Granddad: “I’m just damn fine.”
Emotions are important

Monner: “Stop sending me these checks.”
Grandmother and God loves me no matter what

Ricky: “Now it’s time to build the magnificent structure on the foundation you’ve created.”
My life has purpose

Fred: “We can’t blame dad for our problems anymore.”
I choose how I show up in the world

Dad: “If two trees are leaning against one another, what happens if one falls?”
Find your inner strength

Ma: “You boys are driving me up the wall”
Parents are people too.

Jon: “That Guy in Austin”
no one knows who you are. Use that to your advantage; everyone is too worried about themselves to worry about you.

Rob: “It takes longer to live a life than read a biography”
change takes time in 3D.

Anikiko: “Follow The Whispers”
How many different ways can I say the same thing?

John: “Tell them I’m the expensive one”
You create your own life

Paola: “If you’ve found a program that works, grab on.”
No need to compare spiritual paths
Prodigal son story

Frederick Marx: “it falls to each generation to teach the new generation”
I burst into tears when I read that. Oh fuck. I can’t do it. I must do it. Aaaggggghhh and that was…. (checks email) 8 months ago.

Joe McMoneagle: “Just start planning”
Whatever you wanna do starts with an idea.

Robert Monroe: “Life on earth is addictive”
We want to come back again and again (to resolve our karma = mismatch from living according to Love –> Law of One)

______: “God dwells in you as you”

Robert Golden: “What do you really want to do?”
well, I want to walk across Japan..

Things I learned from young people:

Nathan Brandli: I’ve learned to be grateful for the way my life is now while still moving towards what I want.

Robert Golden: “Have you read Whatever Arises, Love That”

Robert M: “Welcome to speak at TEDxOgikubo”

Soness Stevens: “Step on the red dot”

Pavel: “we met at HackerX”
Shine uniquely

UA: “Be all you can be isn’t necessarily what God wants you to be.”

UA: “God as you understand God”

podcast: “Tithing tells God what you think is important in the world.”

podcast / Rob “Tithing tells God you have enough money to tithe.”

Emma Wild: “It may take time. It will grow if you keep at it and continue long term.”

Dai: “There is no time for any of that.”
addictions, distrust, hatred, fear,

All you -> me:

This is like a spiritual life biography for you.

And a key story you want to bring up across the course is not crying at his funeral.
emotions are important

The way that you express yourself as the way that the world responds to you.

Now the lesson in here is learning to tie it another one is learning about gratitude.

That your grandma doesn’t care what you call her
using that as an allegory for understanding that God doesn’t care what you call him or her

allowing people to recognize that they are here for a reason

That there must be a reason for life,

Tuning into the will of God as another one.

God dwells in you as you
which is a core part of what you want to get across in that.

I have not achieved enlightenment. I haven’t experienced Samadi (sp)

This book cannot get you there, but it can get you started. And you can use your mind along the way.

“A change on one level simultaneously affects all levels.”

Samadhi Movie, 2018 - Part 2 (It's Not What You Think)

1. Allow easy sorting of files (by title, not date) (finished 26 April 2022)
2. Write about perfectionism and procrastination

In some ways of thinking, the walk hasn’t had any effect on my life whatsoever. And just yesterday, two of my close friends, or Nakama talked about how the walk had a big impact on them. So that has helped inspire me to continue the quest and continue writing my book. In some ways, I think I am a perfectionist, and have this idea that the book must be perfect or not at all. But as my good friend, Mark says, done is better than perfect. So with that in mind, let’s write this book.

Today, I am 18,762 days old. So in some ways of thinking, that is the day number of this journey. I numbered the days of the walk, and struggle a lot with getting that system to fit in with the system of days counted in the outer world. For example, I call the hotel and ask them about my reservation on the 20th. And they said, the reservation was for a different date. And I realized the date I was using was the day number of my walk, not the calendar date that I would arrive.

So that’s an example of the difficulty I had. Linking my world with the real world. writing this book, in a way is another difficulty. Because in my world, I don’t have time to write the book. And in the real world, I have stated that I would write the book. In my mind, there are people waiting for the book, but also in my mind, there are people getting along with their lives and have written me off or written off the book. So which is it?

Step by step, we move forward. So let’s see if we can do this thing.

My friend Michael calls this navel gazing. I think, as I’m wondering aloud about my life and the choices. I intend to make this book available free on my website at this URL https://www.robnugen.com/books/slow-down/, and you can even watch its creation if you watch one of these other URLs

• https://github.com/thunderrabbit/barefoot_rob/
• https://bitbucket.org/thunderrabbit/barefoot_rob/
• https://gitlab.bmemc.com/thunderrabbit/barefoot_rob

So with that, let’s get started.

I have often said it makes no difference what you do. And then again it makes a huge difference.

3. Write about spirit and just do it

Humans were made in the image of God. So this doesn’t mean that God is shaped like a human, or vice versa. It means that humans are creative. We have freewill, and can create. According to our free will, within the limits of karma and physicality, we can create and do whatever we want. So, going on a walk across to him, might seem pretty ridiculous, but there’s literally no reason not to do it

from the point of view. We can do whatever we want to do. So,

All we have to do is start planning. And for me the biggest concern was getting the time off work, and then getting support from my wife to be away for that long. She tends to worry about things more than I do. And

it took some long discussions to assure her that I would remain safe during the trip. At the end, my head, I have two eyes. And I like my feet intact. So, all my body parts intact. So my definite intent intention to remain intact for as long as possible, including the duration of this walk. So, she finally agreed. Having the support was invaluable.

As we shall soon see.

Do whatever you want. Nothing matters. No one cares.

Do whatever you want. It makes all the difference in the world.

4. Let’s talk about the Ever Present Present, or EPP. Alan Watts pointed out that we use the thinnest of hands on our clocks and watches to trace the transition of Future into Past, as if the present moment is actually simply a sliver of Time.

As best I can tell, the present is actually all that is.
In The Power of Now Eckhart Tolle talks about it.

I heard his work was based on The Course of Miracles.

My chapter here is based on my cursory glance at those books on my bookshelf, waiting patiently for me to read them or toss them or anything else. Or nothing else.

So, in short, I should not be writing this book. As Frederick Marx said at length in the intro for his book Initiations, it falls to each generation to teach the new generation. I burst into tears when I read that. Oh fuck. I can’t do it.
I must do it. Aaaggggghhh and that was…. (checks email) August 7th, 2021.
I sent him a photo of myself crying.

• add photo
• maybe add emails, inc his reply

And now it’s April 27th, 2022. (8 months later!) Life happens. Things go off the rails.
Just come back to the project and put a few words together. It can be no other way. Life takes time as we go through successive snapshots of living all taking place in the EPP.

Breathe with me. Be here now.

5. I am fascinated by time. I love taking pictures of long(?) construction projects like houses being built in my neighborhood, or sidewalks being repaired, or a street being narrowed(!) to make more room for sidewalks on each side.

One of my favorite projects in my world is what I call Marble Track 3. In a way, I started in in early 1980s when my brother and I would build marble tracks with Legos.

I tried to slow the marbles down by making the slopes less sloped; I eventually realized Legos simply couldn’t do it. I turned to Craftsticks, which were just popsicle sticks bought from Michael’s, a craft/hobby store.

I built my marble track over a period of years spanning high school and university. It mostly got put on hold after that when I started working full time (thanks to my best friend Maggie’s referral) and then really got put on hold when I put my entire life (*) on hold to travel.

I asked Maggie if she could hold the marble track for me while I spent a year or two in Japan. That was in 2003.

In early 2007, I realized it had been a while. I decided to make a new marble track, dubbed Marble Track 2, as a gift for Maggie.

I gave Marble Track 2 to Maggie as a gift for keeping (the previously unnamed) Marble Track 1. And to make things make sense, gave her Marble Track 1 as well.

Meanwhile, I posted Marble Track 2 basically finished (NSFW language) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mlUqu6QE7bw http://mt2.robnugen.com on Youtube and it got attracted lots of comments. 1,289,076 views as of 27 April 2022.

Most interesting comments for me were basically: “How did you make that?”

“Well, I just glued sticks onto wood and more sticks onto those…”

Then a whole slew of other comments were deriding my art! “6 months wasted” etc.

So now I am creating Marble Track 3. While doing so, I am creating a stop motion animation of characters creating Marble Track 3.

It’s taking ages! My response to those trolls: “you think I wasted 6 months? Well watch this”

And my response to those who wanted to know how I made it, “watch this” which shows every stick being brought into place step by step.

I try to work on it a couple hours every week, and the final video slowly accumulates frames. I estimate the final will be two hours long.

Still need to add audio and CGI background, but I’ll let Future Rob figure that out.

So yeah, playing with time: taking years to spend hours (creating approximately 6 to 10 photos per hour), which when viewed at 12 frames per second create a coherent story, which itself lasts hours!

(*) Wende, engagement, Spot, Scott, house, and more! It was hard.

6. Technology is a weird new shiny thing for us.

Each time we come into a human body (yes I’m talking reincarnation here) we have to start from scratch.

Even if you scratch the reincarnation part and just say we’re born, we have to start from scratch.

Chaotic sensations eventually get resolved into lights and sounds, which eventually get identified and faces and voices.. plus this funny body with “arms” and “legs” “fingers” and “toes” “head, shoulders, knees, and toes” We have to learn all this. From scratch.

But technology just keeps on marching.
I watched a video on Youtube via Reddit via my “phone” which is actually like a portable TV and radio on which I can see, hear, communicate, etc.. Really wild…

Oh sorry, so I watched a video that showed some guys making a rope… out of plants. Basically out of wheat or straw or something.

Making a rope!

Now, rope just magically squirts out of a rope machine, apparently at a Factory on the other end of my mailman’s route.

Now we’ve got not just rope, but cars, airplanes, ball point pens, and all kinds of stuff. Plus Bitcoin, NFTs, contact lenses, James Webb Space Telescope orbiting Lagrange Point 3 or whatever, checking out infrared radiation so it can see further away than we have in recent memory.

Okay, so the point is don’t get completely swept away by technology.
You’ve got a physical body, full of blood, nerves, emotions, chakras, ideas, inspirations, desires…

Once you’ve figured out enough of the chaotic sensations that come into your body, feel free to listen internally and decide what to do based on your inner guidance.

Toss this book down or close the computer or turn off your EyeVisor 3000 and just breathe.

Notice this moment.

Who this book is for

In a real sense, this book is for me and people like me. If you have been around for a bit, got some experience and such for others to hear, let this book be a reminder that you have enough to write a book. I am literally just littering the page with a bunch of old stuff I heard or words I know and somehow gonna shape it all together, invisible to most people, but in visible show for those who know where to look. The first version of this text is and so long as GitHub exists, will be available at

https://github.com/thunderrabbit/barefoot_rob/commit/119599158840936cd9910f9945eea9def0bb710a

And by the nature of how git works, you can see every time I saved changes.

Okay anyway, Mel Ashe suggested “Start Your Own Religion” so I created R.O.B.O.T. an acronym for Rob’s Own Brand Of Thinking, and you’re only allowed to join if you share my name, birthdate, and birth city.

So I am suggesting you write your own book. If you have a book in you, write it! Stop reading this one.

This book is for people who want to hear that little voice in their head saying “you can do it,” for, you can do it.

Even if you have to do butterfly in diving bell style write with glances, or with morse code twitches, do it. That your book wants to come out is proof someone wants to read it. And as I am writing this utter garbage now, which I presume will get cleaned up, I am getting to the good stuff.

Just write.

I thought I was writing about who the book is for, not how to write a book!

I need to Slow Down.

(five minutes please)

This book is for those who have too many projects, too much going on, too many fucking things scratching at the eyes of attention, trying to get the precious nectar of time.

Time does not work the way we think.

Time transcends time. When I smoked pot, time slowed wayyy the fuck down. When I ate 7 pot brownies, time flowed backwards. In Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, time just is, and can be perceived in any direction or orientation.

I love playing with time. My friend Kyoko routinely goes for 10 day meditation retreats (Vipassana). Right now she is on a 40 day retreat. Last time we talked she mentioned that now she consciously plays with time during her meditations. A second can feel like an hour and an hour can feel like a second.

I don’t know what all this means except that western science doesn’t know wtf time is. We don’t even know what gravity is, really.

Oh, so I love playing with time. I am making a stop motion animation of characters making a rolling ball track.

Just now I glued another piece onto the sample Outer Spiral. I took a picture of it and four months later posted on the page https://www.marbletrack3.com/p/os

Thank you!

Slow Down

And get moving

Freedom

Allow your mind the freedom to play. Allow yourself the freedom to play. Explore ideas, go wild. Emulate Dr Seuss and ride a flying blueberry pancake hat to the moon and back each night in your imagination

Kick Start

My project stalled out and went on to the proverbial back burner for 2+ years until it was completely forgotten even though I had t-shirts printed in my lower drawer, one of which was unopened to keep it pristine and ready to go.

This can happen to your projects and it doesn’t mean they are doomed to failure. In my case my friend Robert Golden asked me if I had any wild dreams and I pulled this one out of the proverbial closet and mentioned it to him.

“I want to walk barefoot from here to Niigata”

Plan or Not

Depending on the size of the project and the support you may or may not want from others it might be valuable to do some planning.

As Joe McMoneagle suggested to me in 1996 after I asked him how I could travel around the world, he said “just start planning.'

I think this is a great example of mentoring or coaching or something. This advice works without knowing any of the details and without getting immersed into micromanaging someone else’s project.

In our example of a flying blueberry pancake hat to the Moon, it’s pretty easy to get started: just buy some pancake mix and grow some blueberries…

Dive into the details. And talk over it with your friends getting some suggestions along the way.. For my walk across Japan I originally planned to do a camping version, but I figured being Barefoot might mean I want some place to clean injuries and camping wouldn’t make it very easy.

go

According to my friend Jason Hancock, there are four stages of adapting to any situation:

Honeymoon, hatred, humor, homecoming

Starting your project here in the honeymoon stage. Any problems are just curiosities and puzzles to be solved, and everything in general is fresh and new. Life is great and the new project is underway. Congratulations, and hip hip hooray!

For me, the Honeymoon portion lasted about three or four days of my walk. Everything was basically fine and had lots of road ahead of me and lots of convenience stores around me so I could relax and walk and eat and talk and everything was just fine.

The first day was the best and easiest by far, 21 km walking with my wife Lin, the first five or seven kilometers with our mutual friend Shraddhan, and the first almost one kilometer with Clare and Yumi offering smiles, photos, encouragement, and best of luck.

Go

It was on the third day or so I got my first bloody injury. Very small piece of glass in the ball of one of my feet. I don’t even recall which one as I write this now (over a year later). I wondered if I could have predicted it or avoided it, but there was nothing to do but keep on walking.

Stop?

During my walk, there were times that I had to have compassion on myself. And while the desire was there to fulfill my promise to walk barefoot across the country. There were points, that it was literally

dangerous to do so. I recognized I should put on sandals after walking once it had gotten so dark, I literally couldn’t see where I was putting my feet.

And so I could get a light. It was in the moment of pain that I just had to put on sandals. And as soon as it got to be into a lighted area again, I took them off.

I walked barefoot and injured my feet and injured my feet again walking on a sidewalk that hadn’t previously seen a bare foot since its inception, I’m sure,

covered in gravel and grass and glass. And I just wondered how I was going to make it. And then I realized that I could put on sandals. my sandals.

Stop!

Oh no! Something really unexpected happened. This is the curse and the beauty of adventure! OH no, much harder than I expected.

Let’s just retreat and curl up at home with a nice book and pretend nothing happened.

You have this option! I won’t stop you from doing it; I am all about self care.

Here are some questions to consider:

1.

“How will you feel after this moment passes?”

This is the question Shraddhan asked me the morning of Day Ten(?) of my walk. I was hella ready to quit. I literally couldn’t stand without pain. My feet felt so swollen that it was like agony just to put my foot down on carpet. How the heck could I handle gravely streets?

I thought about his question, playing through my mind what I would do if I quit now.

I could go home and be home in like 2 hours from now, crying and sleeping for a day and then slumped in front of my work computer thinking “ah man why the fuck did I quit?”

I told Shraddhan something like, “I’ll feel like shit if I quit now. I gotta do this.”

2.

“Are you actually unsafe to move forward?”

If so, is there a way around it, or will it pass if you wait?

There was a non-venomous snake green rat snake who crossed the sidewalk right in front of me during my walk. I knew it was fine, and rat snake knew I was fine when I paused, watching, my heart full of joy.

Snake moved on and so did I. (After taking photos and video with Francois)

3.

“Is it temporary pain or difficulty?”

Take a moment to notice the present moment. Just breathe.

Now that you are settled with your breathing, allow your awareness to expand to include the big picture. Allow yourself to see the original impetus for this plan, and your imagined completion. Are you reasonably on the path between those two? What can you do to get back on path?

In other words, this is the chance for you to look at the big picture and see if you can make course corrections that will keep you in line with your original goal.

GO!

So now that you’ve made your decision, continue to go for it! You have the option of going home and you have the option of continuing your path either way is okay and your loved ones will support you in either case.

Success?

It’s over. You did it. Did you do it? Who’s there to notice it? Do you celebrate? Are you alive?

Now WTF?

Now what do you do?

My friend Klaus mentioned that the completion of the project necessitates the death of an identity. There’s a grieving process required because there was so much energy put into this project that is now completed so now there’s no role for that identity anymore.

Take your time to grieve. After my walk across Japan, it took me fully 10 days before I could figure out how to even really get out of bed. I mean I went to work and stuff but I was a proverbial shell of my former self unless I was specifically talking about the walk.

I was shocked at how difficult it was to come back.

https://otter.ai/u/pAPYt35yrJ6mRAdprZJevHrWmEs

Today is Monday, January 30 2023. And I’m going to sing a little rap singers song new thing that I wrote. This is in quotes while riding my bicycle TJ bike from Tokyo to Kyoto and back to Tokyo.

When a little something according to my memory went a little something like this.

TJ Bike is the bike I like;
we don't cause trouble when we hike.
TJ bike, TJ bike, TJ bike, TJ bike.

TJ bike is the bike I like;
we don't cause trouble when we hike.
TJ bike TJ by TJ bike, TJ Bike.

See a river. we go through it.
We see a mountain go do it,
see a highway we go to it and just use it.

TJ Bike TJ Bike. etc

And so that was basically it, on repeat in my brain.

For hours and kilometers and miles of this ride. I made up this little rap for my bicycle it was like my my version of Dory singing Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming and Finding Nemo movie so yeah.

In approximately 2006 per my memory. After I finished my second voyage around the world with peace boat.

I was out of money. I had 20,000 yen to my name.

And I had a plan to go to Kyoto in order to do the 10 day Vipassana sit that was scheduled for like two weeks later or something.

And I was like, Alright, I need to be there in two weeks. I’ve got 20,000 yen.

So if I if I go there now I have to run out of money on the pay for the train. not have enough money to stay anywhere.

Okay, if I so I was like, you know, just stuck for how to deal with this situation. And then I was like, I have an idea. I’ll ride my bicycle to Kyoto, and sleep, you know, on the high along the highway on side of the road on the way there.

And I had just been on peace boat as I said. So a couple of people during the voyage were like yeah, come on. Over, you know, whenever you like. And so during the this very poorly planned trip.

I did stay with a couple of friends along the way.

Koji is a man who has I may still be alive. I don’t know.

This was what 12 years ago.

More than 12

He and his wife had like a woofing farm willing workers on organic farms. Set up down in me a spelled mi E and he was like yeah, come on over so i did i i got I’m skipping so much the story but I here’s the important parts. Forget about all the bicycle stuff.

I had this plan to ride my bicycle.

And this is going to be the point of this chapter.

I had this plan to ride my bicycle to Kyoto.

And there was nothing stopping me so to speak. I didn’t have a job. I had just gotten I just finished the peace boat voyage for like 100 day voyage back in Tokyo and had this plan and I was like kind of working out in my mind. You know what, you know how I could possibly do this bike trip. And I discovered I was like, essentially looking for permission to go.

And it’s it comes back to the like this thing of like wanting to be good. I think that if if someone says that, oh yeah, it’s okay for you to do it. Then or I want you to do you know something? Okay, perfect. I’ll do it. If you say I should do it, then I’ll do it.

But in this case, I didn’t have that. And it would, it would have taken too long to like, set up some fake. Like, it was a situation of like, okay, guys, it’s going to be I’m going to leave on this day. On Thursday. Come on out and wish me well. You know, not that that would be fake but that would take two weeks of Tokyo time because everyone’s busy and all of that and to schedule something in like that.

And the entire trip, I only had two weeks. So that was that didn’t even cross my mind that I could like make an official thing and get some buy in from people who would care which I did do it for my walk but not for this bicycle trip. And I because it was so curious. I was like, Huh, I’m waiting for permission and it’s like, dot dot dot, from whom?

Who is it should be free from him. Yeah, from her from whom? From whom? Who was going to give me permission. When I was literally free. I just could I could just go and I was like, Huh.

And so I just went very unceremoniously. I packed I had, I had already bought the bicycle T I had already bought TJ bike. I had purchased it with like saddlebag racks on the front and back, plus the saddle bags. And I just worked out a way to like, put my back. What was it I had a couple bags in the back. Basically it was quite overloaded with all the junk I had.

But I was like, huh, I can just go and I just went this at this time I was not living anywhere really where was my bicycle at that time.

But I keep thinking that I was in the place when Bo zaru which is the name of a place down near Socrata Shane mochi name of a building. I was staying with Jesse. But the main part of this the anyway, I’ll get to that in a second.

So I saw I just left I was like, okay, I can just go and I jumped on my bike.

I know I do know that.

90% Sure. I had ridden my bike or had my bicycle at the Peace boat office up in Takadanobaba.

And I remember one of the other teachers named Carl was like he was flabbergasted Are you serious? You’ve really fucking just gonna go without planning and anything. I was like, Yeah, I might as well you know.

And I had, as I said, 20,000 yen to my to my name and I had no map. So I needed to go to a book shop and I bought a map that was like the motorcycle touring guide of Japan. And as I speak this I’m turning around in my seat to grab this book.

Mapple three and it has a ratio. One to 140,000 is the size on this thing and it shows a motorcycle on the front.

publish date and obviously on the binding or anything but it was 1600 yen, apparently. And I I remember spending 4000 yen.

On the books maybe I bought two because I remember also that it didn’t cover the entire area I wanted to ride but yeah, so this map book is kind of has some water damage on it a little bit pages a little bit bent. Have a bunch of little tabs on the side and dirty edge because you know I was you know, I was basically camping. And I wrote a bunch of notes in the little little Little Book Notes. So this one says I didn’t write the year that’s amazing says like 10:25am May 28 Breakfast granola Megamart and there’s an arrow. This is written in the water and of the map and there’s an arrow pointing up to this little dot and I’ve got these little dots that are alone the road pointed to by arrows and then on the map here, this is like four centimeters away. 10:25am four centimeters away.

Unbelievable.

deal that’s 28th of May 27 of May Ah there it is a year 2006 Perfect.

So okay, this is going the other direction.

Anyway, the few centimeters away as a different night and then here’s a.by a river. This is on page two of this map.

And there’s a.by The river it says May 27 9:11pm Sleep 2006 And before that was 7:31pm so to an hour and what 40 minutes before I was 1234 centimeters away on the map.

As a dot that says, Say 7:31pm looks like just has it hold G or an O six.

I don’t know what that means.

And yeah, here’s another one says seven April 2006. So maybe Yeah, going the other direction or something. Anyway, it’s like little Discovery Zone of notes in this map that I’ve put together.

And to the point, I was looking for permission.

When I’ve realized suddenly, I was blocking myself it was up to me to give myself permission and just go and just do it. So I jumped on the bike and headed out and this is perfectly in line with the answer I got from Joe mcmoneagle This is way back in the night. 1995 or six I think

yeah, so I had asked him I was like, Hey Joe, I want to I want to travel around the new moon and just like do all this traveling as I how do I how do I start?

And his answer was perfect and beautiful. The the perfect kind of guidance that I needed.

He said just start planning.

He didn’t say it all dramatically like that. He’s like, well just just start planning.

And I was like, just start planning. That’s amazing. You know, and he didn’t have to get tied up in any details and he was empowering me to take care of myself and to to do this thing and the whole purpose of this chapter is to empower you to do what you need to do. Just start planning meal, put the thing together, ask for help as needed. Help will arrive and just do it. So

yeah, that’s the first bit of the chapter for two TJ Bike Adventure.

Let me click my notes again real quick here.

Ignore message Ah, okay, the notes I’ve written.

I haven’t even gotten that far in the trip. So let me I’ll just keep out just keep it rolling didn’t matter.

I can imagine this will be a paragraph break here.

In in my freedom, my my free time availability. I had nowhere to go or be or do or whatever. This was like basically headed toward Cody’s farm apparently had an address.

I had a who, how would this have worked? I guess I had a laptop laptop computer because I’ve always been a computer type type person. And he must have just been using free Wi Fi from McDonald’s or what have you.

And I could check email that way and stuff and I guess there must be yeah cuz I have photos and stuff from the trip.

It’s probably instead of blabbing all this stuff from memory to look up those stories but

writing to down into me a can from from Tokyo took me I think it was like eight days and just like basically alone the entire time. With just your superficial interactions at supermarkets to get granola or rarely one time I went to McDonald’s That’s how desperate I was for food.

And I remember there was a like a

some to one or two teenage teenagers had. Oh hey, we saw you writing before.

An hour ago. And now you’re here and they asked about my trip and bought me a hamburger or something. It’s just really a generous kind of interaction in my mind and at that time, though, I was craving connection.

And, you know, oh, thank you. Oh my god, you know, and thinking that we’re going to be friends and hogs and there’s like, Okay, here’s hamburger Bye. Good luck with your trip. But it was like the human connection I had received up to that point during the trip. And is it it was really nice. And how many years later that I’m still remembering it.

Can we do the math this time? Four plus two 610 So 16 years ago 17 Because we’re in 2003.

And yeah, so they, it first it was all fine with just basically flat flat flat and then got into a few hills and it was like a slog. Going up and down some hills and I got there was some something something roadway that I couldn’t go through and I had to go around the mountain I thought turns out it probably could have gone through the tunnel but I went a long way around. But I finally I got to Cochise house and it it had been like hour so along the way there. I just slept in parks basically to say oh, here’s a good Park. Crash out next to it not crash but like sleep next to a tree from 9am to five uh Sorry 9pm to four or 5am and then be like book jump on my bike. Zoom, zoom, zoom, keep it rollin. This is a I say bike. I mean bicycle. TJ bike was a bicycle. steel frame. Louis Garneau brand.

heavy as hell. Plus all the the the bags and and I don’t wanna say shit. This is not for kids. Anyway, all the bags and shit that I had on the bike. It was it was overloaded and heavy.

And yeah, but just stayed in parks and no one. No one bugged me. It was really great. The one thing that I don’t recommend about this kind of trip that I was riding along the roads listen to motorcycle touring map, which were roads and highways, not my like tollways but sometimes they didn’t have sidewalks or even really curbs on or what’s the pads on the side? And it was it was dangerous with big ass trucks going in June, June back and forth pass me.

But yeah, it was it was.

It was cool. One day on the way there.

I had

it’s, I don’t know I didn’t know the details but it started raining. And I went under a bridge. That was like, I have this sense that was like we had been going up a hill and it was raining is like Ah shit, I need to stop but there was nowhere to really stop. But we had the road was like going up this hill but there was like valleys and stuff underneath the road. And so I had found a way to get down under the road and there was a flat big flat concrete section that was holding the the pilings of the bridge.

And I just had a view out over this valley but the road itself the highway itself above me was the roof, no walls.

It was temperature was fine.

But it was just raining like you know, solid rain for a full day. So I had I had a day of rest at this location.

