I am planning to walk barefoot coast to coast (the short direction) across Japan’s main island.

Join us Friday April 16th at Rinko Park in Yokohama, (map) as I start to walk barefoot to Aoyama Kaigan near Niigata Station, arriving around 23 days later, during Golden Week in Japan.

It’s a personal challenge and hopefully encouragement to you to keep pushing your limits!

Just the Meeting points:

Here are the meeting points on Google Maps and the meeting points on Google Earth . They are likely to change so be sure to get in touch if you want to meet somewhere!

Entire Route:

Here is the entire route on plotaroute.com. The map takes a bit to load all of the twists and turns of the route. Be sure to get in touch if you want to meet somewhere as plans are likely to change!

23 days, walking 400km from Yokohama to Niigata

Details:

These are maps of each segment, and are subject to change. I do not yet have a good way to post edits to this page from the road, but am working on that.

(*) Note: dates are subject to change! Be sure to get in touch with me via email at my name at this domain.

I am using GoGetFunding to help raise money for the walk, with proceeds going to Tokyo English Life line (TELL). TELL is dedicated to providing effective support and counseling services to Japan’s international community and its increasing mental health needs.

https://gogetfunding.com/barefoot-pilgrimage-across-japan-raising-funds-for-suicide-prevention/

(I had been using Shopify, but it is not a proper crowd funding site, and the cost of the Shopify store continues regardless of donations / purchases.)

So far, eight copies of the book have been pre-ordered.

Assuming 2500 yen of each book purchased so far can be used for covering costs below, 20,000 yen can be used for costs below.

20,000 / 226,000 yen

██████________________________________________________ 9% funded!

Anticipated costs for the walk include:

Daily costs:

• food 2000 yen / day * 20 days = 40,000 yen
• accommodation 8000 yen / day * 10 days = 80,000 yen

One-time costs:

• sweat-wicking underclothes 30,000 yen
• rain pants 8,000 yen
• rolling cart 3,000 yen
• camera with APS-C size sensor (for print quality photos) 60,000 yen
• battery for old computer 5,000 yen

already purchased:

• old computer
• phone for livestreaming
• unlimited data plan
• rechargeable batteries for phone
• solar panel
• rain jacket
• tent
• sleeping bag

Anticipated costs for the book:

TBD!

Thank you @hancockjason0702 for my first interview about walking to Niigata!

https://www.instagram.com/tv/CI5slpohlYL/

Starting April 13th 2021, I plan to walk from my house in Kawasaki to Niigata station, 300 kilometers away!

The trip should be doable: 300km over 3 weeks = less than 15km per day.

The start date is (still / only) a few months away and my brain has been swamped with ideas,plans,complications,fears,etc so in order to simplify all of that, I will just say

Hey! Come join me for any part of my journey walking to Niigata!

Share with your friends as I want to meet as many people as possible along the way!

I’ve found several neat places I want to visit; do you know of others along this route?

If you cannot join during the actual walk, thank you for supporting my GoFundMe campaign for this walk. (link coming soon!)

Visit my webpage https://www.robnugen.com/quests/ for the latest updates, including a map of the plan so far.

These are my planned rest stops along the way, so please forward to your friends who live in the route. Maybe we can meet along the way to enjoy a cup of tea!

No one knows what will happen while walking from Kawasaki to Niigata so the planned points certainly may change!

Thank you Jason and everyone for your support! I look forward to seeing you on the walk!

Walking to Niigata will give me an opportunity to see the country at a slow pace and really give a chance to be mindful while walking.

Before coming to japan, I drove 11,000 miles around United States and discovered that I didn’t see everything very clearly because I was busy driving. On my Eastern side trip I drove past Cedar Point in Ohio and on the western side I drove through the redwood Forest at night, twice. Didn’t see a thing.

In Japan I rode my bicycle from Tokyo to Kyoto and (almost) back and even then it seemed too fast and I didn’t really get to see everything along the way.

to be honest, this time I might end up with the same thing because I do have a deadline to finish the whole trip, I need to be back at work by the end of golden week on the 10th of May.

But it gives me nearly a month and I’ll have plenty of flexibility I hope so we’ll see how it goes in terms of scheduling.

In terms of personal challenge, walking barefoot will certainly push my limits. I’ve heard that there will be potentially snow on the ground so that’s really not going to be easy whatsoever and may end up stopping the whole thing.

