 4pm. At this rate I'd have very little time to look around the next post town of Seki, which was about 5km away. I picked up my pace and got to Seki at about 4.45pm. The town is built along a long, sloping main street and is reminiscent of the post town of Magome on the Nakasendo. Like Magome, the locals have put an effort into preserving the atmosphere of an Edo-period town by burying electricity and other cables and keeping the facades of old buildings along the main street. However, every so often there was a building with an ugly modern facade which spoiled the overall effect. Also, except for the very centre, the town was devoid of any activity (maybe it was the time of day), giving it the appearance of a ghost town. In the end I passed through without stopping other than to pick up a map and take the odd photograph, and headed straight for my hotel on the other side of town.


I checked in at 5pm. Although seemingly in the middle of nowhere, the Candeo Hotel Kameyama is very modern and chic. I was even more impressed when one of the receptionists told me she had studied in New Zealand. After settling into my room I did a load of washing in the coin laundry inside the hotel. Unfortunately there were no restaurants nearby, so for dinner I bought some things at a convenience store across the road and ate them in my room.


My groin seemed to have handled the day's climb OK (I'd taken another Nurofen at lunchtime). However, my left big toe hadn't fared as well. I definitely had an ingrown toenail. The area around the nail had been slightly red and inflamed since I started the walk, but when I got out of the bath that evening I noticed some puss. I cleaned the toe carefully, applied some antiseptic cream I had in my first aid kit, and bandaged it. But based on past experience, I was convinced things could only get worse. In a day or two I'd be limping, and before long the toe would be so painful I'd be unable to put shoes on, let alone walk 20km with a 10kg pack on my back.

I was practically resigned to the fact that I'd be unable to complete my walk. I started thinking about what I needed to do to end the trip and head home early. First I'd have to arrange an early flight home (was that even possible on the ticket I had?), then I'd have to cancel all my forward accommodation bookings, incurring cancellation fees in some cases. The next three days were comparatively short (around 15km each), so I decided I could probably make it to Nagoya, where I'd scheduled a rest day. I could see a doctor there and get some antibiotics to combat the infection. If I did have to quit the walk, I thought, Nagoya would be a convenient place to come back and resume it some time in the future. These were the thoughts that were swirling around in my head as I hit the sack at the end of day 3.

Day 2: Kusatsu - Minakuchi (24.8km)

I woke a couple of times during the night, but generally slept better than the previous night. Nothing like walking 25km with a heavy backpack to ensure a good night's sleep. At about 4.30am I was pretty wide awake, so I got out my book and read for a while. At 5.30am I turned on the TV and watched the news and weather.

I got up at six and went through my usual routine of showering, dressing (remembering to apply anti-chafe balm to my feet before putting my sox on), and shaving. At seven I went down for breakfast. The breakfast buffet at the Boston Plaza Hotel was one of the early highlights of the Nakasendo walk in 2007, and I'm pleased to say it was up to the same high standard in 2009. I had scrambled eggs on toast, various fancy pastries, and cereal with fruit, fruit juice, milk, and yoghurt.


I left the hotel at eight and retraced my steps to the point (identified with the stone route marker shown in the photo above) near the honjin I visited the day before where the Nakasendo and Tokaido go their separate ways. My legs were still a bit tired from the previous day's effort, and my groin, left big toe, and hips were all sore. Still, I felt excited at the prospect of venturing into unknown territory.

It was mostly flat with little traffic all the way to the post town of Ishibe, making for pleasant walking. I took it easy, taking a couple of long breaks to rest and eat scroggin, eventually arriving in Ishibe at 10.45am. There I'd planned to make a side trip to the Tokaido History Museum and Shukuba no Sato, which according to one description I'd read on the Internet was a kind of theme park dedicated to the Tokaido. I made my way to the railway station from where I caught a taxi to the museum and theme park. While making plans for my trip I'd considered walking to the museum as it was only a couple of kilometres at most from the station, but I was glad I took a taxi as what I hadn't realized was it was uphill most of the way.

The taxi driver dropped me off at the main office where I left my pack and paid the entrance fee of 320 yen. The "theme park" was a collection of around half a dozen reconstructions of the kinds of buildings that might be found in a post town in the Edo period. Each was filled with period furniture and other bits and pieces. There was also a reconstruction of a pair of ichirizuka. Ichirizuka were mounds of earth, each topped with a tree, usually an enoki (Japanese hackberry) or matsu (pine), placed on either side of the road at intervals of one ri, or approximately 4km, for the purposes of calculating distance along the Tokaido. Some of them still survive, although it's very rare to find original ichirizuka on both sides of the road as when roads were widened one or the other inevitably had to be removed. As well as these originals, there are also quite a few reconstructions of ichirizuka along both the Tokaido and the Nakasendo.


The Shukuba no Sato was quite interesting, but not as impressive as I'd imagined. The museum was rather dreary and I left after just a few minutes inside. I went back to the office and picked up my pack. After chatting with the staff there for a few minutes, I set off on foot down the hill in the direction of the station. I knew I'd hit the Tokaido before I arrived at the station, so my intention was to rejoin it at the point. Unfortunately I lost my bearings and had to ask a young couple for directions.

I felt a little frustrated as I was concerned at the amount of time this little side trip had taken up. However, the scenery around Ishibe was very pleasant (lots of old buildings, newly planted rice fields, very little traffic) and this soon put me back in a positive frame of mind.

At around midday I started looking for somewhere to have lunch, but it wasn't until
I reached the town of Kosei at about 1.45pm that I found a place I liked the look of: a Japanese chain restaurant called Washoku Sato. I ordered the Nagomi bento, which consisted of cold soba, tempura, chawanmushi, rice, and a choice of drink (I had iced coffee).

Soon after leaving Kosei I rejoined the main highway to cross the Yasu river, whose course I'd been following for most of the way since leaving Kusatsu. Along from the modern bridge was a monument marking the spot where travelers used to cross the river in the Edo period.


My legs were quite tired by this stage. Thankfully it was only another three kilometers or so to my final destination of the day in the town of Minakuchi. Once there, however, I had trouble finding my hotel and had to ask directions at a petrol station.

It was about 4pm when I finally checked in. The room was a bit drab but offered a nice view over the city. I rested, watched some sumo on TV, and then popped over to the big Heiwado shopping complex next door to the hotel to have dinner. I didn't think much of the restaurants there, so I bought some things (deep-fried squid, chirashi gohan, beer, and a grapefruit dessert) at the supermarket and had dinner in my room. I watched some more TV and was asleep by 9pm.

Day 1: Kyoto - Kusatsu (25.7km)

As was the case the day before, I found myself wide awake at the ridiculous hour of 2.30am, and as I couldn’t get back to sleep this time I decided to read for a bit. I finally managed to doze off again, and was woken by my watch alarm, which would remain set at 6am for the duration of my walk.

I got up, showered and packed. At 6.45am I went down to reception to see if they had a computer with Internet access. They did, so I checked my other blog and found that the emails I was sending from my mobile phone weren't being posted. I quickly realized what was wrong and fixed the problem by changing a setting.

By the time I'd finished on the computer, breakfast was being served. It was quite an impressive buffet for a cheap business hotel. There were several Japanese dishes, but my stomach has trouble coping with anything other than Western food first thing in the morning, so I sampled some of the several different varieties of bread on offer along with a plate of salad (with egg) and a bowl of yoghurt with a dollop of jam on top, which I washed down with coffee and orange juice.

I finished breakfast at 7.15 and went up to my room to get my stuff. I was checked out by 7.45, and I set off on foot to Sanjo-Ohashi to begin my walk.

It was already quite hot. A high of 30 degrees was forecast, which was much warmer than average for the time of year. But despite this and my injury worries I was in a very positive frame of mind. It felt good to be under way after the long journey from New Zealand and the day in Osaka and Kyoto.

