date: 2021-04-26T06:10:06+09:00

title: "Beginning to walk again: Day Eleven"

Good morning from みどりの村キャムプ場, which has a pretty nice setup of bungalows and such. Not much food in the camp area, but a coveni is outside the property.

Feelings slightly nervous about engaging the mountains. it’s definitely colder here, and apparently 10 degrees C at the place I will be for tomorrow night.

Regarding the phone saga, they will send a new phone to the place I will be Tuesday night.

Mountains and hills coming soon to a walk near me!

Now it’s time to pack!!

date: 2021-04-26T11:13:59+09:00

title: "Quiz: what is this?"

Quiz: what is this? Not the cloud, the black surface on the ground.

date: 2021-04-26T12:13:59+09:00

title: "Went through my first tunnel"

My first tunnel!

Fortunately I had earplugs

Back into reality

date: 2021-04-26T14:11:09+09:00

title: "Little Road after Akane Tunnel"

Past the tunnel, I turned left on a little street which I assume was here long before the tunnel.

Lots of interesting things to see, including some free cedar logs!

don’t throw rubbish here. This character will be sad if you do!

I could not see anything on this sign (but dirt)

Ya might want to turn here

I wonder how this tree was shattered. I would guess lightning but I don’t see scorch marks

Found an opportunity for a selfie

Ya might want to ignore this sign

I thought these small ferns were cute

I guess this cart plans to stay here a while

From where does this water come?

François at construction site

The first little road ended here

start of the second little road

Apple trees, prepping to make apples

Looking back at the start of the third little road

Blue roof and yellow flowers

This hill looks positively pointy.. I wonder what the tip is like when standing there?

Red roof within apple orchards

cute pond and concrete for what? I wanted to put François on it, but decided it was too far away from the edges of the pond to do safely, and the locals might wonder what I was doing..

I tried to get the cloud reflection here

date: 2021-04-26T14:14:14+09:00

title: "François on pallets of crushed cans"

Hang on.. is that a recycling center?

Indeed it is!

François would like to have a seat here

I believe these are steel cans

I think these are for oil

How do they collect this many of the same type of can?

rusted cans hmm I wonder how long these have been here

date: 2021-04-26T15:45:18+09:00

title: "Arrived in Yumotokan Day 11"

Yay just arrived in Yumotokan. The host said the onsen is very hot.

Lots of pics on the way here, but first wash feet, contact Jason, maybe have dinner with him.

Oh, maybe I can start them uploading… oh but I want to name the photos.

I can pop them up to cloud and deal with them “later”, hopefully sooner!

Here are the paper maps I used to walk today. Most of them have segments labeled with the number of (left) footsteps I took during each segment.

date: 2021-04-26T18:41:09+09:00

title: "Day 11 finished (photos)"

Old school fire hydrant

Fancy new curb caught my eye. Why was this section redone?

This may be a manhole cover of an eggplant carrying a telescope.

A bridge for Akane

I thought these leaves were cute and wish I had made them more visible. It was quite sunny therefore difficult to see what the screen was seeing

François on a truck scale

We have walked quite a bit!

Wow that solar panel is big for just one support..

Oh it rotates and tilts to follow the sun!

It made small adjustments every 30 seconds or so

Flowers

Rivers

What does this say?

Here was the plan for Day Eleven

date: 2021-04-25T11:14:22+09:00

title: "Some progress on phone: it's rebooting"

The phone can boot

and reboot

and reboot

and reboot

I found an issue with Android halting when low/no memory so I bought a new SD card but still have the same issue. At least I got a good price on the card.

256GB micro SD with adapter: (5,780 yen + tax) 6,358 yen

Back to phone shop to see if they will make good on the warranty.

13:19 Sunday 25 April 2021 JST

They were not willing to sort me out with a loaner phone.

At first the reason was they could not contact my local shop via phone.

Then when we were like “well there are many other shops near Tokyo” they said they could not give a loaner phone because I am on a 5G contract and they don’t have a 5G phone.

What an incredible reason is that?? Especially given that half the fuckin' time I look at my phone, it is on 4G because we are in the middle of no 5G towers.

20:08 Sunday 25 April 2021 JST

Just called CSR and they will send a new same model of phone to my hotel location. Nice!

date: 2021-04-25T17:36:35+09:00

title: "Finished Day Ten sans Phone sans Walking"

Just to be super clear, I did not have to walk from Sky Terme Shibukawa to Midorinomura camp area.