It’s certainly possible to walk in snow so I’m curious as to how much I will push myself through it if necessary.

I’m greatly looking forward to being able to say “I walked here from Kawasaki” near the end of my trip, which will likely be more satisfying than “I plan to walk to Niigata” at the beginning of my trip.

I’m also looking forward to the amusement parks along the way to need to start committing those to memory, as well as the other places I plan to stop.

Speaking of places to stop, I still need to go through and double check the list and make tweaks and call places where I want to stay during the trip.

One concern that comes up is that would further lock down my schedule so it might take some of the freedom out of the plan if I want to adjust things depending on what I see.

I’m looking forward to some stretches walking along railroad tracks including shinkansen tracks, though this shinkansen will probably be elevated so I won’t be able to see much.

Places I can think of now, not in order

• Yomiuriland
• Seijoen
• Aina water park
• Grampy
• Hendon Farm
• Jacky’s cafe
• Bunjee jump place
• Dragondola
• Between two rivers

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 bought a premium account on PlotARoute.com because it looks just about perfect for what I want to do.

• April 13th afternoon, walk from my place to Yomiuriland

Optional: ride some rides in the park!

• April 13th evening, walk from Yomiuriland to Tama River

Sleep near the river.

• April 14th, walk from Tama River to Seibuen Amusement Park

Optional: ride some rides in the park!

• April 15th morning, walk from Seibuen Amusement Park to Fujisawa Central Park

chill in park

• April 15th day, walk from Fujisawa Central Park to Aina Water Park

Hopefully play in water park

• April 16th morning, walk from Aina Water Park to Strawberry Garden

Eat ice cream!

• April 16th afternoon, walk from Strawberry Garden to BBQ Camp

Hopefully meet people willing to share some food!

• April 17th am, walk from BBQ Camp to park

chill in park

• April 17th day, walk from park to Italian restaurant

eat four cheese pizza

• April 17th evening, walk from Italian restaurant to Arakawa

Sleep next to the river

Here are some other route segments not yet converted to plotaroute.com

Seibuen Amusement Park to Tennenonsen Kachofugetsu Hot Spring via Miyamae Park, nico rico, and 5 other stops in Google Maps.

https://goo.gl/maps/FvvQDWknCoTLWpKp8

Tennenonsen Kachofugetsu Hot Spring to 鳩山町文化会舘 via Ikejiriike Park, Takakurakofuku Temple, and 6 other stops in Google Maps.

https://goo.gl/maps/B8LRVmSdopBC1cC99

鳩山町文化会舘 to 薪石窯PIZZA たんぽぽ via Kamigarako, Kamigarako, and 3 other stops

https://goo.gl/maps/pdznGMLe55z8o37EA

薪石窯PIZZA たんぽぽ to Niigata Station via Lockheart Castle and Prefectural Gunma Observatory

https://goo.gl/maps/H3g616T2Y4eY74DR8

I have decided to not stop at Lockheart Castle, I have now figured out a way to embed maps on my site. Yay plotaroute.com!

13 December 2020

First draft of the route is finished!

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 have begun to walk again in the mornings. I have posted on FB my idea of walking to Niigata. I have begun to plot out some potential waypoints for the route.

So far, I have plotted waypoints for 5+ hours to walk to Seibuen Amusement Park

https://goo.gl/maps/YgmtgwGVbAALcXdH8

Seibuen Amusement Park to Tennenonsen Kachofugetsu Hot Spring via Miyamae Park, nico rico, and 5 other stops in Google Maps.

https://goo.gl/maps/FvvQDWknCoTLWpKp8

Tennenonsen Kachofugetsu Hot Spring to 鳩山町文化会舘 via Ikejiriike Park, Takakurakofuku Temple, and 6 other stops in Google Maps.

https://goo.gl/maps/B8LRVmSdopBC1cC99

鳩山町文化会舘 to 薪石窯PIZZA たんぽぽ via Kamigarako, Kamigarako, and 3 other stops

https://goo.gl/maps/pdznGMLe55z8o37EA

薪石窯PIZZA たんぽぽ to Niigata Station via Lockheart Castle and Prefectural Gunma Observatory

https://goo.gl/maps/H3g616T2Y4eY74DR8

Though I have decided to not stop at Lockheart Castle, I have not yet figured out a way to embed maps on my site. Working on that now. The Google maps API allows “only” 20 waypoints on a map.

06:34 Saturday 04 July 2020 JST

This entry has been updated!