Walk to Waltham

The start of a new month seemed like a good time to officially start training for my Koshu Kaido walk. I had a bill to pay over in Riccarton and someone to see in Phillipstown/Waltham, so on Wednesday I decided to give my new shoes and jacket a good workout in the drizzle. Everything went well, although the body was a bit sore yesterday, probably to be expected after such a long walk with so little preparation.

Distance walked on Wednesday: 15.7km
Distance walked on Thursday: 3km
Total distance walked since Koshu Kaido training began: 18.7km
Days left until departure: 104

Post-Koshu Kaido

At just over 210km, the Koshu Kaido will be a walk in the park compared to my next big adventure.

3300km. 128 days.

I think my fate was sealed back in December 2009 when I rounded off a post about Alan Booth's The Roads to Sata with the following comment: "Writing this has made me think how interesting it would be to walk the length of Japan following the same route Booth took as a kind of experiment to see how much things have changed in the nearly 25 years since Roads to Sata was first published."

Jacket shopping

Although not on the scale of that caused by my ingrown toenail and the lingering effects of my old groin strain, the discomfort caused by my Gore-Tex rain jacket during last year's Tokaido walk was of some concern. The jacket, which I bought at Kathmandu, performed well during 2007's Nakasendo walk when we encountered a couple of day's of heavy rain caused by a passing typhoon, but that was in late-October, when temperatures were relatively cool and humidity low. In contrast, it was warm and humid when I walked the Tokaido, and although I encountered very little heavy rain (it did pour for a whole day once but luckily it was one of two scheduled rest days), I did get sick of the drizzle, mainly because my jacket didn't seem to breathe as well as it usually did and I ended up feeling quite sweaty while wearing it. I've since learnt that this is a common complaint about Gore-Tex. Apparently the humidity outside needs to be considerably less than that on the inside in order for the fabric to breathe properly, as a result of which it performs poorly in warm, humid conditions.

The thought of experiencing the same discomfort when I walk the Koshu Kaido in September (the end of summer in Japan, and also the typhoon season) prompted me to start looking for a new rain jacket a couple of weeks ago. But there was another reason. I want to save weight, and my Gore-Tex jacket is probably the heaviest item of clothing I had with me on the Nakasendo and Tokaido walks. I remember leaving to walk the Nakasendo and being quite proud of the fact that I'd kept the weight of my pack down to below 10kg (8.5kg to be precise). I probably carried about the same weight when I walked the Tokaido, but my groin problem as well as a couple of encounters with other walkers along the way, most notably Aki, got me thinking about how I could cut down on weight.

I started doing some online research. I came across a fabric called eVent, which supposedly transports moisture away from the body up to 250% faster than Gore-Tex. Unfortunately it's also hellishly expensive. Eventually I decided to go for a Marmot PreCip jacket. The fabric may not be as breathable as eVent or even Gore-Tex, but it's super light and the jacket has a couple of huge "PitZips" under the armpits which you can unzip to cool yourself down. But the best thing is I found one on special for about $100 less than the normal price. Unfortunately, it being the start of winter here, I have no way of testing it in warm, humid conditions before the Koshu Kaido walk. I have worn it a couple of times in the rain, though, and it definitely kept me dry.

Shoe shopping

Last week I went shoe shopping, and I didn't even leave the house.

I was thinking about what shoes I'll use when I walk the Koshu Kaido later this year, and decided that of all the shoes I've walked in over the years, the most comfortable were probably the New Balance 748s I wore on the Nakasendo in 2007. The only drawback was they weren't waterproof. So I checked out Amazon to see what they had in the way of waterproof New Balance walking shoes.

This pair of Gore-Tex-lined 977s caught my eye. I thought they looked pretty cool. At US$100, the price wasn't bad either. With the New Zealand dollar so strong at the moment, even with shipping included they shouldn't be more the NZ$200, I thought. On further inspection, however, I discovered that Amazon wouldn't ship them to this part of the world.

