Happy New Year to everyone and Happy Birthday to me (yesterday!).

Yesterday was also the first day of the 81st Tokyo-Hakone University Ekiden (English information here). An ekiden is a relay race. In this case, the race a very long one, staged over two days, covering the 108 km (about 65 miles) from Central Tokyo to Hakone on the first day and back on the second. Each day is broken into five stages that are more or less equal. Universities from the Kanto region enter teams of 10 runners in the race, which is always run right after New Year's Day. In America, colleges have football bowl games; here, it's the ekiden, and everyone seems to take it very seriously.

There was a nice article in the New York Times about the race last year; apparently, it was only fairly recently that race participants were even allowed to have any water while running, and success in the race brings glory, while failure is hard to live down. I saw the end of the 10th stage and the race on TV today, and one of the runners set a new record for the last stage, but still apologized to his teammates when he crossed the finish line because he wasn't able to get the team into the top 10 and automatically qualify for next year's ekiden. There is so much interest in the race that they cover it live, in its entirety -- more than 11 hours.

We spent the New Year holidays at my in-laws' house, and the course passes very close by, so it's easy to head on over in the morning and watch the runners pass. Thousands upon thousands of people line the entire course from start to finish, almost universally cheering the runners on with small flags given out for free. You also see clusters of devoted alumni cheering on their schools. This runner is from Komazawa University. He was somewhere close to the lead (as I recall fourth or fifth at this time) but by the end this morning, Komazawa had pulled into first and won for the fourth year in a row.

Canon EOS 20D, EF 70-200mm f/4 L @ 188mm, f/4.0, 1/2500 sec, ISO 400