The walk from Kyoto to Kusatsu was a repeat of the first day of the Nakasendo walk I did with Erik in 2007. I was tempted to put away my map and see if I could trace the route from memory. I think I would have been OK as far as Otsu, but after that it got a bit tricky, and even with the map I was occasionally unsure if I was on the right road.

The first few kilometers were uphill. Although it wasn't steep I found myself huffing and puffing, a reminder of how unprepared I was. I then dropped down into Yamashina before tackling the day's main obstacle: Osaka pass. On the way up a cycle tourist whizzed past going the other way. He was going downhill, so there was no way he was going to stop, but ours eyes met and he gave me a wave.

Near the top of the pass there was a small rest area with a toilet and a panel explaining the history of the pass. I didn't remember this from last time, so I stopped to read the panel. It explained how the pass had been used since the Heian period, when Kyoto was the nation's capital, to transport provisions that had been shipped across Lake Biwa to Otsu over the hill to Kyoto. Ox carts were used for this purpose, and to guide the oxen and prevent the carts slipping back down the hill if the oxen decided they'd had enough, a mechanism called kuruma-ishi (literally "wheel stones") was invented. These consisted of rocks with grooves cut in them set in the earth with gaps in between them. Some of these kuruma-ishi can still be found over the Osaka pass. In fact there were some in the rest area where the panel was.


Soon after leaving the rest area I noticed a Japanese man with a backpack walking in the opposite direction on the other side of the road. We waved to each other, and he gestured to indicate that he wanted to cross the road and talk to me. The road was very busy, and the only place he could cross was near the rest area I'd just left, so I turned around and went back to wait for him.

His name was Mr Koguchi, and his business card gave his occupation as "adventurer". He was walking the Tokaido as part of a longer journey that would take him the length of Japan. And he was doing it the hard way, camping out and cooking for himself. He was very friendly, and we talked enthusiastically for several minutes before taking photos of each other and heading our separate ways.

Mr Koguchi, Adventurer

After descending the pass, I continued on through Otsu and along the shores of Lake Biwa to Zeze where I stopped for lunch just before noon. I'd intended to have lunch at the same restaurant Erik and I ate at in 2007. I couldn't remember the restaurant's name (mars-mars), but I could remember roughly where it was, and I was happy to find it was still operating. None of the staff seemed to remember me (perhaps they were all new). However, they gave me the same friendly reception we got in 2007. (On that occassion we sat outside on a terrace, and one of the waiters brought us knee rugs.) Seeing my pack, one of the waitresses asked me if I was out for a "stroll" (using the Japanese word "sanpo"). She was shocked when I told her I was walking the Tokaido all the way to Tokyo. The food was as good as last time too. I had one of the lunch sets which consisted of seafood spaghetti, a salad, and as much bread as I could fit on my plate, followed by an iced coffee.

Salad (with meat!) at mars-mars

An hour or so after leaving Zeze I crossed the Seta river. Soon after that I left the main road and for several kilometres followed a smaller, twisting road that was quite hilly in parts. At one point I encountered a group of elementary school students, who reacted as many Japanese elementary school kids outside the big cities do by pointing and shouting "Amerikajin!" ("American!"). One even ran up to me, looked at my face, and then ran back to his friends and shouted, "Honto da!" ("It’s true!") We soon got talking, though, and I explained to them all about the Tokaido (which they didn’t seem to know anything about).

I reached the outskirts of Kusatsu at about 3.30pm. I was buggered, and the tops of my forearms, where I hadn't bothered to apply sunscreen, were sunburnt. As well, my groin was quite sore and my hips were bruised from the weight of my pack. I was tempted to go straight to my hotel next to Kusatsu station, but decided instead to stop at a small museum and take a look at the honjin (Edo-period inn for feudal lords) in the old post town of Kusatsu-juku. After all, one of the reasons I'd decided to walk less distance each day compared to 2007 was to give me more time to see these kinds of attractions. I was glad I did stop. Although the museum wasn't great, the honjin was fantastic. I was the only visitor at the time, so the custodian talked to me at length, explaining how this honjin was the best preserved out of the 30 or so left in the country. However, I embarrassed myself by almost forgetting to take my shoes off before entering the building. Mind you, it was only my third day back in Japan. Unfortunately I wasn't allowed to take photos inside the honjin, otherwise I would have taken one of the beautiful lacquered toilet reserved for feudal lords.

