The key takeaways was that nothing really matters. And everything matters. And so we tie that together by saying, Do what you want to do, because everything matters. And

do whatever you want to do. Because nothing matters. So you might as well do what you want.

If you do a journey like this and feel inspired to do whatever whatever, make your plans, have the support of the community and go alone.

While it was great to have Jason’s strength to help carry my bag over the mountain. At the same time, having him there affected how I participated in the trip. I felt pulled by that fact that he was there “waiting” for me at any given point that I was doing whatever I want to do. And I, yeah, I kept thinking that he was wasting his time waiting for me. And I was wasting my time by not doing everything that I may have done. It’s maybe it’d be maybe different if we were in a, quote, relationship together, like a couple could bring themselves closer together through the stress of this type of journey, or split themselves apart. But anyway, if it’s a solo journey, make it a solo journey.

Each interaction becomes fresh and history-less. Without history,

as Emico was saying, part of enlightenment comes from being outside of the matrix where you can do whatever you want.

And maybe that’s why I didn’t schedule. What’s the word?

I didn’t schedule. The things that Craig Mod is doing like

every 5pm he does a 30 minute call or something. Maybe that’s a good balance and getting the community involved. But I wasn’t wasn’t always able to do it.

Okay. New paragraph, new paragraph, new paragraph new paragraph storytime

storytime, storytime storytime

walking around the bend of a highway where the road was terribly rough. And I was wearing sandals because it was so rough. Just about to cross, I couldn’t even see the path where I was headed. And is I was like, I need to, I see the berm of a river. b e r, m berm. And I need to go over that hill. But I come in around this corner, I can’t see if there is actually a path there to go from this level around the left up to the bridge that’s crossing the river. So I might have to go away back or I might have to I’m not going to go way back. Let me tell you that. But I might have to like drag or pick up my bag and carry it up this hill. And so just approaching and approaching and finally at the last minute, it’s like okay, there’s a path cool. And getting legs stepping up the path toward the toward the bridge that was there. over the river. Walking, walking, walking, just looking at my feet and my Oh, so tired. Hello. Hello snake. You’re beautiful. Wow. It’s like Oh, hi snake. beautiful green rat snake. I didn’t know as a rat snake until after I posted a picture up on Reddit. But the answer quick and answer quickly came back. No, that’s a Japanese rat snake is a beautiful species but a beautiful specimen. I was able the rat snake was she was so chill. I was able to put François down in front of him take a picture. Pick François up start a video and then the snake was like I guess I guess we’re done here snake sorted snake and on by. And I like I wanted to pick it up. And thought it would be more polite to just let it go on its way. And someone said on Reddit and to say just say pardon me when you pick it up. And I kind of sort of think that that’s right. I mean, if it’s an actual in my heart to excuse me, I would like to pick you up. I wonder if it’s okay, but I just had this, you know, kind of reverence for this animal. And projecting today that it saw me as a giant animal. It was a big snake but I’m a lot bigger than that. And on Reddit, the guy was guessing is two meters long. I guessed it was 130 centimeters long. But yeah, it’s big snake looks pretty cool. In decent size. So yeah, they’re just there was a cool snake and oh, and then my friend Missy. Like, texted me right after that. She’s like, Oh, I just had an amazing experience. And she was telling me about her experience. And so we decided that the snake was a messenger letting me know to contact her because she had just had a had an amazing experience. So that was neat. on them on YouTube. I called it Missy’s Snake or something

There was there were there was a moment that I wasn’t proud of. And I’m still kind of shocked that I got so upset about this situation. There’s an underlying level of racism in Japan that is well known and not often talked about in my circles, at least. But I guess I’ll tell the whole story. I was looking at a guy’s tractor as that sounds weird, and I guess it was weird for him. But I was I was literally standing on the sidewalk next to the highway and saw this tractor. As I was walking, I was like, Huh, that’s a cool tractor, like some kind of a looks like a giant push lawnmower or has a curved, curved spiral blades. And I was like, wow, that’s neat. And so I didn’t touch it didn’t take a picture. We’re just looking at it. I mean, doodles came up. I hadn’t seen him at first because he was in his yard. About 20 meters away. And he came up, he’s like, you know, I kind of didn’t really make a word like I was in headphones at that point. But I forgot my headphones. I was like, can you chew up? And he said, he said in Japanese, I don’t speak English. And I’m like, dude, I didn’t speak English to you. He says in my head, but I was so angry. I was like, Konichiwa again in Japanese. He’s, I don’t speak English. I’m like, Oh my God. What? So? Apparently, this happens in other countries as well. I heard of, like, Mexican American friend of mine in Mexico. Looks more American than Mexican, I guess. More likely anyway. They’re like, Ah, you know, I don’t speak English in Spanish. And he’s like, dude, I’m not speaking is I’m not speaking fucking English. And so I get I mean, it helps me not be racist against Japanese people for this thing. But why does this happen? I felt really angry is one of my things is about being heard or not being heard. And I certainly wasn’t I didn’t feel heard in that moment. I’m speaking a basic greeting to him in Japanese. And he’s Oh, I don’t speak English. who felt so angry? And I’m surprised at how angry I felt in that moment. I guess because I was tired, I guess because this or that as long as I walk and I wasn’t doing anything out of the ordinary, but what we had was very out of the ordinary. I wasn’t doing anything from his point of view. I don’t know. Who knows. Like, I don’t I don’t know. It was it was fucking weird. I guess I was. I was like a bedraggled bunny. You know, weird white guy looking at his tractor, but man. Talking guy just use your ears. Anyway. There were also very even that same day is when I received two cards. Let me start this story over. Um, I was on a river. No, no, no. I was walking across a river. Just before I go. I gotta find the date of this thing. As I have sketched out on the website. We’re gonna find this kind of quick. 18 pages so far. Oh, I know what’s going what’s wrong here. Dang it. Some of the pictures are on Instagram and some are not. But that’s Mrs. Snake. Um, anyway, so we’re walking across a bridge and a A guy there it is. All right. I do have it on my website. This is day 19.

Walking to Oji Park Hotel, which was quite boring, but Okay, so yeah, the day I went to conduct pizza. Yeah, there was a double cool, crazy thing. Um, so I walked out guys, okay, I walked past a pizza place that was closed and I was like, Huh, I wonder if I can find a pizza place that’s open and look on the map. And found one in fact, oh, okay, there’s pizza place and compare it to my hotels. I Oh, it’s a half kilometer away from my hotel. Like, I’m no cancel and not gonna not gonna do that. So I kept walking toward the hotel. And like, I’m sure I reset my map to the hotel, then had a house walking across a river. Let me see if I can. And that’s how I had pizza tonight. I was walking across the Oh, I don’t have Okay, so it must have been the shinano River shinano gawa. This is not zooming very well. Okay, so I’m on Google Maps here at the same time. I’m recording this. I don’t see what river it could have been. It must have been the shinano River anyway. I don’t see where Oh, okay. That’s it. Oh, geo Park Hotel. So it’s correct. All right. Anyway. Oh, that’s the problem. So it was here. Okay. Got it. So I was walking across the river. And a guy came up to me. And he’s like, hello. And like in Japanese, he’s talking to me in Japanese. Thankfully, this is after this is the same day that the guy was like, get away from my tractor. And in it doesn’t speak English. So this guy was talking to me, and greeted me very nicely on the bridge. And he was sharing stories with me about the river and said, as I asked him some questions, I was like, well, what’s, what’s that over there? And he, he was telling me like, Well, back in the day, when they there were a lot more ships in the river. That was a place that they were basically charging tax for people to use the river. And so it was a it was an old weird, not weird as an old style house, there’s like, right on the edge of the river. And like, dude, who would live there is Oh, that was the tax collectors place. Like, wow, that’s neat. And then he’s like, because back in the day, the the there was a lot more river traffic than there is now. And they had to go from this place to that area. And these guys set up at the fork of the river here. And could like cover both rivers or something. Anyway, it was just it was a lovely amount of detail. I got about 80% of what he was saying but I couldn’t possibly like ask him particularly smart questions that were just beyond my level of Japanese to speak to that level but I could kinda sort of understand what he was saying. And so here’s what you need to to be speaking with him. And so we talked for easily 1015 minutes and he was asking me where I was walking where I was staying as oh just right up here at the at the the whatever the hotel is called. And orgy I can’t read it. Anyway. It’s only read the ojio Hotel. So brain. Oh, so he gave me a he showed me two cards that he got from the

