5/13/2009
TIM UNRUH
NEW CAMBRIA — Kanpei Hazama’s garb Wednesday morning as he jogged along Old Highway 40 included a gray wig and a Tokyo 2016 Olympic hat. The comedian — “just as famous in Japan as Saturday Night Live cast members in New York,” according to his entourage — is running through Kansas this week on a more than 22,000-mile run and sail around the globe, called the “Earth Marathon.” The journey began Dec. 17 in Osaka, Japan, and will end somewhere in Japan during 2011. He stopped a few miles east of New Cambria Wednesday morning, to perform and tell a few jokes in Japanese. Hazama, 59, doesn’t want money, but some attention would be nice as he runs about 35 miles a day for five days in a row.
Read the rest of this story in Thursday's Salina Journal.