Kusatsu honjin

After leaving the honjin I pushed on into central Kusatsu and checked into the Boston Plaza Hotel. I think I must have been a bit dehydrated, because the first thing I did when I got to my room was gulp down about three big glasses of water. The second thing I did was take a close look at my feet. When I took my shoes off at the honjin I felt like I had blisters. On closer inspection, however, this appeared not to be the case. My burnt forearms were a worry, though, so I went out and bought some sunscreen to supplement the tube I'd brought from home, which was really just for my face and hands.

For dinner I went to a noodle place and had a nishin soba set (soba with grilled herring, a bowl of rice, and various side dishes). On the way back to my hotel I stopped at a convenience store and bought some yoghurt with fresh fruit in it which I ate in my room for dessert. I then had a long soak in a hot bath before going to bed at around 9pm.

Osaka - Kyoto

I woke at around 2.30am and snoozed on and off until around 5.30am, when I was pretty sure I couldn’t sleep any more. The first thing I did on getting up was to try to get the phone going. I was sure I'd tried pressing all the different buttons the night before, but just to make sure I tried pressing them again. Suddenly the phone sprang to life. I then remembered you had to press a particular button and keep it pressed down to turn the phone on. I felt like an idiot, although I would have felt like more of an idiot if I'd taken the phone into a shop and asked them if they could "fix" it, which was what I was originally planning to do later that day. Anyway, to have the phone going was a huge relief.

I showered, etc. and watched TV until 7.15am when I went out for breakfast. The area around the station was already quite busy, and I was shocked to see so many people wearing facemasks. I swear as many as eight in ten people were masked up. I found a coffee shop inside the station building and ordered a typical Japanese coffee shop breakfast set of toast, boiled egg, salad, and coffee. No other shops were open yet, so I went back to my hotel room and topped up the phone and sent a few emails.

At 10am I went out to buy some provisions (bottled water, sachets of washing powder for washing my clothes along the way) and to check out some bookshops. I then went to the Mont Bell flagship store and bought a belt. I checked out of my hotel at 11.45am and went to have lunch at an Italian restaurant not far from the hotel where I usually eat when I'm in Osaka. While I was eating I looked around me and felt something was wrong. After a while I realized that it was because none of the patrons were wearing facemasks. I'd already gotten so used to seeing everyone around me wearing a mask that the absence of masks seemed strange. You'd think that if you were going to use a mask to prevent catching swine flu then a crowded restaurant would be one of the first places you'd use it, but of course you can’t eat with a facemask on.

After walking around for a bit I picked up my pack from the hotel and wandered over to the Hankyu Railway station to catch a train to Kyoto, arriving at Kawaramachi at around 2.30pm. It was too early to check in to my hotel, so I had an iced coffee and some cake at a nearby coffee shop. I noticed that far fewer people were wearing masks in Kyoto, even though it was only half an hour by train from Osaka.


I spent the rest of the afternoon wandering around the Pontocho area on the west bank of the Kamo River. It's an area of Kyoto I'd never really explored before, and doing so left me with a new-found respect for the city, which apart from the temples has always left me feeling underwhelmed in the past. I went as far north as Sanjo-Ohashi, the bridge that marks the beginning (or end if you're walking from Tokyo) of both the Nakasendo and the Tokaido, taking quite a few photos along the way, including several of the bridge itself.


For dinner I went to Cappriciosa, a popular local Italian restaurant chain, where I couldn't resist ordering a glass of a beer to wash down my salmon spaghetti and garlic bread. I'd decided as a rule to stay off alcohol during my Tokaido walk, but I figured I wasn't actually walking yet. Plus, regardless of the time of year, I always feel like drinking beer when I'm in Japan, which is odd since it's a beverage I rarely drink in New Zealand.

Despite all the walking I'd done, the toe felt pretty good. But the next day would be the real test. I was due to start walking the Tokaido.

Auckland - Osaka

I'd asked reception to give me a wake-up call at 5am. However, I was awake by 4.30 and decided to get up to give me plenty of time to buy and eat breakfast before heading to the airport. I showered, dressed and packed, and then sat by the phone waiting for it to ring, but the wake-up call never came.

I went out and got coffee and a large apple crumble muffin, which was delicious. I then checked out and walked down to the bus stop on Queen Street to catch the 6.05am bus. A few minutes before the bus was due to arrive, a shuttle pulled up at the bus stop offering to take people to the airport for the same price as the Airbus. I considered taking up the offer, but I'd bought a return bus ticket the previous day and naturally the driver wouldn’t accept it.

The flight to Kansai airport just outside of Osaka was one of the least unpleasant long flights I've endured in recent years. The seat next to me was vacant, so I was able to stretch out a bit. I watched three movies (Gran Torino, Valkyrie, and Taken) and read quite a bit of my book, Barry Eisler's One Last Kill. For lunch I had a rather soggy crumbed fish dish, and for dinner I chose the chicken dish. I don’t eat chicken or red meat, but I never bother to order special meals on planes, as there's usually a fish option and if not, whatever vegetables and other things (bread roll, salad, dessert, etc.) that happen to be on the tray are usually enough to satisfy me. I used to drink a glass of wine or two to help me sleep on long flights. These days, however, I stay off the wine and coffee and try to drink as much water as possible to prevent dehydration, and usually feel a lot better as a result.

After over eleven hours in the air, it was a relief to touch down at Kansai airport at just after 6pm local time. I'd been worried about being held up at the airport due to the swine flu scare, but apart from having to fill in a form on the plane and hand it in at a quarantine desk before going through immigration, the process at the airport was no different than usual. Immigration was actually quicker than normal (there was hardly any queue at all), and customs was a breeze. I was out in time to catch the 7.05pm bus to Herbis Plaza near Osaka Station, from where it was just a two-minute walk to my hotel.

At check in I was greeted by a row of receptionists in white facemasks. Also, there were posters in the lobby detailing the measures the hotel was taking to prevent the spread of the flu. I headed to the elevator, surprised at the precautions the hotel was taking, for my understanding was there were only one or two cases in Japan. An Asian woman in a bright floral dress got in the elevator ahead of me. "Which floor?" she asked in English. "Eight," I replied. As we were going up, she turned to me and said, "Ten dollars?" I'd already gathered she was a lady of the night, but I was still rather taken aback by the proposal. "What do you mean?" I asked in Japanese. "Only joking," she said, herself switching to Japanese. "You didn't think it was funny?"

I got to my room and turned on the TV. The news was on, and I soon understood the reason for the precautions in the hotel. Between the time I left Christchurch and the time I arrived in Osaka, swine flu had hit the Kansai area in a big way, with over 150 cases confirmed in Kobe and Osaka.

On the personal health front, my toe felt fine all day. My groin, on the other, hurt whenever I stood up or sat down on the plane.

This wasn't the only thing worrying me. At the hotel I'd picked up the mobile phone a Japanese friend had sent me to use while in the country. I charged the phone and tried to turn it on, but it didn’t respond. I couldn’t get it to work. Although there was no manual with it, I'd used the same phone before and thought I remembered how it worked. I was convinced that it was broken. I was quite worried, as I was relying on the phone to update my blog and keep in touch with people in Japan during my stay. I was determined not to let it bother me too much, but I was in a pretty gloomy frame of mind when I got to sleep at about 9.15pm.