With without food. Well, I must say without food. I had food but without any other resources. I just always like sat there and slept or read or wrote for a day have no real memory of that.

Those details and probably a lot of sleeping.

And then the next day it had stopped raining so I jumped back on the bike kept on rolling because I was under the highway literally zero people except me knew I was there. And it just the road traffic just had some guy on the underneath the highway.

And yeah, it’s just a curious thing.

So I got to Cochise house after like seven eight days. And they already had another worker there.

Woman from Australia I want to say and it was the first her speaking to me in English was the first time I had her English in many days and it was like wow, English, you know, kind of thing and I was like, Oh my God, you know just so grateful again for the connection. And you’re wondering if we would become best friends and all that but again is just passing workers in the in the farm and she was actually on her way out that day.

And but I remember as well we were talking a bit and she was talking about and that she used to grow up grow up on a farm that they made yogurt and maybe she’s from New Zealand anyway.

I remember being so entertained by like with my joke that I made I was like you can make yogurt I thought it just magically appeared in the store.

But I I just have the sense that she didn’t get it cuz she’s like, Yeah You’re a big dummy. You make yogurt. Yeah, bacteria available. I know how it’s done, but at that point, it was anyways a funny joke.

What my brother and I call a location joke. You had to be there.

And I remember like taking a shower at Cody’s places the first shower I had had in seven or eight days after riding my proverbial butt off for all that one of those days. My the the thickness of dead skin on my skin was amazing. And it was just like my I would like scratch my arm with my fingernails and just had this like, glob of gray under each fingernail all these dead skin cells. It was a whole gross and like my I don’t even want to say how like I don’t have one I have a guest two millimeters thick it seemed.

I have no idea if that’s accurate or not. But it was just like holy crap. It was just so much and really interesting to have that experience of taking a shower after seven or eight days of writing.

And yeah, but then I was a if they showers and baths and in traditional homes like that in Japan are great who just have have a shower have a big big bathtub kind of thing.

Although I remember it wasn’t that big, but it’s just we have the bath space just to relax and chill. So that was nice.

Yeah, so I If this message ever gets back to koji and his wife somehow i I want to acknowledge now i i stayed too long while I was there because they there was very welcoming and, and was that I was uh, you know, working on the farm. But wasn’t that much work to do? I don’t think they really needed me. And after a while his wife was like, Yeah, so when are you leaving it? Like oh, I guess I’m leaving pretty soon.

And yet I remember staying one more day because she had asked in the afternoon. I didn’t want to start late in the afternoon. And plus, it was much nicer to sleep in their, you know, fluffy farm bed at their farm instead of on the road. But I left early the next morning and headed down to Kobe, where my friend Richard lived.

Now, Richard, was he I know kiwi. Sorry. I know Richard a much more than I know.

Koji or the groin that Richard is definitely a kiwi from New Zealand. He had been in Japan for quite a few years. quite fluent in Japanese like a million times more than I am even even now.

And he was working in like the some government office and also on the side doing work as a like a fake marriage, where they call it like, basically like officiating the marriage. But it doesn’t take much training. Just have to memorize all this very fancy, fancy Japanese stuff.

You can tell I’ve never done it. And so I he’s like, Yeah, meet me at this park or whatever. And so I I arrived there and and he took me out to dinner at whatever, you know, his favorite restaurant or something, and then went to his house for an evening the next day. I had a free day. Maybe I was there a couple of days. Had a free day or two in Kobe and went to the the the I forgot to like the coast but there’s a park on the on the bay there. People flying kites and all this stuff.

And he unfixing on the Saturday after he had finished his wedding to fishy ation, officiating stuff. We met again. And he’s like, You know what? You need this money more than I do. And he handed me 20,000 yen.

And I was like, Holy shit, you just double that my budget for this entire trip. And again, it was such a gift from you know from him that was in a way it was very simple and easy. And to me had a huge profound impact. I was like, Wow, thank you. Thank you. Thank you so much, you know, really, really beautiful blessing. And it was so so so so great. And with that money, if I recall correctly, I immediately went to get the bike, you know, TJ bike, tweaked and tweaked that’s the right word, but like one of the pedals was had gotten loose. So I got new pedals and probably, you know, that Titan new brakes or something and then you know, whatever, just get some maintenance done on the bike.

So that was good. And then the days had gotten a lot had gone through and I had the next day I had to be up in Kyoto for the 10 day Vipassana thing.

And I basically went straight north from Kobe, to the location and I up and down some hills and finally Okay, now we’re finally here and i i I remember the hills were like, like, big, you know, lazy turns and lazy hills. and down hills and just a nice little hill country.

But I got to the location turn left and go into their the property. I don’t know if they own it or renting it or whatever. But

I basically I arrived. And I recognize that I was looking for a grand welcome as i Wow, you rode all the way here from Tokyo.

And it’s a passenger train and so I mean, the whole point is to just, you know, to drop all of that.

And so there there was no ceremony or grand arrival and this kind of gave them my my buy bags and my computer and we didn’t have phones at that point had a phone but not like an iPhone.

And there’s handed everything over and they’re like, Alright, there’s your room. Go take a shower to go to your room. Kind of thing.

And yeah, it was. It was a good experience. So now I’ll pause this recording. It’s been 32 minutes. That’s that’s quite a bit.

And thanks for listening. If you ever do, again, this is January 30 2023. It’s now 7:46pm Japan time, and I’ll talk to you guys later. Bye

https://otter.ai/u/SkgJv5BJi5fxklRHEnQ5mGcOox4?utm_source=copy_url

Doing the meditation was in a way harder than riding my bicycle out to Kyoto to do it. My brain was like, chaos who could run it around like doing jumping jacks the whole time. I just couldn’t stay awake. In the morning. I got grumbled and by one of the the volunteer staff when I didn’t wake up in the morning,

Yeah, it was tough. It got harder and harder and harder for the nine days. And then on the last day than I was suddenly like, like “oh, yeah” and I suddenly got it. And I understood the value.

And then on the 10th day, we were able to speak again. I took a moment to just cry that I had completed it or out of relief. I didn’t really want to talk to anyone, to be honest. But we did talk a bit and that through those conversations, I actually got so number of the I told the guy that didn’t have a job and he mentioned that I could contact a man named Hide, and volunteer as a lab rat in Kagoshima, which I ended up doing a few times and made a bit over 2 million yen. Overall, that was nice, but main point being that the person was quite challenging. And at the end, I determined two things.

One that I would do it again, I haven’t yet and I determined like a like what I would tell people who were you asking about the past and it’s like is that if you think you can’t do it, you don’t want to do it, then definitely don’t do it. However, if you think you’d be interested and it might be a good thing, then definitely definitely do it. As challenging as it is. It it’s like quite a very few people like on the fence. Here there’s like if it could be good or not, you know, maybe if it’s a case that someone has a like a min. A mentor, like what’s the word, like mental condition that needs monitoring by a doctor or what have you. I mean, I don’t know. But beyond those types of issues, just let the curiosity be the judge if you’re curious, you think it’d be cool, definitely do it. Otherwise definitely don’t do it. It was really, really challenging. I’m glad I did. And it really helped with the next part of my TJ bike story.

https://otter.ai/u/953TbOXk8ocpyhDxCK1uXiMUzhI?utm_source=copy_url

How do you experience God’s guidance in your life? When I was younger this must be this definitely before I came to Japan so 2030 years ago at minimum, I 20 or 30 years ago at minimum. I had this idea for a movie concept that the movie camera would like be panning around the room from the perspective of the protagonist and things that could help the protagonist what very subtly like flicker or light up or there’d be a little hint of light pointing some direction and this would be a representation of God guiding the protagonist in the right direction. And as I’m describing this now, I might add some guidance in the wrong direction with a different color light, like yours also, this has been portrayed as like a little angel on each side shoulder the consciousness of an angel or a devil guiding one or attempting one, one way or another. And I just want to take this as to a very kind of literal sense I once had the experience of moving without really thinking doesn’t sound good enough. I’m not sure if I told the story yet here. about seeing a woman basically, B rating her lApi rating, seeing a woman who was yelling at her son, a couple few years old. She was he was crying and she was telling him not to cry. And that there was no one to help I my sense it was all in her she was speaking Japanese to him. My sense what she was saying in my memories mentally Been a while that there’s no one here to help and stop crying. I just got the idea that she had been recently divorced or left with a young child and there’s no one here to help her and just stop crying. And I was like that that eight right, the way she’s treating him and I I didn’t do it because it’s Japan and it’s an her her business and blah blah blah. Oh gosh, but when at one point I just found myself, like watching them but then I found myself moving toward her. And I can’t explain it. Well, I can explain saying in my mind as I Okay, I guess we’re doing this kind of thing. As I had just set my bag down, I walked over, gently walked over to her. And I put my arm in between her and the child. And I basically focused on her I ignored the baby the child for a bit and I said it’s I don’t My Japanese is not that good. I said something like no, I’ve said it in English but in simple English. I said he is so small. And I hope I didn’t say it that way. Gosh, no, I wish I have maybe find my journal entry. I’m sure I wrote a journal entry about this and I think it went rather well. This retelling is like not as good. But the point is, I believe God guided me to support her and I ended up like giving my my card as I call me anytime. At the same time thinking why the heck would she call someone who can’t speak Japanese but just the offer was there. She never ended up calling me but I hope that it helped her recognize the need to find a different way to express her anger and her sadness. I’m sure she was devastated. And yeah, it was it was really a powerful moment in my life to have the sense that I was being guided to do something that I truly believe was an overall positive effect. Even though I was breaking the Japanese mores of it’s not just Japan like the speaking to a stranger randomly, but I think it’s even more so in Japan to not get into other people’s business. But to the question I’m posing to you now. How do you hear God’s guidance? And do you even believe it’s possible to hear guidance from higher power God as you understand God? Do you believe there even is a god? I know I addressed this a couple chapters back, you’re trying to prove that there’s something and is there as something that you would like to tap into? Is there something that you can imagine tapping into so

allowing God’s guidance to flow in my life I tend to slow down. I tend to speak more gently, thoughtfully. If you were to listen to this recording, Even now my voice is slower. As if in a meditative state, facilitating a meditation

simply dropping into a quiet state. I believe I can hear insights, guidance. encouragement

and I imagine the same is true for anyone who chooses to allow God’s guidance into their life this is a simple point of like gonna go a little bit faster now. I tend to think that religions are inoculations against true spiritual connection by going to going by going to another human or a human, you know, an organization and looking at looking to another human or a book to get insights from God. It’s a reasonable starting point. It could be a good mentor. It could be a good book and say, Okay, fine. That is fine. Totally fine. However, once one has grown into an adult, and it’s like, put away the book for a moment. Sit down and meditate. For a moment, allow God to speak directly to you. And in this moment, I’m not speaking to those who would declare that blasphemy or what have you. I’m not sure if that’s actually last me in any religion. I hope not. But it’s it’s amazing to me to think that many religions saying Your God is infinite. And then to think Oh, but he can’t speak to me directly. He or she? It’s like, Huh, that’s interesting. So, being infinite, whatever for whatever version of infinity one chooses or omniscient or what have you. How the heck you saying God can’t speak to you directly. My friend Marty said that he leaves or how does he say it like God fiercely loves each of us uniquely and individually, something like that. I have to ask him to the exact quote and I yeah, I like that, you know, as infinity. You know, people talking about the infinite multiverse is of whatever and describing all kinds of different possible like every world exists. Including one where the, you know, all all the words are the same except for the word. You know. Yes and no are reversed. You know, just describing these different possibilities. And then, not necessarily the same people, but then to say that, Oh, God can’t talk to me directly. It’s like, yeah, that seems strange. So yeah, heck, I don’t know. I’m just blabbering at this point. But how could how might God speak to you in your life? Do you want that as a possibility? My sense is that meditation helps open the space so that I can hear more clearly more subtle energies more fine or divine or more. Not trying to rhyme, but guidance coming from a higher source. For more subtle energies. We’re here in this 3d world. And kind of limited to whatever videos probably seven or eight senses we can definitely add balance and proprioception to the list of the five so that seven right there and

emotion I feel my emotions. That’s gotta be a sense. And my sense is that emotions are this kind of interface between spirit and me. And tapping into the emotions. processing them, not just ignoring them who are suddenly have this whole giant conspiracy theory that by being taught to not feel or process our emotions, we’re being taught to not experience higher power taught to throw away the insights received from higher power. Emotions are literally just guidance for our lives and I know I’ve talked about that before. Anger is the emotion that comes up when it’s time to set a boundary or maintain a boundary or you know, protect, protect oneself. Sadness is an emotion that comes up when it’s time to grieve a loss or acknowledge a loss. Fear is an emotion that comes up when it’s time to get more information. Or to keep on alert, tread carefully. Joy is an emotion that comes up when I’m I’m on the right path, so to speak. I have what I want and I want when I have gratitude is an emotion that comes up when I’m recognize the receipt of something that I need or want or love that didn’t come from my direct control. Now this one I just know freestyled this sense of gratitude, I’ve been wondering for a long time, what is gratitude? And so I’ll try to define it here. It’s an acknowledgement of receiving something of benefit without having to do anything for it. So to speak. That last part, I’m not sure. But receipt of something positive receipt of something acknowledging receipt of something that I appreciate or supports me. And gratitude can arise slightly different than Joy. Joy, simply being here now. And enjoying the ride and gratitude the subtle difference being here now and acknowledging the greater world around me making this joy possible, perhaps In

this space and intentionally left blank

at my first TED X speech in what was it October 2021, I guess? September October. I included 30 seconds of silence in a TEDx speech. And it was recommended that I describe it as maybe a little bit unusual for TEDx, but I included it. Just as an encouragement for people to get present in the moment.

I believe, though, you might claim the inability to meditate or what have you. The mind is not easily going to give up its role of spitting out all kinds of stuff. So don’t think that quietening the mind will, is the goal of meditation. When you first start to meditate, that is kind of our here, here we go. So erase all those previous paragraphs, just here it is, when you sit down to meditate. The practice of sitting down to meditate is what’s most important. It’s not quietening the mind. That’s most important. That will happen over time and I’m talking like decades lifetimes of practice.

But it’s the practice that’s the part that I can control. That I take five minutes even 30 seconds is better than zero. Just take a moment to breathe. Just take a moment to be the mind Oh, keep on jumping around. That’s fine. Imagine that that’s not in your control. And when? What is in control of just sitting down and taking 30 seconds, eventually the mind will follow suit you’ll find moments of no thought you’ll find moments of quiet

then they’ll be gone and your brain will start thinking again and that’s natural and just sit just be there

and if you forget to meditate for a day or a week or a month or 15 years It’s cool man Just start again.

Just take 30 seconds.

Welcome to do it now. If you choose.

https://otter.ai/u/ZyNGtar-Ox6EIi9Ifs8sLNr4IzE

Okay, now here’s part two of the TJ bike story. I left the passenger center was recommended to go on the north side of Biwako, the largest lake in Japan. And I went to Amanohashidate that day, which, wow, that’s amazing that came out in the transcription that they said was like the third most beautiful place to see in Japan. I went as I am, it’s okay. I definitely wouldn’t have put it in the top three, but it stands out in the story because they had built it up so much as like, okay, it’s a hill overlooking the city, but then the dragons need to turn your head upside down and dragons tail maybe it’s good for kids, but I was like, Yeah, whatever. Maybe just so frickin tired. ride my bicycle all around.

Had I gone via train, maybe be different, but it was okay. The cool thing about this part of the country is there not many trains and while it was spread out I was again on my own free time do whatever I want. I had a train a train went by. It was only to train cars as I Oh, wow. I’m going to take a picture of that. So I waited until the next train and waited and waited and waited. And a woman was like what you’re doing because she went home and came back or whatever she went by you like “what you’re doing?”, like “waiting for the train.” She’s like, “the next train is not going to be for another 45 minutes.” I said, “Oh, really? hmmm, well, that’s okay. I’ll just wait.” And she’s like, “okay,” and so she went, apparently home,

She came back with some big ass strawberries. Like they were enormous like, like five strawberries had barely fit into a pint container. “Wow, thank you so much!” And I just like eat these strawberries with my hands. I’ll read from the juice everywhere is so so great. And delicious. thanked her never you know, exchange information with all over again. But nice little gift.

Thank you Ms Strawberry! And the train came by after loud I took a picture.

I have no idea where that picture is. Oh, I do know that picture is that’s interesting. That’s a different story. are a hard drive and magic smoke oh gosh that’s so frustrating. So you Yeah. Brain brain come back.

So dry riding my bicycle around to the topic of the coast and came back. Have no idea where I was except new kind of I know that city I just mentioned, and north of Biwako but again, we didn’t. I didn’t have Google phone or no GPS running around tracking me. And I don’t remember really writing much in my map book at that time. Thing and look for that. But I got down to I think Nagoya. Yeah, that’s right. And saw my friend Karen, who I had met on peace boat. And she basically, Karen put me up for a few days. But then, like, turns out she was like putting up with me for about a week and she’s like, “Yo, Rob, you gotta go.” And I was like, “holy shit. I’m sorry. You’re right.” I was just being in there and using the internet at the university a lot. But you know, she she didn’t know she was single and just want to travel in space and so i i left and from Nagoya I saw a city on the map called Toyota.

I think it was intrigued by the car company name and the city name and made my way down to Hakone and up and down some starting to get hilly again. Got to Hakone and there’s the next day was scheduled to eat lunch with now I just summarized like five days, I think in two seconds here.

The next day was scheduled to eat lunch with my friend whose name I forgotten in Odawara, and the map book said it was a straight shot from Hakone to Odawara. So cool. I want to get there quick because I’m tired. And the though the map said the road was straight. The road said the road was curvy. What a mean is the scale on the map couldn’t possibly show how curvy this road was. It just like basically straight but was hella curvy and reality. And I went on the first curve and bike bike TJ bike being overloaded brakes were tired. I was tired. I went off the road and kind of into the the soft mud embankment. And, you know, like, you’re kind of thrown into the soft dirt embankment. And was all “Oh, better be careful.” But apparently I wasn’t careful. And that in that moment, I mean, that was the new the guidance from from God being like, “Hey, man, don’t go down this hill.” But I persevered. I said “alright next time if it happens again. I’ll stop.” However, next time. It wasn’t a soft mud embankment; it was a car and I was on his side of the road. In Japan, traffic circulates on the left. The curves were so curvy and the bike was so overweighted that I went into the right hand side of the road and the car was coming up and I was like oh shit. And yeah, I pulled back toward the left but didn’t quite make it and I hit the very back edge of the car. It pushed me down sideways to the left. And like boom, onto the pavement or asphalt and that was it. I was like “huh, I had a wreck.” I lifted up my bike, put it on the side of the road. My heavy ass bike that I picked up. On the side of the road I sat down said “why does my shoulder hurt?” Putting my right hand on my left shoulder is like, “oh, that’s the wrong shape for my shoulder.” My left clavicle was broken. and I was like “welp…” And I looked up at the trees and looked up at the weather. I said “today is a beautiful day to break my shoulder.” Even though it had been like a couple of weeks, since I left the Vipassana meditation center. I still had the meditation vibe in my in my being and I was still meditating, like up to an hour each morning. And I can’t say that I did meditate that morning. I have no memory of that. But I but I remember telling the story is like because I had done Vipassana. Even though I broke my shoulder, I was aware of the situation around me. Say “huh today’s a nice day to break my shoulder.” Beautiful whether checking the rest of my body is like like nothing else is hurt. There is no pain anywhere else my there is no yours and nose or everything’s all working fine. It’s just my shoulder say okay. And

just so, so grateful for having done the meditative experience that allowed me to have this presence of mind just after experiencing a broken shoulder. The car stopped called 911 I free up the numbers here and 110 Maybe 119 That’s it. 110 is for police 119 is for is for ambulance. Ambulance came police came ambulance took me to the hospital. Police took my bicycle to the police station down in order water and hospital was just up the hill at a clinic. And the doctor was like well, you need surgery but we can’t do it here. We’re not outfit for the kind of surgery that you need. And a woman overheard the situation and me stumbling through the Japanese. She’s like, Do you need help? Yeah, that would be fantastic. She’s speaking in English her her mom was there at the clinic from I think she’d said she got like basically flush from too much heat and not enough water while running around Hakone. So once they got all sorted out, they drove me down to down the hill safely to the train station. And I don’t remember which back maybe I just took my laptop bag or something but I couldn’t have cared on both shoulders. I don’t I don’t I have no idea but I believe I would have kept my laptop. But they took me down to the train station. Made sure I got on the right train the romance car to Shinjuku. We had they took me to lunch at a like Jonathan’s or something I think some family restaurant is telling there or a cafe have no idea so long ago. And she this this bilingual woman and I met for lunch once later like a month. Later or something after had my surgery and everything and just like grateful to her like Yeah, so the angels appeared as I was in a time of time of need help me get onto the train to Shinjuku Station. My friend, Jesse’s roommate, Mike came and met me at the station and took me down to his place which was no no, we went to hospitals in the evening and everyone was like, nope, nope, nope, get out of here. And it was very frustrating, but ended up in the hospital near Sakura-shinmachi.
Yeah, so that was the end of my TJ bike trip. And I’ll talk about the surgery. After that. Short answer is that surgery went well, but just took a few days for the surgery to be scheduled.

Creation is messy

It’s easy to be happy when things are going well

It’s also ready to get bored and complacent, complain, and fall off the happy vibes.

Happy Birthday to you, age 26 is the perfect time to switch back to celebrate days.

Hold up. I’m an adult, but I don’t feel like an adult. I feel young but I’m in an old body.

Navel gazing is the perfect way to realize something is wrong. Or fall into a hole and not realize we can do anything about it.

After a certain age, if you don’t care about yourself, no one else will. Everyone is too busy worrying about themselves.

Thing is: there is no self in the individual sense.

If you are in a situation where you can afford to pick up this book and have a read, you have time to focus on your focus. Where are you spending your energy? That’s where you will find yourself.

Creation is messy beautiful R and D for the individual.

What is art? A copy of a copy of is not born of inner inspiration. You have to take a moment to peek inside, nay to feel inside. All that stuff that feels messy includes the good stuff. Thing is, it’s difficult to distinguish what’s good in terms of what will move you toward the way you want to go and what will not.

Focus on creativity 80% of the time and feel lucky if you get to create 50% of the time.

Not “stamp widgets” create, create: hearing inside and putting pen to paper or steps to dance or fingers to strings. Yes, you were hurt by doing it before. Yes, keep going. You will get hurt again. Keep going.

The thread of creativity used to be seen as an entity. I read that in Eat Pray Love. Author Elizabeth Gilbert apparently took a leap and the universe caught her. Where is she now? I don’t know. Is she leaping faithfully again? I hope so. It doesn’t have to be in a public way, but in a you way. Unique to your predilections. God manifest through you. God dwells in you as you. God dwells in me as me.

We can choose at any given moment how to focus. Focus on X and get more X. This is really how I saw it works.

The dog is not in on it.

marijuana makes you produce from the heart because it puts the present moment in full detail. Time stands still like a roller coaster coming to a full stop before you get back into the station to get outl. Just like shhhzzzzzzzzxxx. Silence. Wow what happened? Where am I now?

I fell into a hole for a while, approximately infinity lifetimes until the dog came up to me, living in the moment and offering some licks.

Choosing an optimal action in each moment seems like the best way to go and there are multiple optimal options at any given point. The thing is that all options are optimal for the universe and some options give us different experiences and we can choose our experience based on the options that we choose or choose our experience with the options that we choose and they’re all equally good in the eyes of the universe because we learn something and any case ignoring karma we don’t affect the universe directly. It just adds to our karma and that’s fine.

IMPACT

On 30 August 2022, around 6:51 in the morning, I wrote to my friend, _____.

Good morning _____!
On May 11th of this year I discovered an organization called underearners anonymous
It's a 12-step program for people who are addicted to under-earning and under-being
When reading through their symptoms I thought "oh wow that's me" for a lot of them.
The solution to all of my woes is to put my life into the hands of higher power.

((etc etc more normal conversation))

_____ replied a few days later:

Hey Rob,

It's good to hear from you.  Your message is just slightly weird,
like it's trying to sell me something, but then it really sounds
like Rob, so I guess your account has NOT been hacked.

As you know, I am VERY direct and straight.  I was pissed that I
contributed to your walk and you were meant to send me a postcard
or something, but you did not keep to your side of the deal.

Basic ethics, and keeping promises is VERY important.  It's not
cool or interesting, but it's the foundation for all (any) of the
funky stuff.

Feel free to call me on Whatsapp or on FB Messenger.  Please call
me mornings, as I work hard and I get very tired.

Love to you and Lin.

Oh shit. I fucked that up didn’t I? See, _____ had sent me $100 for my book, so I wrote their name on the list for my book, (not a postcard.) The book is still under construction.

I took on a larger project than I knew how to handle. It’s been over a year.

Thank You, higher power, for the kick in the ass!

Standing in two boats, you go nowhere.

I’ve got about five important projects going now:

MT3, MKP, barefooting, confidential listening, and AB.

Oh, and writing this book.

None of them are coming along particularly quickly, but all of them are coming along.

I recently decided to focus more on the ones that I would do for free: walking barefoot and confidential listening.

Walking barefoot is well within my genius zone. Confidential listening is my expertise and passion, but probably not my genius zone, at least not completely.

Alan Watts said at least once and maybe multiple times that when we send children to school they are being raised by children and they tend to want childish things like fashionable clothes or what have you.

I’m writing now to recommend that you listen to the inner voice more often than the outer voices.

That is the quiet inner voice not the loud ruminating voices.

The prerequisite of mental work is the ability
to retain silence of self at a steady state
when required by the self.
The mind must be opened like a door.
The key is silence.

- Ra

https://www.llresearch.org/channeling/ra-contact/5

In a recent Vitamin JR meeting, my friend Jeremy Weikel said

Instead of the rush of "gotta get it done now"
Slow down and let it percolate.  
"maybe a little of this.    maybe a little of that"

A month later, he said,

Thank you for reminding me of the importance of
slowing down and feeling how I'm feeling everything

Q. How do you clean water?

A. Pour it on top of a mountain.

It takes time to process each molecule as they filter down through the layers of earth and emerge as a spring.

From UA fellow Jon:

Paradoxically, slowing down is the fastest way
for me to get to my destination.

When I'm mad at someone, I'm actually mad at myself.

When I finally listen to myself and allow life to take time,
I feel calmer and succeed more easily.

From UA fellow Alin M

Don't just do something, sit there.

What are fish good at? Swimming! Breathing under water!

Do fish know they are good at these things? Do they think about it? I imagine not; it’s just what they do!

What are you good at? ___________! __________________!

Do you know you are good at these things? Do you think about it? I imagine not; it’s just what you do!

In fish-world most everyone swims, which is where my analogy breaks down.

In human-world, each person has different innate talents. I won’t claim everyone is in a state to use their talents, but you’re spending time reading this book, so let’s explore the idea.

• What types of questions do people generally ask you?
• What problems do people come to you for help?

Exploring these questions for myself, I have learned I’m a good listener. I’m also grounded, for lack of a better term.

People have described me as “like a tree.”

Missy once had a dream where everything was in chaos, while I was standing in the middle, calmly holding space.

This chapter appeared after Jeremy Weikel reminded me

Another take-away from our talk: Keep an eye out for other parts of yourself
that you consider ordinary, normal, and unremarkable, but that you see other
people take note of. Hidden superpowers revealed = sacred gifts given to us,
to use to heal this world.

