So one day I went for a walk...

I am sitting in the common room of banana hammock now, my bag repacked, water reservoir topped up and stomach full. Today won't be an extremely challenging walk.  I will take the train downtown to the start of the Tokaido road in Osaka.  From there it will be 9-10km to my next guest house, and Kyoto in 3 days. Once there I will stay for a week to explore before setting out on the next leg to Nagoya. I am once again walking.  We will see where this new route takes me.

Today was my last idle day on Osaka. The weather is slowly falling, and the intense humidity that strangled the city, making 32C feel like 42C, is subsiding. I have enjoyed my time in Osaka immensely, and made a great friend in Takanori in the process.  But I can't stay forever.  I still plan to reach Tokyo by foot before the end of November, just not on the route I originally and painstakingly researched. Instead, I have chosen to alter my route to trace the Edo era road that connected Osaka and Tokyo (then called Edo) that runs predominantly through lowlands and the southern coast. This new route is about 2/3rds the length of my previous one, clocking in at about 600km, and will follow far more urban routes, with less stints into the wilderness than originally planned. This change in route is a response to the condition on my right knee, strained before I left Canada, and further aggravated in the mountains outside of Osaka.  I could have chosen to stubbornly th...