Running to the Set/Location of Akira Kurosawa's 'Dreams'

A wonderful Sunday adventure at the Daiō Wasabi Farm

I won’t waste your time with a whole lot of padding or preliminaries here. I try to never do that. But today especially, as I am burning the midnight oil, and tired.

Here is where you can (and should!) watch acclaimed Japanese director Akira Kurosawa’s “Dreams” (夢) for free, and even download it: https://archive.org/details/kurosawas-dreams

If you want to watch just the Village of the Watermills portion of the movie (the location I ran to in my video at the end of this post), you can do so here:

The spot I ran to is the Daiō Wasabi Farm in Azumino, Nagano, Japan — the site where Kurosawa filmed the last of the eight vignettes that comprise “Dreams.” The last short film is called Village of the Watermills. I was moved by it, as I was by several other stories in the work. I guess I’ll just let the video do the talking.

Long story short, Village of the Watermills made me feel, once again, that a better life more in tune with nature and our own spirits is possible. Running is one way of many to forsake the madness of the world, and return to the sanity of the true, real world of air and water and nature and interesting things. As the old man says in the movie: Life is おもしろい … is interesting.

It was magic being in the spot I had just seen in a movie the night before. A movie that filled me with powerful emotion.

As far as the run, temps were cold, pack and hoodie were weighty (especially when sweat entered the equation), and shit got tough as it always does now and then on a long run, but I used my mind to make a mutual deal with (and “override”) my body so we could eat the pain and crush the last mile. I held down a near 10:00 pace on mile 20 even after 19 miles in non-optimal conditions. For me, that’s a win.

I also had the Bloodthirsty Butchers’ fantastic album “Birdy” (all music in the vid is from this album) and other J-rock alternative music from the early 2000s keeping me company for the first 13 miles. Highly recommend that album.