Adapted from https://github.com/thunderrabbit/barefoot_rob/blob/20e1764324cf164cce2d1c5cd33e364fba8212ee/content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/09day-by-day-plans-for-walking-route-400km-to-niigata.md

Just the Barefoot Walking events:

• 16 April (金) 9am Rinko Park in Yokohama
• 18 April (日) 2pm Higashimurayama Chuo Park
• 18 April (日) ~5pm along Lake Tama near Seibuen
• 19 April (月) 2pm in Sayama Inariyama Prefectural Park
• 23 April (金) 6pm in Maebashioshima Park
• (more to come)

Details:

Expand Sections Collapse Sections

These are maps of each segment, subject to change. For the latest info, PM me on LINE.

Looking at the whole map, I realized it was so close to being a coast to coast walk. Just add a single day of 20km and bingo Coast to Coast.

Wow and there’s a park called Rinko Park right where I want to start!

So Lin and I spent Day number one walking from Yokohama to our house. I woke up early, then took the train to Rinko Park in Yokohama. I left before Lin and she arrived later.

I left my bicycle at home which meant I needed to roll the bag to the train station, so that I would not have to go back via the train station. While rolling the bag, I could hear something gently brushing the ground. By the time I got to the station, concrete had worn a hole through Lin’s rain cover and my waterproof jacket. Not so waterproof anymore.

Basically the concrete sanded holes into her bag and my raincoat.

The walk from Yokohama to home is 21 kilometers, which makes it basically 5% of my walk across the island.

Lin joined. She knew the way by heart!! So grateful

Everyone joined at first! It felt super great to have support of everyone who showed up on the first day: Mark, Emma, Shraddhan, Lukas, Yuumi, Lin, Clare,

We did a walking meditation that morning, which gave people a chance to connect with the earth, and the present. And then we did a foot photo shoot at the water with my foot in the water on the Yokohama side of things,

Yuumi gave me gifts: chocolate and crackers. She had also done a similarly long hike, and had a guess as to what would support me.

So grateful for lots of hugs and then basically started walking. The beautiful thing is that Lin has driven the route, many, many times, and knew exactly how to get home from there. On this day, I didn’t have to use my phone as a map, and could just use it as a camera, which I did on the way from Yokohama to our house. One of the first pictures, was that François sitting next to a cool statue. Shraddhan helped take some photos there as well. I was glad that Shraddhan and Lin got along well, and happily surprised Shraddhan joined for quite a bit. So glad they were happily talking with each other when I was slow with my bag.

date: ‘2021-04-16T13:44:02+09:00’

We went to a Hawaiian Cafe for lunch and Shraddhan generously picked up the check for the three of us.

For some reason I did not think to take any pictures.

Bye Shraddhan at the corner of Nittori as he turned right to go to Shin Yokohama Station. I tried to take a photo of him from far away.

First bag upgrade; proof of concept but crushed the box lid.

François and flowers near Yokohama Stadium

2021 apr 16 15:01:25

Second bag upgrade to waterproof.. we still use the waterproof box in her garden.

date: ‘2021-04-16T16:31:38+09:00’

title: 'two consecutive upgrades'
location: 'geo:35.5241,139.59129;u=72.9000015258789'

This picture is from when we said bye to Clare and Yuumi.

See how the bag looks all crushed and tired?

For my computer’s safety I had it up at the top of the bag so it wouldn’t get crushed, but it was causing the bag to pull the handle as if to collapse the cart.

Lin had an excellent idea of getting a box to hold most of the heavy stuff, i.e. computer and two blank book diaries.

We bought this box at a home center, with the idea that if it doesn’t work then can use it in her office. It worked well enough for a while but the lid kept getting crushed under the weight of the bag and presumably putting pressure on the computer inside the box.

Now, it looks like we’ve solved it by going to a heavier duty home center and getting a heavier duty box.

Super thanks to Lin for knowing that that was a heavier duty home center and would have the stuff we need.

Stopped at 11 of 21km at convenience store

Lin and I at 11 of 21 kilometers

2021 apr 16 17:20:47

So tired and so genki, and so lost even when relatively close to home. Super glad to have Lin’s guidance.

5% finished by the time we got home.

date: ‘2021-04-16T22:27:58+09:00’

title: 'finished day one.'

( this is being written 12 hours after the datestamp )

Arrived home last night at 22:05, super sluggish, barely able to drag self up and down the stairs. The first few times I went down, I walked backwards because my legs could not handle going forward down the stairs.

So so grateful for Lin joining me and sorting out the luggage issue.

Turned out to be a great idea to be home on the first night and morning of second day. I was able to finalize packing and go over my list again and again.

Always wondering what I should take and trying to predict what I would need and how I might use it.

Lovely to have support from our neighbors who actually pulled my bag up the hill. I resisted not letting them help me, remembering that it’s better to accept help than to reject it.

Helping makes others feel good.

Think back to the last time you helped someone out. It felt
terrific, didn't it? To refuse an offer of help is to deprive
someone of that same wonderful feeling.
That's a very unkind thing to do.

https://www.inc.com/minda-zetlin/hesitating-to-accept-help-5-great-reasons-to-get-over-it.html

The walk to Yomiuriland is pretty easy except for one set of stairs going over Odakyu Line train tracks. Otherwise just a long slow downward slope and long slow upward slope. 45 minutes without my big bag.

I met Missy at Yomiuriland, where we rode rides until the park closed at 6pm. Lin and them were already in the pizza place, waiting for us to finish.

It almost started a fight, though I thought I had been pretty clear that we would go enjoy rides in the park. Everyone was invited to join, but apparently preferred pizza over roller coasters.

I didn’t take many / any pictures, but I had a student named Kanta, so I took a picture of his namesake

Pizza was great, and I was grateful to Lin getting the manager to let the group stay past our 90 minute limit. He seemed quite pleased that I was walking across Honshu, kicking off from his restaurant.

https://otter.ai/u/CUxvx6jP7ImxxaMgXo5wFErgrRg

Otter: the convo has been updated:

After the amusement park, and after the pizza, it became time to go. And though it was a really great time, why we did it, it was much later than expected. And just for fun it was raining. So we said our goodbyes and gratitude to the pizza place owner and went outside some people left to their car and some came with me to the locker where I had stashed my bag and coats in all my gear and stuff. So they want me put all that stuff back together. And I don’t know if there’s any photos of it actually. Which seems strange but hope we can pull some out somewhere. Then it was like Okay, bye. And hugs everyone and I headed off into the rain over the hill. And Lynn was apparently really worried. saying like, I hope, I hope he’s okay and all that stuff. And Missy was like dude, he’s not going to battle. He’s going to walk across the country with a bunch of convenience stores and it’ll be fine.

But it was fine in a long walk. Rain rain rain over the hill and down a very steep hill narrow edge way. Somehow I did it barefoot, because wearing sandals would have been too slippery and risk ripping the sandals is a strong sandals. The sandals are not that strong. They said they are not that strong of sandals and down the hill and then stray for a long ways. And just really curious to see this road from a different perspective and to see it noise slowly and to see it in the rain and the scary car is driving by real quick. So quite interesting. Now walk walk, walk, walk, walk. Recognizing that I was walking past a train station that I walked to before going down some stairs that were over there and realize realizing I could have gone up the stairs but then glad I didn’t because the stairs would have been wet and lots of BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP BUMP to go down with my giant bag so the street with a smooth slope was actually better. But it was neat to see the perspective is I oh that’s the station down there. Here’s a walkway where I could go back and be back where I know where I am. Them

then sort of walking left along the highway, cross the street and the rain was still raining pretty pretty effectively and feel a different texture on the sidewalk which was nice sensation going through the dark and rainy, giant sidewalk found a very interesting recycling center. I think I can find those pictures that I may have taken some photos but it was hard to take photos with all the rain. And fortunately, I had a waterproof phone but dragging my gear and having camera to take photos and how the phone being rained. On was kind of non responsive or incorrectly responding to the raindrops as opposed to my fingers and I also had the map to deal with the phone so it was really kind of a pain in the ass to be following the map and then try to switch to camera mode and the phone is like Oh, raindrop, raindrop and reacting to all the raindrops. You could barely see what I was looking at it was kind of foggy on the camera lens maybe. But overall was fine. I enjoyed walking through some review. Let’s have water coming down the another hill. It was a curvy hill it was curving up into the right. Getting into the two o area that’s the city to o ch Q o

and walk walk walk I found a water fountain that is the middle of the night so no one was there and it was raining anyway so I splashed in the fountain had a lot of fun splashing in the water and just basically enjoyed myself took some pictures of a kind of a the entrance to a park or something maybe it was a cemetery I don’t know. That was before the water fountain in the city. eventually got to the hotel where I was staying, utterly drenched and soaked and the guy at the front desk was like hello. Hi I made a reservation. He’s like you know why the hell he’s so wet? Would you have an umbrella? And I just explained you I’ve walked here from Yomiuri land he’s like, okay, come on. Like sorry about the water. He’s like, don’t worry about it. It’s like it just drenching dripping water on the tile there. It was tile as well as had to walk carefully. Got into the room and basically just collapsed. That hung up my junk to dry. My intent was my clothes. And it was all dry by mornings I don’t remember being wet in the morning. That’s one good thing about the bathrooms and hotels they tend to keep them really dry so there won’t be mildew or whatever. And closed, dried and headed out the next morning. The I think the same guy was there maybe I don’t remember. But that was cool. That was a walk from Yomiuri land to the hotel in Chuo

Water feature

2021 apr 17 22:36:36

WASH STA

2021 apr 17 22:31:16

Pink azaleas maybe

2021 apr 17 22:27:40

Splish splash waterproof feet

2021 apr 17 22:22:25

Too tired to read this but this is where I am right now, #rainy #walk

Apr 17, 2021, 5:20 AM

Cool design on a manhole cover

2021 apr 17 20:48:09

This was my first full day alone, though still not too far to call for help in a trice.

My first stop was the Sewerage Museum, which goes down about 7 stories.

I enjoyed their exhibit going down within the staircase, showing samples of the soil at the depth down to which we had walked.

Also super thanks to the woman at the front desk for keeping my bag while I explored the museum.

Manhole covers in sewerage museum

2021 apr 18 08:00:00

Four tree design manhole cover #manholecover

2021 apr 18 09:01:29

After leaving the museum, I went back a couple hundred meters to the pizza place I planned to eat, but they were set up for delivery only, so I headed back back along my way.

Neat flowers

2021 apr 18 10:20:03

We can meet and buy meat at the meat shop called meet shop. I also really like the font for this sign.

2021 apr 18 11:28:56

Kids these days littering their beer cans around.... Hang on.. milk tea cans!?

2021 apr 18 12:24:09

This is about day three that I went to the sewerage museum. And after the museum and after the pizza place, I found myself walking along a nice little stream for maybe a kilometer or two until I got to some railroad tracks so the stream was nicely tree lined and made a great place. For people to spend a strolling Afternoon everyone walking, no bicycles or anything on the on the path. Lots of pine needles and me dragging my big old bag behind me and didn’t really find a place to rest while on that path, but there may have been some I felt a bit conspicuous dragging my bag, but once I got to the railroad tracks the path I turned right off of the path and then headed along the railroad tracks, and that’s where I saw the meat shop spelled m e t, and then a little bit later, took some pictures. Oh, along that line. There was a section that I was trying very hard to get a picture of Francois next to the train with the train going by. And I spent maybe 30 minutes there actually. Trying to get the perfect photo for that. Was the train in motion like, far away Closer, closer, closer? Why didn’t I just take a video? I don’t know. But then there were several places or walking on the rocks was very, not smooth, very painful on the feet. That’s the day I found the beer can party which turned out to be a milk tea can party very surprising. And I liked the structure I found like a kind of a shape over a parking area that they had made her place plays out of scaffolding to maybe make a porch on top of it. It was me know it was neat to look like it would be great to climb though I refrained from climbing on their scaffolding

https://b.robnugen.com/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/en_route/day-03/2021_apr_18_jungle_gym_car_port.jpeg

This is the day that we had a walking meditation back when I was still doing walking meditations. Shraddhan and Yuna attended though I forgot the park name. Yuna left after that and Shraddhan joined me for a long walk along the park. During which I got a phone call from my friend Anne in United States and talked to her for a bit, then said bye to Shraddhan who recommended that I go get some grease or oil for the wheels on my bag because there was a bike shop down there. But I couldn’t bear to go our direction that I would have to come back so I said bye to him and went into a park and went for a long walk in this park up toward the amusement park called Seibuen and there were lots of hills I couldn’t bear to go up the tall Hill to what was apparently overlooking a lake or something. I guess I’m curious to go back there sometime when I have more energy.

But I got out of the park and promptly stepped on someone glass and that was my first bloody injury of this walk. And then Seibuen Park was not open so I could not use the shortcut that I plan to go. And I desperately contacted people who might attend the second walking meditation but no one showed up for that. And I walked 3.7 kilometers along a walkway along side Holy Cow I think and then went to my next location but the walk was like oh my god so fucking painful on my feet. It was really really, really really really really fucking painful. And just, I mean I could walk on it for a little bit but it was just a fucking endless it seemed like like I said for three point something kilometers and it got dark so I couldn’t see where I was going. And it was crazy painful. Then didn’t know which way to go. When it got to some intersection. And then I tried to take a picture using the new camera and because it was dark, I didn’t realize that the lens cap was still on. And then I lost the lens cap when tumbling down into a construction area where I wouldn’t be able to get in there much less see the thing. So I felt really sad to lose the lens cap and really felt stupid because I had thought to myself that I should attach it to the camera somehow but I didn’t want to put any kind of sticky tape or anything on the camera or the camp. And so the cap paid dearly for that with its life. And I basically didn’t feel comfortable using the camera because it’s it might get dirty or whatever. So anyway, I had to wear sandals for a little bit because it was literally so dark. I couldn’t see where I was going. So it was dangerous. If I stepped on anything, so I wore sandals for about maybe 100 meters or 200 meters until I got to some light again and then dragging li got myself to Hotel Restay. But that’s where I talked to a guy about COVID And he’s the one who said it should be a crime to have people be so desperate for money that they couldn’t really he’s a poverty was a crime. As was his claim. And he was curious way to see it. And but yeah, we talked for a bit until another customer came. It was very strange to talk to a guy and behind the desk at a love hotel.

After the long injurious walk plus getting glass in my foot the previous day, I was a bit nervous about walking again, but this is my new job for the next 3 weeks and it’s time to go to work.

Systematically getting all my stuff packed again, having done almost none of the document-the-day work that I wanted to do just because I was so exhausted, I headed out and downstairs, thinking that I might see the same guy I had talked to the previous night, but the reality was that of a love hotel in Japan: that absolutely no one talked to me and I just headed out alone into what was for me a new world.

I stepped out onto the street and could see very quickly: No sidewalk.

This was a highway not designed for people to be walking. Oh shit. Hmm

Fortunately, there was a man driving some kind of backhoe in a parking lot adjacent to the hotel so I went to speak with him.

It’s not really common to talk to strangers around Tokyo but he was quite friendly and learned about my plan to walk from Yokohama to Niigata and we even got a picture together.

He agreed that the highway was not a good place to walk and let me know that there was a park that had trails and stuff which would take me the directions I needed to go.

Compared to walking along sidewalkless highway, It was wonderful.

Heck, compared to almost anything the park was fantastic. Nice smooth sidewalks made of carefully laid bricks with gently curved corners, all of which were clean of any dirt or debris. Super smooth walking and I was really happy that I had found the courage to talk to that guy.

I could have just said “oh woe is me” and walked along that highway, destroying my feet on rocks and sticks and pine cones, plus endangering my life with highway traffic.

The sidewalk went along a lake and then crossed the lake and I made it through the park

https://b.robnugen.com/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/en_route/day-04/2021_apr_18_safely_across_the_safe_walk_by_the_lake_.jpeg

Even in the nice park, my feet were still pretty sore from the previous night but everything ended up okay and I got through the park in an area having a sidewalk available along the highway which was great news.

The sidewalks kept getting larger and wider as I went through the day and I even saw some kids walking across a pedestrian bridge over the highway on their way home from school.

With two courageous kids

2021 apr 19 15:14:06

They all crowded around me asking questions, basically wondering why the hell was I walking barefoot and two of the boys got a photo with me.

Kept on keeping on and the walk got hella boring after that point and the kilometers went by like at a snail’s pace and I can remember just counting my steps trying to pass the time and entertain myself as the meters wore on.

I estimated in just 1.2 kilometer I would get to a convenience store which was very close to my hotel for the night, I tried to count the entire way focusing just on my left foot steps to halve the number of steps I needed to count.

From there it was just a few minutes walk to the hotel and oh my God those minutes took forever I could see the stand of trees and what I hoped was the sign for the hotel what looked like a mile away and step by step going across the parking lot I finally got to the next road to turn right and then along that road and cross that road and watch out for traffic and go and go then turn left at the next street and then the road started to get really rough and painful on My feet and somehow got there and got to the entrance and was so so grateful that they greeted me and realized who I must be because I had made a reservation months in advance and they were like wow and actually took a picture with me it was really sweet and I’m really grateful for their support and they gave me a free drink as I waited for the room to be ready and then headed upstairs.

date: ‘2021-04-19T20:54:54+09:00’

title: 'lovely greetings at Hotel Will Resort'
location: 'geo:35.89916,139.38705;u=1799.9990234375'

The owners greeted me as I came in struggling with my luggage.

They even opened up a non-smoking room for me at my request.

Thank you for the lovey support!

François at a tunnel

2021 apr 19 14:30:13

https://www.reddit.com/r/japanlife/comments/s77qqb/comment/ht9fc2p/?context=3

https://goo.gl/maps/aLiqeHSmfKyHZUc7A

That led me to where I saw a crane under a bridge

Crane

2021 apr 19 14:49:50

date: ‘2021-04-20T08:07:00+09:00’

title: 'gifts from local convenience store'
location: 'geo:35.8989,139.37855;u=27.393999099731445'

I received some gifts from the local convenience store after the manager read my shirt and asked why I was walking barefoot across Japan.

This is the first time that I used William’s recommendation for how to say what I wanted to say in Japanese.

“When you’re living you can do anything but if you’re dead and can’t do anything.”

date: ‘2021-04-20T08:29:17+09:00’

title: 'white and pink flowering trees'
location: 'geo:35.9075,139.37573;u=23.90999984741211'

date: ‘2021-04-20T09:33:52+09:00’

title: 'a tree in the trail'
location: 'geo:35.92428,139.38991;u=2299.9990234375'

Just before hanging up with Brian and Gavin in Corpus, I showed them this tree with reflectors around it. No reflectors on the tree, and for some reason the path could not go around the tree.

I am glad this tree was allowed to stay. I guess this was a cedar forest before roads and paths came through.

Thanks to Mark for showing me how changing the _________ allows different things to be visible in the photo. In the bottom photo, I tried to emphasize the reflectors.

Starting this day, I was feeling genki so went back to the convenience store before heading up the hill and on my way. So happy with their response to my story because they actually gave me some free products including spray cooling roll-on and a neck cooling thing.

This is the first day I talked to Brian in Corpus. I actually got so involved talking to them that I missed my turn and had to backtrack a bit.

We were entertained by the tree in the trail.

On this day I tried recording some video to show myself on the trip, plodding along, eating lunch, etc.

date: ‘2021-04-20T14:45:31+09:00’

title: 'met a fellow walker and bicycler'
location: 'geo:35.97419,139.385;u=126.34600067138672'

He said he has bicycled from here to niigata and he knew the exact mileage.

He’s also biked or hiked in Iran and other countries I didn’t recognize the names of.

http://ogasho.at.webry.info

date: ‘2021-04-20T20:29:17+09:00’

title: 'Day Five finished'

I arrived in the lobby of Hotel Park Inn at 6pm. The hotel seems nice, offering some free snacks and “free” dinner for people who pay full price.

I took a bath and pretty much expect to go to sleep soon.

JUST IN CASE THere is a claim that I ate curry in the bathtub before today, I am 99% sure it was on April 20th because that’s how it’s in my album https://photos.app.goo.gl/nRraQ59PAAuc8aQP9

https://photos.app.goo.gl/WRfHfbpVpcHF1W52A

date: ‘2021-04-21T05:54:18+09:00’

title: 'Good morning Day 6'
location: 'geo:36.03059,139.37445;u=65'

Let me just first say I am tired / not wanting to get moving today. Spirits are a bit low; I seem to have lost my preferred foot cream (prescription ointment), and while looking through my bag found things I have not used yet. KUMON book and Way of the Peaceful Warrior (volume 3).

I knew the trip would be tough, so continuing to move. I think the honeymoon stage is ending and getting into hostile territory (yikes stripes!).

• honeymoon
• hostile
• humor
• home

Four stages of adaptation to new challenge (as offered by Jason when he gave me the Deep Blue, which has been amazing; thank you!)

François on a pedestal

2021 apr 21 08:45:46

date: ‘2021-04-21T09:00:32+09:00’

title: 'big swamp carry road'
location: 'geo:36.03927,139.34669;u=100.4729995727539'

I found some cool green rocks for François to climb.

There’s a sign saying the name of this town 滑川町 Namgawa Town

Geolocation is off because it took a while to post this… I had to relog into my GitHub account to authenticate Quill

date: ‘2021-04-21T09:05:44+09:00’

title: 'François on new shrine'
location: 'geo:36.03928,139.34668;u=102.10800170898438'

I saw François on what looks like a new shrine in the middle of somewhere that people wouldn’t see very often..

date: ‘2021-04-21T12:37:17+09:00’

title: 'construction zone featuring no sidewalk'

I came up to a section where the sidewalk was missing…

And I was able to make my way through it even with the construction worker guys there.

I didn’t get a picture of that, but I did get to discover just how hot fresh poured asphalt can be.

Also got a chance to take a picture of François on rabbit shaped barrier holders.

And then the most amazing thing is finding this new manhole cover it hasn’t even had its plastic taken off yet…

Here it is in context with the sidewalk ripped out around it

Francois found the sidewalk!

date: ‘2021-04-21T12:39:50+09:00’

title: 'power tower in a green area'
location: 'geo:36.07786,139.29579;u=135.60000610351562'

Struggling along the hot asphalt here, I paused to look up and saw this interesting shot

date: ‘2021-04-21T15:33:50+09:00’

title: 'Day six hot'

date: ‘2021-04-21T15:39:50+09:00’

title: 'I wore my sandals'

With 7km to go on Day 6, I put my sandals on to walk the rest of the way to SPAMU. My injuries were still painful but much faster as they were not compounding

date: ‘2021-04-21T19:47:35+09:00’

title: 'foot soles, Day 6'

Here are the soles of my feet, photos taken last night, at the end of day 6.

These photos were taken at SPAMU

This is the day I walked to SPAMu, which I selected for its name that reminds me of SPAM, the salty pork blob “meat” stuff. As opposed to SPAM, SPAMu was expensive!

The front desk person almost didn’t let me in until I reminded her I had made a reservation.
She said she remembered, so “let” me stay. At $180 a night, I think it woulda been fine to kick me out, though that’s all in hindsight, a year later.

At the time, my feet were in agony to the point that I was wearing sandals as I arrived in the hotel. She seemed very unimpressed that I was wearing sandals, and I felt bad that I assumed no one here would know I had said otherwise.

François on the rocks

2021 apr 21 08:50:46

I was able to recognize the last two kanji

2021 apr 21 09:07:37

I wonder if it's one of these guys' thorns that I stepped on..

2021 apr 21 09:17:16

Yet another cute manhole cover 滑川

2021 apr 21 09:41:10

Poetry, Maybe

2021 apr 21 11:36:46

date: ‘2021-04-22T06:58:41+09:00’

title: 'construction behind SPAMU'

花園橋 Hanazono Bridge over Arakawa

Sign describing the reason for construction

河川を利用する皆さまへ

川は、ここで雨が降ってなくても、上流の雨により急激に 川の水位が高くなってくる場合があります。 急に川の水位が濁ったり、ゴミが大量に流れて来た場合などは、 上流で大雨が降っている場合があります。 川を利用される場合には、事前に気象情報などを確認して、 十分周囲して下さい。

These backhoes have red and white pool noodles to let you know how close not they get to their zone of rotation.

date: ‘2021-04-22T07:49:32+09:00’

title: 'François in oval, etc'

A circular mirror reflected sunlight onto the ground into an oval shape.

date: ‘2021-04-22T20:09:32+09:00’

title: ‘Summary of Day Seven’

Oh my gosh my foot hurts ten times worse after the doctor cut the splinter out.

Summary of today

• Day Seven (Thursday April 22nd *) Part 1:
  9am - 11am Walk 9km, From Hotel Spa Mu https://spamu.jp/index.html To Saitama Grand hotel in Honjo (121km walked so far)

1. Mail postcards at Misato Post Office (open 9am - 5pm)

2. Get splinter removed cut out of my foot
3. Eat dinner as the local antisthesia wore off
4. hobble to hotel like omgayfkm
5. client session 7pm
6. go to sleep early

This was the morning after the splinter. I woke up and my foot was still in agony as soon as I touched it to the carpeted floor below my bed.

Fuck this. I’m going to quit, I told Shraddhan on our morning call.

“The train station is right there,” I said, looking out the window. “I recognize those cars. Those are Tokaido Line cars.” They go directly to Tokyo Station. “I can be home in about an hour.” (*)

“Well, are you sure that’s what you want to do?” Shraddhan asked. “How will you feel when we talk tomorrow morning?”

Silence.

Silence.

“No, that’s not what I want to do. I want to keep going. Fuckit. I’ll just wear my sandals and it will be fine.”

And that’s what I did.

Once I got walking, the agonizing pain stopped. The splinter removal didn’t bother me the rest of the trip.

Now that it’s 9 months later, I don’t recall much else about this day. Google maps says I walked 23.1km in 6 hours 42 minutes. Saitama Grand Hotel Honjo to Hotel Ruka, which I often read as Hotel Ruruka.

https://photos.app.goo.gl/LMY75HbGsLHrADtt5

Photos show long straight stretches along highways and a river.

(*) It was 本所駅 I could see from Saitama Grand Hotel.
Apparently would have taken 2.5 hours to get home via train from otherwise but I was otherwise correct about the train line.

date: ‘2021-04-23T10:40:01+09:00’

title: 'walking along Tone River'
location: 'geo:36.27622,139.18082;u=31.381000518798828'

Walking along the river and found this nice sign..

I like noticing how some of the lines on the solar panels line up all the way across their field

Mountains coming soon

2021 apr 23 13:29:21

Interesting to see how this highway just cuts through all these smaller roads that were lined up in a grid.

I imagine there was a lot of discussion and consternation when this highway was planned to come through.

2021 apr 23 13:52:21

date: ‘2021-04-23T20:09:32+09:00’

title: 'Summary of Day Eight'

date: ‘2021-04-24T04:26:46+09:00’

title: 'day 8 finished'
location: 'geo:36.38188,139.09379;u=10.875'

I made it to my hotel last night just after dark, turned off all the lights, took a bath in complete darkness and fell asleep in the bath, woke up when the water started getting cold, put ointment on my feet and jumped directly into bed.

Summary of Day Eight

Summary of Day Eight WAS:

date: ‘2021-04-24T08:25:47+09:00’

title: 'good morning day 9'
location: 'geo:36.3834,139.09324;u=3.7900924682617188'

Good morning from day 9, a day that I’ll get to see Lin.

She’s going to drive out and meet me at the hot spring place this afternoon!

Here is François on an octopus slide thing

date: ‘2021-04-24T09:37:57+09:00’

title: 'Texas T-Bone at highways 3 and 4'
location: 'geo:36.39321,139.07412;u=29.038999557495117'

Texas T-Bone at the intersection of 3 and 4

date: ‘2021-04-24T12:05:26+09:00’

title: 'tunnel under small power tower'
location: 'geo:36.42941,139.05036;u=3.7900924682617188'

It may be a small power tower but we get to walk right under it

date: ‘2021-04-24T13:05:26+09:00’

title: "Hydroelectric Plant"

I saw this from the side as I approached. Woah something interesting going on here!

