It has taken me a full week to get back into a mode that I can post about the walk in any kind of reasonable way.

Klaus summed it up, saying I had lost an identity of being the guy walking across Japan. There is grief in losing that part of myself.

I did a couple of livestreams on Instagram yesterday. (I downloaded and copied them to Youtube so you don’t have to log in to view them.)

Water pouring into rice fields

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ltEFRpkT9U

Great talking to Eddie a bit on his way to get his kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DIq1T_-HNc

APA Hotel Tsubamesanjo Ekimae is really the best I have used this walk in terms of price per ameneties.

Private bath, bed, TV with free VOD including adult content, plus a larger than micro sized toothpaste, and a nice toothbrush with soft bristles. Just 3700 yen. Nice.

Day 22 was

Before I started walking, Jason H described a simple 4 steps to adapting to any stressful situation. I think I am in the last stage now; I have just come to realize walking is my life. Nothing can be done to change it. Just walk walk walk.

I felt quite hot and tired by the end of today. Not a drop of rain in sight, and plenty of sun, so I am glad I put on sunscreen before I started out at 7am. I arrived at the hotel about 2:30pm, so 7.5 hours walking 17.5 kilometers (according to Google Maps)

Leaving the hotel this morning around 7am

Two manhole covers with same design at different sizes. I may have posted a large size version somewhere.

Bicycle wheel themed bicycle parking

Went through a tunnel that apparently gets flooded at times.

Saw a turtle in a river

turtle without zoom

Also saw an orange in a river

Curious loops on wires a I guess to keep birds off them

Wow I was back there a few days ago..

Curious that these huge heavy plates are being held down by a backhoe

Brand name

Saw a rather large ratsnake I encountered before crossing Kariyata River (map). He was quite chill.

16:30 Monday 17 May 2021 JST

Rambling transcript of story:

Walking around the bend of a highway where the road was terribly rough. And I was wearing sandals because it was so rough. Just about to cross, I couldn’t even see the path where I was headed. And is I was like, I need to, I see the berm of a river. And I need to go over that hill. But I come in around this corner, I can’t see if there is actually a path there to go from this level around the left up to the bridge that’s crossing the river.

So I might have to go away back or I might have to I’m not going to go way back. Let me tell you that. But I might have to like drag or pick up my bag and carry it up this hill. And so just approaching and approaching and finally at the last minute, it’s like okay, there’s a path cool. And getting legs stepping up the path toward the toward the bridge that was there. over the river. Walking, walking, walking, just looking at my feet and my Oh, so tired. Hello. Hello snake. You’re beautiful.

Wow. It’s like Oh, hi snake. beautiful green rat snake. I didn’t know as a rat snake until after I posted a picture up on Reddit. But the answer quick and answer quickly came back. No, that’s a Japanese rat snake is a beautiful species but a beautiful specimen. I was able the rat snake was she was so chill. I was able to put François down in front of him take a picture. Pick François up start a video and then the snake was like I guess I guess we’re done here snake sorta snake and on by.

And I like I wanted to pick it up. And thought it would be more polite to just let it go on its way. And someone said on Reddit and to say just say pardon me when you pick it up. And I kind of sort of think that that’s right. I mean, if it’s an actual in my heart to excuse me, I would like to pick you up. I wonder if it’s okay, but I just had this, you know, kind of reverence for this animal.

And projecting today that it saw me as a giant animal. It was a big snake but I’m a lot bigger than that. And on Reddit, the guy was guessing is two meters long. I guessed it was 130 centimeters long. But yeah, it’s big snake looks pretty cool. In decent size.

So yeah, they’re just there was a cool snake and oh, and then my friend Missy texted me right after that. She’s like, Oh, I just had an amazing experience. And she was telling me about her experience. And so we decided that the snake was a messenger letting me know to contact her because she had just had a had an amazing experience. So that was neat. I put him on YouTube. I called it Missy’s green snake.

It’s now nearly 4am Thursday 6 May 2021 (according to my computer). To my feet and legs, it’s early on Walkday. My brain knows it is now Day 21, but this entry is about Day 20:

I did not take many pictures on Day 20, compared to other days. Photographs seem to happen more in the morning, but as I get tireder and tireder from walking, the pictures taper off as I’m like bah, who cares about seeing more flowers that are not really differentiatable from other pics I have taken.

Day 20 things:

• saw a two car train and tried to take a video but realized later I apparently did not hit record until after the train went by.
• saw species of little yellow flowers that I had not seen before
• talked to Brian in Corpus for about an hour while sharing stories of mapping. Very fun talking with him as we have similar senses of humor.
• 1. “everything was going fine until I talked to those guys in Corpus”
• 2. “here’s your diploma!” after walking through flowerbed on campus
• almost recorded Joetsu Line shinkansen, albiet far away
• Surprised to see Doge is up to 77 yen, and has gone up 11000% just in 2021.
• Installed Folding@Home and signed up for the Doge team https://www.dogecoinfah.com/doc/gettingstarted.html#getstarted on my laptop and on my Vultr server (pinning its CPU to 100% (up from 4% over the past years))
• Nearly weaned myself off aidungeon.io, helped by the response “The AI doesn’t know what to say. Alter, undo, or try again.”
• Walked across Shinano River with water pouring through Myokan Weir, a word I did not know the meaning.

Day 20 was:

I had a good cry this morning with Shraddhan on our daily call.

• callous on my right foot despite wearing sandals
• long-ass walk yesterday 6 hours through the hills after 2 hours on the highway
• crying last night because I could not figure out how to put together my futon
• sandals ripping almost apart yesterday
• not able to find the photo I took yesterday
• not getting the photo I wanted (and basically too late to go back)
• camera could not use 32GB card
• and it’s raining today

Plan for yesterday was

It is late on Day 12 and I just finished uploading Day 9 and Day 11 photos..

Day 12 will have to wait. Day 12 photos have been uploaded to Smugmug for now

https://thunderrabbit.smugmug.com/Travel/Japan/Quests/2021-walk-to-Niigata/Day-12-2021-april-27/

Here was the plan for Day Twelve

Here are thumbnails of the trails I plan to use for Day Thirteen, 28 April 2021:

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