he got from a shrine. And the he said, Yeah, go ahead and choose a card. And these are blessing cards or something that to give you good luck, as well, thanks. I chose a purple one. Then I gave him my card, which is like, you know, barefoot walking across Japan and all that. And it says about that helping to reduce the suicide rate on the back. And he, he was like, Wow, cool. Take both cards, please. So he gave me the other card. Because it was like, apparently inspiring for him. They’re here to read about the walk on my card. Because I had to mention, I had mentioned Corona as a people during Corona time, there’s a higher suicide rates and all that. He’s like, dude, and he gave me the other card, which is a COVID protection card. And it has the Japanese COVID protection character drawn on it. So that was a really sweet interaction to offer that offset the not as sweet interaction I had with the previous person. But anyway, Jia parkhotel. So yeah, the cards are there. And so then, as Okay, thank you and see you and bless you and then then left and walked the rest of the way to the hotel. And I couldn’t find it. I was like, should be right here. And as I looked over here, like near is it around the underside of the buildings, and no came back over here. And I was like, oh, there’s a pizza place right here. Why didn’t that show up on my map? Because it’s open. And it’s and I had just searched for it near my hotel. I looked down on my map, it was like that. This is the pizza place that you decided not to go to before. And I was like, Ah, oh my god, you know, so I guess I’m gonna have pizza. So I went Sorry, I went inside as a Hey, you know? It was Yeah, so it was it was a great pizza. And I said load up all the cheeses that that you have and he just made me like it was in the in the CI that the edge. Sorry the cheese went right up to the edge of the pizza is really dense with cheese like blue cheese and yellow cheese and white cheese and all these cheeses handmade. So it was just a great and lovely pizza looks really happy. And it says on the the website says I bought a large pizza of which I’ll eat half this is written in future tense. I’ll eat half and say the rest for tomorrow. Dude, I Chow that whole fucking thing. I was like, This is delicious. I fucking ate the whole thing. It was so great. Huh? Yeah, it was it was it was delicious. Anyway, it was delicious pizza. It was really really good. Really glad that I was guided to there by the by blindly following the map. So that was good. And what else what else? So that anyway, that’s how I had pizza on that on that day. So other like cool stuff. Like, gosh, there was so many different interesting things. Let me answer this on either the questions the key takeaways. go alone. That’s one key takeaway not nothing matters. What’s the gift the gift was the gifts were that

I was supported on the walk. People were inspired by the walk. It was easier to do than I expected. I made it hard on myself by doing the Barefoot version, or pushing the Barefoot version as much as possible. But

like it was, it was easy. It was really, it was really, really hard and easy. I’m not I don’t know how to explain it much. But maybe because I had done so much pre planning that made it easy that I knew where to go. And I had all of that laid out a framework for it. So, and there’s a convenience store, everywhere in Japan, even in the places where there weren’t convenient stores. They weren’t that far away. I never had to really go hungry. I mean, the worst is I wasn’t sure if I could pee in this area or not. Like is anyone going to care if I pee underneath the train tracks of the the joetsu line? That’s the Shinkansen line. But there, I saw what really looked like an outhouse right on one of the rivers that just apparently just dumped right into the river. So that was a bit bizarre. To see that it was flowing right through rice paddies and such. I’ll have to ask what that is. See if it get a confirmation that it’s an outhouse. The door was locked. But anyway,

from one day of the walk, the route was like literally, straight. 14 kilometers along the straight Shinkansen line. This hotel to that hotel I was of the English garden to the next one, which I don’t remember the name I let’s see, I guess would be day for the map here.

No, that’s not Anyway, there was a day of just like straight straight, straight, straight straight. And that was that was it was after this one. Anyway, maybe they 20 have no idea.

So yeah, I’m still.

Yeah, still kind of figuring out what happened. My friend Robert Golden pointed out that it’s, I’m not I’m not supposed to know what happened or what, what I was saying that all of my friends talked about being inspired and, and like, not knowing what the ripples may be. And Robert added that I’m not supposed to know. And that helped in a way to

Yeah, it helped. I’m not supposed to know it doesn’t matter. So I’m going to pop this up onto the get it transcribed and continue next one in a second.