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Breakfast used to be fun. Breakfast used to mean cereals, toast, butter, condiments, yoghurt, eggs, meats, cheeses, croissants, porridge, take your pick. Breakfast used to be cool. Breakfast these days is nothing but an exercise in confusion and anxiety. Thought you had it nailed yesterday? Well it’s back to square one for you, buddy. Unsure of how to get that fried egg cooking on the mini-stove into another dish with no fork? Unsure of why your egg has a credit-card sized slice of pork embedded in it? Clueless as to whether that decorative leaf under that sauce next the fish on the other mini-stove plate is edible? At a loss as to what those sticky beans are in that polystyrene tray? Never fear, just ask the waiter like the American guests in this room are doing.

I walk to Agematsu train station and buy my ticket to Nojiri. I have half an hour to kill before my train leaves so I wander around town to see what’s happening. A taxi driver waits outside the station, reading a newspaper with the engine running. An old man sweeps a forecourt. I see a little old lady—like ancient old, and about half my height—struggling to hang a pair of trousers up on a washing line. I cross the street to offer my assistance but by the time I get to her she’s just about managed to get the coat hanger hook over the line on the fourth attempt. (That I saw.) I worry about how she will get them down again.

At the far end of town I find a shopfront that looks unlike any other in Agematsu—it looks modern, inviting and sports no gimmicky mascot beckoning people in. It’s advertised as a woodworking shop and general workspace. I like the look of one of the picture frames in the window so I take a photo so I can plagiarise it when I get home. A guy inside the building sees me, gets up from his desk and walks my way. I’m already preparing my apologies when he benignly tells me, in English, that all the pieces—there’s the frame, wooden pens, coasters, ladles, cups and the like—are by local artists. I tell them they’re beautiful, and he says thank you, even though he made none of them. His English is almost as bad as my Japanese, but because he is under 60 and knows what the internet is we enter into a conversation via Google Translate. He asks whether I’m travelling around; he asks where I’m going to today; he reminds me to wrap up warm because it’s getting cold these days. When he finds out I’m from England he tells me he loves Radiohead and watching Glastonbury. I ask what he does and he says in charge of restoring community and culture to Agematsu. He tells me most people here are old and they are trying to make the town more attractive to younger people, like yesterday’s bakery owners whose business card I now spy in the window beside me. He also tells me he was a drummer in a band in Tokyo called フレンズ (i.e. “fu-re-n-dzu” i.e. “Friends”). I could talk to this guy all day but my train is about to leave so I bid him farewell.

The train ride to Nojiri takes 24 minutes. It will take me four hours and thirty minutes (with detours) to walk back to where I started. As I walk past the Nojiri station ticket office I notice there is a different employee to the one working yesterday, which makes me glad I chose not to eat a banana on the way. I walk out of town and pretty soon I’m in actual rural Japan—everything feels more expansive, less ordered. Every house seemingly belongs to a hoarder—the amount and variety of bric-a-brac I see in and on and around and under every house is astonishing. Broken strimmers; a sun-bleached hoover attachment; twenty-litre containers filled with empty plastic bottles; a hoseless hose reel; crates of porcelain ornaments; all neatly arranged by some logic. Just one of these houses would be enough to give Marie Kondo an aneurysm. I feel like I’m in the French countryside; I blur my eyes a little to erase the details that would tell me otherwise, and it really does feel like France—same light, same colours, same contouring, same ad hoc urban planning. I walk past a small farm and inhale the sick-sweet smell of cow manure.

I pass through Okuwa and marvel at the domestic overhead power cables. Japan loves its overhead cables. Japan is proud of its overhead cables. Japan places as many overhead cables as possible on main streets where people can see them and marvel at their greatness. I try to figure out why there are so many overhead cables. I stop at an arbitrary property and count four cables going from the master power line to the house. I’m no electrician but four seems excessive. In a show of blatant oneupmanship the building next door has six cables. I can only guess that the number of cables is a way of advertising social standing.

It must be local-election season because I see bill posters of electoral candidates everywhere. I can only read enough Japanese to decipher some of the candidates’ names. Takeda is wearing a navy suit, a navy tie, and a cheesy grin. I assume he represents a right-of-centre party because the colour scheme is overwhelmingly blue with a touch of purple. Another anonymous candidate is wearing a black suit, a blue tie, glasses and wrinkles. The colour scheme is a plain, darker blue, so I’m guessing centre-right and not quite as extreme as Takeda. I would like to see a debate where the two of them discuss the state of Japan’s power cables.

From this point on it’s pretty much tarmac sandwich all the way back to the hotel, following our beloved National Route 19. Over the road I see a car park with enough space for about 40 cars, but no building or point of scenic interest of any note besides a small memorial monument with a sculpture of a tyre on top that I can’t imagine anyone would ever drive to go and see. Again not being able to read what it’s for or whom it commemorates invites me to ascribe my own meaning. I invent a song, sung in unison by tyre-factory workers across the country as the day’s work starts and ends, with an upbeat poppy melody counterbalancing the lyrics detailing the horrific injuries and long-term illnesses suffered by factory employees in the course of daily service to the tyre industry.

National Route 19 is a busy road so I can’t just pee wherever I like as I would in the woods. From a distance I spot some lay-by toilet facilities. I’m no more than 20 metres away when a man pulls up in a mini-van and jumps in the men’s toilet ahead of me. He’s left his van’s engine running. He’s the third person I’ve seen today get out of their vehicle to perform some task or other and leave their engine running. I get ideas I do not act upon. With the gents’ toilet occupied I’m obliged to use the disabled toilet instead. I laugh when I see a bin inside.

A small hamlet brings relief from N19. I come to a crossroads at the same time as another walker coming the other way. We both pull out our phones to check directions. Since we’re both stationary I start up a conversation. I find out he’s Lithuanian and he’s walking the same route as me but in the opposite direction. He tells me his rucksack weighs about 25kg and my back creaks. He confesses he’s brought too much stuff, so I ask what would be the first thing he would get rid of. He says a pair of baggy jeans, and I do not attempt to dissuade him. He mentions that he hasn’t pre-booked any accommodation, and so far (four days in) he has spent one night camped in the woods and another in a train station. I bite my lip and try not to mention my luxury spa & mallet golf resort.

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I’m the only person on the mallet golf course except two greenkeepers hard at work. I say hard at work, but on hole 12 one of them abandons his lawnmower at the side of the fairway to come and watch me tee off. All of a sudden I feel under pressure I haven’t felt since breakfast. My strike is powerful but errant and the ball goes careening squarely into the back of idle mower at high speed. I gasp and apologise profusely but the greenkeeper is already doubled up in laughter at the ridiculous luck of the lawnmower stopping my ball from going out of bounds. I honour my good fortune and the lawnmower by making a birdie.