Lin and I woke up for breakfast at 6:30, packed, then spent the morning driving around trying to get my handset working again.

Amazingly, the shop staff was able to reboot my phone with a llllonnnngggg press (18 seconds) of the power button. I thought I had “done everything” but apparently I hadn’t done that.

The phone kept rebooting, though, and never could get past the opening screen or so.

Looking up online, I found a Stack Exchange issue of something determining that low memory was causing his phone to reboot. I mentioned this to the staff so they offered to sell me a larger Micro SD card:

• 64GB for 9,700 yen
• 128GB for 17,000 yen

I had seen much better prices in Shibuya, so Lin drove to the local Yamada Denki where I got a larger Micro SD card:

• 256GB for 5,780 yen

I put the new card into the old phone but it still just kept rebooting.

Back to the phone shop to tell them the card did not help. They were super confusing. Here are the responses I understood over the hour we were there.

• “We can’t help you.”
• “We can loan you a phone.”
• “We can probably get you the same model here, today.”
• “We can’t get the same model.”
• “We cannot loan you a phone because we cannot reach our sibling shop near your house.”
• “We cannot loan you a phone because you have a 5G contract and we only have 4G phones.”

Good grief. Anyway, Lin and I gave up with them after an hour of this, plus calling the CSR line who were only able to “Send a phone to my house” and could not interfere with management of the local shop.

We ate lunch, then went to 金島温泉, which was small, cheap, clean(?), and fine, but got about 2 stars from me and low rating from Lin as well.

We finished around 4pm there which was too late for me to then walk to my place for tonight, so she is joining me in a bungalow at 緑の村キャムプ area.

I am a little bummed because this was to be the day I started walking up mountains, but I am also happy to receive a day off from walking.

Oh, and surprising to me, though my phone is stuck on a screen saying “Just a sec…” it can still receive calls on my phone number. That is a great relief; at least I have connection if people call me. I cannot make calls out, though.

Oh, I was able to print the maps for the next 6 days or so. Tomorrow I plan to start walking using paper maps.

Here was the plan for Day 10

date: 2021-04-25T18:22:31+09:00

title: "Day Eleven will be long"

Feeling

Feeling great right now, and just discovered that I already created a way to generate updates using a Perl script.

Recently

Phone died yesterday afternoon; ended up taking today sans walking as a result. Printed maps at 7-11 and plan to use them tomorrow to walk.

Now

Lin is resting beside me and noted tomorrow is going to be a bit of a long day walking. I am grateful for my day off today! (Day 10)

Coming up

Tomorrow will be a 20km day through the foothills(?) and/or mountains. Yikes stripes am I ready for this?

date: ‘2021-04-24T08:25:47+09:00’

title: 'good morning day 9'
location: 'geo:36.3834,139.09324;u=3.7900924682617188'

Good morning from day 9, a day that I’ll get to see Lin.

She’s going to drive out and meet me at the hot spring place this afternoon!

Here is François on an octopus slide thing

date: ‘2021-04-24T09:37:57+09:00’

title: 'Texas T-Bone at highways 3 and 4'
location: 'geo:36.39321,139.07412;u=29.038999557495117'

Texas T-Bone at the intersection of 3 and 4

date: ‘2021-04-24T12:05:26+09:00’

title: 'tunnel under small power tower'
location: 'geo:36.42941,139.05036;u=3.7900924682617188'

It may be a small power tower but we get to walk right under it

date: ‘2021-04-24T13:05:26+09:00’

title: "Hydroelectric Plant"

I saw this from the side as I approached. Woah something interesting going on here!

Here is the exit from the back side

Ah! It’s from a power plant. Hydroelectric plant yay!

Coming closer to the plant, looks like there is more frothy action around the corner

oh sweet! Water pours down into the little river from something above it..

