Thinking Allowed: Day 32-34: Kamaishi to Karakuwaosawa

Day 32: Kamaishi to Yoshihama

Hours walked: 8:00 to 3:00

Distance walked: 23 km

Cumulative: 669 km

Quote of the day: “Are any sentences invented by cannibals? Like, ‘you’re such a sweet little girl‘?”- Tova

Ah, thank heavens for an easier day! We ate a filling hotel breakfast, then set out with just one light pack of water and diapers; we’d decided to stay another night in Kamaishi so today was a ‘slackpack.’ Once again, the small roads were mostly cute with nice ocean views, while the 45 was no fun at all. For the first leg, we decided that the highway tunnel was actually safer than the typhoon-ravaged trail, and speed-walked a difficult hour to reach Tōni.

But the tunnel and road were crummy, so we then decided to take the trail to Yoshihama; a steep climb on single-tracks and forest roads. We instantly lost the trail and wandered around for a few minutes, like less than 50 meters from the trailhead. There were lots of jitters: Sophia and Zadie afraid of every flying insect, and Tova deeply offended by the grass that irritated her legs. But it turned out to be a lovely trail, and quite well-marked. And a real workout - we had a long, sustained climb on steep switchbacks for over an hour. The scenery was beautiful, we sweated freely, life was good.

We came down the mountain into Yoshihama with almost two hours to kill before the train, but luckily there was a cute beach right near the station. Nobody swam, but we enjoyed our onigiri and relaxed near the waves; it was a calm end to the hike.

The train was a single car straight out of the 1940’s: upholstered velvet seats, chandelier lights, hardwood booth tables. We did laundry, cleaned up in the onsen, bought pants for the baby, ate tasty Indian food for dinner, got ice cream, chatted with worldschooling friends and tumbled into bed, feeling grateful for a day that challenged our physical endurance more than our psychological resilience.

Not such a fun tunnel as the cars sizzled by

The trail was about a million times nicer :)

A few fallen trees from the typhoon, but no big deal

Tova inspects an insect bite on her clavicle

Day 33: Sanriku to Ofunato

Hours walked: 9:00 to 4:00

Distance walked: 20 km

Cumulative: 689 km

Quote of the day: “This is the cleanest I’ve been on such a filthy hike“ - Tamar, who’s been getting onsen time every day lately

Bonus quote: “Have as much as you want! Up to a quarter..” - Aurora to Tova, about an inari the size of a small deck of cards.

We had a yummy hotel breakfast: Tova had rice with soy sauce, corn and seaweed, she says.

We decided to bypass the section from Yoshihama to Sanriku, our first “skip” of the hike - about 5 kilometers. The tunnel felt too dangerous, and these trails have been in woeful condition as they bear the rainfall of multiple storm systems. So we took the train to Sanriku.

There, a cheery man met us at the station and hustled us off to a subshine-yellow house nearby. He mercilessly woke a Czech hiker there, even though the poor guy was fast asleep and heavily hung over after last night’s festivities. Jakob had a stilted conversation with him and learned he’s hiking northbound, but has spent the past week resting up in this little windowless house. The Czech brightened up when Tamar started asking about map apps, and now Tamar has a great topo map that works offline.

Jakob also chatted in French with a black belt named Isabelle, and soon we set off a-walking, somewhat later than planned. We didn’t want to backtrack into Sanriku so we couldn’t buy anything until well past lunchtim3. We took a seawall for better views, but it dead ended and we lost ten minutes. Tova and Sophia really wanted to go down the steep slope of the sea wall, but Jakob was too worried about our reputation

We voted between two routes (coastal or mountain), with mountain winning as (a) it’s shorter and (b) coastal had poor shoulders and busier roads. A nice old guy pulled over to warn us about the mountain road (“lots of fallen trees”); he even reappeared a kilometer later to give us his blessing. We climbed steadily on a mossy paved road, with many fallen branches from the typhoon but few actual roadblocks. Tamar almost stepped on a snake but we noticed in time and yelped. We ate a very spicy wasabi mix, which Levi inexplicably loved.

Pushing the stroller up was hard. We took turns, and drank a lot. At the pass, a sign towards the summit read: “this road is a terrible road”. Glad we aren’t going that way!

Coming down was fast and we enjoyed rhe pine forests all around us even more. In town we saw a kid blindfolded with a metal baseball bat, about to smack a head of lettuce, surrounded by kids cheering her on really loudly. We visited a playground where Tova sprinted around and Aurora sat 30’ up in a giant ropes structure. Sophia did pull ups just Iike the old days.

We got mochi at a “weirdly peaceful “ fancy French Japanese fusion pastry shop, then a supermarket dinner and so to bed in the Route Inn Ofunato after the usual laundry and onsen visits.

When your road is overgrown with moss, that’s a good sign

Tova’s entry in our family photo competition

Strolling up the mountain

The trees were festooned with spiderwebs

Spiderman :)

Day 34: Ofunato to Karakuwaosawa

Hours walked: 7:45 to 3:15

Distance walked: 25 km

Cumulative: 714 km

We started with a big chunk of walking, aiming to make it to the rest stop and tsunami museum as a first break. Tova has a couple of cracks between her toes which have been given her some grief, and her mood was pretty up and down.

We passed some striking memorials as we approached Rikuzentakata - a large apartment building left ruined up to the fourth story, the wreckage of a highway rest stop. Eventually we reached the tsunami museum, which was somewhere between sobering and upsetting. We saw footage of the earthquake and tsunami, read accounts of firemen, office workers, families, and learned about the history of tsunamis in the region; the coastline’s complex shape and numerous bays actually makes it more vulnerable to tsunamis as the waves get funneled into smaller mouths and pushed further inland.

So we were all kind of somber as we set off again. Fortunately, a kind lady and her little girl stopped their car soon afterwards and gave us orange icy poles, which was a nice pick-us-up. But Tova was struggling with aching feet and it was still quite far to the campsite … so we decided to shorten our day a bit and take the train into Kesennuma. Turns out the train has been a bus ever since the disaster, but regardless we made it to Hotel La’gent by dinner. It was a bit rundown, and so expensive that we actually reran our reservation on booking.com - then had to wait almost an hour to get into our rooms. An extremely jovial Austrian chatted us up, we got Tova some toe socks at Daiso, at a humble dinner from the supermarket, and turned in on some mighty hard single beds.