Walkabout

Saturday wasn’t terribly eventful… mostly going to a tavern-type place (izakaya) with some friends after hanging out with Liz at her house for a few hours. She put up some Christmas decorations and I showed her a thing or two about her new macbook laptop!

The next day I joined the townspeople of my area for a walkathon! I wasn’t quite sure why the town was having a walkathon until much later, but the reason for it was that the bridge connecting the main road to itself was completed. Now I am able to take a main road from my house to anyone else’s house, which will be great once it starts to snow. Before I would have to take one of three back roads to get anywhere. This cuts my travel time by about 10 minutes, which is handy!

I suppose the walkathon was in celebration of this bridge, and for the hell of it. As autumn seems to be turning into a strange, moist season (it rains or hails 99% of the time now), I think everyone was keen to walk while the weather was still manageable.

Luckily for the people of Tsutsukawa, Ine and Honjo, the weather was lovely! It was in the 50’s and the day was clear and even a bit warm (or maybe it was all the walking). The walk was divided into three courses, 4 kilometers, 7 kilometers and 10 kilometers. None of them was too long or arduous. I joined the boss of the Board of Education (or rather he sort of made me join him) and some of his family. He had a daughter (in law?) and three grandchildren. Hamano-san is an energetic and kindly old man. I think he likes hanging out with the town gaijin because it makes him look good to the rest of the town and interesting to his colleagues. I would have spent the time with my students, but I suppose the company wasn’t lacking!

There were a lot of children and elderly people joining in the walk (and I am talking ELDERLY, like people in their 80’s and 90’s). Many of them decided on the shorter courses, but I was impressed nonetheless! Many of the children joined the walk as well with their parents and friends. Most of them did the full 10 kilometers. The baseball team ran the whole thing! I was so impressed by that. It wasn’t just 10 kilometers around a track; it was up and down Seaside Mountains and everything! We even saw a miniature dauschund walking the 10 km hike! He seemed pleased. The whole thing took just under three hours with the constant stopping to appease the 3 year old. It’s hard to make a 3-year-old walk five miles without stopping, it really is. He, Harunori, was a pretty awesome kid though, and didn't’ complain once. When he got tired he would simply sit down until his mother came to fetch him and carry him on her back. The walk was beautiful, and because nobody stretched, we were all very sore the next day. My feet hurt quite a bit by the end of it, but instead of falling asleep on the floor of my hallway, I managed to drive South and hang out with some people at a Korean-style restaurant before going to a shopping mall and buying a new watch.

Nothing else remotely interesting happened, which was fine by me! I’ve had enough crazy weekends so this was a nice relaxing one for a change.