Day 41 of Running the Length of Japan – Hashimoto to Otsuki (51.41 km)
Start of day 401. 41 now. 41 now. It’s not 40. 40 was yesterday. Okay. We’re over halfway. We’re heading up into the mountains today and it’s going to rain on us this afternoon. This afternoon. But we’ve had a lovely evening and camped over here and we’re going that way. This is absolutely breathtaking today. That bridge over there is quite cool. [Music] What do you think of these signs, Joy? It’s just stupid. I must hit it on somewhere else. Here comes Joy cycling back after she’s lost all her rain gear. At least she’s found it. Here she is. You feeling silly? No. Anyway, push day. [Music] in the rain again. But at least the views looks beautiful. We’re always doing another rain day. Really, really nice. [Music]
The day started with a trek uphill. It felt really good to be heading out of the city and into the wild. We were soon amongst trees and small villages, before reaching a lake covered in rowers.
For parts, we followed the old Kōshū Kaidō. It’s one of the five major routes from the Edo period. It was built to connect Tokyo) with the Yamanashi Prefecture, and we’ll be more or less following bits of it until close to Matsumoto.
We made good time through the morning, and even with the clouds forming above us, we got our first glimpse of Mt Fuji in the distance. The ups and downs (mostly ups) continued and afterr lunch, the rain came. I put on my rain gear, Joy did not. She had lodged her rain gear securely on the luggage, rather than storing it inside. That way, it was easy to get to once the rain started. Unfortunately, secure wasn’t quite as secure as she expected.
We decided to backtrack to find it. Joy cycled ahead, and I followed along, scanning the road as I ran. Just over a kilometre later, I received a message, she’d found the waterproofs by the bridge where she’d stopped to take photos. We had been so lucky. If it hadn’t rained, we’d have got to the hotel before realising they were missing. If it had rained later, we might not have gone back. If it had dropped somewhere else, it might have been run over or lost. A small bit of misfortune was followed by a large dose of luck.
We then carried on for the last 10 kilometres into Otsuki. It had been a really good day, and we took our rather soggy selves into the hotel to get dry, eat a convenience store dinner and do laundry.