Thinking Allowed: Day 2: Wakkanai to a remote beach

Hours walked: 7:30 - 5:00

Distance walked: 32 km

Cumulative: 61 km

We woke up before 6, ate muffins and leftover soup, and hit the road a bit later than we’d hoped; packing up with a baby is not easy! We passed many schoolchildren on our way out of town, all wearing the same loaf-shaped backpacks. One curious boy stared at us so long he ended up late, sprinting after the bell rang. Just after leaving town, we realized we’d forgotten to buy matches! How would we cook our sumptuous dinner? Jakob power walked back, bought some and caught up. The sun soon beat down on us; it was a very hot day. Our sidewalk eventually vanished but the shoulders remained decent.

At a post office in Bakkai, we asked to fill water. They smilingly obliged, and also gave us five small ‘donuts’. So we got out one of our hand-drawn decals (Tamar had the bright idea of printing out a bunch that Sophia and Tova drew) and the girls presented the postwoman with one. The woman’s eyes and mouth grew perfectly round. “Arigatooooo!” she gasped. We ate the donuts outside an empty temple, they were very sweet. Later we had lunch in a very Japanese rest stop, with soft classical music playing and giant hornets buzzing around the ceiling and terrifying the children. Our final break was huddled in the meager shade of a road sign, trying to escape the blazing sun.

We had nowhere to camp, but scraped our way down an overgrown trail to reach a beautiful, deserted beach facing Rishirifuji, a gorgeous, smoking volcano 20km offshore. This was a huge relief after fears of being stuck in a marsh next to the road. Tova and Zadie bathed, soothing their fairly nasty hiker’s rashes; between those, some back pain and heat exhaustion for Jakob, and an asthma attack for Aurora, it was a challenging day.

We were low on water, so the sumptuous dinner was nixed in favor of a half apple (sandy), a half cucumber, and some walnuts, for each. We buried our food in the sand using some laundry hampers washed up onshore, put up our tents hopefully above the tideline, and fell asleep very fast indeed.

Bonus monologue by Tova from today’s walk: “I don’t care if you spoil my kids, I just have a couple of rules.

1) No Coca Cola

2) No whiskey

3) No meat

4) No motorcycles

5) No cigaretting, including secondhand smoke

6) No letting them get mosquitoes in their ears

7) No greasy pizza

8) No buying them lots of new clothes, the maximum is 1

9) No cavities

10) You are allowed to buy them, like, goggles and surfboards