Silly wall blocking the view.

some water wants to get into the little river first!

audio transcript:

I found a what I believe to be an electrical power plant that hydro Electric plant and I described the water pouring off of us like a small river pouring that cascading into a bigger river as like 10 bathtubs per second worth of water. And I don’t know, what was a more common unit of measure and I guess, cubic meters per second in Japan is it’s usually cubic feet per second in the US, maybe yards per second anyway. I measured it and and estimated it to be 10 bathtubs per second. pouring from the small river into a big river. I took a lot of pictures with with my old phone then I was like, Oh, I have this cool camera. So I went and took photos with the cool camera of this area as well. And so kind of did a little backtracking. But anyway, I took a bunch of photos, I really enjoyed seeing the area and taking lots of photos, even though no one else in the area seemed to care about it anymore. Because they had already seen it. But um, there weren’t a lot of people in the area, but a few so that was that was a cool thing. And I wonder if I can find where that was on the map.

date: ‘2021-04-24T19:26:46+09:00’

title: ‘Day Nine Finished’

After my phone died, I was already pretty close to Sky Terme Shibukawa so was able to walk sans phone from Bando Bashi to Sky Terme Shibukawa with the help of locals pointing the way.

As of yesterday, Lin planned to meet me at Sky Terme Shibukawa (super sento (public bath)). She did that, but then drove me to the hotel because my phone died and I wanted to get it resolved as quickly as possible. Phone shop is closed until tomorrow (and booked until May), but we will try to get in tomorrow and get a replacement handset.

Anyway, about today, the sento was nice, not huge, but has a great view, being 5 stories above green fields. Nice open air deck.

Day Nine Summary

This was the morning after the splinter. I woke up and my foot was still in agony as soon as I touched it to the carpeted floor below my bed.

Fuck this. I’m going to quit, I told Shraddhan on our morning call.

“The train station is right there,” I said, looking out the window. “I recognize those cars. Those are Tokaido Line cars.” They go directly to Tokyo Station. “I can be home in about an hour.” (*)

“Well, are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Shraddhan asked. “How will you feel when we talk tomorrow morning?”

Silence.

Silence.

“No, that’s not what I want to do. I want to keep going. Fuckit. I’ll just wear my sandals and it will be fine.”

And that’s what I did.

Once I got walking, the agonizing pain stopped. The splinter removal didn’t bother me the rest of the trip.

Now that it’s 9 months later, I don’t recall much else about this day. Google maps says I walked 23.1km in 6 hours 42 minutes. Saitama Grand Hotel Honjo to Hotel Ruka, which I often read as Hotel Ruruka.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LMY75HbGsLHrADtt5

Photos show long straight stretches along highways and a river.

(*) It was 本所駅 I could see from Saitama Grand Hotel.
Apparently would have taken 2.5 hours to get home via train from otherwise but I was otherwise correct about the train line.

date: ‘2021-04-23T10:40:01+09:00’

title: 'walking along Tone River'
location: 'geo:36.27622,139.18082;u=31.381000518798828'

Walking along the river and found this nice sign..

I like noticing how some of the lines on the solar panels line up all the way across their field

Mountains coming soon

2021 apr 23 13:29:21

Interesting to see how this highway just cuts through all these smaller roads that were lined up in a grid.

I imagine there was a lot of discussion and consternation when this highway was planned to come through.

2021 apr 23 13:52:21

date: ‘2021-04-23T20:09:32+09:00’

title: 'Summary of Day Eight'

date: ‘2021-04-24T04:26:46+09:00’

title: 'day 8 finished'
location: 'geo:36.38188,139.09379;u=10.875'

I made it to my hotel last night just after dark, turned off all the lights, took a bath in complete darkness and fell asleep in the bath, woke up when the water started getting cold, put ointment on my feet and jumped directly into bed.

Summary of Day Eight

Summary of Day Eight WAS:

date: ‘2021-04-22T06:58:41+09:00’

title: 'construction behind SPAMU'

花園橋 Hanazono Bridge over Arakawa

Sign describing the reason for construction

河川を利用する皆さまへ

川は、ここで雨が降ってなくても、上流の雨により急激に 川の水位が高くなってくる場合があります。 急に川の水位が濁ったり、ゴミが大量に流れて来た場合などは、 上流で大雨が降っている場合があります。 川を利用される場合には、事前に気象情報などを確認して、 十分周囲して下さい。

These backhoes have red and white pool noodles to let you know how close not they get to their zone of rotation.

date: ‘2021-04-22T07:49:32+09:00’

title: 'François in oval, etc'

A circular mirror reflected sunlight onto the ground into an oval shape.

date: ‘2021-04-22T20:09:32+09:00’

title: ‘Summary of Day Seven’

Oh my gosh my foot hurts ten times worse after the doctor cut the splinter out.

Summary of today

• Day Seven (Thursday April 22nd *) Part 1:
  9am - 11am Walk 9km, From Hotel Spa Mu https://spamu.jp/index.html To Saitama Grand hotel in Honjo (121km walked so far)

1. Mail postcards at Misato Post Office (open 9am - 5pm)

2. Get splinter removed cut out of my foot
3. Eat dinner as the local antisthesia wore off
4. hobble to hotel like omgayfkm
5. client session 7pm
6. go to sleep early

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WRfHfbpVpcHF1W52A

date: ‘2021-04-21T05:54:18+09:00’

title: 'Good morning Day 6'
location: 'geo:36.03059,139.37445;u=65'

Let me just first say I am tired / not wanting to get moving today. Spirits are a bit low; I seem to have lost my preferred foot cream (prescription ointment), and while looking through my bag found things I have not used yet. KUMON book and Way of the Peaceful Warrior (volume 3).

I knew the trip would be tough, so continuing to move. I think the honeymoon stage is ending and getting into hostile territory (yikes stripes!).

• honeymoon
• hostile
• humor
• home

Four stages of adaptation to new challenge (as offered by Jason when he gave me the Deep Blue, which has been amazing; thank you!)

François on a pedestal

2021 apr 21 08:45:46

date: ‘2021-04-21T09:00:32+09:00’

title: 'big swamp carry road'
location: 'geo:36.03927,139.34669;u=100.4729995727539'

I found some cool green rocks for François to climb.

There’s a sign saying the name of this town 滑川町 Namgawa Town

Geolocation is off because it took a while to post this… I had to relog into my GitHub account to authenticate Quill

date: ‘2021-04-21T09:05:44+09:00’

title: 'François on new shrine'
location: 'geo:36.03928,139.34668;u=102.10800170898438'

I saw François on what looks like a new shrine in the middle of somewhere that people wouldn’t see very often..

date: ‘2021-04-21T12:37:17+09:00’

title: 'construction zone featuring no sidewalk'

I came up to a section where the sidewalk was missing…

And I was able to make my way through it even with the construction worker guys there.

I didn’t get a picture of that, but I did get to discover just how hot fresh poured asphalt can be.

Also got a chance to take a picture of François on rabbit shaped barrier holders.

And then the most amazing thing is finding this new manhole cover it hasn’t even had its plastic taken off yet…

Here it is in context with the sidewalk ripped out around it

Francois found the sidewalk!

date: ‘2021-04-21T12:39:50+09:00’

title: 'power tower in a green area'
location: 'geo:36.07786,139.29579;u=135.60000610351562'

Struggling along the hot asphalt here, I paused to look up and saw this interesting shot

date: ‘2021-04-21T15:33:50+09:00’

title: 'Day six hot'

date: ‘2021-04-21T15:39:50+09:00’

title: 'I wore my sandals'

With 7km to go on Day 6, I put my sandals on to walk the rest of the way to SPAMU. My injuries were still painful but much faster as they were not compounding

date: ‘2021-04-21T19:47:35+09:00’

title: 'foot soles, Day 6'

Here are the soles of my feet, photos taken last night, at the end of day 6.

These photos were taken at SPAMU

This is the day I walked to SPAMu, which I selected for its name that reminds me of SPAM, the salty pork blob “meat” stuff. As opposed to SPAM, SPAMu was expensive!

The front desk person almost didn’t let me in until I reminded her I had made a reservation.
She said she remembered, so “let” me stay. At $180 a night, I think it woulda been fine to kick me out, though that’s all in hindsight, a year later.

At the time, my feet were in agony to the point that I was wearing sandals as I arrived in the hotel. She seemed very unimpressed that I was wearing sandals, and I felt bad that I assumed no one here would know I had said otherwise.

François on the rocks

2021 apr 21 08:50:46

I was able to recognize the last two kanji

2021 apr 21 09:07:37

I wonder if it's one of these guys' thorns that I stepped on..

2021 apr 21 09:17:16

Yet another cute manhole cover 滑川

2021 apr 21 09:41:10

Poetry, Maybe

2021 apr 21 11:36:46

Yay just arrived in Yumotokan. The host said the onsen is very hot.

Lots of pics on the way here, but first wash feet, contact Jason, maybe have dinner with him.

Oh, maybe I can start them uploading… oh but I want to name the photos.

I can pop them up to cloud and deal with them “later”, hopefully sooner!

Here are the paper maps I used to walk today. Most of them have segments labeled with the number of (left) footsteps I took during each segment.