As both a Trailwalker participant and as a member of our Trailwalker focus group, Andrew has supported our efforts by helping to plan the course over the past two years. Andrew puts a lot of effort into various sports, including the fun-running “drinking club with a running problem” known as the Tokyo Hash House Harriers, and wanted to make fundraising enjoyable.

■Q1. You put a lot of effort into creating various ways to successfully fundraise. We would like you to share some of your fundraising experiences and ideas.

Many people told me that collecting small contributions for Oxfam is so difficult in Japan. I pointed out that my company always asked me to contribute a small amount, usually 1,000 yen, when someone leaves the company or gets married, and that no-one would do this in England, but if you told them it was for Oxfam, people in the U.K. would contribute.

So I thought we should try to persuade Japanese people that contributing to Oxfam is like helping your family or supporting your company’s members at difficult times. We only need to extend it to say our family or our company includes people who need drinking water in Africa or people affected by the Tsunami.

But then I heard from a friend in Kobe who decided to raise funds for his Oxfam team by getting a bar to let him hold an Oxfam fund-raising event, and a rock band who agreed to play for free, and I realized that FUND-RAISING CAN BE FUN!

One of the things that I can do that is fun is to have a BBQ party. Usually I invite my friends and I buy food and drink but ask my friends to bring some of their own. Sometimes I say I will buy everything, please contribute 2,000 yen to the cost. This time, I said it is a fund-raising BBQ party for Oxfam, please pay whatever you like, maybe 3,000 yen, more is better. We all enjoyed the BBQ party.

■Fundraising with fun !
Because it was intended to raise funds, we made a special effort to invite people we thought were able to contribute the most. But we noticed that some of the people who had a lot of money did not contribute very much, and some people who were in low paid jobs contributed a very large amount of money. I noticed this particularly because one shy Japanese girl put in several notes when she thought no-one was looking, and at least one of the notes was a 10,000 yen bill.

So I decided to accept the Oxfam philosophy that many people making small contributions is better than trying to find a few people to make a large contribution. So if a wealthy person is only contributing 500 yen, that is good too. Well, actually, I will try to find a way to tactfully tell them that a bit more would be appreciated.

■Q2: How did you raise funds?
Everyone who came to the BBQ party contributed. I also visited a number of companies and offered them “naming rights” for my Trailwalker team. The idea was that the company that offered the most would get their company name as the name of my team. So far, all of the companies I have asked have offered a cash contribution and not wanted to be named. If they had wanted to be named, we would have worn their T-shirts.

■Q3: How did people respond to your fundraising event?
Basically, people had an enjoyable party and paid a reasonable amount. If we wanted, we could have squeezed them a little more and got a bit more money. We could have had an auction of donated items, for example, or even of stuff we are trying to get rid of.

■Q4: Do you feel your efforts help to expand international cooperation?
Of course, the most important effort is required to communicate the concept of charitable contributions to the average Japanese person.

■Q5: Give your message to participants in Trailwalker Japan.
When the Oxfam people came to Japan, they said they wanted to walk near Mount Fuji and they wanted to have an easier trail than Trailwalker in Hong Kong. We told them that was impossible. The landscape in Japan is tough, and the Trailwalker Japan course is tough. Japanese people have to be tough enough to handle that.

■Post-Trailwalker comments:
It's now one month since the Trailwalker Japan, but the people who participated still can't stop talking about it. Everyone who did it shares an experience that no-one else in the world can really feel.

At the time of the BBQ party I had already recruited and lost several team members, and, perhaps emboldened by a few beers, two people volunteered at the party and later dropped out. Then my remaining team mate injured his foot and I gave up. But afterward, I met a team called Genki Gaijins that had lost one member to a work commitment. We had time for only two practices, but soon discovered that I was now the slowest team member, except when running downhill. Team leader Colin Yarker printed up some cool T-shirts. A last-minute disaster broke the day before the event when our van-driver became ill, so we had to rush around organising bag deliveries at the start of the Trailwalker, and we were still doing this when the starting gun was fired, so we can honestly say we were the LAST team to start.

Some very fit and competitive people finished the event in incredibly fast times, but the real achievement was by some ordinary people with no experience of hiking, endurance events or competitions, proving that anybody can do the Trailwalker if they want, even if it takes them a bit longer. The people that moaned about the steepness of some of the slopes should remember that. I knew all about the trail, since I had helped find it and felt I "owned" it, but since it was my first time, I learned three things about Trailwalker:

1. Equipment and Logistics: having the right clothing for different conditions is important, and arranging the transportation so you have what you need without carrying too much can make a huge difference.

2. Food and Drink: drinking from a backpack continuously, and eating small amounts of energy food at frequent intervals are essential for keeping going over the distance.

3. Teamwork: this means having a plan, having a leader and having four members all prepared to help each other.

As you may expect, I learned these lessons the hard way. I swapped to my night-time shirt at Check Point 4 and had to take it off because I was too hot on the steep climb after that. I didn't eat enough, and ran out of energy after Check Point 7, and my team members should possibly have noticed that I was sleepwalking earlier.

But generally we worked well as a team. Colin planned our time ranges for each section and made sure we weren't too fast or too slow. We stayed within sight and sound of each other the entire trail, and when the team finally realised I was a zombie they gave me some energy food, a pep talk and pole position. Fortunately we didn't have to carry each other, even though we were prepared for it and two of the members had carried team mates in Hong Kong Trailwalkers. We saw other teams make the mistake of going too fast and tiring out too soon, getting separated and having to wait for each other, or leaving people behind and being disqualified at the finish.

As a result of good pace-setting, we did the hardest part, which is downhill from Kintokiyama, during daylight on Friday and we did the final Mikuniyama and Myojinsan as it got light the next morning, so we avoided the hail and thunder storms. Our finish time was 20 hours 23 minutes, and we were in 7th place. If it hadn't been for me the team might have broken 20 hours!

The strangest part of Trailwalker for me was the "Lost Patrol".
Because we did Kintokiyama in daylight we knew there was no-one behind us for a long way, so we were very surprised at Check Point 6 when another team from Hong Kong came running in. They had taken a wrong turn and climbed another mountain before realising their mistake. We set off, and I heard them coming up behind us. I looked back, only to see them take another wrong turning. They finally caught up with us on a very steep narrow path where they couldn't overtake. Near the top of this path another Chinese team had stopped. The Lost Patrol leader shouted at them and made them start again, so soon I had 8 people walking behind me. They had tired themselves out so they couldn't overtake and didn't talk, but they matched our pace the whole time, and with their headlamps right behind me I found this really annoying. So when we got to the "Oxfam-made" downhill trail, my team ran as fast as we could to get away from them.

When we got to the Finish line there was no-one there. We crossed the timer and suddenly Oxfam people shouted out "STOP!". In the photograph you can see I am arguing with them "What do you mean "stop"? We've just walked a hundred kilometres, how can we stop now?" Eventually they came running up with a finish tape for us to walk through.