Welcome to winter in Tokyo area! I hope you have been enjoying the fresh cool air and beautiful sun!

Due to the cold, we are planning indoor events for January (and probably February) instead of ShinYuri Art Park!

Meeting Point

Saturday 06 January 2024, 13:30

Shin Yurigaoka between KFC, MUFG, and Dean and Deluca: 35°36'13.3"N 139°30'29.5"E https://w3w.co/locator.juggler.nail

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Details

Enjoy Community

Find like-minded others who enjoy walking barefoot!

What to Expect

• The event is on, rain or shine.
• We’ll walk from Shin Yurigaoka station starting 13:45

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Donation:

500 yen

What to bring

Whatever you need to take care of yourself. Come barefoot or wearing lightweight shoes which you can take off inside.

I’m super sad to have to cancel today; My throat is feeling sick so out of abundance of caution, I am canceling so I can take care of myself! I hope you have a lovely holiday season and I look forward to seeing everyone in 2022!

First Meeting Point

Thursday 30 December 2021, 11:40

Second Meeting Point

Thursday 30 December 2021, 12:00

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Today at Christine’s birthday party, Petya suggested a great idea for sponsoring my trip. “For every 10km walked, ______ will donate one pair of shoes to _____.”

The blanks still have to be filled in, and I guess it is only 33 pairs of shoes which seems small, so maybe every 1km walked?? Or “for each person who walks 10 km.”

Also at Christine’s birthday party, Johnny said he would love to interview me for his podcast! Awesome! Now I am like “ahhh!” cause there is not yet a domain to send people to, and no site really talking about it. Is /quests on my site enough?

I guess it’s okay to say “Rob Nugen dot com slash quests”

I was thinking about some ways to kind of promote the trip with cards or a story answering “why Niigata?” (because my shirt says Niigata.)

Maybe selling shirts if you want to buy a shirt too and maybe building community interest, asking “where should the next trip be?” that kind of thing. Inviting local people to join for a segment as they are interested.

I need to finish planning each part of the route, like each day of the trip. I need to start laying out the days so I know where I’m going to go each day and have enough time for community feedback on those plans as well, so one first step is to get the maps up on my website.

Maybe I can put up a areamap image of the overall route and maybe have each section be its own clickable zone or something.

(recorded 07:14 Tuesday 30 June 2020 JST)

I just walked to Yomiuriland and took some pictures!

I’m very happy because it’s proving that my walk is definitely possible.

There were some signs of how they are dealing with COVID-19

I plan to visit the hot springs near Yomiuriland on April 13th, 2021.

I just noticed this wall near two big old trees that surrounded an entrance to a house that has been torn down.

Sign next to steps to water supply

Lots of ads for some sort of community center, I think

This is my first second official journal entry for my walk to Niigata. I have tagged it “niigata walk” and plan to have Hugo look for that tag when putting together a blog, possibly at /quests/walk-to-niigata/ which currently has a copy (hardlink on my local machine) to this file.

I will almost certainly end up with a shorter domain pointing at the entries, and I want to use the same workflow as I do now for journal entries.

Anyway, I have started mapping a possible route, and talking with my men’s circle about logistics.

me:

Men, do any of you know electronics?  I am looking to make or buy
a charger setup that can harness solar / wind / walk / slow
rotating energy as I walk to Niigata.
I found this
https://www.outdoorgearlab.com/topics/camping-and-hiking/best-solar-charger

Rick:

I found this backpack with a solar panel
https://www.666-666.jp/1505270000000000.html for sale on a
Japanese website.

Mohamed:

I think for this you need to first calculate how many Watt hours
do you need and the voltage of the appliances and what's your
optimal discharge time then you can go from there. If your goal is
to have electricity whereever you go, then a couple of powerbanks
with fast charging would be ur best bet in my opinion but if your
goal is to build a system then you'd need to do more calculations

Jerome:

Hey Rob, you asked for help and help you get... It may just not be
very helpful.. Seems like you find something similar re portable
chargers, but here's one that comes recommended from use on the
3000km+ trail that covers the length of New Zealand - Te Araroa.
Older sites recommended not using solar in NZ cos it's always
cloudy haha but seems tech has adapted and here's the winner

Solar adventurer

I found it on this website and it discusses the Te Araroa trail, in case you're needing a longer trail to dream about as well

I mentioned that I want to pull a wagon.

Pulling a wagon, epic! A man from a circle in Wellington I know
pulled a wagon from Mongolia to Beijing,
http://theslowway.weebly.com/blog/cart-prototype-10-test

Bren, relaying some crowdsourced ideas of cool places to go:

Aizu, https://www.echigo-tsumari.jp/en/, Mashiko, Eichigo Uzawa

09:28 Tuesday 19 May 2020 JST

I considered incorporating this route, but it is longer and apparently higher.. https://walkjapan.com/tour/nagano-snow-country

I enjoyed leading the first Connection Circle on a Friday morning, as part of Oren’s Quarantine Activity Guide for April 2020. This was the fourth or so time I have led the workshop, and great to see all new people in attendance.

The list below was my agenda, with the numbers being minutes on each bit. 2 hours worked out quite well!

• 2 Ground rules
• 5 Grounding
• 15 Check in (name location feeling)
• 3 Time + mindfulness = joy
• 20 Three rounds of gratitude
• 15 How have you spent your time recently?
• 5 break (get writing utensils)
• 25 Healing the past visualization (while connected to the present)
• 15 If anything, what might you want to change about how you spend your time?
• 10 (optional) What new opportunities have you noticed?
• 10 Set SMART Stretch for self

Next circle will be 9:30am - 11:30am Tokyo time Friday April 17th. Enjoy deep connection with like minded people in the safe setting of your own home! must RSVP to join!

Ma, Madeleine, and I enjoyed a great day walking through the old Japanese houses, speaking with some of the volunteer guides as we enjoyed spectacularly clear blue skies and crisp fresh air. It’s a natural haven just 30 minutes from Shinjuku, the busiest train station in the world.

Great to see the New Year’s decorations and we received some hand-made souvenirs: grasshoppers made of grass, and mice made of paper!

The indigo dye workshop was amazing fun. I told the staff I’d come back hundreds of times. It was a bit of a challenge to understand the Japanese, but we had a great time dyeing and created some beautiful handkerchiefs!