Akihiro cleaned himself up and graduated properly by the following spring (he bowed out of the ekiden on his fourth year to concentrate on his finals). After graduation, he pursued a career at a non-profit organization as a software developer engineer. At the reunion timeline, Version 2.0 of his tracking software* has just been slated for an international release. Akihiro became an active member of Namban Rengo (Tokyo’s International Running Club), and continues to participate in various running activities across the country with like-minded fellows.

*I didn’t mention this in my Q&A, but in the novel, Nico actually came up with a running simulator software program (with Yuki’s assistance), that was supposedly able to track, compare and calculate each runner’s speed and final positions in the race. It didn’t work very well though, because it was running so slowly that the rest thought it’s just faster to calculate with pen and paper, lol!

Yohei was still out of work for a good six months after graduation, so he accepted a sales job at a Television network when it opened up. While it’s not his dream job, he did find that he was good at it so he stuck with it (he could keep a conversation going, and was good at making pitches to achieve a sale). Working at a TV station also has its perks, as it brought him closer to the variety shows that he enjoys watching. At the reunion timeline, he’s already at a senior rank where he gets to train new recruits. He still has difficulty connecting with people on an intimate level*, but recently, a new starry-eyed junior who just joined his team has showed interest in his favourite show, and his enthusiasm reminds Yohei of someone he knew back at Aotake…

*Yohei explained his thoughts a lot clearer to me in the novel than in the anime. Yohei sees the ekiden as also fulfilling his dream - to feel that intimate connection with others he never got in real life. And yes, even with the Aotake members, he has always felt left out until they started running together, and he admits that because of his pride and timidity, he’s not very likely to change, and he may never feel this closeness to others again when the ekiden ends (hence a dream he did not want to wake up from). But I wish for good things to happen to him, I really do. Don’t give up, Yohei!

Yukihiko reconciled with his family shortly after the ekiden (he called his mother after the race was over to talk), and by the time graduation rolled around, he had already secured a job as an intern at a respectable law firm located in Roppongi, and was confirmed as a graduate associate within a year. At the reunion timeline, he is still ambitiously working his way up the corporate ranks to make partner (which he aims to succeed within six years or less).

Yuki never moved back in with his step family and still prefers to live on his own (a guy needs his own space to invite dates home, so he says), but now he contacts his mother regularly, and dutifully visits his step family every New Year’s Day. He is also fairly over-protective of his step-sister (whom all her potential suitors get rigidly screened by him).

Takashi took over as captain of the Kansei U track and field team after Haiji left, and participated in the next ekiden running in the same section, where he ranked 6th. After graduation, he returned back to Yamagata to manage the family business, but still travelled regularly between Yamagata and Tokyo to visit his friends (he’s the one who diligently keeps in touch with everyone from Aotake). At the reunion timeline, his family has recently expanded into the sake export business, and Takashi is in talks with some of his dad’s partners to set up a business branch in Tokyo.

This year, instead of Musa coming to visit his hometown, it’ll be his turn visiting Musa’s family in Tanzania.

Musa stayed on in the Kansei U track and field team, and took part in the ekiden on his third and fourth year (he ran in Section 2 and Section 9 respectively, averaging 5th position for both). Since his first trip to Yamagata, he’s been visiting Shindo’s family back in his hometown every year, and has learnt to ski! At the reunion timeline, Musa is pursuing another year of studies at Kansei U. He then went and studied some more, and eventually obtained his PhD. He also became very fluent in Japanese*, and a position as adjunct professor in Kansei U happened to open up, which he applied for and got accepted.

He served as club advisor to the Kansei U Track and Field team after Mr. Tazaki retired, and remains as the oldest member of Aotake who is still affiliated with Kansei U.

*More as an additional headcanon than footnote, but I’ve always pegged Musa as being bi- or trilingual when he arrived at Aotake - being fluent in English, Swahili and a third dialect (since he’s from Africa), just that none of those were useful when he was in Japan!

Akane never participated in future ekiden races again, but remained in the Kansei U track and field team as a perfunctory member (so he could stay in Aotake till he graduated). He continued to dabble in all things manga for the rest of his uni years, but always made time to help out at the ekiden, mostly as Kakeru’s assistant in his section since he already has experience with it.

At the reunion timeline, he’s working as a Junior editor at the manga department of one of the top four publishing houses in Japan, where he handles shojo manga titles (he’s extremely popular among his female colleagues). Despite his constant complaints of tight deadlines and pressuring working conditions, he continues to remain in that industry, and in a couple of years he gets promoted to editor-in-chief and takes over managing the sports manga section.

Jojiro found his affinity with running after his first ekiden experience, and opted to stay on with the track and field team to continue to pursue running seriously. He took over as vice-captain after Kakeru was promoted, and can be credited for pulling in a record number of members that year. After graduation, he was recruited into a prestigious corporation along with his brother and joined their Running Club, and meets Kakeru and Haiji’s team regularly as friendly rivals in the races held in the Kanto region. Although he has yet to best Kakeru’s time in the races, there is one thing he did win over Kakeru, and that’s being the first to confess to Hana-chan after graduation. He also goes on to be the first among his same-age peers to get married, and Kakeru was his second best man together with his brother Jota.

Jotaro left the Kansei U track and field team* in his second year (with Kakeru and Joji’s blessings) and went back to his first love, soccer. He joined the Kansei U Football Club and earned his spot as a regular, and even got to play in the Kanto league. Since their “separation”, the Jo brothers were closer than ever, and they discovered something interesting that came out of them doing different things – that they’ve had even more successes pranking juniors in their clubs, most of whom had no idea they came as a set! After graduation, he joins his brother Joji in the same corporation, but doing work in a different department (and the pranking continues, lol). The brothers and Kakeru remain very close friends.

*My headcanon of Jota obviously diverts from anime canon where they’re both still in track and field, but I’ve always had a stronger impression that Jota never planned to stay on in running after the ekiden, from what I had interpreted from his thoughts about his brother, as well as his conversation with Yohei before the run. Also, in the novel’s epilogue, a junior from the Kansei track and field team had only mentioned about “Joji-senpai”, but not Jota. While it doesn’t prove anything, it really does make me wonder if perhaps it was because Jota had chosen to move on from running. I never believe it’s a sad thing for them to divert on different paths though, because siblings are like that and their bond is strong.

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YOU’D THINK I SHOULD BE DONE BUT WAIT I HAVE MORE. 

BONUS BITTERSWEET HEADCANONS!!!

Kakeru had been visiting Haiji in hospital daily after class since his operation, but by autumn, Haiji announced he was moving back to his hometown to recuperate, and his contact with Haiji naturally became less frequent. (Kakeru wondered if Haiji was deliberately avoiding him but he never asked. Knowing Haiji’s character, he’s not going to be honest about it anyway. Also, Kakeru was not good with texting or calling, a weakness he suspects Haiji knew and used it to put some distance between them). Kakeru felt hurt that there was nothing more he could do for Haiji, but chose to respect his decision for some space.

In response, Kakeru ran in Haiji’s section (Section 10) in the next ekiden, besting his own time from Section 9 and breaking records that were previously set. He believed that Haiji would not be able to resist watching the ekiden (because he knew Haiji’s weakness too), and that was his answer. His efforts to reach out finally paid off (Haiji sent him a very long text message scolding him for a minor flub he did in his run… but also “congratulations”.) Kakeru would continue to run in Section 10 for the remaining two ekidens, and on his final year, Haiji appeared out of the blue again, this time in person to recruit him into his running team.

Kakeru took over as vice-captain of the Kansei U track and field team from the second year, and later as captain after Shindo graduated. Since he’s been on the team, Kansei U has never failed to earn a seed in the ekiden for subsequent years, a legacy that would carry on long after Kakeru’s graduation.

Haiji had to be rushed to surgery after the ekiden, and as expected, his injury had been aggravated and the damage was severe. A knee replacement surgery had to be done, and the year would prove to be a painful time for Haiji, who had to re-learn to walk all over again. In autumn that same year, he decided to move back to his hometown, citing family reasons (in truth, it was also because Kakeru wouldn’t stop visiting him in hospital, and it really was harder to be around Kakeru at this point in time than his family, so he picked the lesser of two evils).

Haiji would spend the next few months coming to terms with his situation while thinking about where to go from there. There were days where his mind wandered a bit too dangerously far, but his determination not to go back down that same path before manages to pull him back. Between his physiotherapy sessions, Haiji would often stop by his alama mater and watch his dad at work, lost in his own thoughts. And when he saw Kakeru running in the ekiden on TV again, his heart began to stir, as if a gust of wind had lifted his spirit and was pushing him towards the answer he was looking for.

He had found his second wind.

Haiji talked his father into letting him go back to school…. this time to pursue a sports degree (while their father-son relationship remained fairly complicated, the dad was more receptive to Haiji’s request since it’s to do with running, and Haiji was smart enough to leverage on his dad’s knowledge and connections to his advantage). His dad managed to pull a few strings and got Haiji enrolled into Rikudo (!!!) for a post graduate course, and Haiji moved back to Tokyo and threw himself into studying while nursing himself back to health. At the reunion timeline, he is armed with a sports coaching master’s degree, and has joined a relatively new corporation that hired him to set up a new running team. And Haiji knows exactly who he plans to recruit as soon as that person graduates.

My favourite finds were the last two spots at Hitoyoshi Castle Park, as they were spots that didn’t ping on my radar while I was researching for Natsume. I was wandering around Kuma-gawa and saw the long white wall, and it struck me as looking rather familiar. So I went digging through my image archives and  managed to uncover one screen shot that matched that particular wall (the one with Shibata and Natsume). Finding the exact spot where the reference shot was taken for the anime took a bit longer - if I recall, it required some extra leg work to scale up a high stone wall that was overlooking those white walls.  It’s not a spot where I would have explored nor have found had I not been looking for it, but it’s got a pretty nice view! Wasn’t able to find the screen shot for the last photo while I was there, but I just had this feeling it might be relevant so I took a picture of it anyway (and my hunch was right)!

Story time! I thought that Tengu Bridge would be close enough to Hitoyoshi City that I could clear with the other locations I was planning to hit within the day, but it turned out to be a whole other station away, accessible by a local train that only ran every other hour. Another miss was underestimating the distance between each location hunt, so there was no time to budget a trip to the bridge and back before evening. I was due to leave on a 9:30am train so there wasn’t much time to attempt a next day quest either. It did seem silly to be so hung up on one location when I’ve already got most of the ones on my checklist, so I decided to sleep on it, hoping that I’d get over Tengu Bridge by morning.

Spoiler alert: I did not get over it. 

Full luggage in tow at 7:50am, I got into a taxi to take me to Tengu Bridge. Now the thing about me and Japanese taxis is - 1) I still don’t know how to call for one on my own and pretty much relied on hotel/ryokan staff to do that for me; and 2) Tengu Bridge was located pretty far away from…. everything? But I hadn’t really thought that far ahead yet, and when we got to the bridge I explained my predicament to the driver. The plan was to negotiate for her to wait for me for five minutes while I sprinted off across the bridge for a picture and back. And part of the reason why I’m sharing this story is so I could give a shout out to this lovely lady driver in her shiny pink taxi who did me a real solid, and granted me ten minutes to enjoy Tengu Bridge while she waited for me with the fare meter paused, which meant she didn’t charge me for the waiting time at all. 本当に ありがとうございました～！Also, she knew about my 9:30am ride and was mindful of the time for me, so I even made it back to the station and was able to board that train after all. All in all, a last-spurt side adventure that thankfully turned out well. To think I was almost prepared to give it up! (p.s: you can actually spot the pink taxi waiting in the third photo at the far end of the bridge).

I keep procrastinating this post but to be honest there’s quite a bit to unpack for this trip. Tl;dr, other dramatic misadventures happened on that faithful 9:30am train I was on, and it seemed that my travel plan was destined to be delayed no matter what I ended up doing that day anyway, ahaha…

And そ, I continue to ponder about questions that I do not have the answers for. But ah, such is life too.

Other fandom travel musings:

Kudos is also due to Saga Tourism Board for getting onboard the YOI bandwagon*, which made finding locations in and around Saga effortless, which meant more time to enjoy the process of exploring! 

*You can get a YOI-themed pamphlet at the Karatsu Station Tourism Information Center if you fill in a survey form.  Bonus if you don’t speak nihongo, they have English versions because they know we’re coming, haha!

Some extra shots dump because I took too many:

On to PART 2!

Other fandom travel musings:

Up until this trip, Yokohama had always been more of a brief stopover en route to Tokyo than a full day’s plan, but I had returned to Yokohama for the specific intention of hunting down Bungo locations, and arrived in Yokohama early on an overnight train for that intended purpose. Still, the locations in Bungo were a lot more scattered around Yokohama that I had anticipated. That and the unrelenting rain made me narrow down my spots to places I have yet to explore, which took me to the Yokohama Red Brick House, the buildings in Yokohama Naka Ward, Yokohama Chinatown and Yokohama Landmark Tower. The Port of Yokohama is a place I visited before Bungo, but I’m throwing it in this post anyway because I happened to spot a photograph I took that looks pretty similar to the screencap.

Out of all the observatories I’ve visited across Japan, I must say the view from Yokohama Landmark Tower is one of the more unique and scenic ones I’ve seen because of its signature Ferris wheel and the fact that it faces the sea... which brings me back again to the Port of Yokohama, undoubtedly my most favourite spot in this area. There’s just something about being close to the sea and the salty air that gets you all contemplative about life. 

Random story: On Yokohama’s subway, I somehow ended up chatting with a friendly Japanese old lady retiree, who had just returned from a 100-day around the world cruise from the ship at Yokohama Port. If there’s ever such a thing as catching a glimpse of one’s future self, it sure would be great if I had already met me.

Other fandom travel musings: