Yay just arrived in Yumotokan. The host said the onsen is very hot.

Lots of pics on the way here, but first wash feet, contact Jason, maybe have dinner with him.

Oh, maybe I can start them uploading… oh but I want to name the photos.

I can pop them up to cloud and deal with them “later”, hopefully sooner!

Here are the paper maps I used to walk today. Most of them have segments labeled with the number of (left) footsteps I took during each segment.

Hang on.. is that a recycling center?

Indeed it is!

François would like to have a seat here

I believe these are steel cans

I think these are for oil

How do they collect this many of the same type of can?

rusted cans hmm I wonder how long these have been here

Past the tunnel, I turned left on a little street which I assume was here long before the tunnel.

Lots of interesting things to see, including some free cedar logs!

don’t throw rubbish here. This character will be sad if you do!

I could not see anything on this sign (but dirt)

Ya might want to turn here

I wonder how this tree was shattered. I would guess lightning but I don’t see scorch marks

Found an opportunity for a selfie

Ya might want to ignore this sign

I thought these small ferns were cute

I guess this cart plans to stay here a while

From where does this water come?

François at construction site

The first little road ended here

start of the second little road

Apple trees, prepping to make apples

Looking back at the start of the third little road

Blue roof and yellow flowers

This hill looks positively pointy.. I wonder what the tip is like when standing there?

Red roof within apple orchards

cute pond and concrete for what? I wanted to put François on it, but decided it was too far away from the edges of the pond to do safely, and the locals might wonder what I was doing..

I tried to get the cloud reflection here

My first tunnel!

Fortunately I had earplugs

Back into reality

Quiz: what is this? Not the cloud, the black surface on the ground.

Good morning from みどりの村キャムプ場, which has a pretty nice setup of bungalows and such. Not much food in the camp area, but a coveni is outside the property.

Feelings slightly nervous about engaging the mountains. it’s definitely colder here, and apparently 10 degrees C at the place I will be for tomorrow night.

Regarding the phone saga, they will send a new phone to the place I will be Tuesday night.

Mountains and hills coming soon to a walk near me!

Now it’s time to pack!!

Feeling

Feeling great right now, and just discovered that I already created a way to generate updates using a Perl script.

Recently

Phone died yesterday afternoon; ended up taking today sans walking as a result. Printed maps at 7-11 and plan to use them tomorrow to walk.

Now

Lin is resting beside me and noted tomorrow is going to be a bit of a long day walking. I am grateful for my day off today! (Day 10)

Coming up

Tomorrow will be a 20km day through the foothills(?) and/or mountains. Yikes stripes am I ready for this?

Just to be super clear, I did not have to walk from Sky Terme Shibukawa to Midorinomura camp area.

Lin and I woke up for breakfast at 6:30, packed, then spent the morning driving around trying to get my handset working again.

Amazingly, the shop staff was able to reboot my phone with a llllonnnngggg press (18 seconds) of the power button. I thought I had “done everything” but apparently I hadn’t done that.

The phone kept rebooting, though, and never could get past the opening screen or so.

Looking up online, I found a Stack Exchange issue of something determining that low memory was causing his phone to reboot. I mentioned this to the staff so they offered to sell me a larger Micro SD card:

• 64GB for 9,700 yen
• 128GB for 17,000 yen

I had seen much better prices in Shibuya, so Lin drove to the local Yamada Denki where I got a larger Micro SD card:

• 256GB for 5,780 yen

I put the new card into the old phone but it still just kep rebooting.

Back to the phone shop to tell them the card did not help. They were super confusing. Here are the responses I understood over the hour we were there.

• “We can’t help you.”
• “We can loan you a phone.”
• “We can probably get you the same model here, today.”
• “We can’t get the same model.”
• “We cannot loan you a phone because we cannot reach our sibling shop near your house.”
• “We cannot loan you a phone because you have a 5G contract and we only have 4G phones.”

Good grief. Anyway, Lin and I gave up with them after an hour of this, plus calling the CSR line who were only able to “Send a phone to my house” and could not interfere with management of the local shop.

We ate lunch, then went to 金島温泉, which was small, cheap, clean(?), and fine, but got about 2 stars from me and low rating from Lin as well.

We finished around 4pm there which was too late for me to then walk to my place for tonight, so she is joining me in a bungalow at 緑の村キャムプ area.

I am a little bummed because this was to be the day I started walking up mountains, but I am also happy to receive a day off from walking.

Oh, and surprising to me, though my phone is stuck on a screen saying “Just a sec…” it can still receive calls on my phone number. That is a great relief; at least I have connection if people call me. I cannot make calls out, though.

Oh, I was able to print the maps for the next 6 days or so. Tomorrow I plan to start walking using paper maps.

Here was the plan for Day 10

The phone can boot

and reboot

and reboot

and reboot

I found an issue with Android halting when low/no memory so I bought a new SD card but still have the same issue. At least I got a good price on the card.

256GB micro SD with adapter: (5,780 yen + tax) 6,358 yen

Back to phone shop to see if they will make good on the warranty.

13:19 Sunday 25 April 2021 JST

They were not willing to sort me out with a loaner phone.

At first the reason was they could not contact my local shop via phone.

Then when we were like “well there are many other shops near Tokyo” they said they could not give a loaner phone because I am on a 5G contract and they don’t have a 5G phone.

What an incredible reason is that?? Especially given that half the fuckin' time I look at my phone, it is on 4G because we are in the middle of no 5G towers.

20:08 Sunday 25 April 2021 JST

Just called CSR and they will send a new same model of phone to my hotel location. Nice!

I walked sans phone yesterday (Day 11)