Here is the exit from the back side

Ah! It’s from a power plant. Hydroelectric plant yay!

Coming closer to the plant, looks like there is more frothy action around the corner

oh sweet! Water pours down into the little river from something above it..

Silly wall blocking the view.

some water wants to get into the little river first!

audio transcript:

I found a what I believe to be an electrical power plant that hydro Electric plant and I described the water pouring off of us like a small river pouring that cascading into a bigger river as like 10 bathtubs per second worth of water. And I don’t know, what was a more common unit of measure and I guess, cubic meters per second in Japan is it’s usually cubic feet per second in the US, maybe yards per second anyway. I measured it and and estimated it to be 10 bathtubs per second. pouring from the small river into a big river. I took a lot of pictures with with my old phone then I was like, Oh, I have this cool camera. So I went and took photos with the cool camera of this area as well. And so kind of did a little backtracking. But anyway, I took a bunch of photos, I really enjoyed seeing the area and taking lots of photos, even though no one else in the area seemed to care about it anymore. Because they had already seen it. But um, there weren’t a lot of people in the area, but a few so that was that was a cool thing. And I wonder if I can find where that was on the map.

date: ‘2021-04-24T19:26:46+09:00’

title: ‘Day Nine Finished’

After my phone died, I was already pretty close to Sky Terme Shibukawa so was able to walk sans phone from Bando Bashi to Sky Terme Shibukawa with the help of locals pointing the way.

As of yesterday, Lin planned to meet me at Sky Terme Shibukawa (super sento (public bath)). She did that, but then drove me to the hotel because my phone died and I wanted to get it resolved as quickly as possible. Phone shop is closed until tomorrow (and booked until May), but we will try to get in tomorrow and get a replacement handset.

Anyway, about today, the sento was nice, not huge, but has a great view, being 5 stories above green fields. Nice open air deck.

Day Nine Summary

Tunnel under a small power tower

2021 apr 24 12:02:34

Texas T-bone

2021 apr 24 09:34:02

2021 apr 24 09:11:11

2021 apr 24 09:08:30

So my phone died during the walk, it was surprising to say the least. I know exactly where it happened. I don’t know why it happened. I can guess. But I haven’t. I don’t know for sure.

walking across. Gosh, okay, so I was walking across a river, I took a video of me walking across the river. And the video ended up on Google Cloud or on Google in Google Photos, I believe. And yet, by the time I walked to the end of the bridge, and turn the phone back on to check how you were I needed to turn the phone didn’t come back on. And I was like, Ah, that’s weird. Because it had just been working fine. Taking the video. And it wasn’t the battery. I mean, I, I had char, I had a battery pack to charge it. So I tried to charge it didn’t help. And so basically, I was without a phone for that dress that day. And I was like, Huh, because I was planning to meet my wife that day, I did not have a map of where I was going without the phone. Without the phone, I didn’t have a map. And without the phone, I couldn’t call Lynn. Fortunately, I do have her phone number memorized. And fortunately, I did know the name of where I wanted to go. Or maybe just the description was enough. It was an shibukawa. So I walked down the slope past the bridge. And it’s like, a very, not industrial area, but like a business area, but very few people were there. As in none the requirement anyway, but I looking around, I happen to see a woman just happened to come out of her front door. And I was like, Hello, I am trying to go to the to the shibukawa. Sky term. That’s a mispronunciation in Japanese, by the way to talk to me, I think that’s like, taught taught me is the Japanese version. And she’s like, Oh, yeah, just go down the street, go to the second light, which is pretty far and then turn right. And it go even further. And you’ll be there. And I was like, cool. And went to your it matched what was in my brain of how to go like, keep going for a bit and then turn right. So that was good news. And so I just I trusted her guidance and walk to the second light turned right. Walked for a little way saw convenience store, talk to the next guy as I Hey, where’s this thing? And he’s like, keep on going down the street. And it’ll be on your right and I was like, cool. So I got there easily enough. It was all fine. And that also that had been my one of my fallback plans was to know where I needed to go each night and just ask people along the way, Hey, where’s this thing? And they would give me finer and finer detail as I got closer and closer. So anyway, I got to the thing called Lin on their phone, explained the situation. Hey, can I borrow your phone? And uh, yeah, very, very friendly. So I’m glad about that. And called Lin. She was late due to traffic. She’s driving out to meet me. This was like date 10 I think day 10 No, it was day nine. And therefore the 16th of April and nine plus on the 14th of April. Sorry. Interesting. So

basically add 15 days during April, add fifth to subtract 15 days from the date in April to get my walk number so, April 16 was day number one of my walk. Today number nine of my walk was now I’m confused. Nine plus 15. When I say so 24. April 24. Why am I so confused anyway, fuck it. This has been recorded so I can figure out what just happened. So I believe it was April 24. It was day nine of my walk because I remember day 10 got wasted and I’ll tell you why soon. Matlin. It was interesting. After I changed into my outdoor clothes, I was not allowed to sit on certain chairs in the waiting area, and it wasn’t like fancy chairs but like these chairs are okay, but those chairs are only for people who are wearing the right clothes. Dude, okay, whatever. didn’t even try to find it. I was like, okay, fuck off whatever. I don’t care. But fair enough on the woman for like, coming up to me did let me know. But it’s a weird rule. Anyway, cuz they can’t distinguish who paid I guess unless I have the right clothes on. Anyway. I so Linden Lin came is like Wow, good to see you again. You know, and you know, connected and shared and a lot of dots. And then we decided to leave. She didn’t want to do she didn’t want to take more time to do the onsen. That night. That’s the hot spring. So because it was too late for her to get there. And so we drove she drove me the what would have been a 45 minute walk to the hotel, where I had booked a single room and they were like, to me, they said there’s no double rooms available. Sorry, get out of here. But when Lin called she was able to negotiate that we stayed in double room. I don’t think an extra price I’m not sure. But that was great. That was I think the hotel taught to me, I think video is the place right after the five story hotspring which is kind of cool because like each the women’s side and the men’s side were on opposite sides of this like spaceship looking thing on top of a four storey tower and could just be like looking out onto the world over the rice fields with your with your dangling hanging. And so it’s an interesting kind of experience to be up there. And relatively cheap for the price it’d be it’d be cool to go with the men’s group or something. So I went to the hotel, completely exhausted just like sleep. And next day went to it’s funny to hear Lin tell the story of the next night which I’ll try to tell here. The hotel wasn’t I mean, it wasn’t anything to really to write home about his late they had food they had an onsen or a hot spring. Once a cold Yeah, like a public bath thing, but only One group at a time could use it. It wasn’t like, per gender. But that was good. So we, we booked our time and we went in there and didn’t do anything. Besides just take a shower, and I just went back to sleep. But I can’t think of anything else. I can’t even think of anything else that they’re worth talking about. The next day, Len drove me to the phone shop, to try to get my phone replaced, because I had a warranty

insurance on it. And they were like, nope, because I was traveling. And they couldn’t figure out how to prove that I would get the phone back to them if they gave me a loaner phone. And I was like, I’m not coming back to your shop here is too far away from my house. And they couldn’t get in touch with it was really a frustrating situation. Let me be very direct about that. It was super frustrating because their story kept changing. They were like, Oh, yeah, we can do it. And then Oh, wait, no, we can’t. And then oh, maybe we can do it right now and get you the new phone then? Oh, wait, no, we can’t. And like back and forth kind of thing. And I’m not sure why that was happening. And the poor girl, they’re like going back and forth between us and heard the back office of their little shop. But what if what, God? It’s unbelievable to me what the final answer that they gave, like, basically, they couldn’t. I can barely even tell the story without getting angry about is it makes no sense to me. They couldn’t get in touch with the phone shop. near my, near our house near our station, there’s an au shop. They tried to call the shop. But apparently, they’re busy or whatever, and wouldn’t answer the phone or have the wrong phone. I mean, who knows. But because they couldn’t get in touch with the shop, to confirm that I could take the phone, the loaner phone back to that shop. They said they can’t do it. Which is semi sorta like, Okay. However, there are hundreds of au shops in the Tokyo area, any of which I’d be happy to bring the phone back to. Then they said, Oh, we can’t give you a loaner phone because your plan is a five g plan. And we only have four g phones. And I was like, dude, if that is the actual reason, why did you spend an hour going back and forth? Trying to figure out? I mean, it’s like it’s completely nonsensical, because Anyway, my phone was being used as a 4g phone through the backwaters of deriving their area through these, like not very large city areas that don’t have 5g towers. Good on them. Fair enough. Who cares? Just give me a phone. Right? So they know that from the very outset, what’s your name? What’s your phone number, therefore, they have my account information. They know it’s a 5g account, if that’s what they care about. Oh guy was so frustrating. I was like, Are you fucking kidding me? spent an hour with this bullshit. God, it was a nightmare. And I mean, of the First World variety, but it’s like, dude, just God, you know? Cuz it was because of that kind of crap that I didn’t walk that day. And so there actually was some upside to that like Lynette to spend time with Lynn and who drove around and all that was great. But, Dude, come on, you know, just it was super frustrating. And I don’t even know if it’s really going to come across in the vert in the text version of this as I, as I’m reading this by voice right now, but it was very fucking frustrating. So let me go on the good side of things. At one point. I, gosh, okay, so I couldn’t get the phone to turn on at all, like I would pull the power button

for five seconds and it wouldn’t turn on even if I had it plugged into a battery. And I believe I had it plugged into a battery that for enough of the previous time that it should have been charged, but the, the girl at the shop, held the button for like a full 20 seconds. And that caused the phone to wake up. So whereas I was like, hold it down for five seconds, she’s like, none, I know, you got all that down. And so anyway, we were able to get it to power up. But the operating system wouldn’t fully boot and load and we’re just like, paying or reboot or whatever. And we couldn’t get like the first screen. Although at first it looked like it was it was okay. Like, oh, hey, it’s working. Yay. But then it would power cycle it would reboot itself shortly thereafter. So I don’t know what was happening with the phone, but I did use Lynne’s phone and I looked up online. And someone was saying Oh, his phone kept rebooting because he didn’t have enough storage on his device. Which is like, kind of a bad architecture. Like why wouldn’t they keep enough space but you know, anyway, the I Well, I was just I had been taking long videos, maybe the the, the SD card is was too full. And that’s what caused it to crash. So the shop they’re like, Oh yeah, we have SD cards here you go in there only like five times the the normal price of SD cards as I know, I see what you’re doing there. As I was about to go down the street isn’t we’re not that far in the boonies. We went and got another SD card that was hella bigger, like twice the size for half the price. And so I guess their their markup was four times the price anyway. They were selling up to 128 gigabytes for like, oh, seven teen 1000 yen, maybe I didn’t, I don’t have the numbers memorized. But we went to base we got it twice a size 256 gigabytes for like 5000 yen, I think. Anyway, it was a lot cheaper. And I put the new card into the old phone but still had the same problem. As I alright. That’s not the card. So that’s when we went back to the first time she just she basically press the power button real hard turned it on. I said, Oh, it’s kind of working. Maybe it’s the SD card. We went and got a new card came back because it wasn’t as at first is like, Oh, I guess it’ll be fine. But then crashed again very shortly. So we went back to the shop and that’s when we spent an hour back and forth back and forth. They’re like maybe we can do it. Maybe we can’t and then oh sorry at the end surprise. You have a 5g phone or a 5g contract. And we only have 4g phones. I was like yeah, that was so annoying. Anyway, anyway, anyway. linen I then we’re like okay, screw you guys. We went to lunch, then went she drove me to the the Hot Spring was called think money something money hot spring money Island i think is the translation con a Shima onsen, I believe. And then by that point it was 4pm by the time we finished with all of that, and not realistically enough time for me to walk to the the green village camp area,

Midori no Muna camp Joe. But because we drove there, we heard a song on the road, which was kind of surreal, lovely surprise, because it was singing When you wish upon a star. And I was like, I heard it. I was like, hang on. That’s music. And then Lynne was like, What’s that noise? After I had already parsed it, it was music and I had a pretty good idea of what song it was, is like, validating my theory that it was When you wish upon a star. And then Lynn’s like, What’s that noise? Like? Dude ain’t been listening to it for a while. But not to not to send me he’s, she’s driving, and whatever. But we got to toilet was it called planet toilet and planet restroom. So it’s planet or sorry, planet restroom and planet restaurant. And I was like, I knew the planet restaurant was closed. And I knew the planet rest room was open. So I was like, dude, I got to go to Planet restroom. You know, this amazing place called planet restroom. And it was just a restroom. And so that was a that was yet another example of something that’s like, you know, cool looking on the map in the name, but like, Yeah, not that cool in reality. But what was interesting slash cool in reality was Oh, and part of the reason that we waited a whole hour for them to go through their checklist. They wanted the phone to get charged up to at least 50%. So they knew it wasn’t the battery that was causing the problem. And so we’re like waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting for that which would ended up not helping, obviously. So anyway, we’ve wasted a lot of time, but that that shop when I’m not very impressed with that. Anyway, screw it, we, we went to Planet restroom, and it was like, and then went down to the green green camp area. We were the only people there as far as I could tell. And we rented out one of the bungalows. And then Lynn’s version of the story is that she wanted to go get some food. And I was like, No, too tired. And just wanting to eat the nuts that she brought. And so I didn’t even really think about that would even though being her husband, I should have known that she would like to go somewhere for food, but I was just like, not too tired. Couldn’t even like think about walking to the truck to drive to wherever. I just wanted to sleep, sleep sleep. And that’s what we did. So it was the bungalow was was fine. It was not too cold as she feared it might be and so she in her version of story, she’s like, okay, you just eat a few little nuts or anything. And to me it’s completely ample and fine. Like no need whatsoever to have more had she known her husband better what she could have done was not give me the nuts first of all because she she’s like, hey, here I am. Here’s all the stuff you wanted and gave me all these nuts and stuff. are maybe I didn’t even order it but she just gave them to me and I was like cool. Done. You know, that’s dinner for tonight. And so she, she knows me well enough that I think she could have made that guess and give that to me in the morning. But she doesn’t have the same patience I do to, like, let her for something and make it allow it to happen in its time. But she prepared and she like hey, go here’s your here’s your your dinner for tonight is what I was hearing and she she wanted for a snack for later anyway. Anyway, anyway, whatever. Um, so that’s the story about the phone. No, not even done yet. So then interestingly,

while the I had this dead phone, and we were driving to the green camp site, I got a call on the phone, and it’s the green camp green campsite, they’re like, we have you down for reservation, where are you? So we’re almost there. But it was cool. That might. So the SIM card on the phone was working fine. And the hardware was working fine. But so I could receive calls. But with the software, the O s, I couldn’t make calls couldn’t even log into the the OS itself. Not log in, but could you like boot the OS. But um, I could receive calls, that was a blessing. So for the next day and a half. I was able to use that phone to receive calls and certainly came in handy to have that as an option. Lynne called me a couple times, and Jason called me a couple of times during that time,

then, okay, so then that night, in the more annoying phone saga kind of thing. The call the, the, like the head office, so to speak up the phone guys and say, hey, my, here’s my name. here’s, here’s my phone number. Here’s my name. Here’s my secret code. And my phone is broken. And yes, I have insurance. And yes, I like using a new phone. But I’m not at home. I’m out and about and it won’t be back for a long time. And so can you send it to a hotel and you’re like, ma’am, and all of this is taking like double the time to communicate. Because it’s going from me in English to an English translator to a jet to Japanese guy in the backseat translator and back to me. And because Lynn’s not allowed to call on my behalf for my phone, but from my account, but finally they’re like okay, well we’ll send it to the hotel. What’s the address? And so then I get the phone to Lynn so she could read the address off in Japanese. You know, seidu gaco sorry, gaco Onsen, Honiara nanaka, Baba and then they’re like okay, Have you contacted the hotel to make sure it’s okay to receive something? Um, no, we just decided you were here during the conversation you know when we’re deciding which hotel and he’s okay please call them first. All right by call them hotels like sure the call the phone guys back that it’s it’s the the office and there’s like 1010 different people there answering phones. Hello, What’s your phone number? What’s your name? What’s your secret number? What happened? phone died. Okay. But um, my new phone Okay, you have insurance, but I’m traveling. So okay, what should we do about it? All right, send it to this address. And yes, we contacted them so you can send it Okay, what time do you want to send it? And so, these we said between 2pm and 4pm. And in order to arrive on this day, so we confirm the day confirm the location, confirm the address confirm the time and when you fit into the system, the system works well in Japan. So great. I try assume is going to be there. I did not Send it to the plays for the next day, which I could have and think about it probably should have, but didn’t because the next day was a long walking day. And the day that I sent it was going to be a short walking day. So I would have time to phone and get the phone set up that afternoon. Anyway, um, the next day, I spent walking using paper maps, and during the whole driving around town on the on day 10 to figure out what’s up and get the new phone, I also was in parallel, just in case we cannot get a phone I downloaded I took screenshots of the maps that I had prepared and organized the screenshots with the day numbers and printed the O so we had to go by a what’s it called, and SD, USB, USB storage device and buy it buy the device, we we went to a place that said they could print it from a file, but it would be like beautiful image quality like photograph quality pictures with 400 yen each. And I was like Ah, no, not gonna do that

i i doubt I can sell these and make that worth the price even though they would be nice quality paper. And they’re going to get all tore up anyway because I want to write on them as I’m walking. So we bought and I bought a USB storage, USB key for storage. And took that to convenience store. Which only printed JPEGs oh god so back to my computer. And that’s what we at that point we went to lunch back to my computer, converted the PNGs into JPEGs back onto the USB key back to the convenience store. plugged it in and printed like 24 odd sheets, which was that was fine in great nizi once again once I got into the system, it worked fine. It just it was annoying to get into that system but burnin six days worth of six days worth of pages. And then that night is when we contacted the the guys twice to have them send the send the phone to the next location anyway, the next day I use maps to walk to the next hotel and do what i the only thing I needed was to get started on the right road. So we like drove to know I walked Yeah, I walked from the bungalow to the front, the office which there was no one there we just dropped the key off at that thing. So I’m not able to ask anyone but looked at lens GPS looked at what I could see physically around me looked at my paper as I Alright, I Okay, I see which street I need to take. So I started taking that street wave goodbye to Lynn and lots of lots of kisses and hugs and walk walk walk wave goodbye. And it was very easy to use the paper maps. Very grateful for her support to get me sorted out with paper maps I would have been quite annoying to do a lot of walking. Had I had to do it. probably would have been a lot more expensive as well, because I would be like nah. Not willing, for example, to walk to the place where they had microSD cards at a good price, etc. But

so yeah, I, I using the map I was, there was a first time I was counting my steps. And I got a relatively good system, just count my left foot steps. And would mark mark each segment of the map where I needed to, like, walk to this corner turn here, as I marked out all the different bits, like this was 40 steps. This was 50 steps. And I hope I still have that page. I’ll go scan it right now if I do, because that’s an interesting little thing. Please don’t be thrown away. Please be here. Okay. Is it here? Wait, yes. Okay. Yeah, they’re still here. Good. So I’ll scan these. And so So yeah, I printed the maps and they were it was very easy to use to walk around. And so now, here I have the area that I walked around and this one here we go. Yeah. Okay, nice. Really glad I kept these. I had them in my trash. They didn’t make the cut yesterday. I had thrown them away, but they didn’t get released. I can just scan them very easily and put them on my website. I hope they scan. Okay, they’re all folded up. I mean, let’s see. You know, they’re all kind of out of order. I do have an ordering system for them. Okay, let’s see, there’s number six. Number five, this is number four there number eight. So number 7177. Didn’t get used at all.

But eight has a free marks on it. I wonder why that wouldn’t be done. Yes. Hopefully Todd has put seven in here as well.

Can I do double sided when I’m doing these scans? So I don’t know. Okay, so we’ll do if this works, I’ll be very impressed with the scanner. Okay, journal journal. Yeah, turtle. What options do I have? Morning? turtles.

So it’s only me one side at a time. But they’re working. That’s fantastic. Good job. Okay. So that was this side. No, I can do this. If I change the order.

Cool.

Okay, so good. No, do the other side.

And all that future Rob sort out the file names and stuff. But those are scanned back into the trash. Bye You okay? Um, okay, this is a phone story still right? So. So we get to the sotto sotto gaco. That’s the monkey capital, monkey capital, sports, sports in sports in fujiya. And they because they had said that they wouldn’t be happy to accept the phone and all that. So I got there at about one o’clock because I knew between two and four, it would come. So I expected I expected them to come say, Hey, your phone’s here. That didn’t happen. 4:15pm I went down to the office. I was like, Hey, man, did my phone come? And she’s like, Oh, yeah, it Yeah, just a second. I actually maybe at first she was like, Oh, you’re you’re What? And then she’s like, Oh, yeah, maybe my story’s a more melodramatic. But she’s like, yeah, it was right here somewhere. Hang on. Okay, wait, maybe. Wait, I think maybe I put it over here. Oh, oh, here it is, like, underneath some papers. I’m like, dude, that’s my oh my god. You know, come on, you know, geez. You said you would negate you wouldn’t accept it. Please. Help. Anyway. So see, like that’s part of the job like yes, you can deliver something here. Oh, you want me to deliver it to you? I see you. Yes, please. Thank you. Not would be nice. But the short version is yes, I got the phone. I put the 32 gigabyte memory card of the old phone into the new phone. And actually, I started with the big the big card and the 256 gigabyte card put it in and it worked fine. Certainly started the device and all that and then I was like I eyes I don’t remember what my thinking was but I was like, let’s just see. Oh, maybe I know because all the images were not on the card. So I put the 32 gigabyte card into the new phone but it was as if it was starting over again be in I believe that’s because the I believe that’s because the encryption on the card is tied to the hardware of the previous phone they the hardware key or maybe the key within the hardware of the previous phone. So anyway, the new phone could not read the the old 32 gigabyte memory card and so fair enough I mean it’s good security and it’s it’s good to know that if the SD card gets out or stolen or whatever then it can’t be read I don’t know I’m glad to know a bit more about how the cards work but um what what so now that the new phone is using a 256 gigabyte card and it’s working so far are working okay a couple of weeks now a few weeks so yeah, that’s the story of the phone let’s see if another story comes real quick here Yeah, so the one other story while while I Is this correct No. I yeah, I did have the the phone was still working. So this would be like day eight or something or maybe the same day nine that the phone died.

I found a what I believe to be an electrical power plant that hydro Electric plant and I described the water pouring off of us like a small river pouring that cascading into a bigger river as like 10 bathtubs per second worth of water. And I don’t know, what was a more common unit of measure and I guess, cubic meters per second in Japan is it’s usually cubic feet per second in the US, maybe yards per second anyway. I measured it and and estimated it to be 10 bathtubs per second. pouring from the small river into a big river. I took a lot of pictures with with my old phone then I was like, Oh, I have this cool camera. So I went and took photos with the cool camera of this area as well. And so kind of did a little backtracking. But anyway, I took a bunch of photos, I really enjoyed seeing the area and taking lots of photos, even though no one else in the area seemed to care about it anymore. Because they had already seen it. But um, there weren’t a lot of people in the area, but a few so that was that was a cool thing. And I wonder if I can find where that was on the map. I’m sure I can but yeah, anyways, so that’s, that’s enough for this audio thing to new one in a second.

date: 2021-04-25T11:14:22+09:00

title: "Some progress on phone: it's rebooting"

The phone can boot

and reboot

and reboot

and reboot

I found an issue with Android halting when low/no memory so I bought a new SD card but still have the same issue. At least I got a good price on the card.

256GB micro SD with adapter: (5,780 yen + tax) 6,358 yen

Back to phone shop to see if they will make good on the warranty.

13:19 Sunday 25 April 2021 JST

They were not willing to sort me out with a loaner phone.

At first the reason was they could not contact my local shop via phone.

Then when we were like “well there are many other shops near Tokyo” they said they could not give a loaner phone because I am on a 5G contract and they don’t have a 5G phone.

What an incredible reason is that?? Especially given that half the fuckin' time I look at my phone, it is on 4G because we are in the middle of no 5G towers.

20:08 Sunday 25 April 2021 JST

Just called CSR and they will send a new same model of phone to my hotel location. Nice!

date: 2021-04-25T17:36:35+09:00

title: "Finished Day Ten sans Phone sans Walking"

Just to be super clear, I did not have to walk from Sky Terme Shibukawa to Midorinomura camp area.

Lin and I woke up for breakfast at 6:30, packed, then spent the morning driving around trying to get my handset working again.

Amazingly, the shop staff was able to reboot my phone with a llllonnnngggg press (18 seconds) of the power button. I thought I had “done everything” but apparently I hadn’t done that.

The phone kept rebooting, though, and never could get past the opening screen or so.

Looking up online, I found a Stack Exchange issue of something determining that low memory was causing his phone to reboot. I mentioned this to the staff so they offered to sell me a larger Micro SD card:

• 64GB for 9,700 yen
• 128GB for 17,000 yen

I had seen much better prices in Shibuya, so Lin drove to the local Yamada Denki where I got a larger Micro SD card:

• 256GB for 5,780 yen

I put the new card into the old phone but it still just kept rebooting.

Back to the phone shop to tell them the card did not help. They were super confusing. Here are the responses I understood over the hour we were there.

• “We can’t help you.”
• “We can loan you a phone.”
• “We can probably get you the same model here, today.”
• “We can’t get the same model.”
• “We cannot loan you a phone because we cannot reach our sibling shop near your house.”
• “We cannot loan you a phone because you have a 5G contract and we only have 4G phones.”

Good grief. Anyway, Lin and I gave up with them after an hour of this, plus calling the CSR line who were only able to “Send a phone to my house” and could not interfere with management of the local shop.

We ate lunch, then went to 金島温泉, which was small, cheap, clean(?), and fine, but got about 2 stars from me and low rating from Lin as well.

We finished around 4pm there which was too late for me to then walk to my place for tonight, so she is joining me in a bungalow at 緑の村キャムプ area.

I am a little bummed because this was to be the day I started walking up mountains, but I am also happy to receive a day off from walking.

Oh, and surprising to me, though my phone is stuck on a screen saying “Just a sec…” it can still receive calls on my phone number. That is a great relief; at least I have connection if people call me. I cannot make calls out, though.

Oh, I was able to print the maps for the next 6 days or so. Tomorrow I plan to start walking using paper maps.

Here was the plan for Day 10

date: 2021-04-25T18:22:31+09:00

title: "Day Eleven will be long"

Feeling

Feeling great right now, and just discovered that I already created a way to generate updates using a Perl script.

Recently

Phone died yesterday afternoon; ended up taking today sans walking as a result. Printed maps at 7-11 and plan to use them tomorrow to walk.

Now

Lin is resting beside me and noted tomorrow is going to be a bit of a long day walking. I am grateful for my day off today! (Day 10)

Coming up

Tomorrow will be a 20km day through the foothills(?) and/or mountains. Yikes stripes am I ready for this?

date: 2021-04-26T06:10:06+09:00

title: "Beginning to walk again: Day Eleven"

Good morning from みどりの村キャムプ場, which has a pretty nice setup of bungalows and such. Not much food in the camp area, but a coveni is outside the property.

Feelings slightly nervous about engaging the mountains. it’s definitely colder here, and apparently 10 degrees C at the place I will be for tomorrow night.

Regarding the phone saga, they will send a new phone to the place I will be Tuesday night.

Mountains and hills coming soon to a walk near me!

Now it’s time to pack!!

date: 2021-04-26T11:13:59+09:00

title: "Quiz: what is this?"

Quiz: what is this? Not the cloud, the black surface on the ground.

date: 2021-04-26T12:13:59+09:00

title: "Went through my first tunnel"

My first tunnel!

Fortunately I had earplugs

Back into reality

date: 2021-04-26T14:11:09+09:00

title: "Little Road after Akane Tunnel"

Past the tunnel, I turned left on a little street which I assume was here long before the tunnel.

Lots of interesting things to see, including some free cedar logs!

don’t throw rubbish here. This character will be sad if you do!

I could not see anything on this sign (but dirt)

Ya might want to turn here

I wonder how this tree was shattered. I would guess lightning but I don’t see scorch marks

Found an opportunity for a selfie

Ya might want to ignore this sign

I thought these small ferns were cute

I guess this cart plans to stay here a while

From where does this water come?

François at construction site

The first little road ended here

start of the second little road

Apple trees, prepping to make apples

Looking back at the start of the third little road

Blue roof and yellow flowers

This hill looks positively pointy.. I wonder what the tip is like when standing there?

Red roof within apple orchards

cute pond and concrete for what? I wanted to put François on it, but decided it was too far away from the edges of the pond to do safely, and the locals might wonder what I was doing..

I tried to get the cloud reflection here

date: 2021-04-26T14:14:14+09:00

title: "François on pallets of crushed cans"

Hang on.. is that a recycling center?

Indeed it is!

François would like to have a seat here

I believe these are steel cans

I think these are for oil

How do they collect this many of the same type of can?

rusted cans hmm I wonder how long these have been here

date: 2021-04-26T15:45:18+09:00

title: "Arrived in Yumotokan Day 11"

Yay just arrived in Yumotokan. The host said the onsen is very hot.

Lots of pics on the way here, but first wash feet, contact Jason, maybe have dinner with him.

Oh, maybe I can start them uploading… oh but I want to name the photos.

I can pop them up to cloud and deal with them “later”, hopefully sooner!

Here are the paper maps I used to walk today. Most of them have segments labeled with the number of (left) footsteps I took during each segment.

date: 2021-04-26T18:41:09+09:00

title: "Day 11 finished (photos)"

Old school fire hydrant

Fancy new curb caught my eye. Why was this section redone?

This may be a manhole cover of an eggplant carrying a telescope.

A bridge for Akane

I thought these leaves were cute and wish I had made them more visible. It was quite sunny therefore difficult to see what the screen was seeing

François on a truck scale

We have walked quite a bit!

Wow that solar panel is big for just one support..

Oh it rotates and tilts to follow the sun!

It made small adjustments every 30 seconds or so

Flowers

Rivers

What does this say?

Here was the plan for Day Eleven

2022-jan-31 13:48

I found the shop! I gave up scanning along the road and just clicked and boom here it is:

https://goo.gl/maps/cLdDCDxoPEUGc9ZAA

亀屋酒店 Kameya Liquor Store

• 〒379-1404 群馬県利根郡みなかみ町相俣25-1
• 25-1 Aimata, Minakami, Tone District, Gunma 379-1404

+81-278-66-0002

date: 2021-04-27T20:11:09+09:00

title: "Day 12 finished (photos)"

It is late on Day 12 and I just finished uploading Day 9 and Day 11 photos..

Day 12 will have to wait. Day 12 photos have been uploaded to Smugmug

https://thunderrabbit.smugmug.com/Travel/Japan/Quests/2021-walk-to-Niigata/Day-12-2021-april-27/

AND as of 2 Feb 2022, here are Day 12 photos here:

2021-04-27 10:21:09

Hiked to top of hill near Hie Shrine

https://goo.gl/maps/v9EcbncMP8AtAC6MA

Day 12 is when we met the woman with phone number ending in 0002! She and her crew were really friendly, saying they knew the owner back at Day 11 and the owner at Fujiya.

After seeing this building for a bit, I was like “whoah it’s abandoned!” and started taking pics.

Akayako Hotel was abandoned, with its front door literally open and leaves strewn into the lobby.

It’s right on Highway 17 below the bungee jump area.

It was super interesting to see all the safes, TVs, blankets… plus perfectly fine little things like cups and saucers.

1pm or so

Dragged our butts into Fujiya Hotel where my phone would be delivered. I expected the owner to let me know it arrived but eventually had to go down and she was like “oh hmmm yeah..” and eventually “oh here it is!” buried under a few sheets within a huge stack of paper on her desk!

Wow would I have received it if I hadn’t asked??

“That’s my phone you’re burying there!!”

BEGIN pics posted 29 April 2021, title pics-of-rob-day-12 so apparently from Day 12

date: ‘2021-04-29T06:13:10+09:00’

title: 'pics of rob day 12'

Jason took pics of me on the Red bridge

END pics posted 29 April 2021, title pics-of-rob-day-12 so apparently from Day 12

Here was the plan for Day Twelve

BEGIN 22:50pm JST Wednesday 2 February 2022

I just put all the content below based on entries visible here

content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28almost-at-the-trail-we-need-to-take.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28day-13-will-likely-be-challenging.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28francois--get-down-from-there.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28good-morning-day-13.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28hard-to-see-but-ladder-ready-to-climb.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28highway-17-before-trail.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28oops-we-were-only-halfway-when-i-thought-we-were-close.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28red-bridge-and-abandoned-trampoline-building.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28snow-on-the-trail-and-tunnel-through-the-trees.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/28this-concrete-block-keeps-the-road-in-place.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/29omg-i-did-not-know-the-ways-this-trip-would-be-difficult.md
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/29past-trail-arriving-at-akashiya-house.md

BUT it seems the post date for some might not match the order in which photos were taken.

The order below is my best guess, but the bestest way would be to check the exif data on the photos, not necessarily including the ones Jason took of me (with his camera, I think), which we can pretty easily establish were taken while on the red bridge.

END 22:50pm JST Wednesday 2 February 2022

date: ‘2021-04-28T09:00:22+09:00’

title: "good morning day 13"
location: 'geo:36.72829,138.87984;u=2000'

Getting started today on day 13 walking toward the trailhead of my entry point over the hills past the tunnel that I can’t go through..

date: ‘2021-04-28T09:08:19+09:00’

title: 'hard to see but ladder ready to climb'
location: 'geo:36.7298,138.87692;u=122.4000015258789'

Oh my gosh there’s a ladder right there across the highway from us but there’s a bunch of cars going by and I don’t think they would understand why I’m climbing this ladder…

Later I decided these ladders are for the monkeys in the area because the concrete walls are hard to climb.

(the black smear in the photo is a car entering the frame)

date: ‘2021-04-28T09:14:16+09:00’

title: 'red bridge and abandoned trampoline building'

Bridge pretty close to Sarugakyo Onsen area

This was taken from the same point I just took the Red bridge picture

916 a.m. approaching the Red bridge

Jason took pics of me on the Red bridge

Built in 1963

Not sure what these are but they sure seen rusty

I’m glad we didn’t go into this abandoned building because I barely made it to my hotel in time for dinner tonight but I did certainly think about going into the building…

I did a few test bounces on the trampoline but it wasn’t strong enough for me to be comfortable doing backflips on it

I wonder what caused the sheet to be lifted up strongly enough to pull these things out of the ground you usually stab it in

date: ‘2021-04-28T09:32:13+09:00’

title: 'François!  get down from there!'
location: 'geo:36.73237,138.86935;u=42.5'

Walking along a telephone line or something I saw a place where François can sit

date: ‘2021-04-28T09:58:47+09:00’

title: 'almost at the trail we need to take'
location: 'geo:36.71806,138.89841;u=3099.9990234375'

Wow. This red flowering tree amazed me with its red flowering flowers.

If I lived near here I wonder how often I would try to climb this wall..

Does walking count as slow?

The numbers keep getting higher. Remember, add like 30km to count from Yokohama.

((( Oh and for the record, we still had 2km to walk before getting to the trail we needed to take. )))

date: ‘2021-04-28T10:20:13+09:00’

title: 'oops we were only halfway when I thought we were close'
location: 'geo:36.73077,138.85625;u=300'

Mountains are getting closer and closer… I guess maybe they’re just tall hills and not really mountains

date: ‘2021-04-28T10:23:52+09:00’

title: 'this concrete block keeps the road in place'
location: 'geo:36.72981,138.87072;u=1600'

This concrete block is keeping the road on the mountain

date: ‘2021-04-28T09:31:39+09:00’

title: 'highway 17 before trail'

Let’s reflect on how this reflector works.

I guess these are to catch snow..

This is where we transferred from highway 17 to walking on the trails around Mitsukuni Tunnel

date: ‘2021-04-28T13:59:00+09:00’

title: 'snow on the trail and tunnel through the trees'
location: 'geo:36.7634,138.82418;u=2200'

Somehow, there’s a little patch of snow un melted on the trail when we haven’t seen any other such patches for some kilometers

And between the trees we can just barely make out the tunnel that we’re walking around

Me at Obansanja Shrine

Standing on the frame near the tunnel entrance

post date: ‘2021-04-29T06:27:50+09:00’

title: 'past trail arriving at akashiya house'
location: 'geo:36.78711,138.79841;u=1899.9990234375'

Plan for Day 13:

date: 2021-04-29T07:44:54+09:00

title: "OMG I did not know the ways this trip would be difficult"

I had a good cry this morning with Shraddhan on our daily call.

• callous on my right foot despite wearing sandals
• long-ass walk yesterday 6 hours through the hills after 2 hours on the highway
• crying last night because I could not figure out how to put together my futon
• sandals ripping almost apart yesterday
• not able to find the photo I took yesterday
• not getting the photo I wanted (and basically too late to go back)
• camera could not use 32GB card
• and it’s raining today

Plan for yesterday was

date: ‘2021-04-29T10:23:27+09:00’

title: 'Sake Base Naeba excellent signage'
location: 'geo:36.7895,138.79211;u=55.68299865722656'

Sake Base Naeba has a very clear easy to read sign.

But the shop is closed

date: ‘2021-04-29T10:26:19+09:00’

title: 'new princess souvenirs sign'
location: 'geo:36.78993,138.79174;u=21.121999740600586'

New princess souvenirs

Sign seems a bit less than new

date: ‘2021-04-29T10:29:49+09:00’

title: 'Another abandoned building'
location: 'geo:36.79017,138.79039;u=31.964000701904297'

It looks to be about 12 stories tall and has a curved glass front facade and spiral staircase in the entryway that’s completely cleared of any stuff.

date: ‘2021-04-29T10:31:08+09:00’

title: 'Prosperitas temporarily closed'

Google says it is temporarily closed. I hope so because it looks like a nice place

Just to the right, we can see clouds hanging over the mountains

date: '2021-04-29T11:15:47+09:00'
content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/29climbed-a-mystery-ladder-to-find-an-amazing-array-of-tires.md

I found a ladder and just had to know where it led

So far so good

Oh wow this makes the entire trip worth it. Seriously omg wowowowww this is great!!

Perfectly walkable being rubber so they are non-slip and a bit cushiony

Don’t mind me. I’m just walking on an array of tires..

wow wow wow so cool!

I think this is the happiest I have been for a while!

Gotta head back eventually

And I headed back down the ladder

content/quests/walk-to-niigata/2021/04/29first-time-for-me-to-see-a-snow-blower.md
date: '2021-04-29T12:12:26+09:00'

Wow a snow blower!

I have never seen one of these up close before.

Nor had François seen one

ohhhh so that’s how they work!

date: ‘2021-04-29T13:00:38+09:00’

title: 'Interesting broken cement tube location'
location: 'geo:36.82993,138.78082;u=2500'

Why are these cement tubes

• clean,
• broken, and
• lined up ready to go?

The ends of these concrete tubes are broken

otherwise they look clean and fine

date: ‘2021-04-29T13:53:18+09:00’

title: 'Final random pics from today'

Cute sign, but

are the cars supposed to be doing wheelies?

Is this broken concrete due to ice-induced cracking?

Wow long walk

What did they write on this sign?

Cherry blossoms are nearly in full bloom here

Here was the plan for today but we skipped Dragondola because the weather was cloudy and seemed like we would not be able to see anything anyway.

(written 2021_may_17 skipped dragondola snow_shed_tires_first_walk_first_two_tunnels)

While planning the trip, I discovered a tunnel through which I could not walk because there’s no sidewalks. And after a lot of thinking and a lot of planning and looking around and trying to figure out a way, I kept using the Street View to look at the tunnel and try to find, like, come when I walked through eyes, I know it’s kind of long and this is Mikuni Tunnel that’s the Japanese three country tunnel. And when dragging this is using Google Maps when dragging the peg man to activate streetview I noticed that there were some other places I could drop the peg man to, to see things. And those places were in fact, a series of trails that don’t show up on the map unless I’m dragging the peg man to try to find a place to land.

So, while not sure how this works behind the scenes, but while the trails are not used for navigation purposes, like what’s the best way to walk from here to here? They don’t show up in that kind of data, but they are available for the Peg Man to show you what is actually there. So maybe I Anyway, there’s many different ways that might be happening but a simplest might be that they’re just tagged like don’t use this why would they be tagged to not use it? I wonder? Hmm, maybe because they were rough overgrown trails that were quite challenging to walk on.

And ah, next time I’ll walk through the tunnel It was really I mean, I don’t know I mean, if I was just walking and like had proper hiking boots, which I did but I didn’t use them they were in my bag so I carried my boots along with my computer in my journal and this is when it was great to have Jason’s help because he really supported like picking up the bag even it kind of.. as mad as I was that he was there it was great to have him there because he would like pick up the pick up the bag when it was going over rough spots and so it’s kind of magical to have that caught that conflict of interest is I don’t want him to be there and thank you for helping carry my bag kind of thing.

So I mean I love him and now all of that ROI and gratitude and all this acknowledge I had this this conflict inside me is like leave me alone. Thanks for carrying my bag. Both of them were there so it was like

I forget him like I think six hours that we were walking over the mountains from from this corner to that corner and I haven’t exactly mapped out like the entrance and exit of the walk and was funny. We were walking walking walking just to get to the trail. And like okay, it’s probably right around this corner here. And then check the map is like oh fuck saikhan still two kilometers to go. And they probably right around this trails. Oh, it’s still one kilometer to go. So it was like it was tough walking just even on the highway there because it was uphill and blah blah blah, but We got to the, like the corner where actually that’s where the the trail was about to be there. And this is where I had wanted to book my accommodation. But they weren’t open. And by not open, I think it was abandoned. These locations were simply left unused, and you know, unused they. We didn’t take time. Even if I was alone, I don’t think I would have taken the time to go into them. Because it was like, I was so tired for one thing and didn’t have a lot of time. Actually, I was optimistic that the trails would be no problem. But they were really hard, hard as hell to climb over all the mountains and stuff. Not mountains. I mean, we’re talking to a few 100 meters. No, yeah, I don’t know, a couple 100 meters of elevation difference, but it was tough, tough for me. And I assume nothing like the Appalachian Trail and all of these like, weeks and weeks in the in the jungle. So it’s probably 0% like that, but it was 100% like, what what we experienced and it was, it was tough going, you know, walking over these, like ankle breaking rocks that were you know, not well settled and not rounded. They were they were rough and not rough. They were sharp and broken and just kind of I don’t even have a real word for it. But there should be a word for this kind of gravel, not pea gravel. It was like

shattered bowling ball gravel kind of thing. Just rather large pieces that were just kind of scattered anyway, whatever. I mean, it was tough to walk on. Especially stupidly with I was in sandals at least I had sandals on I didn’t try to go barefoot over this stuff but there were like small trees in the way and and Jason wanted to move the tree off the trail and I because the tree had like fallen and was then growing again like it all it had. So it was at least a year or two of growth that from what I remember I don’t know if I took a picture of this thing but a tree had fallen then the branches were like going straight up from its otherwise fallen position. And I was like Wow, that’s cool like nature finds away kind of feeling and Jason wanted to clear it off the path and he turned it kind of upside down like no no I put it back and so that was a conflict of desires there you know I desired to leave the place natural and he was trying to support future walkers as he was supporting me and he carried my knot and he didn’t carry my bag but he picked up half of my bag as we were both holding it from each side. So anyway, God just walking some kilometers through this up and down, up and down. really rough trail and covered and branches and not branches but sticks and twigs and, and, and rocks and just do was rough going. And again, nothing like crossing the Sahara, or like bushwhacking through, completely virgin forest but tough for me a city boy to walk through

I we saw snow at some points. Not snow falling, but snow that had had melted in like those patches of snow, snow that had not melt. And we saw patches of snow that had not melted and could see the tunnel through which we were not walking from afar. And I have a picture of that which took ages to get online for some reason, because it was too big and blah, blah, blah. But I finally did get it online. And the tunnel was like a tiny dot between the trees. And so anyway, we walked. We walked and walked and walked. And then I was like, Oh, that’s what when is that rain? Huh? Yeah, there was. There were high tension power lines going over the mountain. And while planning the trip, I noticed them was Google this all by the magic of Google Maps. But I noticed the high contention power lines were like making a straight path right across the mountains, that was presumably cleared. Because the people who put them there don’t want trees growing and like shorting out the power lines. So I thought, as a last resort, if the trails don’t work out, I can walk that route of the high tension power lines. Were going because it would be a clear route. Now, in reality, looking at it from the point of view of the trail, I don’t think I could have done that. But I remember now, I think maybe a false memory. But I believe I remember now seeing those high tension power lines from the trail. And thinking it was interesting. And now I kind of remembered that that’s where I had been looking to try to find a way across them the around the tunnel basically. So you wouldn’t have to go through it. Anyway, we were like going around like saw the the tunnel from afar and then gotten like, very slowly got closer and closer. And then we were looking at it from the edge at while we’re at the edge of the tunnel. As like where is this trail going as he was going away from the tunnel like curving off to the right, or as a tunnel was on the left and I couldn’t see where the trail was headed. I was like, Oh crap, he was going to get going so far. And I had just had this sinking feeling is like it. I think according to what I remembered, the trail goes over there, which means we have to go to the right and then back around to the left. And then up that whole damn, you know, little hill there, which is only half kilometer away. But we’re there to be a bridge from here to there. It’d be half kilometer away. And so anyway, we had a walkway down there and way up here and blah, blah, blah. And then I was I was right, I had to walk up this up onto the mountain to keep saying mountain, I guess their mountain so they’re visiting tall hills from some people’s points of view, I guess. And then there’s two posts, I put on Instagram where my website is like, I must be Instagram like, let’s see how long it takes to get to there which on the map looks pretty close. But I knew in reality, it was gonna be a long way because of the trails going switching back and forth. And then suddenly we were there. And it was suddenly because

I thought we were heading how even say this I thought the was called the shrine past which we plan to walk was going to be on our left. But it was on our right and in my mind, like if it’s on the left, we’re apparently got a lot damn longer way to go because there’s no place on the left where it can show up. Eat Oh, it’s on the right. Because we were just like walking, walking, walking, walking in like a to the we’re on the left of a giant hill on a well it’s obviously not there. But I knew it was on the left we would have to go around that hill. And then something else is Oh, it’s on the right of the hill. Cool. So we were there suddenly. And I was very glad because I was like, Good grief. Because on the on the map is like 50 meters or something. You lie and 50 meters my Oh, yeah, it is okay, cool. And kind of thing. Um, but once we got there, I opened the the shed the doors of the shed surrounding the shrine, it’s kind of like, I guess it’s not a stretch around it wasn’t a shed surrounding it so much as the shrine was enclosed. And the doors were unlocked just sliding wooden doors so the shrine itself was locked behind a wooden grate and I collected some soil put it into my candle holder, put the candle foot candle in my candle holder and lit the candle to your calling the spirits and pray for your gratitude and and and for a good safe and thanks for thanks for the people making the trail and making the shrine and the maps and the and all the stuff that went together to make it possible. And did a 15 minute like pause there to bless the the walk and Jason and all the people who were supporting and everything and had to in my mind, I I had to make sure I didn’t burn down the whole thing. It’s all made of wood. You know, and I’m like lighting a fire inside this this shrine son I forgot the name of it. But three something three something area. Oh, maybe it’s related to the three Cooney area the three country because it’s close to there, but certainly a different sound anyway. Whatever. So lit a fire lit no lit my candle in there and I just had to make myself stay awake and watch it for 15 minutes while I was standing there. And sometimes my eyes were closed and I was like alright, don’t fall asleep. Don’t fall over. Don’t burn the place down. kind of thing. You know basic stuff. So, anyway, it was fine. There’s still intact Ay, ay, ay, the candle burned itself out. I took the soil back and and spread it onto the ground and everything was fine. loaded up the bags and and Jason Wade had waited patiently the that time and we headed from there it was an all downhill. But as you may know, downhill gets quite tricky as well, especially on ankle breaking rocks and things broken. trying to think of this like broken softball size rocks that we’re walking on.

I wonder if they’re names of wonderful can find names of different sizes of rocks. Anyway, we got down the hill, we It was funny. Like according to the map this this map was mapped out as a usable path on Google Maps. So getting up to that shrine was not labeled on Google Maps, but going down from the shrine was labeled, is labeled, I assume. And so like, all the back and forth switchbacks are are marked out on Google Maps. And so I counted like six teen large, like, you turns out like switchbacks going back and forth, back and forth. Alright, Jason, we got 16 curves, you know, let’s try to count them out. And so we did, basically, well, like counting the same in reality, what we what I had counted on the map, I think we ended up counting in reality 20. Whereas on the map, it didn’t look like they should count, I guess that’s one way to describe it. But got to the bottom. And oh, actually, almost got to the bottom. And

I recognize that there’s a place that I can just about and get on to the tunnel. So I went down there and couldn’t get onto the tunnel, because it was too big of a drop down from the frame of the tunnel, if that’s the right word, like the vertical backdrop onto which the tunnel in to I don’t even want to call that but it’s something and I couldn’t jump down onto the tube of the tunnel from there, because it’s too far to I guess I probably could have jumped down, but I was too tired to do so and my knees were like, No, fuck, you not going to do that. And I wouldn’t be able to easily climb up and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So I didn’t do that. But I did have Jason take a picture of me. So that was great. To have a photographer photography help. At that point. He declined to go down there to get the same photo up. But generally, he wasn’t able to explore exploration just what’s the word here? willingness to explore, he wasn’t as willing to explore. There should be a word for that. Anyway,

right. As we got to the bottom of the hill, the owner of the next location called me on my phone, which was wait at that point. Which was working. I then had a working phone again, I’m trying to I’m trying to remember the order. That’s one curious thing. I’ve completely forgotten the order. Not completely, but I’ve to a large degree, I’ve forgotten the order in which I was at this or that location and the order in which things happen because I just didn’t have a well, I don’t remember that in general. Anyway. I don’t remember time. I remember location very well. But anyway, so that’s the thing that happened. And I think my phone was fixed by that point.

Yeah, okay. Definitely. It was fixed. I know I can remember. Because that was walking from the monkey capital sports in which is where I got my phone back, which has its own little story and walked to walk past the three country tunnel and to family of a guesthouse called family house. I was the only one there and they were quite friendly and nice and the guy had superglue to fix my sandal which had when did it break?

Did Jason give I’m now I’m getting more confused because maybe Jason gave me it lonely loaned me his sandals. But I know I use my sandals on that part of the walk. And I know the guy at that house use superglue on my sandals, so they must have been broken. So I don’t know what happened. Maybe I may be able to figure out the details later. But right now as I’m here, it’s 10:20am on May 17, so eight days after the walk finished and so like, you know, as much as two weeks from this point that I’m talking about.

Yeah, that was the original sandal break.

Strange.

90% sure I was wearing. Oh, wait. Okay, it’s coming. My I know exactly where my sandal broke. It was at a was at the weird to haul. Like, what I decided must have been an electrical power plant. And I’ll need to find that on Google Maps to place it for sure. But I right now, I believe it was after the food, the sports house. And before we started to walk over the mountains, therefore, I was wearing Jason’s sandals while walking on the mountains. But I thought I had been wearing my sandals. That’s that’s curious to me. There is some video of me walking, so we can check the video and as I’m thinking about it, because Missy made a comment about it that I’m wearing wearing shoes. She didn’t say sandals. So maybe it was Jason because they were crocs they look kind of like shoes, I guess. Okay, so I must have been wearing Jason’s sandals to walk on, on the broken baseball sized or softball sized rocks. And then we got to the bottom of the hill. And that’s when the guy from the next location the family house called me is like, Hey, man, we got you for a reservation today. Are you coming? And Yep. And I told them where I was. And he’s like, Oh, he’s gonna be here in one second. I was like, ah, but we are walking. He’s like, Oh, okay. So anyway, they they were cool. And they delayed the dinner was supposed to be at 6pm they moved at 6:15pm when I’m it’s not a big deal. But I mean, they have their own life and they’ve opened up their life to let some random random guy come in. But he also the next morning, he put glue on my sandal. And it lasted for a day for like a full day and a half and I I was like I should let him know and your gratitude, but I haven’t yet done that. The issue is I keep thinking about doing it. But in Japanese, I’m like, I don’t know how to write that in Japanese. It would take me ages to write that in Japanese. But anyway, the glue lasted for over a day. And anyway, that was the first day that we walked around a tunnel. Then the next day we walked. Oh, okay, so the next day, paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, paragraph, new page, new page, new page, new page. The next day was like new. This is a new chapter by the chapter per day I think I should do.

Next morning, I woke up pretty early and had breakfast, they were like, yeah, whatever time you want, I said six. And they’re like, Sure. So I got up at six and had breakfast. And it was again, ample and in great and fine. Jason had stayed at a different location up ahead, by like a kilometer or so. which turned out to be a great location for him because the owner was Chinese. So they were able to speak Chinese together. And that so that was a blessing on the walk and in general. Um, so the

last membrane so walking from the family, the family house, we walked into the ski resort area, punctuated by Prince hotels, longest gondola in the world, or at least the longest in Japan, probably on the world, five kilometers long and, and I was like, dude, I’m totally gonna ride on that. That sounds amazing. must do. And oh my gosh, Baba blah. And looking at the map, it was just amazing. It’s like a straight shot, like straight up the mountain and, and it goes up to this, whatever. Other ski resort and holidays like, wow. So we approached that area. And there were lots of abandoned buildings like some that said there temporarily closed and some that were like, closed, closed. A sign, like a really fancy sign. That was like a neon sign. I couldn’t find the building for that sign. The sign was itself all like, like, it looked like it had been hit by a truck on the bottom corner somewhere. And so from afar, it’s like, oh, that’s a sign coming up to it is like, Oh, it’s all fucked up. Because it was just like, smashed and broken and near the glass had been cleaned up on the street, but the glass was broken, still hanging from the sign there. And I couldn’t find a building that matched that sign, which is strange. But anyway, it was, it was close. That’s the short version of that. So we get to the hotel, the prince hotel for this long gondola. And looking up at the clouds, or sorry, the mountains. It’s kind of covered in clouds. I’m like, I don’t want to go on some gondola that goes up into the clouds. You can’t see nothing. So I called them Jason was actually ahead of me. And I was like, Hey, man, let’s ride this gondola. And he’s like, Okay. And then he came back and I called them and got he had gotten ahead of me because I was taking pictures of all the like, the abandoned buildings and stuff. And like, Oh, where’s Jason’s? I called him back. And so that was me fucking with his schedule. He’s like, Fuck the gondola. He’s walking forward. And But anyway, we work together and and he he came back to, you know, to be nice or what have you, which anyway, does a whole separate story of you know, taking care of oneself versus the other and blah blah, blah. But I called the hotel as I let me talk to the gondola people and in so I had already called the hotel the previous night. So I knew the gondola was open a new one time it opened. And they confirmed it was open and that it, it wasn’t like one gondola car that went up and down the thing every 15 minutes, but it was like, a series of cars like a ski lift more like and so we wouldn’t have to wait for a certain timing or what have you. But looking at the the clouds, I was like, dude, we’re not gonna be able to see anything. So I had I had my doubts. I was like, but then she’s like, on the phone. She’s like, Yeah, well, if you do the gondola, you get 500 yen off our amazing buffet, you know, and I was like, so what’s the price? The total price is like, only $30 or something. And I’m like, I wasn’t that hungry at the moment into that much of I was like, nah. And Jason was like, nah. And so we’re like, Alright, screw it. So we skipped the gondola is like, I’m sad

about that. But it was just it didn’t fit in well, with our current situation plus the weather. Basically, the weather was bad. Didn’t want to wait didn’t want to eat a bunch of food to make the price the ticket worthwhile say it was just weird. And I might be off on the price. Like don’t don’t write that price down and try to complain to them. But anyway, it was too much and we’re like, nope, so let’s let’s get out of here and kept on walking. Then could after a while walking along the highway Walk walk, walk, walk walk. We like walked for a kilometer or two just about and then I saw some how we say it. Sound gondola cars, like skirting along the ground. Like they were like 20 meters off the ground. And they’re in this valley. And I was like, hold up a second. That’s the long ass gondola that I want to ride. Oh my god, I’m so glad I didn’t do that because it’s not going straight up and down the mountain. It’s like winding its way through this little valley. And we won’t do that. I want to go up a sheer cliff that now I couldn’t possibly do by myself. But it looked like it reminded me of a of a quaint country railroad line, like kind of winding its way through the through the between the mountains. Oh my god, I’m so glad we didn’t do that. And it was it was cool to see. Like that had the like the the entry tunnel is like at one point. I was they the the the gondola like the rope way. We say this, the towers just vanished. And it’s like, oh, they’re going into that tunnel. So they go into a tunnel under the mountain. That’s crazy. Oh, that’s the station. That’s the beginning. So that’s where they go into the little house and back out again. So we had walked and walked and walked and walked for like a kilometer and a half before even getting to that point. So had we gone to ride the gondola we would have had to do that walk, do the crappy gondola, then walk all the way back and then walk to where we were. So it would have taken up an enormous amount of time. And apparently be a crappy little gondola. Anyway, it’s probably a nice for a date. And I would quote unquote I would like to go back sometime with With my wife, but for this trip, I’m so glad that we did not do it. Because it was anyway, for all the reasons and just stated dislike, yeah, nah. So yay, I’m glad we skipped the gondola. Because Because check this out. Alright, so while walking along the highway and seeing the gondola that we had missed, it was so glad we had missed it.

