Tokaido Epilogue 1: Fundraising update

Thanks to many lovely and very generous people, the Tokaido trek has helped raise over $1500 for the Indigenous Literacy Foundation and their great work providing books and other literacy-related services for some of the most disadvantaged children in Australia. To everyone who has contributed, heartfelt gratitude.

Sadly, however, I’m still $425 short of my target – which means, as things stand, I’ll be spared a night in one of Japan’s legendary capsule hotels. Back when I set the target, I hoped that the promise of consigning me to a night of discomfort in a box little bigger than a coffin would encourage people to contribute to not only a very worthwhile cause (Indigenous literacy) but also a slightly sadistic one (me: capsule).

The good news is that the fundraiser is still open, and I have nine more nights in Japan! Currently I plan to spend all of them in the comfort of a conventional hotel room (bed, floor, standing room … that sort of thing), but I can change the schedule to accommodate a night in a capsule if the target is met. Pictures will be posted for your delectation and amusement.

So if you’ve been thinking about contributing – perhaps waiting to see whether I would actually walk all the way from Tokyo to Kyoto (executive summary: I did) – now would be the perfect time to do so. This link will take you directly to my ILF fundraising page.

Thank you!

Tokaido prologue

Hiroshige, Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido . No. 26: Kakegawa I visited Japan in 2017 and 2019, on the second occasion with Fred, as well as my partner (with whom I’d travelled in 2017) and her son. Like most people who come for the first (or second) time, we took the Shinkansen – bullet train – from Tokyo to Kyoto on the line called the Tokaido. Volumes have been written about the wonders of Japan’s Shinkansen system. It is, I think, something that should be experienced at least once in everyone’s life if possible. ‘Tokaido’ means ‘eastern sea road’, and the line bears that name because it follows – more or less – the route of the centuries-old road that linked the Imperial capital of Kyoto with the Shogunate’s headquarters in Edo (now Tokyo), respectively the seats of ceremonial and administrative power. For hundreds of years, thousands of travellers made the 500-kilometre trip between the two cities (and usually back again), the vast majority of them on foot: horses were rare, t...

Tokaido Day 1 – Thursday, 9 November: Nihombashi to Kawasaki (22 km)

Link to GPS track Any sense of excitement at the dawn of the day that I would actually start this thing I’d been planning for so long was somewhat subsumed by the need to organise my gear and arrange for stuff I wouldn’t need for a couple of days to be sent on to the next hotel. The front desk staff at the Hotel Sunroute in Asakusa were, of course, extremely helpful and told me that the bag would arrive at the Terminal Hotel in Odawarra the next day. That still left me with a pack that was heavier than I’d been expecting – I guess about 15 kg – and it was with a slight sense of trepidation that I checked out and headed to the subway to catch the Ginza line to Nihombashi. Nihombashi – which I think just means ‘Japan bridge’ – marks the start of the Tokaido and is traditionally the place from which all distances to Tokyo are measured. Today its historical significance is not immediately apparent, not least because of the dominating freeway overpass that crosses above. However, the c...

Tokaido Day 2 – Friday, 10 November. Kawasaki to Totsuka (27 km)

Light rain punctuated the day. For much of the time it was more of a nuisance to hold the umbrella than to get slightly damp, but although humid it was reasonably cool and pleasant walking conditions. Like the previous day, today was short on scenic beauty but long on immersion in the ‘real’ Japan of shops and houses and schools and workplaces. And people. To get back to Kawasaki from Odawara involved three trains, including a 15-minute blast on the Shinkansen to Ofuna. From Kawasaki station entrance I picked up the Old Tokaido route, and after a couple of kilometres at Hatcho-nawate came across this roadside memorial. A nearby plaque said it was to honour people whose remains had been unearthed in the area, suggesting they had been victims of natural disasters such as “earthquakes, large fires, floods, famine and epidemics”. A little further on was the day’s first shrine, a very small one set on a mound that had once been an ichi-ri-zuka or ‘one-ri-mound’. A ri was a unit of mea...

A Single Step

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