Christchurch - Auckland

Because I'd booked my ticket through Japan Airlines, I had the choice of either flying to Auckland on an international flight (actually the final leg of the Air New Zealand/JAL flight that takes passengers from Tokyo to Auckland via Christchurch) and staying a night there before continuing on to Osaka, or paying extra and doing the entire journey in one day by flying up to Auckland on a domestic flight early the same morning as the flight to Osaka. I chose the former. This had its advantages and disadvantages. On the minus side it made the journey to Japan seem a lot longer. On the plus side, during the flight to Auckland I got to play with the newish entertainment system on the Air New Zealand 767, which has a nice wide screen and seems to have a clearer picture than the system on the 747s and 777s.

The flight to Auckland only took an hour and 20 minutes, so I steered clear of the movies (which I'd have plenty of time to see the next day during the flight to Osaka) and watched some music videos instead. I chose the Classic collection of clips, which were mostly from the 1980s. Some of the songs were pretty dire, others were OK if a little dated (e.g. Lionel Richie's "Dancing on the Ceiling"), while a couple actually lived up to the title "classic", including the Thompson Twins' "Hold Me Now". But seriously, will the absurd fashion of the eighties (big hair, shoulder pads, high-wasted baggy trousers - and that's just the men) ever make a come back?

After touching down in Auckland just after 11am, I caught the Airbus Express into the city. The bus seemed to take a rather circuitous route to the CBD, taking me through leafy parts of Auckland I hadn't seen before. I was dropped off on Queen Street and soon found my hotel, which was literally a stone's throw from Skycity. This was handy, as I was due to have dinner at the revolving restaurant at the top of the Sky Tower that evening. As a bonus, my room had a view of the harbour.

I dumped my bag and went out for a wander. Being a Sunday, things were pretty quiet. One thing I did notice was the large number of beggars and buskers on the street compared to Christchurch. I had lunch (pumpkin soup and toast) at a café on Vulcan Lane and continued walking around for an hour or so, mainly checking out bookshops and CD shops. As I was coming out of JB HiFi, a young guy at the door asked if I minded if he looked inside my bag. "Yes, I do mind actually," I said, and continued walking out. A reminder, citizens of this fair land, that not even a policeman has the right to search you without good reason. Those signs in stores declaring that it's a condition of entry that you may have your bag searched on leaving have no legal backing whatsoever.

Having seen everything in the inner city that I wanted to see, I retired to my hotel room and spent the rest of the afternoon watching TV, mostly Sky Movies. I enjoyed Scoop, a Woody Allen comedy starring Scarlett Johansson. I interrupted my TV viewing once to go out and get coffee. I noticed that the coffee shop just along from the hotel was open 24 hours. I decided that's where I'd get breakfast the following morning, as I had to check out by 5.45am - well before the hotel restaurant opened - to enable me to get a bus back to the airport to catch my flight to Japan.


I'd booked a table at Orbit, the revolving restaurant, for six, so at about ten minutes to I strolled down to Skycity and took the elevator up to the restaurant 190 metres above the ground. A waiter showed me to a window table with a great view of the city below, which had already descended into darkness. I was about to put my bag on the floor beside my table when I noticed that this was near where a revolving section of the floor and a non-revolving section met. I decided to hang my bag on my chair instead. I wonder how many people have made the mistake of putting their bags on the floor only to look down later and find them missing.


The restaurant takes about an hour to make a full rotation, so I got to see the entire city by the time I finished my meal (which included the colourful snapper dish in the photo above). I was back in my hotel room in time to catch The Amazing Race (the episode in question was filmed in Siem Reap, so I was keen to see it). I then switched back to Sky Movies to watch Vantage Point, eventually calling it a night at around 10pm.

Although my day in Auckland wasn't a complete waste of time, it was probably a mistake to stay there overnight instead of paying extra and getting a domestic flight up to Auckland the next morning. I was eager to get to Japan and start walking. At the same time I was quite apprehensive about the weeks ahead. I hadn't really trained enough, and I had some real injury worries. My left big toe was quite sore from time to time during dinner, indicating the onset of another ingrown toenail, and my groin had also been playing up for a couple of days.