There was what I’m calling a snow shed. And I don’t know if that’s the name in general, but that is the name given to one of these that’s like, on the highway, going alongside the mountain, then they put a roof over the highway to basically keep snow that comes down the mountain from going on to the highway. And at one point that was called a snow shed in Japanese. And so I’m just applying that name to all of these, like on the, if the mountain is on the right. And the roof is above that is like open air on the left as I was looking out over the valley looking down the mountain. And nothing much down there per se like in terms like there’s not a city down there or our river bank basically. Or a river. And so we’re walking along this snow shed. And it had a sidewalk beside it, which was great. And like walk walk, walk, walk walk had a bunch of Monkey monkey shit on the ground. So it’s like, at one point I saw like some dog poo on the ground. Like who doesn’t clean up their dog poop? Oh, later they Oh, it’s monkey shit. Monkey poo. So walking past is just feces on the on the sidewalk beside the snow shed. And stretch, stretch stretch. So walk, walk, walk, walk, walk. And on the corner of my eye somehow I was like, oh, there’s a ladder. So there’s a ladder outside the side. So this there’s the mountain in the highway and a snow shed. And then sorry, mountain highway with a snow shed. And then this notion continues with the sidewalk. And then outside the sidewalk. There’s a ladder. And I was like, dude, ain’t no one out here that can see me. The cars are driving by super fast, they can barely see what’s going on. I almost didn’t see the ladder myself. I want to climb this ladder. So I was like what Jason Hang on, hang on. There’s a ladder here. And he’s like, you’re going to climb it. And I’m like, Yes, I’m going to climb it. And so he took a picture of me on the ladder and as I was on my way up and

so I got up onto the ladder. And I thought I’d just be all around. I thought I would just get up onto the roof of this notion. And I did why didn’t guess is that there would be a three dimensional array of tires tied together like these are truck tires, all the same size. Basically I don’t know how I didn’t measure them, but to they’re all laying on their side. Like 20 tires. I have pictures 20 tires wide. Hundreds of tires long along the snow shed two tires thick. So it’s a 3d array of tires all tied together. And I was like Dude, there’s Oh, my god and so happy to find this. And so, I have video of me, like walking on the tires and noticing that some of the tires are branded Yokohama, which is where I started my walk. And Yokohama was like, cool, you know. And there are other tire brands on the thing. And they some of those tires, all the tires, presumably, were flat, and some of them had sidewalls blown out. So all the like the inner cables were, like, ready to stab my feet, so I had to be careful under which tires I stepped. But they were, they were all like firmly, like locked into place by these wires. So I had to be careful not to step on the wires. Because the wires were not carefully cut, they were cut cleanly, but not like in a like, feel free to stand on me kind of way. And so I was walking along the tires, like every head for stepping point four quarters of the tire to step on at any given point because they were divided by these wires. And so, a 10th of the time the sidewalls were blown out. So I had to always watch out for the wires, a 10th of the time Watch out and not step on blown outside walls. So I mean, it’s easy enough to like walk happily and semi not jog but walk quickly across the tires like rock hopping but in on tires, like tire tire tire tire and doing video at the same time. And so it’s really fun. And had I been less tired puts on sunglasses. So I so I could have done much quicker if I wasn’t doing video and if I was less puts on sunglasses tired. But it was really fun and great in this I was overjoyed to see that on top of the roof. I was like wow, very few people know about this. And I get to be walking on a barefoot It was like a dream come true practically for the walk was so cool. So fun. And just thinking about the poor guys driving underneath that they have no clue what’s even there. And much less get to run on a barefoot. And even Jason was like, Yeah, he didn’t care. He saw the pictures. He’s like, yeah, it’s okay. Didn’t want to climb the ladder to go do it. But All right, cool. Fair enough. Yeah, I would have gone back up there with him would take pictures up on the thing and like, Hey, what’s going on? But didn’t do it. I guess I begged him to come up and he would have But anyway, that was really fun in grade on the the roof of the snow shed that’s just north of the the prince hotel with the long gondola. And

so it’s kind of a long walk for people who are used to driving but it’s certainly not even a day trip to walk there from the hotel to get to it. So yeah, I can I can recommend it. I just go do it. It was fun. What else? So climbed down from the tires and kept we kept on walking. I can’t remember offhand. I guess the next hotel was lodge monta Jose. I’m curious what the voice transcription is going to do with that name. But so paragraph paragraph paragraph, new page, new page new page. We walked from the ski resort area to basically the other end of the five kilometer gondola and it was the other end in terms of latitude by It was up a mountain to our left. And we stayed at this lodge rush basically right on highway 17, where the next feature of highway 17 was another tunnel through which we could not walk because it was so narrow. And in this case, I had not found a way around it. Except, well, presumably, we can take the gondola up the mountain, and presumably we can go outside long the ski area to your Walker does a lake over there, we could walk around the lake and and presumably there’s no ski snow at this point. But there’s a lot of presumptions that I just I couldn’t easily get the answer for, especially in Japanese to try to figure out how to who to call and how to ask etc, etc. So, basically just got to the hotel and said, Hey, we’re walking here to hear how do we get past this tunnel? And so, like, the first guy I asked, said, well, there’s no way around the tunnel. Just be careful and walk through the tunnel, as I okay. Fair enough, you know. So, that was the, the, what we decided to do. Then the next morning, while we were at breakfast, the apparently the, the word had gotten out that we were planning to walk through the tunnel. And the the grapevine came back as I yeah, let let us drive you through the tunnel. And I was kind of like, really? The guy other guy said it’d be okay. And so, I was for a moment, I was like, oh, man, you know, they’re gonna make us go drive to the tunnel. And I’m gonna have to another segment that I didn’t actually walk through. And I was bummed, and I was like, hang on. I’m 51 years old. I’m a man. I can fucking tell them. No, we’re going to walk through the tunnel. And so that’s what we did. I, I looked outside, I’m looking at the highway. And like, that highway is not very busy at all, like, a car every 30 seconds or not even that a car per minute. I’m like, Fuck that. I’m not gonna drive us through that shit. We’ll fucking walk through the tunnel. And so Jason was like, yeah, whatever you whatever you want to do. I’ll do that. Okay, cool. So let’s walk. And so we told the the large guys that and they didn’t like Neil for bid us or anything like, okay, be careful. And I and I was like, Yeah, well, of course, if not, well, we’ll come back if we can’t make it through we’ll come back. So we got to the tunnel. And it’s like it’ll be alright. There is a 30 centimeters on each side. We can you know, we can walk through this thing. And so we did we walk we walked through and walked and walked and walked and walked it’s like 2.4 kilometers. And about

two thirds of the way through though, like well, a third of the way through we’re looking forward and I can see sees me I can see windows. No, I could see lights in the tunnel. And I was like, Huh, there’s lights in the tunnel. Alright, there’s no lights here. But there’s lights up there. So I wonder what’s going on up there. And you keep walking, keep walking, keep walking. And we get to lights like Oh, these are windows, looking out of the tunnels and Wow, that’s cool. And the windows are all dirty. Then like trying to appear through I can kind of see through but they’re they’re dirty. To the point that they’re definitely like blurry everywhere and opaque in some, you know some places that try and take pictures of it and and have video white wall while walking through the tunnel. Lots of You know, video and pictures and waiting for cars to pass and what it’s like. And fortunately, I had earplugs, which I wore through the tunnel. Jason did not. And I felt kind of bad. I didn’t have an extra set of earplugs. And he was like, Yeah, don’t worry. So. Um, so um, we got to the, to the windows, and we’re taking pictures and took a picture of Jason in the area. And he took a picture of me and all this stuff, really? All right, cool. That’s the windows. And so we continued walking. And suddenly look right, or look right, when we say this. On the right, we suddenly saw up ahead. There’s a door. And by door, I mean two doors. And by two doors are like four meters tall, and two meters wide each. So it’s a four by four meter square exit out into the valley, where we had been trying to take pictures through these muddy mucky Windows is like, ah, wow, and walked out these doors into this magical wonderland of a valley that we could stay for a week, a week, a month, we could stay for a month and no one would know. Because it’s, it’s, I mean, it’s right past the tunnel. But it’s like people can’t see unless they happen to decide to stop and walk out that door. Which in driving a car, there’s really no safe way to do that. And so people would have to walk through or Oh, sorry, they could drive out the door. But anyway, people not going to do that very often. It would have to be like a security truck with lights like blink, blink blink, you know, we’re doing like safety stuff on the highway. Anyway. Cool. We went outside and into this valley where there was snow not like snow crunch, crunch, crunch, but like snow up on the sides and and you could I could see how the plants were kind of way they had been weighed down by the snow but they were still growing like yeah, we’re gonna grow in the snow and how they had just had what they persevered via, during the snowy winter, and they kept on going and growing. And so we’re like, looking around, I saw like a tree that had been like completely knocked down but then was growing back up again, similar to the tree that was on the trail that had been knocked down and growing up again. And I kept like, looking around at the tunnel area looking for a ladder looking for a way to climb up on to the tunnel. And the the tree, the tree covered face of the mountain was

excuse me just about dense enough with trees that I could, they could like use the trees as handles or steps or stairs and go up the thing. But again, it’s like just beyond my risk tolerance level. So I didn’t want to didn’t do it. And slightly too tired. Slightly, not trusting that we could get help soon enough if I did fuck you fuck up my ankle or whatever. So I didn’t climb the trees, you know, didn’t use the trees as a ladder or whatever. But looked around, looked around, looked around. And there’s hard to describe via it verbally but there was basically it was two tunnels that were learning how to say this. You got your basic mountains. You got your basic highway going through the mountains via tunnels or alley that causes a break in the tunnel. So basically, from the cars point of view, they’re out of one tunnel into one tunnel immediately, like 50 meters later. If, if that wasn’t that far, and then the, there’s actually, in that valley, there is a road that approached the highway from the side from the valley. And then, so the road would come down in through the valley between the two mountains into to approach the highway, so they could connect to the highway and go through the tunnel. Or, presumably before that, it went on down the valley. First further to get around the mountain. Anyway, that road still connected to the, the, to the tunnel. And they put a windowed tunnel over the highway, and left the entrance for the road to go into this tunnel area. And

had four by four meter exit to go out. And so the exit had its own little tunnel for a few meters to cover the doors and cover the transition from the valley into the tunnel. And it was at it was on one side, it’s all like open and I can see the windows and stuff. And the other side of that mini tunnel is right next to the mountain. And, and I was able to like slip through between the mountain and that little mini tunnel and walk along the big tunnel for a bit. And that’s where I found the ladder. So if you can parse all of that maybe I’ll draw a diagram or something. But the ladder was there. And the ladder went up the face of the mountain not the like the baby like up what five meters high. And so I I had to it was a it was dangerous because it was like all covered in leaves that were ready to be slippery. And they were like covered in some snow when there’s all were wet. So it was dangerous, to be clear, and I don’t recommend it for anyone to try what I did. But I carefully walked my way past the the, through the thin part and past the cables that were sticking out of the mountain to hold the mountain into that shape through like a concrete mesh that is which is common in Japan to have on sides of mountains. I didn’t grow up in a mountainous area in the United States, I guess it’s common there as well in mountain areas. But anyway, the cables were poking out like ready to slice the slice of belly open if they were not with us, we’re not wearing clothes or rip up the clothes or whatever. But anyway there’s a ladder and I checked a ladder it was firm, secure, strong, like they built into the concrete. And so I climbed the ladder like step by step hand by hand and I always had at least two points of contact on the on the ladder. So very safe for what I was doing. And got to the top there’s a giant fence on the top of like a snow catching fence and I didn’t go beyond that fence but I went along the fence and try to get on to the tunnel but I couldn’t similar to the tunnel that we did not go through but I could see above the windowed tunnel and The name of the tunnels that were names of the tunnels that were there before. I couldn’t read the names because they were obscured by branches and stuff. But I can see the names were there, which is, again prove to me that the window tunnel didn’t exist when these first tunnels were first put into place. And for other reasons, I think the the squirrely road in the valley was the first thing to be there, because that would be 10,000 times easier to go around than to build tunnels through. So anyway, I took some pictures, some selfies up from that ladder and took pictures of the ladder from the top and the bottom. And then I went down the ladder. And then when I got down the ladder, that’s when Jason came around. He’s like, Oh, there you are. I’m like, yep, see? Ya miss me on the ladder. I wanted to get photos of me there. You know how selfish of me and egotistical But anyway, it was fine. I was like, yeah, if I could, I’m not gonna climb the ladder again. But we

were he just to be my robot. No AI, and I definitely would have had him take pictures of and I would have gone back up the ladder. But I presumed he had been waiting the whole time and blah, blah, blah. So went down. And we then got our new gear back. Well, mine was on my trolley the whole time. What’s it called the cart. And but he got his backpack back on and we headed back into the four by four meter doors and into the tunnel and continued our way down the tunnel until the exit. So that was our first tunnel, which rewarded us very handsomely with this beautiful valley. And it was really yeah, it was really it was really cool. So next time, if I do walk through this area again, I will definitely walk through the three country tunnel as opposed to going around it, even though we went to that shrine and all of that. Not that was way annoying, too difficult. So I’ll go through the tunnel next time. So yeah, I’m going to pause this recording. I’m glad it is still recording and continue a new

Happy I followed my heart!

date: ‘2021-04-30T12:15:13+09:00’

title: 'walking inside triangle braces of snow blocker'
location: 'geo:36.89177,138.76324;u=600'

I was intrigued + amazed + happy to see how strong the snow barriers are.

And found a section of triangles through which I could walk quite happily

Day 15 was

date: ‘2021-04-30T21:29:41+09:00’

title: 'Found a secret door out of tunnel'
location: 'geo:36.858386,138.773803;u=65'

The owner of Lodge Montoze offered to drive us through the tunnels, but traffic on Highway 17 seemed light enough to venture through the tunnels on foot.

It was basically fine. We just moved to the side when cards approached.

My light and reflective vest should keep us visible enough to oncoming vehicles.

After walking 800 meters, we found windows in the tunnel!

We could barely see through the windows.

I wondered what it would be like out there.

Hmmm if only there were a way to go outside.

Walked a few steps further and discovered two huge doors 4 meters tall, standing wide open to the beautiful forest outside.

geo:36.858386,138.773803

The middle hinge was higher than I am tall!

We found a beautiful stream outside. I looked for a way onto the tunnel.

Sweet! A ladder is just the thing I need.

On top of the ladder I see the windowed tunnel was actually a connector between two previously distinct tunnels.

I could almost make out the name of the end of the first tunnel

I’m on top of the world (of happiness)!

Back down the ladder looked a bit spooky and was totally fine.

Looking back, I could just about see the name of the second tunnel

These wall holders really intrigue me

Cool! It opens up into a larger space.. including a ladder!

Duplicate pictures were also posted on May 3rd. Future editor figure out what to do.

There must be a way to get up there

Some of the wall anchors did not have covers; I didn’t take a picture, but there were three cables inside.

Yes! I found a ladder around the corner

Eventually time to go back down..

2021-05-01T12:51:34+09:00

title: 'tents at Garden Log Center'
location: 'geo:36.92678,138.81002;u=87.6500015258789'

Lots of wind buffetting these tents and inflatable tent covers

This was at NASPA Camp Garden

https://g.page/naspa-camp-garden?share

2021-05-01T14:15:13+09:00

title: 'Finished Day 16'

Day Sixteen was relatively short, and our last short walking day. This was the day I wore my SOGO shirt and ran across the side of a dam in a damn beautiful area.

The onsen at Hirokawa is large warm, and covered in cool tiles of varying sizes. Very nicely done!

2021-05-02T09:15:52+09:00

title: 'two water pipes just north of Yuzawa'
location: 'geo:36.94433,138.801;u=50.707000732421875'

Two giant water pipes begging for me to climb them..

2021-05-02T09:19:32+09:00

title: 'not much building left'
location: 'geo:36.94071,138.80313;u=77.5999984741211'

Very little remains of this building but I can see stairs

2021-05-02T10:32:58+09:00

title: 'River branching off from train tracks'
location: 'geo:36.96734,138.80151;u=149.60000610351562'

Found a nice back alley path between the highway and railroad tracks and then looking out I see the river branching out from railroad tracks which looks pretty neat..

2021-05-02T10:53:31+09:00

title: 'swing set and manhole cover'
location: 'geo:36.97393,138.80286;u=5.0701398849487305'

2021-05-02T11:18:25+09:00

title: 'Welcome to お'
location: 'geo:36.98341,138.80441;u=4.998470783233643'

Welcome to お

2021-05-02T15:10:41+09:00

title: 'great Italian restaurant'
location: 'geo:37.02329,138.8359;u=16.59000015258789'

I was really happy to talk to the owner here at this restaurant because he was friendly with great smile.

Day 17 was

2021-05-03T10:00:41+09:00

title: 'thank you Muikamacchi Hutte'
location: 'geo:37.07204,138.869;u=30.222999572753906'

Muiamacchi Hutte was a great place to stay last night and get in out of the rain. Nice clean rooms and great hot onsen.

https://maps.app.goo.gl/1YtZtkDxyAzihFXS9

2021-05-03T10:18:10+09:00

title: 'found a nice little shrine'
location: 'geo:37.07655,138.87211;u=10.861404418945312'

Found a nice little shrine

2021-05-03T10:26:34+09:00

title: 'flowers in Muikamachi'
location: 'geo:37.07783,138.87211;u=23.215999603271484'

2021-05-03T10:29:21+09:00

title: 'though it''s day 18 I will walk to Day Ten City.'
location: 'geo:37.07862,138.87208;u=30.513999938964844'

Shall I walk to the mountains or to Day Ten City

2021-05-03T10:58:40+09:00

title: 'pylon with no bridge to carry'
location: 'geo:37.08489,138.87476;u=6.220832347869873'

Ready for a new highway

2021-05-03T11:16:42+09:00

title: 'I just received two cans of coffee'
location: 'geo:37.08882,138.87638;u=116.0999984741211'

A couple in a small black van pass me and then stopped reversed and greeted me when I approached.

They gave me two cans of coffee from the back of their van and apologize for offering so little. I couldn’t express enough how much it meant to me; they are actually the first people to stop and offer something along the way.

Super gratitude for their gift.

2021-05-03T11:22:06+09:00

title: 'mountains seen from the side of highway 17'
location: 'geo:37.08829,138.87705;u=142.5'

Fortunately we didn’t really encounter any snow while walking through the mountains.

2021-05-03T11:40:26+09:00

title: 'hello red car driver from NASPA'
location: 'geo:37.0929,138.8735;u=1200'

Before I even had time to go down the hill from where I was able to take pictures of the Japanese Alps, I saw a red car approaching so jumped out of the way but then the driver stopped and was a hey it’s me from NASPA, and I’m like oh my God hi it’s so good to see you!

She asked about Jason and I explained that he went on ahead, needing to finish the walk by the 7th of May. So from here on we are both walking separately.

She wished me good luck and went on her way.

So interesting to have so many connections happening here on this stretch of highway!

By the way, the coordinates of this entry look much more likely to be correct than on the previous two or three entries.. at least this time they’re showing me next to a highway instead of in the middle of small roads through small fields.

2021-05-03T11:43:51+09:00

title: 'Day Six City tunnel number 9'
location: 'geo:37.09335,138.87323;u=2500'

I guess I’m still in Day Six City

2021-05-03T12:11:23+09:00

title: 'a peek inside a sprayer'
location: 'geo:37.10143,138.8877;u=104.0999984741211'

Cool. I found a sprayer that is a little bit ripped up so I was able to look inside..

The coordinates of this entry look to be off again because I’m actually right next to the highway..

2021-05-03T14:03:14+09:00

title: 'cool framing of the mountains'
location: 'geo:37.13632,138.91056;u=62.98899841308594'

Walking next to a bullet train line which is the top of this picture of the mountains in the background..

2021-05-03T14:08:28+09:00

title: 'trees both protected and trapped'
location: 'geo:37.1362,138.91034;u=54.94599914550781'

These trees seem to be protected and trapped by a fence underneath the bullet train line.

2021-05-03T22:15:30+09:00

title: 'add this to summary of yesterday day 18'

Just before walking under one of the snowsheds it started to hail a little bit as part of the precipitation. The hailstones were only a few millimeters across, but definitely not sleet because it wasn’t that cold.
I ate one of the hailstones and it was great. :-)

For several long barefoot segments, I was walking in the street which was much nicer than the adjacent sidewalk. I could see way down the street and move out of the way when cars came, which they rarely did because it was so rural.

Just before Urasa Station, I interacted with two groups of people: two teenage Japanese boys who took pictures with me including @kousei_mountains on Instagram, and three people speaking English, but who didn’t seem interested in talking when I said hello and such. I felt a little sad because I haven’t gotten to speak much English (in person) during this trip.

Day 18 was

title: “1504 Let Go and eat pizza”

2021-05-04T05:36:34+09:00

title: 'Arrived in Sudaya just before dark last night'

The walk yesterday was reasonably good with just a little bit of rain. Lots of walking along railroad tracks including scene a interesting train construction thing that I hadn’t seen before. I was a little bit late by the time I saw that I didn’t take the time to upload the picture but I have a couple to upload.

I stopped for a bit in Urasa Station, which was largely closed except for restrooms and two shops on the second floor: some kind of gift shop and a convenience store.

There was an up going escalator up to the second level which was high so actually about the three floors worth of steps. So I left my bag downstairs while going upstairs to pee and such.

I went to the convenience store and got a bunch of stuff but then realized my wallet was downstairs in my bag because it won’t fit in my pockets when I’m wearing my rain gear.

Fortunately, this is Japan, and unfortunately, the train station was nearly desolate, due to covid I guess, so my bag was completely untouched and fine when I went downstairs to get my wallet. Anyway the point is just that I had to tell the cashier apologies and then run down the stairs and escalator back up with my wallet to pay.

I was barefoot the entire day except for about 2 km walking north of that station, where the roads just didn’t have any sidewalk but did have lots of gravel and such. That was around the area that has two different snow sheds in a row on the highway next to the Joetsu Line.

It was nice walking along the Uono River; it was pretty large and flowing pretty quickly with bluish looking clear snow melt water.

I am in a small city called Koide now, and planning to pack and go pretty soon.

I have not updated my website to put the day by day things at the top of the page so I have to dig down a little bit to find that entry and figure out where I’m going next.

2021-05-04T05:53:00+09:00

title: 'Good morning Day 19'

Well it looks like someone didn’t do their job… The text written in the screenshots says I’ll be staying somewhere near a park… Which was apparently written before I had found a hotel near that location, and was probably written before I decided to stay at hotels for most nights.

Fortunately, I do have access to this information on my phone via the magic of Google Sheets…

According to the sheet I’ll be staying at Ojiya Park Hotel in 小千谷　(おじや) .

https://goo.gl/maps/qon2wdyNcaJyGeRg6

2021-05-04T09:24:58+09:00

title: 'clay dam I think'
location: 'geo:37.2608,138.88872;u=256.5799865722656'

Clay

2021-05-04T10:55:27+09:00

title: 'halfway finished Day 19'
location: 'geo:37.26075,138.86893;u=13.253000259399414'

I’ve made it halfway and my feet have slight injuries like skin worn through and starting to bleed on my left foot. I should probably put on my sandals.

Here are some pics I took from inside a tunnel

2021-05-04T11:50:16+09:00

title: 'blue sheet caught my eye'
location: 'geo:37.26102,138.86831;u=4.881699562072754'

2021-05-04T13:33:20+09:00

title: 'walking next to train tracks'
location: 'geo:37.28301,138.83276;u=2900'

Looking back on a nice view as I’m more than halfway done walking today.

I said hello to a guy in Japanese and he replied that he doesn’t speak English. I guess I’m not in Tokyo anymore.

2021-05-04T16:56:59+09:00

title: "and that'
location: 'geo:37.31158,138.79624;u=14.218999862670898'

Canak’s Pizza
https://www.facebook.com/PIZZACANAK/

On my way to the hotel for tonight I walked right by a pizza place but it turned out to be closed.

I searched the area for other pizza places and found one that was kind of near my hotel but the wrong side of the street by like half a kilometer so I was like nah. I ain’t walking way over there just for pizza.

So I bought some of my staple food for this journey and a convenience store and put it into my jacket pockets for consumption at the hotel.

Walking across 信濃川 (Shinano-gawa), I spent some time talking to a sweet old man who spent time telling me about the area and answering questions I had about the landscaping of the river and some of the local shrines.

He gave me two cards from the local shrine, offering one of the two and then offering both after I told him about my anti-suicide campaign of this walk.

After he left, I followed my map to the hotel but couldn’t find it. I walked around to where it seemed to be on the map and suddenly there was a pizza place.

Wow! Why wasn’t this shown on the map before?

I looked down and somehow had fat fingered the map to get myself to the pizza place from before instead of to my hotel.

Bought a large pizza of which I’ll eat half and save the rest for tomorrow.

いただきます!

Boom ate the whole thing. I was hungry!!

Day 19 was

🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕🍕

2021-05-05T20:53:51+09:00

title: "Finished Walking Day 20"

It’s (according to my computer). To my feet and legs, it’s early on Walkday. My brain knows it is now Day 21, but this entry is about Day 20:

I did not take many pictures on Day 20, compared to other days. Photographs seem to happen more in the morning, but as I get tireder and tireder from walking, the pictures taper off as I’m like bah, who cares about seeing more flowers that are not really differentiatable from other pics I have taken.

