The date of this post is about when I started walking but the idea really started off a few days before in
Nagoya. I had not yet done much travelling of Japan and was about to start a contract job for a webpage. I really didn’t want to settle down yet so I decided I should travel before starting work. The only problem… I only had about ¥20,000 which is roughly $200AUD or currently:
By the time I’d left Nagoya I had far closer to ¥14,000. I got to
Nara late at night wondering if I would get to the Youth Hostel before curfew and if they would give me a room. Luckily they did and I soon ended up naked in the bath and chatting casually about where we came from and the decisions in our lives that led us here.
The next day was spent looking through Nara’s amazing temples (so long as I didn’t have to pay) and meeting some cool guys. That not the topic of this post though so I’ll put that somewhere else. That night I worked out where I wanted to go.
Now I hadn’t been to any
onsen yet and a little south there was a place with three different onsen that the guide book said were the best in this area. That kinda sold me. So I did a few measurements with my fingers and figured I had to walk about 30km. I know that I walked 40km one night and my brothers walked from Bridgetown to Manji one day and thats 30kms. I was carrying a big bag so that might make it two days… thats one night sleeping on the side of the road which shouldn’t be a problem. So I talked to the new guy behind the counter and took some photos of his map before heading of to bed to get a good nights sleep.
Now believe it or not (I choose not to) fingers are not the best measuring devices… On top of that Lonely planet guidebooks maps are really inaccurate and I was looking across two maps that had different scales and didn’t match so well. Finally I was walking through mountains and not as the crow flys.
So on my first day my goal rapidly became: “Just make it south, it doesn’t matter where”. By the time it became dusk my goal became: “Just keep moving somewhere and don’t die”. By the time I set up camp under a bridge the goal had simplified to “Don’t Die”. Its simple I like it. Anyway… it was at about this point that I was reintroduced to how much colder it is over here. At first the concrete was just a little cold so I put on both jumpers and curled up over my hiking pack. This obviously wasn’t too comfortable but I made do and got about half hours kip. Then I put on more pants and shirts and took out the uncomfortable stuff from my pack and tried again. Then I moved up to the tiny slot that was smaller then the capsules at the
capsule hotel (actually it was about the right size for what I would want to pay for) and once again tried to sleep. Finally I resorted to using my pack as a sleeping bag. Turns out I’m small but not that small. It was at this point that I hit gold. Walk during the night and sleep during the day.
Some Highlights of my 4 day hike (Others hidden in the map):
- Meeting many police officers who wanted to know wtf I was doing and wouldn’t let me sleep. Once I whipped out my laptop and double clicked on my last way point, the eyecandy seemed to convince them that I was well organised enough. I did lie to each of them about owning a tent and a sleeping bag though. And before the eye candy they would want me to keep walking and I would not have slept the night before and be staggering with a massive gapping drop that some might call a gorge off to one side..
- Being amazing surprised at how little water I had drunk over the last two days and how great I felt only to hardly be able to move the next evening when I woke up and got out of my drain. See, by this stage I had learnt that hiding from the friendly police was the best policy to avoid the sleeplessness they could cause and hence avoid stumbling half awake and falling to a rather adrenaline pumping death. Anyway, turns out I need to drink the same amount of water.
- That the smallest country towns actually do have about eight vending machines so that when you wake up and can hardly move due to your dehydration you just walk on for a few km’s and hit up the nearest vending machine.
- Seeing some amazing scenery. Will upload pics soon.
- People in country towns actually saying hello in the streets, smiling and giving me food.
- Finally making it, asking for directions only to have the old block walk 3kms to ask the local Baker who asked his customer who asked their Mums friend. Next thing you know I have a tour guide who paid for food and entry. As if that wasn’t enough they gave me a lift to the next town (Tanabe).
My rough path is below. Turns out that its actually about 100km as the crow flys, google keeps telling me that there are no buses there so it wont tell me the real distance :( Will update soon.
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