My own personal track.

Several kilometers from my apartment on a narrow, windy and climbing road, lies an emerald green lake in the crater of an old volcano. It bears the name Katanuma, literally "lagoon swamp". A sign claims it to have one of the lowest PH levels of any lake in the world. There are no fish, and I've been warned by a number of people not to swim in it. Its certainly beautiful, but until recently, I had dismissed it as merely a place to take visitors to Naruko for a quick stroll.

During one of these walks last week, I realized the place is a perfect, natural track. A single lane dirt road circles the lake, about half of which runs through the forest. The sign states the lake is 1.3km in circumference, or a couple tenths short of a mile. There are a few buildings in sight, including a snack shop/ boathouse that's open on the weekends, but I rarely see many people there. Sulfurous steam sputters from several earth blowholes around the lake, signs of the geothermal actvity happening beneath. Legend holds that a female dragon god (Ryujin) owns the lake, and if you take children there on the Festival of Dolls (March 3), she will snatch them into the lake.

I have never been much of a runner--I usually get bored after about a mile. Man-made tracks are too monotonous and I could always find plenty of excuses (congested roads, hills, dogs, people, in the middle of a good book, etc) to not run other places. But Lagoon Swamp leaves me no excuse. Its beautiful, its quiet, its more or less flat, its convenient, I almost always have it to myself, and the whole time I am running, I can help but thinking "Who else in the world right now is running circles around a dragon in the crater of a volcano?"