Day 20 things:

• saw a two car train and tried to take a video but realized later I apparently did not hit record until after the train went by.
• saw species of little yellow flowers that I had not seen before
• talked to Brian in Corpus for about an hour while sharing stories of mapping. Very fun talking with him as we have similar senses of humor.
• 1. “everything was going fine until I talked to those guys in Corpus”
• 2. “here’s your diploma!” after walking through flowerbed on campus
• almost recorded Joetsu Line shinkansen, albiet far away
• Surprised to see Doge is up to 77 yen, and has gone up 11000% just in 2021.
• Installed Folding@Home and signed up for the Doge team https://www.dogecoinfah.com/doc/gettingstarted.html#getstarted on my laptop and on my Vultr server (pinning its CPU to 100% (up from 4% over the past years))
• Nearly weaned myself off aidungeon.io, helped by the response “The AI doesn’t know what to say. Alter, undo, or try again.”
• Walked across Shinano River with water pouring through Myokan Weir, a word I did not know the meaning.

Day 20 was:

2021-05-05T08:16:58+09:00

title: 'feeling sad this morning'
location: 'geo:37.30778,138.79659;u=19.309999465942383'

I’m feeling quite sad this morning, possibly because the walk is coming to an end, combined with that I haven’t done a lot of the things that I thought I would do, for example interviews with locals using my audio recorder, or make updates on all the different platforms that I had planned to update, including the crowdfunding campaign site.

Oh, and I haven’t finished all the letters that I told people I would write.

And and there have been some contributions on the crowdfunding site where people have asked for letters or postcards but I can’t figure out how to download them to get those addresses so I’m not sure what to do there.

I was able to figure it out before but my tired brain just couldn’t do it this morning and then I forgot about it before I packed up my computer.

Also sad that my computer seems to have rejected the battery starting over a week ago. Well the computer reports the battery is at 100% it immediately shuts off immediately when I unplug the power adapter.

Fortunately, the computer itself has been working fine when it’s plugged in and I’ve used it to great success in keeping my website pretty much up to date.

The walk today is 15 km so significantly shorter than yesterday, though I’m starting 2 hours later than I did yesterday.

I have a call with my friend in Texas in 45 minutes and then session with a client tonight. It’s wonderful to be able to work while I’m traveling.

2021-05-05T12:31:17+09:00

title: 'Amazing water flow at Myokan Weir'

Placid Shinanogawa

Something happening

Whoah

Vids from Myokan Weir

https://youtu.be/4iMnI-2Ko_Y both sides of bridge

https://youtu.be/AQEsQno2yU4 both sides of thingie

https://youtu.be/t-U0HaStvyU slow motion angle

https://youtu.be/4Pj7W8lbBYU slow motion straight down

https://youtu.be/z2SaTjwXY4Y

https://youtu.be/tunVfQyXJeQ

Deets

Pics

Fish stairs

2021-05-05T14:11:17+09:00

title: 'favorite pudding at a dairy shop'
location: 'geo:37.39601,138.83878;u=87.5999984741211'

I was attracted by the restroom sign icon and then realized the shop sells my favorite pudding, so I am Chilling at a dairy shop with 3km left to walk today..

2021-05-06T12:23:51+09:00

title: "Saw Missy's Green Japanese Ratsnake"

Saw a rather large ratsnake I encountered before crossing Kariyata River (map). He was quite chill.

16:30 Monday 17 May 2021 JST

Rambling transcript of story:

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. 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 sorta 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 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. I put him on YouTube. I called it Missy’s green snake.

2021-05-06T15:23:51+09:00

title: "Pictures from Day Twenty One"

Leaving the hotel this morning around 7am

Two manhole covers with same design at different sizes. I may have posted a large size version somewhere.

Bicycle wheel themed bicycle parking

Went through a tunnel that apparently gets flooded at times.

Saw a turtle in a river

turtle without zoom

Also saw an orange in a river

Curious loops on wires a I guess to keep birds off them

Wow I was back there a few days ago..

Curious that these huge heavy plates are being held down by a backhoe

Brand name

2021-05-06T17:46:42+09:00

title: "Finished Day 21 in record time"

Before I started walking, Jason H described a simple 4 steps to adapting to any stressful situation. I think I am in the last stage now; I have just come to realize walking is my life. Nothing can be done to change it. Just walk walk walk.

I felt quite hot and tired by the end of today. Not a drop of rain in sight, and plenty of sun, so I am glad I put on sunscreen before I started out at 7am. I arrived at the hotel about 2:30pm, so 7.5 hours walking 17.5 kilometers (according to Google Maps)

‘2021-05-07T10:39:28+09:00’

title: 'go straight 14 km'
location: 'geo:37.53583,138.88872;u=4.217646598815918'

Next destination is essentially straight for 14 km.

‘2021-05-07T10:49:07+09:00’

title: 'SUPER CENTER PLANT 5'
location: 'geo:37.53891,138.89069;u=87.5999984741211'

Okay it’s decided then, we will call it SUPER CENTER PLANT 5. Everyone in agreement?

‘2021-05-07T11:22:34+09:00’

title: 'junk behind a shed'
location: 'geo:37.55319,138.89529;u=116.0999984741211'

Stereo equipment and other discarded junk

‘2021-05-07T11:27:28+09:00’

title: leverage
location: 'geo:37.55405,138.89585;u=128.8990020751953'

These doors would have to be paper light for these door stoppers to have a chance of actually stopping them if they really opened.

‘2021-05-07T11:37:24+09:00’

title: 'little house on the river'
location: 'geo:37.55655,138.89773;u=7.986046314239502'

Is this a way out outhouse?

In any case, it’s right above the water.

(The door was locked 🔒)

2021-05-07T18:59:08+09:00

title: "Finished Day 22 around 6pm"

I did a couple of livestreams on Instagram yesterday. (I downloaded and copied them to Youtube so you don’t have to log in to view them.)

Water pouring into rice fields

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-ltEFRpkT9U

Great talking to Eddie a bit on his way to get his kids.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7DIq1T_-HNc

APA Hotel Tsubamesanjo Ekimae is really the best I have used this walk in terms of price per ameneties.

Private bath, bed, TV with free VOD including adult content, plus a larger than micro sized toothpaste, and a nice toothbrush with soft bristles. Just 3700 yen. Nice.

Day 22 was

‘2021-05-08T08:32:53+09:00’

title: 'optimization of steps'
location: 'geo:37.65001,138.93668;u=3.7900924682617188'

Just for the record, I am choosing not to walk about 60 m the wrong direction including across a busy Street so I can head toward my destination tonight and stop at a convenience store about 31 minutes away according to Google maps which will be about an hour at my pace.

That is to say, there’s a convenience store about 60 m wrong direction from which way I want to go so I’m not going to go there. I will instead walk 2.4 km the correct direction so as to not waste steps.

‘2021-05-08T08:39:19+09:00’

title: 'François on Yahiko Line'
location: 'geo:37.65101,138.93734;u=3.7900924682617188'

François on tracks with only one line. Yahiko Line

‘2021-05-08T08:54:51+09:00’

title: 'numbers on deicing label things'
location: 'geo:37.65398,138.93914;u=9.363497734069824'

I still haven’t figured out what these labels represent pointing to the deicing number things. The numbers seem to be within the set 65, 85, 100, now 110.

‘2021-05-08T09:08:38+09:00’

title: 'long greenhouse windows'
location: 'geo:37.65771,138.94439;u=4.0750885009765625'

Wow. They’ve got this crank that will unroll and looks like simultaneously come down the pole to close the plastic window along a 50 m length of greenhouse.

‘2021-05-08T09:16:45+09:00’

title: 'junk near farm'
location: 'geo:37.65752,138.94545;u=32.76599884033203'

Found some junk right next to a farm

‘2021-05-08T09:23:57+09:00’

title: 'crossing Nakanokuchi River'
location: 'geo:37.65769,138.94521;u=142.5'

Crossing Nakanokuchi River

‘2021-05-08T09:42:56+09:00’

title: 'a few pics before breakfast'
location: 'geo:37.66242,138.94711;u=59.58700180053711'

There’s something familiar about this picture

Neat to see this new number (50)

And right next to it a new manhole cover with three birds flying

And a little bit ago I noticed that each of these tiles were tied with wire down onto something, I assume bamboo.

‘2021-05-08T10:17:12+09:00’

title: 'confusing guy wires'
location: 'geo:37.66971,138.95139;u=110'

Confusing guy wires… why do they have two wires on the bottom one of which is unused?

‘2021-05-08T10:36:02+09:00’

title: 'skeleton of a skate ramp'
location: 'geo:37.67539,138.95309;u=3.7900924682617188'

Skate ramp frame

‘2021-05-08T10:42:07+09:00’

title: 'I may have found Jurassic Park'
location: 'geo:37.67549,138.95337;u=19.427000045776367'

Welcome to Jurassic Park

‘2021-05-08T11:14:22+09:00’

title: 'François and a big dam screw'
location: 'geo:37.68077,138.95997;u=32.0989990234375'

François found a big dam screw

‘2021-05-08T15:38:47+09:00’

title: 'interesting pool thing'
location: 'geo:37.75385,139.00787;u=4.323200225830078'

What is this?

From the side

‘2021-05-08T18:49:13+09:00’

title: 'Great time with Daisuke and Hiroe at Googoo'
location: 'geo:37.76135,139.0144;u=20.100000381469727'

Googoo is the sound of an empty stomach and of deep sleep. So what better name to use for a restaurant and guest house?

Located just two minutes apart by foot, Googoo Restaurant and Googoo Guest House are a delicious and clean combo for Italian food and place to sleep off the meal and ample drinks.

Daisuke and Hiroe are also backpackers, heading for months long adventures in different places around the world. We have some overlap in South America and Rapa Nui.

While writing this entry, I got another full glass of umeshu. And they have ice cream… Yikes stripes! Will I wake up in time tomorrow?

20:20

Oh my goodness, they picked up my tab at the restaurant. So generous!

Daisuke had said 遊び来てね！ and that 遊び is what made me think it would be worth it to take my tired butt over there. So worth it indeed! We had great conversations about travel and he asked world-traveler type questions, including “what prompted you to stay in Japan?”

Really super best of alll the places I have stayed. Apa was 3700 cheap and impersonal. Googoo was just 5000 yen and included dinner and hours of great friendly conversation!

‘2021-05-09T05:54:05+09:00’

title: 'hanging out with Daisuke and Hiroe at Googoo'

‘2021-05-09T06:01:16+09:00’

title: 'Creative force'

Last night my computer kept shutting down which I assume is caused by faulty interaction with the new battery. I woke up early to try to open the case and take out the battery but was not able to do it because of Apple’s use of pentalobe screws. Ugh.

I tried super gluing my pen cap into the screw but the glue wasn’t strong enough. I tried using my knife from Bill to carve the pen cap into the right shape but wasn’t able to do it.

While in the creative mode, I realized I could use the tape to make a cover for the camera which I used to take photos of the whole operation which I cannot currently put up on my website now because my computer is not working.

I wish I had asked Lin to bring my new computer from home which I have a 2% hope that she did anyway without me asking.

In any case here’s the picture I was able to take and upload with my phone.

‘2021-05-09T12:35:17+09:00’

title: 'Shinanogawaohashi has stairs'
location: 'geo:37.85398,139.01811;u=1600'

I made it to the bridge with stairs going up, the final interesting point that I planned to visit before embarking on this quest.

‘2021-05-09T12:38:54+09:00’

title: 'François on stairs'
location: 'geo:37.85731,139.01847;u=122.4000015258789'

PS the coordinates listed are kind of off.

‘2021-05-09T16:28:21+09:00’

title: 'arriving at the goal'

2021-05-08T08:38:20+09:00

title: "Day by Day plans for walking ~400km to Niigata"

Details:

These are maps of each segment, subject to change. For the latest info, PM me on LINE.

(*) Note: dates are subject to change! For the latest info, PM me on LINE.

It’s been over a year since I walked. For ten days after my walk I was hella sad. Klaus explained it best, something like I had lost the identity of “walking across Japan” so needed to go through a grieving process.

Plus I was angry. Oh shit now I have to write a book??? Fuck that.

Robert Golden patiently encouraged me to write, saying correctly that the memories would fade. Heck I knew that as a 17 year old; that is how I started my handwritten journal.

I have learned a lot since my walk. I spoke at TEDx Ogikubo about the joys and benefits of barefoot walking.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJzb5n9ldP8

While researching for the talk, I asked my physiotherapist friend Yuji who spoke for 30 minutes about the benefits of walking barefoot. Suddenly I realized I had to expand my number of barefoot walking events. It wasn’t just a feel-good thing; there are benefits beyond just “it feels good.”

Balance is improved; gait is improved; long term safety is improved; short term safety may go down slightly but can easily be mitigated with eyesight or walking in areas known to be safe for bare feet.

I had been doing monthly events, and now as of this writing, I’m leading 7 events per month. Seven! That’s great! That’s great except for one or more things.

Actually, in some cases, one or fewer things.

I am a chronic underearner. Of the Twelve Symptoms of UA on https://www.underearnersanonymous.org/, I often ticked about 9 of the proverbial boxes:

1. Time Indifference – We put off what must be done and do not use our time to support our own vision and further our own goals.

2. Idea Deflection – We compulsively reject ideas that could expand our lives or careers, and increase our profitability.

3. Compulsive Need to Prove – Although we have demonstrated competence in our jobs or business, we are driven by a need to re-prove our worth and value.

4. Clinging to Useless Possessions – We hold onto possessions that no longer serve our needs, such as threadbare clothing or broken appliances.

5. Giving Away Our Time – We compulsively volunteer for various causes, or give away our services without charge, when there is no clear benefit.

6. Undervaluing and Under-pricing – We undervalue our abilities and services and fear asking for increases in compensation or for what the market will bear.

7. Isolation – We choose to work alone when it might serve us much better to have co-workers, associates, or employees.

8. Misplaced Guilt or Shame – We feel uneasy when asking for or being given what we need or what we are owed.

9. Not Following Up – We do not follow up on opportunities, leads, or jobs that could be profitable. We begin many projects and tasks but often do not complete them.

See the full list of 12 here https://www.underearnersanonymous.org/about-ua/symptoms-of-underearning/

I’ve been spending a lot of time leading events, but not making enough money to live my life. I have a 1/4-time job that I do online and then 6 hours per month of other paid work. It’s not enough to do more than scrape by.

I love my free time and yet it’s sometimes too free. I have given a lot of my time away free and end up resenting people who I think should be paying me for my time. It’s my own dang fault, and I have the ability to do things differently.

I have been leading these events at an overall loss for a few months; my transportation costs and other expenses have not been covered by donations from the events.

I’ll probably increase the recommended donation from 500 yen to 1000 yen, especially after I get the custom bamboo barefoot thingies I plan to have designed and made soon. I’ve semi-started that process by asking Yoko if she can talk to her friend who makes things with bamboo.

24 May 2022

Just quickly to write your innate talents are the most valuable thing you undervalue because they are innate. You overlook them because they come so easily to you. What do people keep coming to you for? Continue to do those things more often. (see you’ve got talent)

“Now what” can be taken to as fine detail as we like.
In any moment, we have choices. At each moment, how do we decide what to do?

personal mission

This could come from a personal mission. For example, I have a mission I developed for myself in ManKind Project.

I create a world of love and connection
by connecting and listening.

Actually this version just popped out of my mind. The second line of the previous one was like “by leading and facilitating”

Having a personal mission allows asking useful questions at any moment. e.g.

• “What action will move me toward my mission?”
• “Will this action move me toward or away from my mission?”

emotional body

Another way to choose what we do is by feeling our emotions. Generally I have found that my most effective actions are if I move toward excitement AND fear at the same time.

The excitement means it’s something I care about. The fear means I don’t know how it will turn out. Put those together and get go for it! I haven’t yet experienced times where this guided me poorly.

Oh, by the way, my broken shoulder wants me to mention that if the feeling body features tired or rushed or anxious, it may be good to SLOW DOWN.

SLOW DOWN

This would make a great title for a book! ;-) Allowing your mind to control things is a great way to get muddled up in some mind stuff. Allowing your awareness to open to subtler energies can be a way to sense insights coming from a more loving realm.

Again, I’m talking about God here, or higher power. Maybe I’ll introduce a term I made: EPP, or Every Present Present. I’m not sure it applies here, but it just came to me, so there ya go.

I created the term EPP (not the thing it points to) when I created my own religion. That was while reading the book Shaving the Inside of your Skull by Mel Ash, who apparently got it from Timothy Leary:

This is the advice from Timothy Leary in The Politics of Ecstasy. He says that in order to make your own religion work you should “write down and define your: Goals, Roles, Rituals, Rules, Vocabulary, Values, Space-time Locales, Mythic Context. Develop your own rituals and costumes . . . You will eventually find yourself engaged in a series of sacred moments which feel right to you…”

Dang I ain’t typing the rest now, but it’s on page 173 of Mel Ash’s book.

I pray for God’s guidance.

I learned this year: “God perfects nature.”

I take it to mean we all have a natural way of being.
I’m naturally barefoot, usually optimistic, and a few other good things.
Naturally, I’m also a few other “bad” things. Naturally.

At my request, God perfects my natural skills and gifts.
God lessons my less useful things.
I have to let God in; I have free will to keep God’s meddling Ass out of my life.
I also have free will to let God’s perfect Guidance guide me.

We have free will. Maybe that was the “fall” of Adam and Eve. (I’m no biblical scholar.)

We have free will to do what we like, including let God into our hearts and to kinda take over the wheel of life.

It’s Step 4 (?) of 12-step programs.

In Gene Hart’s new book, Beyond Dreaming on page 14 of the free PDF I just read:

It has always been a great challenge for any author to accurately describe
spiritual dimensions that exist beyond time, space and conventional wisdom;
spoken human language is all but a vain attempt to describe the indescribable.

https://old.reddit.com/r/AstralProjection/comments/yu3vx2/my_astral_projection_book_beyond_dreaming_is_now/ https://youtu.be/OkhPITA2pU8

https://otter.ai/u/rI2he1V1HFWCka0q6gu0c1VtCfg

One of my friends said God couldn’t have a personal interest in each of us.

I countered this claim by talking about integers versus the reals. There are a finite number of humans on the planet and ever in existence. However, the real numbers are infinitely greater than each and every integer.

If God is infinite, God’s not going to be the infinity of the Aleph Null integers. God’s going to be infinite like Aleph infinity infinity infinities plus one of any infinity that humans could ever imagine, much less articulate.

My friend is a mathematician. So he understood this description probably better than I do, and said it gave him something to think about.

In my mind, it is a simple proof that God, of course, can pay attention to each of us uniquely separately individually. Not like the small number of relationships that a human can form but a literal, infinite number of relationships, each in full Technicolor and care and attention

In addition to this, God can trivially have an infinite number of relationships per person, which has led me to addressing God as both daddy and mommy and brother and friend, and employer and mentor and allowing me to sink into all of these relationships, whether they be played out via humans, or played out in my heart.

They’ve been helping me stay more focused on moving in the right way. The most amazing thing for all of these is this sense of gratitude, which I’m still kind of playing with to see what it is or what it means, but somehow, gratitude seems to make things better. That’s as simply as I can articulate it at this point. It’s like the, you know, early days of discovering magnetism or something. It’s like “wow metal things are attracted to this lodestone” and you know, naming the the rock after the island where they were first discovered.

Now it’s like, “huh joy in my life is attracted to gratitude.” I recently had some experiences, a few synchronicities in a row related to my friend Jess who lives in Bondi Beach. When thinking of calling her, I looked up and saw Bondis Ocean Club cafe. And this cafe is near my station. But I had never seen it before.

Now, granted, I didn’t walk this particular route very often. I went a long way so I could have more privacy during another phone call. And yet, it’s just an amazing, interesting synchronicity. And I guarantee that I thought about calling Jess first before I saw the thing, and there’s been lots of physics, in science and different, whatever’s saying that time isn’t what we think it is. And space isn’t what we think it is and all this stuff.

So I’m just kind of like, poking at the edges of what anything might possibly be. And just seems the gratitude makes a difference in the physical world. The This has nothing to do with the synchronicity story, but like having the synchronicity I remind myself to have gratitude. And it’s just such an interesting cool thing. So I had this phone call with Jess in Bondi Beach and then later while having a conversation about her, she texted me. And I was like, oh, that’s also pretty cool. Now, granted, it’s not doesn’t mean anything. In particular, we had just been texting that days. So the odds are pretty high that we would text again, but it was just at the same time that actually someone else was talking about her so yeah, really, really interesting. synchronicities happening.

Is there a way to really tune in to a higher power at all times? Is that what enlightenment looks like? Or is that another description of enlightenment to simply be in tune with spirit all the time I’m just kind of blabbing about it. But it’s just so interesting that my life goes better when I’m feeling gratitude. And it’s easier to feel gratitude when my life goes better.

And so, taking this to an extreme, so to speak, like this feeling gratitude about everything I’ve heard phrases like imagine everything is happening for me, instead of to me like things are happening on my behalf including breaking my finger and I’m seeing all the accidents I’ve had in my life but like, stitches are on my hands or face or just whatever. And you’re breaking bones. Or my back or my head and your breakups being broken up by girlfriends or having to the fights with with my wife just somehow, staying present to this idea this is happening for me and expressing gratitude for the thing.

Now, I’m not always able to do that by any stretch, but when I can, it helps. It helps me stay present. For example, when Lin and I are having a fight helps me stay present. It helps me be able to recover, so to speak much more quickly. It helps me be able to stay calm and have it be able to help her stay calm as well. We went to a therapist who talked about my tendency to be quiet if I’m under any kind of duress, and Lin’s tendency to go under duress if she’s feeling isolated. So there would be this pattern happening that I would feel that she’s not listening to me or something to that would put me into a bad state. So I would just shut up and the why would I talk? Why should I talk if she’s not gonna listen? And so then Lin would feel like I’m running away from her so she would get more anxious and more talkative and are complaining and you know, and then therefore not able to hear me. So this is a second little vicious cycle. And having the awareness of that cycle, helps me a lot in recognizing how to let go of it.

By not engaging or just be it by being aware. But taking that a step further. Like having this cycle is for me, it’s a gift. It’s all for my benefit that this has been happening in my life. And so I can say, well, for example, you know, I get to know myself more or I get to have more joy with Lin, by getting out of that situation more quickly. And I recognize that that’s like saying that having the door locked allows me to unlock the door, which in itself maybe isn’t a gift but yeah, just this whole kind of sense of gratitude makes a big difference. Is very intriguing to me like what’s the metaphysics of gratitude? You know, why? Why would that be helpful and the YouTuber, Teal Swan said something like, “Don’t you like it when people express gratitude to you and it tend to want to do that thing for them more.” She say, well, Spirit is the same way. And it’s a funny way to anthropomorphize God, saying God is like a person which I just started this whole chapter by saying God’s not like a person but

Imagining that spirit likes to be given gratitude is a good way to, to think about spirit as a human. How actually correct is that? What does it mean? Perhaps it’s like, having gratitude vibrations around me attracts people who are also in gratitude and therefore more willing to engage with me in a good way. That kind of makes sense, you know, like, law of attraction kind of thing. And yet at the same time, I don’t need to figure it out. I can simply be grateful that I know the secret so to speak.

I can just use this knowledge or this this kind of skill, of being grateful for all the things happening in in my life. continually asking God to give me guidance and grateful for the guidance or, to me being grateful for the guidance. So yeah. Gratitude, ね。 That’s really really interesting.

I bought Beyond Dreaming, and have been slowly going through it.

I woke up during a dream a couple nights ago:

I was driving my pickup truck and went into a parking lot, looking for the source of some good music. I drove up to another pickup truck, and parked so they were pointing head to head. A black man got out of the other pickup truck and I noticed both trucks were white. He silently offered me a drink in an unopened plastic bottle. I accepted the bottle and watched him open his bottle, take a drink and then splash some drink out of the bottle at the ground in front of me. I turned around and two more of his friends had arrived, silently appraising the scene.

I asked if they spoke English and they laughed a little. One woman said I should watch myself as they all walked away.

I got back into my pickup truck and backed out of the parking lot, somehow able to turn around without bumping other cars. There was a chain blocking my way out and I realized I could drive slowly through it because I was in non physical reality(*). I drove toward the chain then turned left in front of it so as to not break anything. I drove into a tunnel underpass and realized it would be faster to fly, so I went to a restaurant where people were waiting in line and ascended the stairs and went out a door on the roof of the tower which had a camera mounted on top to do weather reports. I went to the edge of the building in front of the camera and jumped off the building and flew with the intention of finding the greenery of central Tokyo. I woke up while flying and looked at the view on my phone which showed my body sleeping in front of the camera for the past 10 hours and 312 people viewing the livestream. I watched myself wake up via the livestream and walked down into my living room of the house (we lived in until 1978) thinking wow what a weird dream and then I woke up in this physical reality, did a dream test to confirm I am in physical reality, then wrote this.

(*) While dreaming I often “realize” I can fly or do other things that would not be possible in physical reality… but don’t usually realize I’m dreaming.

From Gene’s book Beyond Dreaming:

The primary purpose of this book is for others
to learn how to awaken consciousness

From my Book, SLOW DOWN

One of the ways to wake up is to pay attention to little
details.

https://otter.ai/u/wK8e6whTMxefyqWZRE1T1n57z2w

I have been doing monthly check ins with my friend in Hawaii, Robert golden for a few years now at least two years. I think it may have just been it was pre pandemic actually as well. So anyway, today is it’s 8:34am on May 1, Monday. May 1 2023. Oh no, it broke the name it really changed it. E R. O S. So, we’ve been doing these check ins and today. During one of his stories, Robert introduced these two words and arrows, he said is the flow of love and Thanatos is the flow of death. I suddenly had a little vision of a chapter of this book as a result of that I never thought about the flow of death. I guess it could be perhaps articulated as a fire. Fire consumes and kills and then gives life and so I had this vision that we come down to the point of, of God and the language breaks down but what I call the E P P. ever present present is where arrows and Thanatos are merged or the same or somehow equivalent. We can’t have one without the other. And yeah, just really seen how at the micro level they can’t be distinguished. And so maybe it’s like this concept of the far left and the far right being the opposite ends of a horseshoe. The they end up being basically the same. And so, we have maybe that kind of a analogy would fit that the flow of life and the flow of death. I said love before I actually look it up are one and the same when you get far enough to the to the periphery. So I wanted to add a little chapter around that and like my ideas of what is good and bad. Are you know not pointless, but they’re hard to distinguish when we get down to the far ends of the spectrum. And just having this sense of slowing down to bring my title back into the to this piece, slowing down so that we can experience each microsecond of life one one bit at a time. And really dissolving into the flow of life and time. And this is where we have experiences of athletes get into the zone or into the flow state and just being really, really present and discovering that it’s all one in the same from different perspectives. Yeah, so that’s my little topic about Eros and Thantos. Thanks for listening and talk to you soon. じゃねー. Bye bye

https://otter.ai/u/DmZwfg4ZUQgQkUPoMAJupAhccdc

How did this book get its name? I came to Japan in 2003 On leaving Texas on Collins birthday and

before I came to Japan, though I decided I should see my own country first and drove I think 5000 miles from Texas basically through Arkansas, Louisiana. Can turkey or watches First Tennessee, Kentucky for Jigna West Virginia. Up and over Ohio, Illinois Missouri, Oklahoma, back down in Texas. And then from Texas to out west to New Mexico, Arizona, California. Or again and then back down same same country or same states, California, Arizona, New Mexico and back. I was in a huge rush and I had no money and so it didn’t really get my Santa self a chance to chill out. I saw hot springs in Arkansas and it was okay. But I for example did not go to Sandusky, Ohio. Park I drove right by Cedar Point and didn’t go it was closed. But why didn’t I chill out for a day? Why didn’t I just park at the gate you know I I didn’t really have the resources or hadn’t really planned and it was all kind of go by you trying to get to the next location I did stay a few places and you know keep it PG here. And

those were just things that happen to be possible places that that we’re welcoming people who are welcoming and I’m forever grateful

I wasn’t welcoming to myself. I didn’t have my I didn’t have enough resources. I stopped by Maggie’s mom’s house just because I know Maggie, my best friend from university. I knew her very well. I knew of her mom. Very well, had never met her mom. And I basically showed up and had to borrow money from her to fix my bicycle, which had been damaged with a car bumping me from behind bent the wheel vent the disc brake was like $100 worth of damage because a disc brake itself was like 80 bucks or something to replace it her mom called the bike shop and say how much is it to fix a wheel and they said $20 She didn’t know to ask about the disc brake as well. So she called her daughter like, Hey, this guy stole money from me just letting you know. Hard you know he was so I don’t know what she said. But yeah, it’s really something that troubles well. I felt bad when I realized what had happened. And foolish they hadn’t. There’s so many different ways to look at it. I didn’t have the money. And here’s the point kind of I assumed she would have the money and that was a poor assumption. Out of poor not but it was potentially not correct. A presumptuous assumption.

