Formalities

Hello, world

Being a relatively private kind of person, I find the prospect of "baring my soul" to the world, of sharing my innermost thoughts and feelings with total strangers, rather intimidating, if not downright terrifying. So why the blog?

Well, I've decided to embark on a walking adventure. To be precise, I'm planning to walk the inland route (the Nakasendo) between Kyoto and Tokyo - a distance of just over 530 km. And a blog seemed the perfect way to keep track of and record my progress as I prepare for - and hopefully complete - this adventure.

The idea for the walk came to me a couple of months ago after watching a documentary on TV called The Naked Rambler. The doco was about an ex-marine who walked the length of the UK wearing nothing but a pair of boots. He also carried an enormous pack (odd considering he can't have needed much in the way of changes of attire, although I noticed he did occasionally don clothes - much to the chagrin of the "true" nudists he met along the way).

Anyway, to the great relief of my family, I never really seriously considered the naked part, but the idea of an epic walk immediately appealed to me. And it didn't take long to work out where I wanted to go. I've had a fascination with the "highways" of Edo period Japan since I started studying Japanese more than 20 years ago. Even then I dreamt about walking them. The most famous of these highways is the Tokaido, the coastal route between Tokyo and Kyoto, whose name lives on in the form of the Tokaido railway and Shinkansen lines. I have walked a short section of the original Tokaido through a lovely cedar forest near Hakone, but for the most part the Tokaido is buried under modern highways and railway lines. Another drawback is that I've travelled this route or parts of it many times before.

Like the Tokaido, the Nakasendo was established in the Edo period to facilitate passage between the old capital (Kyoto) and the new (Tokyo). But instead of running along the coast, the Nakasendo goes inland. This makes it slightly longer, and of course hillier, and while most of the Nakasendo, too, is today under concrete, some sections of it and even one or two towns along the way have been preserved. It also passes through some relatively out-of-the-way parts of Japan which I've never been to before.

I originally envisaged doing this alone (I was pretty sure I didn't know anyone crazy enough to want to come with me), maybe taking my video camera along to document things, but when I mentioned the idea to my friend Erik in New York during a Skype session, he decided he wanted to come along. Which is great. He also expressed a desire to organise an art project to tie in with the walk, something that I wasn't keen on at first, but have since warmed to.

So that, in a nutshell, is the premise. More tomorrow. I'll also try to post a map or two.

Distance walked today: 2.1km
Total distance walked since blog began: 2.1km