So one day I went for a walk...

Tomorrow marks the beginning of the last leg of my journey across Japan on foot, through the Fuji Hakone Izu national park and down towards Tokyo. As (bad) luck would have it that last leg threatens to start with a day where I have to go to a backup plan and take a zero. This would not be an ideal way to start towards the finish. What's going on? Well, let me give you a bit of backstory to bring you up to speed. For the last few days I have been battling a nasty stomach bug, the undignified details of which shall not be recorded here. I'm not sure if it's something I ate, or signs of a different illness, but it has left me very limited in my activities and shaken my faith in being kilometers away from the facilities. When I left Fuji yesterday, I was extremely unsure about how to approach covering the distance to my next stop in Mashima.  The route was fairly urban, but could still leave me significantly distances from a public toilet, which made me nervous . I sat ...

Yesterday I set out from Shizuoka, leaving behind me the ongoing festivities of the Daidogei street performance world cup and headed towards Fuji. Originally I had intended to break the trip to Fuji into two shorter walks, as the route was 35km long in a best case scenario. I am deeply appreciative of how much physical progress I have made over these past two months of walking, but I know that 35km in a single day is beyond me, both physically and logistically (the sun sets so early in the day now). However my plan to divide the journey in two was thwarted by an inability to find a place to stay, or locate a reasonable looking site to camp.  Along the coast to Fuji the terrain is very hilly at the best of times, so what little ground that might be good for camping was long ago developed. With this in mind I found a hostel in Fuji that was available, booked myself in, and devised a new plan. The route to Fuji would first be through a very urban section, about 10km long, be...