So I want to expand this chapter a bit more. But ironically, I have a call in a few minutes and

yeah, I’d like to have a copy of the call coming up because we’re gonna share some stories. I wonder if we can use Zoom

so there you have it. This time the book is titled slow down because I was in a rush to drive around the US. And then when I got into Japan peace boat was amazing, but like kind of rushing around again. Not enough money. And that’s my fault, not piece boats fault. And then I rode my bicycle around Japan slowed down a little bit. But still it was fast and furious and broke my shoulder

then I walked across Japan

depends on who you talk to but like bicycling or walking. Those are about the right speed. Human speeds these human powered speeds and yeah, maybe this chapter is about that. Not using resources to go faster. But using your own inner power to go the speed that is best for you. I’m guessing it’s a lot slower than driving car or airplane rocket ship. It allows me to control my data shy

mom say goodbye to her daughter. Yeah, so

having the control or insight or the ability to stop in a moment’s notice when God speaks to me, maybe that’s the point here. To be able to slow down and hear higher power. Take time to look at a flower or pet my cat Jenny whose little bell I hear right now. Just really being really being present in the moment. That’s the meaning of this book title. Thank you for reading. Talk to you soon. Have a great day. Be well

https://otter.ai/u/gD4etSSecahlW0nRtKNr43DhykQ

I’m singing a song to Jennie, my cat as he’s sitting here in my lap to sing in like, Jennie, Jennie, you’re my cat. And I love you. So, Jennie, Jennie, I’ll be here until you want to go. Just having her in my lap. I decided to hang out with her until she gets bored of me. Yeah, and, oh, here it goes. She’s almost getting bored. Okay, okay. Okay. So she got bored. Um, maybe it’s because the song ended and I started recording this hey Jennie.

But actually, I want to say last night, just last night, on the fifth of May so five, five. On the fifth year of the Reiwa era. I received a well message. Basically, the short version is that I forgot to bring my I forgot to put my bicycle parking lot card back into my wallet. I I trimmed I slimmed down my wallet one day when it was raining and I expected to get soaking wet. So I took everything out of my wallet. Except just like my identification card. out of my wallet at that time went the bicycle parking lot card with which I can update my sticker on my bicycle. Just for the record, this is the new black bicycle, the giant gravity a bicycle that I got I basically a year ago at this point. Yeah, so and that’s thanks to Mark for helping me select it and actually helping me buy it because at the time, I didn’t have no money. So the

Oh, so I didn’t have the card. I went to the parking lot. And I was like, Ah, crap, I forgot the card again. So I went to the desk, and I was like, Hey, man, I forgot my card. And basically, he didn’t know how to give me a new card with my old customer number on it. And so he’s like, yeah, sorry, took several minutes. He’s like, Yeah, sorry, this is gonna take too long. I’ll figure it out. And you pay me your money. This is this is very Japan. He’s like, you know, give me the money. And we’ll figure it out. But this is not Japan. He didn’t give me a receipt. I just I gave him like 6500 or he made some change back so 6300 yen and maybe more anyway doesn’t doesn’t matter. 6000 Yeah, six was anyway 6800 yen that’s it for sure. So I gave them 6800 yen and that included a 500 fee 500 again fee for making the new card.

And I grumbled a bit but as it because it took so long and silly me for forgetting the card but I was like feeling grumbly energy coming up. But I’m at Yeah, you know, it’s all good. And I kept saying I trust you God. When I left that left the desk left the parking lot the bicycle parking lot area I just my hands in the air. I was like high fiving guys like God, I trust you. It’s all gonna be good. It’s all fine. Even though I didn’t have a receipt or proof that I had paid. I was like it’s all good. And just basically let it fall out of my brain and went to a beautiful day in the park yesterday. Yogi Park was very crowded. Being the during Golden week holiday. So it’s the we just had three holidays in Japan. Today is Saturday. Oh, by the way, today’s Saturday at seven 50 2am On Saturday, April 6 2023. As I write this now or speak it into otter so

yesterday in the park was lovely. I got to re meet Oscar and Yumi who are friends of Jens and Kaori. They, I don’t know how Kaori and Jens met, nor how Oscar knew me. I know they did say that. Oscar Yumi met through a course. He took a course in meditation or something Transcendental Meditation. He may have said that. Yeah, so anyway, he met her through that. I don’t know how he ends and county met. This has no relevance in the beautiful day, but they all were basically on in the park for a picnic. That county arranged the date with me about a month ago. She’s uh, yeah, When can you come out? About may 5 Because that was the first day that I had available my calendar. And she was like, Cool. We’ll be there at one o’clock. I said, Cool. And I’ll be there at one o’clock. I was late. But they were more late. Oscar numi we’re not late. But my friend Ai, Ai-chan was there as well. She was there on time. So she’s the first one who I saw and then Oscar and you meet came back. They were in the park looking for us. And so everyone we all met up and it was all good.

And we found a place in the park had a lovely great day some more my friends came Mike from frisbee from Ultimate. And so go workout boot SOGO bootcamp, and so called Ultimate. And Elena joined and Mike Nelsestuen joined and who else Oh, Martin and Sue Susana, Martin and Susanna joined as well. And their friends via Missy actually who needed someone to help with cat sit her cat cats plural hasn’t five. So they met us via Petya, who knew about the cat situation. So? Yeah, so anyway, Michael Nelson, Steven saw them and was like, Oh, hey, it’s Martin and Susanna. So they came over and join us for a bit. It was great, though. Ellie was there with his son, Eyal. and think, oh, and then on Kaori’s side was Mi… Is that right? Yeah. Miho. And Yumi, Miho, Kaoru, Kaori were there.

So anyway, had a good time, and played played frisbee and it was great. And then people started to leave it started to get dark, not dark, but they left after lunch and stuff. Then Elena, Ai-chan, and I went into the park further to see the roses and the Rose Garden. And then I walked Elena out, because she had to go and then I came back to hang out with Ai-chan for a bit. Ai-chan asked me some questions about how I got started in my spiritual practice. And like, ask if there was a specific event or something. I hadn’t really thought about that. But just realizing that I had been working with the practicing massage, even in high school, through the youth group, and in one of our weekend rallies, we had someone a basic massage therapist, come and teach us some basics of Swedish massage, I guess it’d be called Swedish, but basically, manipulating the muscles to release tension and such. And so even since high school, I’ve been doing massage type stuff.

And I told her that my dad was into, like, what,, ESP and channeling and dowsing. He took a course from University of Santa Monica, about count a counseling course. And so yeah, all all good stuff. And I just was kind of immersed in it growing up. And remember even high school even in high school, I wanted to be a counselor. Which is interesting that I never really studied that. But yeah, all good, all good. So they had a nice talk was Ai-chan in a big hug at the end, and then headed out of the park.

Then I went directly to the barefoot walking event for full moon last night. And I felt really grateful the community is growing slowly but growing as in last month, and I think the month before, zero people attended. And it was like, Alright, I need to I need to advertise better, or cancel if there’s no RSVPs or something. And I’m still kind of feeling into how to do that. Because it was on while I was on the way there. Shinjiro said, hey, I’ll be there. Okay, good. I’m glad that I’m planning to be there. But I also had confirmation from Yoko’s friend Miho, who said she would be here be there is that right Miho? Because we had yes Yumi and Miho. Yes, was another second Miho that I met today. And then Shinjiro said his friend, Hiroto, not Hirota, which is more, which I’ve heard a few times, Hiroto also joined.

So had three attendees yesterday at the barefoot walking event. It was pretty chilly. So we didn’t stay that long. But we went out into the field. Under the full moon had a nice clear view of the full moon at times it was it was overcast. Well, it was cloudy, not overcast, but we could always definitely see the full moon even through the clouds. And yeah, really beautiful time, I did the meditation in Japanese a bit. And I’m too shy to even try it now and the audio but like allow, I didn’t really say Allow but like Moon Moon light shines down on on your body, you know, kind of thing is very simple guidance to allow us to be filled with moonlight and to allow the energy of the moon did or ultra release any negative energies that we don’t need any more. So in very clumsy Japanese, I was able to do some of those phrases, I think. I mean, they kind of came to me he like I think this might be a way to say that and just go for it.

And what’s really, really just so beautiful about the whole thing I am it was again a case of like, Wow, I can’t believe I’m getting paid to do this. And just so grateful to have this opportunity to serve and to to be of service in a way that people are feeling supported. And in all the cynic inspired me like I gotta learn some Japanese you know, better than having like doing verb drills or what have you. Then I so, feeling really blessed by the community growing and that I can support the community and everyone seemed to have a good time and it was all good even it was cold. We had great, great time and energy. Then I got headed headed back to my station. And Jennie Hey Jennie, how you doing?

So I then got got back to the bicycle parking lot area and had this what is it like note on my bicycle, that’s usually as a yellow note, I’m sure it says, Hey, looks like you forgot to pay. You know, and something something your sticker has expired or there’s no sticker whatsoever. And this is a warning will tell your tow your bicycle if you don’t sort it out quick. However, on top of that had been written, we’ll keep your card in the office, basically, we have your bicycle card, and then look down on the on my bicycle on the back was my updated sticker. And I just like I just was felt so grateful. I had a little cry in the moment. I’m like, Oh, God, thank you so much. And just like trusting God and higher power, and that it’s all gonna be okay. And it was beyond what I expected. I thought I’d have to go there and be like, Hey, I’m the guy that lost. But that little bit, they put the sticker on my bicycle for me. And in exactly the right spot where I’d want it to be on top of the previous one, which allows the first sticker to be visible still. And they didn’t rip off other stickers, apparently. Anyway, it was done just beautifully and perfectly. I’m so happy. I had a little cry of joy and just feeling really connected and supported and blessed. And yes, such a nice time.

And that was all while talking with Jess X Goh in Sydney, about our respective days, and how we’re really enjoying the process of living with God’s guidance and, and higher power and spirit. And we just have this shared kind of language about that. And I was like, hey, what does angel number 555 mean? Because that was the date written on the thing. And she’s like, Oh, I have to look it up. And so looking it up. It’s about abundance, about change about letting go of the old and allowing new to come in. And I was like, that sounds cool. And then, you know, gratitude for an angel number, the repetition there. And it’s, I mean, it’s not too surprising that on the date of the thing, however, it was triggered because I forgot the card. And because he didn’t know how to do it quick enough. He’s like, I’ll do it later.

So for at minimum, those two things. If had either one not been the case, I would not have received that handwritten 555 at the top of this notice. And so it’s like, that’s really neat. Oh, and then there’s a third one that I told him. I know, I will not be back before you guys close, because I’m going to the event and bla bla bla bla. So that’s three different things at minimum, any one of which I wouldn’t have gotten the note there. And yeah, so story’s not over yet.

So yeah, so about change and about prosperity and abundance and all of this stuff. I said, Cool. That is great. And then this morning, and this is like continuing the story that started over a month ago. Just this morning at 702 a m, I received the final, what’s the word like the link to do the to make the the official like sign the dotted line with ATG, the publisher of this book. And I don’t know exactly how and where the money is going to come from to pay for it. But it is It’s, I trust God. It is within my means. And it’s like, it’s just Alright. Cool. We’re going to do this right in the book.

It’s just really neat to have the 555 last night, and the email came in this morning. And yeah, really feeling the gratitude and blessing. And this is the the type of thing that I’m finding is normal as I’m continuing to shine gratitude out into the world.

Oh, and I, I talked to Eli yesterday at the picnic, and I asked, How does gratitude work? And he basically said, that this is a theory and he heard and he doesn’t know but that the, the formlessnesss, out of which the form arises, is most effectively directed with our vision, and our gratitude. And okay, that great, that’s basically what I have noticed as well, I wouldn’t use the terminology about the formless. But I’ve I’ve been using like terminology, like higher power responding to gratitude. And yeah, but fair enough. I like even going one one layer back to the, to the formless. And responding well to this is what I remember him, it may not be what he said, But responding well to the gratitude as we give the vision. And I’ve heard this and read this countless, countless times.

So dear reader, this is me, sharing with you. It’s been working, it works. For me, it’s working, sharing your vision, sharing your gratitude. It’s, it’s magic. And it’s working at the level that you will allow it to be true in your life. And so I’m saying that because I’m allowing it to be true at this level. When I sent the email off today, I sent it as best selling author, Rob nugen.com, had Mark. And it’s like just the gratitude and creating the vision best selling author for a long time. Going rewinding the story I’ve been looking up to by a my friend who I met here, he lived in the same guest house when he first came to Japan. And we had basically our commonality we’re both from United States, but he’s he’s from Brooklyn, and he’s into, into like basketball and sports and, and writing, which I wasn’t at that time. And we were basically like, proverbial ships passing in the night. We didn’t really connect. But I’ve always respected his work. And he’s been so he’s now like, well established as a writer, specifically in Tokyo. He wrote the book loco in Yokohama. He wrote, My name is Moses, my name is Biei. And I’m a racist, and really brilliant books. And he’s now writing the weekly or monthly column, black i In The Japan Times, I think. And at one point he posted on social media. I really loved the phrasing. He’s like visualizing his book, selling like tapioca.

Like That is hilarious. because it’s a beautiful thing. And it’s so funny that in like, five years ago, we started to get tapioca tea shops just popping up everywhere it’s like, and the same way that we nowadays you can just add, you know, AI to the business name and suddenly get a bunch of funding, all they had to do was put tapioca in the tea and suddenly sell a lot of tapioca. Or to sell a lot of tea. And he’s like, have his book sell like tapioca? And I was like, Yeah, I love that vision. And so, here’s me like 10 years, you know, his junior in terms of like books, but same vision, gratitude to higher power books selling like tapioca. And I there’s, to be honest, there’s a part of me who does not believe that it can be real and that certainly can can hinder. Your belief is creative. However, as I’m working with vents, and the A T G, team, the they’re well versed and helping get past these, the blocks and the and like, I’m not good enough kind of feelings that invariably come up. This is from the book, do the work. Forgot the author’s name, but invariably, it’s like I’m not good enough. This comes up and I hear it all the time. So yeah, anyway, I’m now babbling and and really feeling gratitude for this opportunity to do my own work. And thank you for doing your own work as it’s of critical critical importance. The the phrase be raft What was that line? I’m gonna pause this and find that line. This is from the course of A Course in Miracles chapter five. Number six time and eternity. God in His knowledge is not waiting. But his kingdom is bereft while you wait. All the sons of God are waiting for your return. Just as you’re waiting for there’s delay does not matter in eternity. But it is tragic in time.

So dear reader, do not delay

your gifts and your work in this world are critical and vital importance. And thank you for sharing them with us.

Sending you all the love in the world. Nice little chime in the recording here sending you all the love in the world. Bless you, and I love you. Looking forward to see you soon

25 May 2023

This morning Lin suggested we swap rooms in our house.
Her room is nicer for me and mine better for her.
We have considered the change a few times over the years that we have been here.

On May 10th 2023, I put the final lock on my shelves to bolt them to the wall so they won’t fall in an earthquake.

How interesting that just 15 days later Lin comes up with the idea to change rooms, just after I finalized my last shelf to the wall…

From you will be quite nice as well. Okay, so first of all, just maybe just explain what are you going to be, you know, what do you plan to do with a walk? And also kind of your, you know, your objectives as well. What do you plan? What How did this come about those kind of things?

Yeah, well, thank you. It’s, it’s been coming over a long time. The long version is that I have been adding different important components of my life together. And they’ve suddenly not suddenly, but they’ve woven together into this walk. And that includes Mankind Project, it’s like, self care in general, the concept of being present with one’s emotions, and in terms of like, knowing who I am as a person, you know, for for any given person reducing stress and suicide rate in, in Japan, and now other the whole world is having problems with that. And walking barefoot, which I love to walk barefoot, and that’s been a thing for 10s of years, 20 years for me. And most recently, I guess, is joining an organization called Bold Life Brotherhood. And a man asked me, What was my bold action to take in the world? And how I just I kind of uncovered this old joke that I had said to my wife, who wanted me to get a driver’s license is like I can walk the Niigata don’t need a license. And that’s to hide my shame that I don’t have a license anymore in Japan. But that joke comment turned into like, hang on, could I walk to Niigata and some years ago, I actually had shirts made it says like, he made that and he got them out MADI araku hace de and it’s just this crazy idea that in it, like walking barefoot helps me be in the present moment helped me be in touch my body gets me moving and out and about connects me to Earth connects me to the earth that to myself, Earth and myself. In all of those are like ways to reduce stress switches like therefore ways to reduce suicide and therefore do self care. And so it is just like, Huh, how amazing is that? I started it because I like to be barefoot. And who knew, but it has benefits that are beyond just like it feels good. I mean, I’m connected to here now present moment by being barefoot.

So you connected to the earth rather than connecting to all sorts of other other stresses in social media and stuff? Yeah, yeah. Right. Okay, excellent. I mean, that that kind of answered. The other question that I had was how it connects to suicide prevention. Yeah. So you you see that the benefits on it this is that Yeah.

Right. And so I I took a course of quitted a question persuade return course, and some different ones to talk about the suicide. People, I don’t know if I should disappear. It should be an interview. But people are ruminating in this expanding around in circles. So coming to the present moment, is one of the key ways noticing what’s here right now. And that’s a key way to help, pass, go go through the feel get beyond the feeling of like, I want this pain to end. And so I’m not sure how much it’s good to like talk about how to get on it. I’m no like, doctor or suicide expert or they should call the lifeline. But I happen to know that your meditations like in our men’s group, wow. I feel a lot better after that. Ground ups is a that’s why we do it. Kind of Yeah, yeah, that applies, you know, to, to all humans as best I can.

Okay, excellent. So you know, since about, I mean, it’s, you know, you obviously you don’t because he’s an expert in it, but that is something that you, you know, it could be one way in which, you know, people could sort of become becoming more present could be one way of preventing. Yeah. Okay, great. Let’s just get some specific stuff. So just just just describe a little bit about, you know, the kind of practicalities, the routes, what what do you really try to take? And are there any events that you tend to hold, you know, while you’re doing the, during the course of it, that kind of thing.

At this point, I have, like, in detail plotted out the first 11 or 12 days of the of the trip, I basically gotten my on the map, I’m using Google Maps, I’ve got myself well into the mountains. And though the weather is lovely here, that will get lovely, or apparently it’s still going to be snowing. So I’ve started describing it like, I’m going to start on April 16, I will start walking barefoot across Japan, which is true. But if we get to see if I get to snow, I’m gonna put on the shoes, and I’ll be barefoot Rob wearing shoes going through the snow to continue the journey. But the trickiest thing has been to find on our route, nicely spaced places I can stay that’s like, Oh, my God so long. And here’s I don’t have a lot of leeway of like, oh, drive 20 minutes over there. No, it’s not me. That’s the entire day worth of walking,

huh?

Yeah. So So yes, you need to you’re still planning, you’re planning.

You’re planning. Even right now I can show your share screen in the mountains.

So if anybody wants to take you in and show you wouldn’t say no to. Yeah, I’m

open to that possibility as I as I described. But at the same time, I need. I want to continue the pace because I’ve made reservations. That’s right. Yeah. Yeah, life is along the way. And so you can maybe my next walk, I’ll leave it open to the universe.

Okay, when my wife would love that, yeah. Well, I say spontaneity is great. As long as it’s well planned.

Exactly.

Okay. All right. So I think I think we’ve done and then. Yeah, just, I was gonna ask you, so you’re so you, obviously, you’re trying to find a walk. And you’re also hoping to raise anything over and above your expenses? It will be? Yeah. We’ll be sent to take your English Lifeline, right. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay, I think that’s about it. If you have any other any comments, or anything that you’d like to add, or

are you asked about events, I do have two events. Well, one that I really want to talk about, on the star team morning, Yokohama to coast to coast. I will do a walking meditation from 9am in rinko Park in Yokohama. So that means like, for about an hour, we’ll just mindfully notice what it’s like to walk or even to stand. There’s a lot of muscles that are happening, right activated to stay on balances, there’s wind and all this. We never even think about it normally. So it’s just a moment to get really in touch with the magic that is this the human bodies that we inhabit.

Hmm. And

so I’ve been leading walking meditations, since every month since November. And before that I had before I’ve been doing some walks, but not walking meditation. Anyways, the that’s the kickoff event is a walking meditation. I can walk to my house and sleep in my house. Think about my life choices and the next day continue on the rest of the way to connect.

And then if you plan it, so as I understand you plan to do about 15 Kay’s a day is that

yes, yeah, roughly. Some are like More I haven’t, since I’ve had to kind of re negotiate to the locations to account for like what’s possible to do. I haven’t completely checked all of them. That’s around 18 1518.

Yeah, yeah. Right. So looking around about three to four hours, I’m guessing.

Yeah. Like a couple hours to get lunch and a couple hours.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. Well, so yes. That’s going to be quite an adventure he shot. Yeah, yeah. I think I think that’s, I think I’ve got all the domain. Okay. Um, yeah, let me just a quick thing about your I mean, you have been on TV a couple of times. Just want to get a bit of information on one. What

happened a couple of times. You’re right. Yeah.

Yeah. Did you get a lot of publicity from that? I mean, did you? Yes. Yeah. I’m sorry. Yeah.

They predicted I’d be I would be famous for a while. Oh, well, you’re on TV and people would recognize me.

Okay, excellent. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Thank you. I mean, that that is something that could be useful to kind of include the AI in any, any sort of release, you know, so that people are reminded that they have a Wii U or something like that. Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. Um, so you say you’re recording this, right. So yes, yeah. And you’re gonna give a get a transcript? Yeah. Okay. Excellent. And then we can work. I can work from that. Yes. Yeah. Great. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

If it’s okay, do you have time for a second?

Just Just wait, just one second. Oh, my battery’s a bit low as well. So

I can continue the recording. Yeah. Tell you. Yeah.

Off you go.

Okay. So,

yeah, I’m okay.

So the I, on my website, Rob Nugen, calm, I am laying out in detail each day, each segment of the day. And that’s intended that if people want to come like, walk with me for a segment, only welcome. I can’t take care. Like, you’re buying people’s hotels, that night kind of thing. But if people want to, like, take, take care of themselves, but join me for a segment on that.

That’s wonderful. Yeah. Is it somewhere where people can follow you as well, like, trace you like, see what Yeah,

I’m likely to livestream on Instagram and read it. And if I can sort it out on YouTube as well. But I need to I need 1000 followers on YouTube before I can do that.

Okay. Okay. Yeah, yeah. Okay. All right. Okay, good. Great. So that’s, that’s also Yeah, that’s something else to kind of just I think that’s important information. Yeah. Yeah.

That’s on my site as well. Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. Excellent. Yeah. So we can Yeah, I’ll try to put something together. Yeah. Okay. Excellent. All the best. Yeah. Yeah. Excellent. You too. Okay. All the best. Bye bye.

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.

Well, I’m basically just recovering from the, from the walk and like back to normal, so to speak. I’m, I’m recording audio stories of the walk. And so happy,

happy to

answer. Sorry, happy to answer questions, because I’m recording this call on my side. I know, well, I can hear your voice, but it is private for me. I won’t like let it out anywhere.

But so well, actually. Well, I mean, you must have had a lot of time to reflect there.

Yeah, definitely.

Like 20 kilometres a day, a couple hours this morning. I talk to you a couple of times. And you know, you’re I don’t know. Your normal headspace.

Right. Oh, definitely. It was a very challenging walk. And I’m barely back now, because I was like, what, what the heck happened? And it? Did anything happen? Was it worth it? What’s going on here? That was my mindset, immediately afterward. So yeah, it was extremely hard. And so what you described as a as a 20 kilometers in a couple hours would turned out to be like, you know, 15 kilometers in eight or so hours each day. It was much more challenging in terms of like, feet pain, legs were okay. But it was mind numbing. And really like, like, wow, what? what is reality kind of thing. And I lost track of days.

longer distances by walking. Right, right. So it makes me wonder, like, where they walk in the day where they walk in this?

what i what i guess is that there wasn’t the quite the contrast of like, life under a calendar in a microscope of hours versus life in the wilderness where time doesn’t exist. That’s my guess. And so

on to they just they just didn’t have a cell phone that tells them the time, but they didn’t know the time really well. Especially, like, when you see like the natives that are absorbed by I didn’t know how to tell time. Yeah, I’m

not I’m not saying that. I’m not I know. They knew. That’s fine. I’m saying that no one was like, you better be here by 3pm. Or, you know, there’ll be consequences. It’s like, All right, good luck. See you in a few days kind of thing. That’s, that’s what I’m talking about. We now have days we’re under a microscope. Hey, do you have time right now? Because I might, I mean, I might have to do something else. So that’s what I’m talking about is a very different. The contrast now versus what I imagined it was at that point, is quite

stark. I actually noticed that when I go back home sometimes. Time seems to expand. I certainly have more good days. Yeah. Back home, it’s very rare to call someone and they tell you I’m busy with something. That’s a rare occasion.

Yeah, so I that’s what I’m talking about. I think.

I remember before, when they asked you why do you want to do what you just said? Because I want to write, but now you’re asking, was it worth it? Was it for what? But what changed? Hmm.

Well, I would say what changes I also had a fantasy that I wouldn’t be able to see people like, well, oh my god, you know, that’s amazing. More so than I did, like, I have crowds of people cheering at the end like, oh my god. Wow. You know, that was a fantasy version of the ending, which was completely a fantasy. That should, you know, is not what happened. And so yeah, I want to do it and I have these expectations of this is what’s going to result. That’s what didn’t happen is my expectations

are looking for some external validation.

Yeah, to a degree. That’s certainly part of it.

I mean, yeah, I remember you told me I want to be famous. Yeah. Yeah.

And so, that has not happened yet that I know of. But basically, no, that didn’t happen.

But you should also be factoring Corona and everything. Right. So, of course, you’ll be meeting this people. So I don’t know. Did you think of giving up during the time?

Yeah. Yeah, yeah, definitely. There was a there was a point that I I had injured my feet I had a splinter in one foot and cut in the other foot went to a doctor who, who got the splinter out, but then it hurt 10 times worse after she got the splinter out big I think because of the anesthetic, which I don’t know. I don’t know what she did to give me anesthetic, but that was incredibly painful. And then it was Nope, for like, an hour. And then again, incredibly full after that, like, painful, even while I was not walking. So. Anyway, the next morning, it was still painful. And I’m like, fuck this, I can’t do it. I’m gonna quit. Because there was a, a train station with my train line, like a tokaido line train. I was like, I can go home without even looking at a map. I know how to get home from here. If I use the train, like fuck this, I’m out of here. And shred on. In there are 7:30am morning calls. We kept those pretty much going. He asked how I would feel after afterward if I make that decision now. And what had what happened to the months and months of planning and all that I was like, you know, leave me alone motherfucker kind of response in my head.

was like, yeah, yeah. Okay,

thank you. And I’m very glad he helped me see the bigger picture. But at that moment, I was like, