Tokyo Marathon – Runners in Costume

Tokyo Marathon would not be the same without all the costumed runners, and this year’s race was no exception. I saw so many that I lost count, but here are about half of the ones that I managed to catch in my finder. There were a few good ones that I missed as they ran in the middle of the stream of people. I would admire anyone who walks 42km let alone tries to run them, and even more so doing it in costume!

Where I was stood at about 4km into the race, the first runner in costume to pass us was the man dressed as a daikon in the second photo (I saw a couple of daikons, three or four nasu (eggplant) a couple of strawberries, a pod of peas and a couple of bananas. Not quite enough for a meal but it was good to see that almost a dozen fruit and vegetable runners for each hamburger (there was one!). Then there was a rather fast Gundam runner (fifth photo) as well as a small group of Where’s Wally? (I saw one more later on). Despite Kumamon being the most popular character in Japan right now I saw only one (seventh photo) but several Snow Whites (both male and female, eight photo). Superheroes were also represented, with at least two Batmans for every Superman, and three or four spidermen for every Captain America. But out of my four favorites this time, here are two of them (two final photos), a man in a business suit complete with glasses and a briefcase, and a man running as a red postbox. Fantastic! I’ll post the others later, just hang in there!