Thinking Allowed: Day 23-25: Kuji to Iwaizumiomoto

Day 23: Kuji to Tamagawa

Hours walked: 7:00-1:00

Distance walked: 17 km

Cumulative: 500 km!

Today we made it to 500km! We had another very hot day, but a relatively short one with some cold drinks and ice cream to cope along the way.

At one point a slightly hyper photographer with a wild grey ponytail pulled over and asked if he could take our picture. He drove 100m down the sidewalk, pulled a tripod out of the back of his car, and snapped a few photos. At one point he hollered the same word at us literally 30 or 40 times in a row, we had no idea what was going on. Later Tova hollered it into my phone and it translated as “hold on” which makes sense. He gave us Amachan buttons and we gave him a sticker.

We finished early, but decided not to walk further and train back since it added an extra 4 km of back-and-forthing. Around lunchtime we got to a nice playground, so the kids played while we stressed about finding accommodation.

The campsite was nice but a bit eerie. We were in a remote field atop eroding cliffs, with one dark old house, locked up, with a stained knife on a table inside the window. There was a large hornet’s nest there too. But Tova and Zadie played in the waves and had a lot of fun. We had the field all to ourselves, so it was super quiet and peaceful. We enjoyed pesto pasta for dinner with weird tofu worms, and turned in early as usual.

Levi is starting to walk the roads with us

Checking out the waves

Levi absolutely adored a cool bath on this hot day

Our road hugs the coastline sometimes

Day 24: Tamagawa to Aketo

Hours walked: 6:30-3:00

Distance walked: 25 km

Cumulative: 525 km

We started early in an effort to beat the heat; though we realized that 4:30AM sunrises mean 8AM is already approaching the hottest part of the day.

We reached a small town with a fish market - the misshapen squid and swollen purple creatures that looked like ox hearts weirded us out, so we went to a small grocery with slim pickings: plums, cucumbers, milk and yogurt. We did not have much food for the rest of the day.

But then: Rest stop! It appeared out of the blue, and was ludicrously helpful. Within an hour, we’d done laundry, enjoyed soft serve, charged our phones, disposed of all our garbage, and even enjoyed tofu sandwiches at a vegetarian restaurant!

Tova, feeling inspired, volunteered to carry Levi - just as our trail shot upwards into a steep climb . Her speed slowed and slowed, to like 1kph. Everyone got upset. It was 30C and tempers frayed. Nearing the top of the climb, it got very buggy, and everyone trudged along flapping their hats. The stroller was worst, like a bug magnet. Poor Levi had flies swarming all around her. But eventually we made it to a long series of switchbacks downhill to a green valley.

Zadie’s newest game is to sing songs, one letter at a time. As we walked along she recited the whole Good Ship Lollipop: “oh en tee aitch ee gee oh oh dee ess” etc etc etc etc.

Then a friend of Tamar’s messaged about the approaching typhoon - wait, what!?! Indeed, it turned out a freaking typhoon was headed our way! Our B&B in Omoe was right next to the ocean and directly in the path of the typhoon. We considered fleeing to Miyako (1h away), Morioka (3h), Sendai (5h) or even Tokyo (6h by bullet train). Or should we just stick with the plan and ride out the storm up close and personal? The kids loitered while we frantically searched poorly-translated Japanese hotel websites. Jakob called at least 30 hotels and inns, with little success. We fretted big-time.

Our campsite, next to a little golf course, let us pay $20 to set up our tent on a grassy field, and charge our phones in a nice bathroom. We have only seen one other tent in our last three nights of camping, seems odd in mid-August.

Moods stayed low. Sophia realized she’d lost her amethyst bracelet while carrying Levana on the hike, and was inconsolable At dinner, we discovered all the noodles had gone bad in the heat, so we just had miso paste, hot water, two carrots and a whole lot of tofu. It was pretty good actually. The kids made cocoa for dessert.

At bedtime, Jakob checked storm updates one last time and saw that after a second earthquake in southern Japan, the president had issued the first-ever “megaquake warning”, a massive 8.0-9.0 temblor that is “70-80% likely to happen in the next 30 years” causing a 30-meter-high tsunami to kill a quarter million people. He peeked out of the tent and calculated distances to high ground, then spent two hours trying to fall asleep and not have a panic attack. Thanks Nature!

Near the top of a gigantic hill, feeling pooped

This topiary garden was a beauty!

Possibly the saddest, most desolate playground we’ve ever seen

Day 25: Aketo to Iwaizumiomoto

Hours walked: 6:30-12:15

Distance walked: 22 km

Cumulative: 547 km

“How do you solve a problem like Mariaaa?” Tamar was the singer, and Maria was the Severe Tropical Storm / Typhoon which was about to rain on our long-distance parade.

We pulled out all the stops in trying to find an accommodation - in the end, the mother of a friend of the son of a friend of Jakob’s (who he hasn’t seen in person in at least 20 years) turned out to be our saviour: Hiroko-san sifted through hotel websites and found a Japanese-only deal in Morioka that brought the cost of two beds for three nights from ridiculous to 55% of ridiculous.

Our day started off cool; stormy weather loomed all around, but it never quite reached us: we only got a few raindrops all day.

A couple of km in, it was time to haul the stroller up a gigantic hill: half an hour of full body workout, four of us swapping out every 20-30 seconds like hockey players; it felt like pushing a wheelbarrow of cement up San Francisco’s biggest hill. By the top we were drenched in sweat, and Tova ran around fanning everyone enthusiastically with Sophia’s barbershop fan.

Breakfast was a lot of makeshift snacks: green beans, Marie kjeks, sesame sticks, rice crackers, peanuts, then (once we hit a mom n pop grocery) milk, bananas, fried sweet potato, and weird red bean paste buns.

After some fast walking we made it to Iwaizumiomoto, and bailed out hard from our trail: we took a train to Miyako, then a bus almost two hours inland to Morioka. It was a shock to suddenly find ourselves in a city of a quarter million people! We had some tasty local reimen bowls, then took yet another train to neighboring Yahaba. We walked two kilometers to our hotel (the Route Inn) and breathed a massive sigh of relief: we’d escaped the typhoon!

Checking in was total gift overload: it happened to be the hotel’s 5th anniversary, plus we are now proud Route Inn members, so we got: Amenity sets including onsen towels, slippers and toothbrushes; 3 juices/ciders, a chessboard towel, *30* drinks tokens, 6 French chocolates, 3 sets of pencils, rulers and erasers, 18 breakfast vouchers, and onsen passes.

Our rooms were cozy and clean, everything we’d hoped for. We all showered, then got a quick snack at the nearby Lawson before snuggling into bed (well, most of us: we only had two queen size beds, so Aurora and Tova were on sleeping pads).