New Year's marathon relay race, the seasonal tradition in Japan winter. (Hakone Eki-den/箱根駅伝: First day)

On January 2nd and 3rd, most famous marathon race is held in Japan.
This race is called Hakone Eki-den (箱根駅伝).

"Eki-den (駅伝)" means "marathon relay race" in Japanese.
The runners are the teams of university.

They are the top 21 running teams of Japanese university which won many marathon races in the past year. There are 10 runners in each team, and one runner runs about 20 kilometers each.

They starts running from Tokyo, hand-off sash, the baton made of cloth, and runs to top of Hakone mountain in first day. In second day, the runners starts from mountain top of Hakone, and comes back to Tokyo again. The distance of one way is about 110 kilometers, so they runs 220 kilometers in two days.



The first day, I took the pictures of runners who goes to Hakone mountain.

When the runners passes, one side of street will be completely blocked, so that no cars or
motorcycles can't get in. Only police and a car which coach of each team rides can run with them.

A lot of people are coming near to the street, and cheers the runners swinging the flags.

As the course is public road, there are a lot of up and down hills.
Some runners seems like flying when coming down the hill.

They are so fast that I couldn't take the photos in best pint...
In the second day, I took little more photos of runners. so I will post them later.

Thank you for reading!
Good night!

箱根駅伝, 城西大学, 神奈川大学, 東京国際大学, 上武大学, 法政大学, 正月