Thinking Allowed: Day 73-75: Okazaki to Nagoya

Day 73: Okazaki to Arimatsu

Hours walked: 7:30-3:30

Distance walked: 26 km

Cumulative: 1,613 km

Today was National Sports Day, so we saw hordes of kids in immaculate black and white uniforms. We read about the traditional games (some, like the cavalry game, sound quite brutal, it’s like four-on-four Chicken). We decided to start our walk with the scenic route through Okazaki, complete with a nice playground, where the girls played grounders.

We are reading The Magician’s Nephew, and Kiki’s Delivery Service (an absurdly lighthearted Japanese novel). Sophia’s reading Oscar From Elsewhere to Zadie: “it’s one of the Brontë Meddlestone books. The whole time they’ve been trying to collect the nine pieces of the key, otherwise all the elves will die. They’ve got four, but the next one is with the witches and they’re really bad, soooo…”

Zadie found a marble! It was dark green with a dim red shape in the middle. It was lying in the crack of a sidewalk. That makes two marbles in three days, she has a real affinity for them.

In the evening we trained into Nagoya and mooched around in our pretty nice Airbnb while Levi romped. She has learned to yodel, and tries to mimic every word that matters: bracelet, Darwin, clean up, tofu. She can mumble all of Jump Jim Joe, and loves dance parties with her sisters (99 Luftballons is for some reason a favorite.)

She’s up to about 2 kph

Jakob is on his third hat, they’re easy to lose

Nagoya countryside

Day 74: Arimatsu to Tomiyoshi

Hours walked: 8:30-5:00

Distance walked: 26 km

Cumulative: 1,639 km

We started our walk with a lovely stroll through the neighborhood of Arimatsu. This is one of the 53 post towns of the Tokaido, and we had a great time walking past the dye workshops, float warehouses, and clay-coated wooden houses that would have fit right in 400 years ago.

It was a cool, cloudy day which made for much easier walking. We were all unusually sore and somewhat low-energy, but made steady headway all morning. Tova made up a puzzle including connecting the words ‘Ham’ and ‘Busti’ in a most obscure way (hint: move the letters forward 1 in one word, back 1 in the other word, and anagram them). We passed still rivers, a huge temple complex, a yard of elementary schoolchildren practicing a 100-person dance routine.

In the nick of time, we noticed we were right near Park Todogawa Children’s Land. The playground was awesome. Levi greatly enjoyed shouting “no-one!” while the others played Grounders; she went on the zip line with Sophia, climbed a wall of netting, and generally had a ball. Tova and Jakob then went to a hyper-upscale shop called Quote Unquote, and gawked at $300 pants, $1,200 purses and $120 wooden plates while a barista made a bespoke Colombian latte which was quite delicious.

The last hour was a smooth walk down the side of a highway. The girls entertained a delighted Levi while Tamar and Jakob walked ahead and chatted happily about all the reasons they’re ill-suited to live in Japan long-term. Then we trained back into Nagoya, decided to walk the 3 km back to our apartment instead of smooshing on the subway, and turned in early after yet another rice, veggies and tofu dinner.

One of the cutest hikers out there

Beautiful Arimatsu

Temple roofs poke up around us in every neighborhood

Levi was a bit too photogenic today

Day 75: Nagoya

Today was a rest day - it felt about time after covering almost 200 km in 8 days. Tamar and Jakob went out for an early coffee and did a crossword, while Aurora slept in luxuriantly (until at least 8, lucky her!)

We went to a bakery with the best Halloween music we’ve ever heard, and got a Magical Choco-Roll, which turned out to be a gigantic chocolate-filled torus the size of a curling rock. Then we went to the Nagoya Science museum: six floors of exhibits about chemistry, optics, nuclear power, hydraulics and more. Students were taking selfies with a giant periodic table so Levi posed too. Eventually we had lunch in a nearby park, where the girls did chin-ups and played tag on the monkey bars, while Jakob tried to recover from a bout of Museum Stupor.

Later we visited the Electricity Museum, featuring green holograms of Bohr, Maxwell and other famous nerds. There was even a whole corner of the room about Fleming’s Right-Hand Rule. Levi pushed every button in sight. There was also a room filled with various activities that were way more fun than they were electrical: reflex whack-a-mole, don’t-touch-the-walls-with-the-wand, and a giant kaleidoscope.

Our day had other minor excursions. Jakob got a haircut from a thin, elderly barber. He mixed up a sort of balsam and dabbed Jakob all over with it using a thick brush that felt like squirrel tail, delicately cut off about 80% of Jakob’s shaggy mane, then used a special razor for the outer ear. We got some new shoes and a blanket. Tamar, Tova and Zadie went out to Osu, saw J-pop artists, a cafe where clients dress up as maid dolls or something, and the biggest sriracha stand ever. Dinner was minestrone made in a small pot and pan simultaneously. It was a lovely day.