I then checked the US New Balance online store. They had the 977s for US$140, but they wouldn't ship to New Zealand either. After trying various other US-based online shoe retailers, none of which would ship New Balance shoes here, I checked New Balance's New Zealand online store. Knowing that a couple of years ago New Balance had drastically reduced the range of walking shoes they sold here to just a couple of models, I didn't hold out much hope, and sure enough they had very little, and nothing waterproof.

There was an 0800 number, so as a last resort I decided to give them a call to see if there was any chance of getting hold of some 977s. To cut a long story short, the answer was no. But when I explained what I needed them for, the man on the phone recommended some 967s instead. I hadn't heard of these before. It didn't take long, however, to work out that they were the replacement for the 966s, a pair of which I'd worn last year when I walked the Tokaido. (You may recall that these were actually women's shoes that I bought on sale. I think they were actually too narrow, because my left little toe took quite a beating on the Tokaido walk, and I ended up loosing the toenail.)

The funny thing was I hadn't seen the 967s either on Amazon or on any of the New Balance websites. When I mentioned this to the man on the phone, he said he'd have a word to the people in charge and that they should appear the next day. I was a bit skeptical, but sure enough when I checked the US and New Zealand online stores the next morning the 967s were there.

So, I put in my order and a few days later they arrived on my doorstep. I was a bit nervous about buying a pair of shoes without trying them on. Then again, rarely have a tried on a pair of New Balance shoes that don't fit. Also, I knew they came with a 30-day unconditional returns policy. I needn't have worried, however, because they fit perfectly.

The Minnesota Declaration: Truth and fact in documentary cinema

LESSONS OF DARKNESS

1. By dint of declaration the so-called Cinema Verité is devoid of verité. It reaches a merely superficial truth, the truth of accountants.

2. One well-known representative of Cinema Verité declared publicly that truth can be easily found by taking a camera and trying to be honest. He resembles the night watchman at the Supreme Court who resents the amount of written law and legal procedures. "For me," he says, "there should be only one single law: the bad guys should go to jail."
Unfortunately, he is part right, for most of the many, much of the time.

3. Cinema Verité confounds fact and truth, and thus plows only stones. And yet, facts sometimes have a strange and bizarre power that makes their inherent truth seem unbelievable.

4. Fact creates norms, and truth illumination.

5. There are deeper strata of truth in cinema, and there is such a thing as poetic, ecstatic truth. It is mysterious and elusive, and can be reached only through fabrication and imagination and stylization.

6. Filmmakers of Cinema Verité resemble tourists who take pictures amid ancient ruins of facts.

7. Tourism is sin, and travel on foot virtue.

8. Each year at springtime scores of people on snowmobiles crash through the melting ice on the lakes of Minnesota and drown. Pressure is mounting on the new governor to pass a protective law. He, the former wrestler and bodyguard, has the only sage answer to this: "You can't legislate stupidity."

9. The gauntlet is hereby thrown down.

10. The moon is dull. Mother Nature doesn't call, doesn't speak to you, although a glacier eventually farts. And don't you listen to the Song of Life.

11. We ought to be grateful that the Universe out there knows no smile.

12. Life in the oceans must be sheer hell. A vast, merciless hell of permanent and immediate danger. So much of a hell that during evolution some species - including man - crawled, fled onto some small continents of solid land, where the Lessons of Darkness continue.

Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota
April 30, 1999
Werner Herzog

Tentative Koshu Kaido schedule

Day 1: Shimo-Suwa - Chino (18.8km)
Day 2: Chino - Araki (21km)
Day 3: Araki - Nirasaki (26.7km)
Day 4: Nirasaki - Kofu (14.2km)
Day 5: Kofu – Komakai (21.7km)
Day 6: Komakai - Otsuki (23.1km)
Day 7: Otsuki - Uenohara (21.1km)
Day 8: Uenohara - Hachioji (28.6km)
Day 9: Hachioji - Chofu (20.7km)
Day 10: Chofu - Nihonbashi (25.7km)

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