I walked across Honshu last year, I remember and in prepare ation for
that. I told some of my friends well, like, Hey, if you if you spend
$100 I’ll send you a copy of my book after I write it after the Oh,
yes, yes, of course. It’s like shit. Now I have to write a book, what
was I thinking? I should just said, I’ll send you a postcard. Because
the postcard was 30 bucks. And the book is 100. Fuck. So they have the
title, like the title is slow down. The title, the the concept. I know
I’m not telling you anything, but just kind of get it out for myself,
like, be in the moment. Notice the world around me. Barefoot gives me
a sensation of like, oh, I have feet. Oh, I have a physical body. Oh,
I have a connection to the other worlds and stuff. And in my way of
thinking that that’s like, one blog entry. But how does one get the
book out of that, like, totally has power of now like in a whole tome
about being here now.
yeah, so, I mean, I did a lot of preparation, I can talk about how I
prepared to walk across the country and what was useful, what was
not. I have several interesting anecdotes and pictures to back it
up. So that’s good. I don’t, I was just a travel log. And so I’m like,
Ah, you know, what is the book that I’m writing
also put in you know, your your self reflections. As you’re, as you’re
walking, like, can make it a meditation and reflecting on your life,
your relationship to America to Japan, right? You know, and to a third
culture, your Chinese wife.
Yeah, yeah. So yeah.yeah, the reflections on culture is a good idea. I
was often intrigued by small things that I found like the bridge with
800 coats of paint that but you can still kind of read the declaration
for the bridge and whatever that was, and, and, like the Haikyo, the
abandoned buildings, we found like in the mid midway through the
country, like a hotel with the door open and leaves blown into the
lobby of the hotel, right on the side of the highway.
You said we walk with somebody
I did. For part of the trip, he joined me for about half of the days
that I was there. And next time I’ll just do it alone because it added
a lot of stress for me in some ways, though, he did help carry my bag
when we went over one mountain so that was very very helpful to pray
for for that. But we were otherwise on different schedules in a way he
he was walking ahead and I was like, lollygagging behind taking
pictures of everything. And and then when like trying to like meet up
by Where are you going to say where am I gonna say kind of thing I had
all my life patients laid out like Single, single, single, single the
whole almost a whole way through. And I was able to add him a couple
of times, but not every time. And so, but it was fine. But the thing
is, his English wasn’t that good. He speaks Chinese and Japanese. And
I don’t speak those much. But yeah, we did see a lot of cool shit,
long away mess, meet people and walking through tunnels with trucks I
knew driving by spooky as hell. And the coolest part was a tunnel that
we went through and saw windows in the middle of the tunnel. And I
thought they were lights at first and then I was like, looking through
trying to see what’s out there, this is all like dirty with like, cuz
it’s outside on the other side of the tunnel. And then I gave up
trying to look to the window, walk about 10 more meters, and there’s a
giant four meter by four meter door that it’s like an exit, it was
like basically a road connecting into this valley have to mount to
small mountains. And the road just came down as I connect them to the
tunnel. Because those windows used to be nothing. And it was just like
two mountains like this, and the road went by, and then they covered
it up to connect to tunnels, except there’s still a road there. So it
was really amazing to be like, Wow, and then walk outside into this
like, Winter Wonderland type of, you know, we could camp here for
months, and no one would know, kind of thing even though they’re
driving by, you know, 1010 feet away. And played around for an hour,
like trying to climb up on top of the tunnel itself to take pictures
and stuff and hopefully not die, because wasn’t that safe. But you
know, since fun worth it as like a fun adventure. It was it was
great. And so these moments were unpredictable, and completely not
really explainable, you know, when you’re just hearing it. So I know,
you know, that kind of experiences. I know, some of the stories that
you’ve told me. And then the other one that I love.
We’re walking underneath a roof, it’s like they call it a snow shed of
the snow come down the mountain will not just hit the highway
directly. And as we’re walking along in the middle of basically
nowhere, there’s suddenly a ladder to go up on top of the roof. Now
like no one can see me literally no one can see me because on the
highway, there’s a bunch of columns, so that even if they looked over,
they would see me for like a millisecond as their car drove by. So I
climbed the ladder. And for some kind of annoying reason, my my friend
Jason, son, Jason, Jason. So in Japanese, he uses Jason anyways, but
son in Chinese song soon, so he wouldn’t climb it. I’m like, why the
fuck wouldn’t you climb the ladder? Come on, you know. So I didn’t say
anything. But I just said that he missed. There was his array of truck
tires, that were two levels deep to catch the snow that was coming
down sit to as a little bit of a snow buffer basically. And so I was
barefoot, running long on these tires, and I wanted a photographer to
video me like, Hey, I’m on the tires and everything, but he wouldn’t
come up. So I just have first person video of me along these tires,
and trying not trying to step on the rubber and not the like the blow
out wires and ships sticking out of the tires. I could just like stab
my foot on one of those wires if I wasn’t careful, all rusty and
everything but everything fine. No injuries is a wonderful
experience. It’s like wow, an array of tires just for me. You know,
something I would pay 2000 yen at a game center to be able to play on
for an hour. It’s just there on top of the road. So awesome. So yeah,
lots of experiences like that.