Day 1: Kannonzaki - Kannai

Distance covered: 30 km
Weather: Mostly cloudy

After an early breakfast at Jonathan's, a 24-hour family restaurant just a few minutes' walk from my hotel in Kannai, Yokohama, I went back to my room and sorted through my things. The weather forecast was good, and since I'd be returning there at the end of the day, I was tempted to leave my rain gear and pack at the hotel and take just my bum bag. In the end, since my pack wasn't all that big anyway (22 litres), I decided to take it - a wise decision given the wild weather I would encounter on this, the first day of my journey on foot along National Route 16.

At 6.45 am I left my hotel and walked to Hinodemachi Station on the Keikyu Line. The platforms were thronged with commuters. However, the train I wanted to catch was heading south, in the opposite direction from Tokyo, and I naively imagined it wouldn't be very crowded. But it was standing room only for the first half of the 45-minute ride to Maborikaigan. There I transferred to a bus and not long afterwards I was in front of the Kannonzaki Keikyu Hotel, the starting point for my walk. I took a moment to look northeast out across Tokyo Bay towards Cape Futtsu in Chiba, where if everything went according to plan I would be finishing my walk in ten days' time. A distance of about 6 km as the crow flies, but 241 km along Route 16. At 8.30 am I set off.

I soon came to my first hill, just a small one but steep enough to have me breathing heavily by the time I reached the top. I definitely hadn't done enough training! But at least I was rewarded with a view. And thankfully it was mostly flat for the rest of the day. The traffic was also light for the first couple of hours, and this combined with the semi-tropical vegetation and ocean views put me in a positive frame of mind.

At Yokosuka I left Route 16 to do a little sightseeing. First stop was Mikasa Park, where Mikasa, a pre-dreadnought battleship that saw action in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-5, is preserved as a museum ship. Next I took a stroll through Honcho, the bar district that caters mainly to personnel from the nearby US Navy base. I'd done a lot of research on the area for my novel, so it was interesting to see it "in the flesh," so to speak.

Not long afterwards, as I was passing through Oppama, it began to drizzle. Because it was almost lunchtime, I decided to press on until I came to a restaurant. But a few minutes later the drizzle turned into a downpour accompanied by thunder and lightning. I quickly sought refuge under a shop awning, where I donned my wet weather gear. The same wet weather gear I'd almost left at my hotel that morning. I'd bought the jacket the day before at a Montbell store in Shinjuku, so I was actually quite looking forward to trying it out. The pants I'd bought in Nagoya back in 2007 while walking the Nakasendo. I was also interested in seeing how my new "waterproof" New Balance walking shoes would perform in the wet. I waited for the thunder and lightning to stop, then braced myself and stepped out into the deluge. 

It was still raining when I eventually stopped for lunch at a bakery/restaurant near Kanazawa-Hakkei Station. As I ate my pizza set (which included a side salad and, somewhat bizarrely, a plate of three different kinds of bread) and drank my coffee, I became aware of blisters on the soles of both feet. I also felt cold. My mood, which had been so buoyant throughout the morning, was decidedly gloomy.

The rain had lifted by the time I set off again, but I still felt pretty glum for the remainder of the afternoon. Time passed slowly, and I was worried about the state of my feet. I was beginning to really regret having done so little training and having decided to cover such a long distance (30 km) on my first day. The last few kilometres were a real struggle, both physically and mentally. It was 4.30 pm by the time I arrived back at my hotel in Kannai. After dinner at a nearby Saizeriya, I had a bath in the hope that it would soak away the pain in my legs and tended as best I could to my blisters before hitting the sack.