I am just back from taking part in the 2025 Tojinbo 62km ultra, and it has been a great experience. So, at the risk of boring everybody, here is the story, with pictures.
I am just back from taking part in the 2025 Tojinbo 62km ultra, and it has been a great experience. So, at the risk of boring everybody, here is the story, with pictures.
I am currently in Japan for nearly a month, a blend of work and simply wanting to visit (I manage to spend some time here most years). I was looking for a run that would be something different and my friends suggested this one, from Katsuyama to Mikuni, in the Fukui area. This is an area I have not visited before – about 320km (200 miles) West of Tokyo.
The race was on Saturday (31 May), so I needed to travel from Tokyo to register and pick up my race number. I was staying in an AirBNB in Tokyo, so, to save money, my AirBNB finished on Friday and I will move to a new one on Sunday. To get to Fukui, I travelled by Shinkhansen from Tokyo Station. So I took my large suitacase and in a mixture of Japanese and English, left it for three days in the left luggage service (near the Maranouchi North exit).
The Shinkansen from Tokyo to Fukui is a very fast, very comfortable 3-hour journey.At Fukui station, I had my first glimpse of the theme of the area and my trip. About 80% of all dinosaur fossils found in Japan have been found in the Fukui area, and the local people have massively embraced the theme.After the Shinkansen, the complete opposite, but very cute, Echizen train. This train runs from Fukui to Katsuyama, where the race starts and where I spent Friday and Saturday night. This train took nearly an hour to travel the 30 km (19 miles) to Katsuyame, stopping every couple of km.At Katsuyama Station, I picked up my race number, met to only two other Westerners in the race, and took a shuttle bus to my hotel.The hotel did not serve dinner so after settling into my room, I took a stroll, looking for somewhere to eat and to buy some snacks for breakfast. This is the sun setting over the mountains and reflected in the water in the rice paddy field – more about rice below.For dinner, I found a small restaurant run by an elderly couple. Not surprisingly, they spoke no English, and the menu was all in Japanese. I was delighted to be able to order a meal and get what I thought I had ordered 🙂 I speak and read a little Japanese, and I went for a tempura set, which is a relatively simple option (and one of my favourites).At 5:15 am, a bus picked us up to take us to the start at the Heisenji temple. The start would be in two waves, 6:00 am and 6:30 am – I was in the 6:30 am wave. The dinosaur theme was in full swing, as you can see from the three people here.There was a bag drop where I handed over a small bag of clothes to put on at the end of the race. We would be finishing 62km away at Mikuni. From Mikuni I would need to take two trains to get back to my hotel and my stuff.Here we are, ready to start the second wave at 6:30 am. Just before this interview, I was interviewed by the MC as I was the only foreigner in the second wave. This was a bit nerve-wracking as it was in Japanese. I did know what the questions were going to be, so I had a chance to prepare my thoughts. If they recorded it, I will be curious to see how bad I was, but people seemed to like it.Once we got running, one of the first impressive views of the day was of Katsuyama Castle.We then ran back into Katsuyama, which was one of the only stretches of road that had been closed. On the right is another interesting building, containing the Echizen Daibutsu, a large statue of the Buddha.The five-story pagoda is part of the same site.This is not one of my photos; we did not go into the site. But I wanted to share a sense of how big the statue of Buddha is; it is the largest indoor statue of Buddha in Japan and is housed in the great hall.Not long after Katsuyama, and after a steep climb, we reached the Dinosaur park and museum. We got the chance to run through a section of the park.In the park, there were a lot of dinosaurs.
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Running with dinosaurs – with sound.
One of the highlights of the park was a run through a forest populated with animatronic dinosaurs. It felt slightly dangerous as the path was narrow, steep, quite uneven, and wet. But, we all wanted to look sideways to see the dinosaurs, and sometimes a runner would suddenly stop in front of you to take a photo, but it was a cool experience.
After the dinosaur park, the scenery was dominated by rice paddy fields.
Here was a wonderful food stop with a youth drum band
Food station with drums.
One of the great things about the Tojinbo race is the food stops. Every 2 to 5 km, there was a food stop, and each one was unique. Noodles, rice with fish, fruit, ice cream, and much, much more. At the food stop above, we also had a youth drum band.
Here is an example of some of the food at an aid station.Dinosaurs are everywhere in the Fukui region, not just in te Dinosaur Park
Getting back to the running. I set off at a steady pace, partly constrained by the crowd, but also by not wanting to run too fast. Quite early in the race, I felt today was not going to be a fast day, so I settled into a comfortable pace I could run all day. I am a fan of monitoring my heart rate, and I kept the average close to 111 beats a minute, exercising, not exerting too much.
Sometimes we ran by the river, making its way to the sea,But usually we ran by paddy fields, reflecting clouds and mountains.Rice requires a lot of work; here is a farmer tending to his paddy field. This is a ride-on transplanter that takes nursery-grown seedlings and plants them in the ground. On smaller fields, I also saw people doing it by hand.There were also many fields of winter barley. Here, the farmer is using a small harvester to gather the barley. At every corner, he had to reverse the machine and swing it round to maximise the amount harvested from relatively small fields.This food stop even included a barbecue. The waiting would have been too long for me, but plenty of people were enjoying it.As we approached 60km we got our first view of the sea.As we approached Tojinbo we could see the bridge we would run over (and back) to visit the island, Oshima.
We ran over the bridge to Oshima, reached the gar and ran back. The video shows the afternoon weather will.
Here is the bridge to Oshima, it captures the afternoon weather.Over the bridge, we reached a gate and a shrine. We rounded the cone and headed back over the bridge.Eight hours and 21 minutes after I started, here I am at the finish, very happy with the run. Slower than I hoped, faster than I feared, and pretty comfortable.
It turns out the event is called Tojibo Maranic – and Maranic is a mashup of Marathon and Picnic.
The day was not over, not by a long way. There was a walk to the shuttle bus, which took me into Mikuni. Then a one-hour ride of the cute, but slow, Echizen railway to Fukui. At Fukui I had an amazing sushi meal and bought some bakery products for my dinner back at the hote, Then it was the one-hour train back to Katsuyama, a 30-minute walk to the hotel, and finally a much needed shower.
Outside of my comfort zone We all need to be outside our comfort zone from time to time, and this weekend was definitely outside mine. The challenge was not so much the run, as long as I take it steady and avoid injury, 62km on this sort of course requires effort, but it is not a new experience. The challenge was going to a new region, where I would need to rely on my shaky Japanese, navigating buses and local trains.
My main takeaway is that I need to push myself harder to speak more Japanese and to put myself in situations where I have to use it. Yes, my Japanese is poor, but people are wonderful and they are happy to work with me to establish some understanding.
From a running point of view, I do need to train a bit more and lose some weight. If I were in better shape, I could have run this race in about seven hours. But, to be honest, I would not have enjoyed seven hours any more, or any less, than my eight hours.
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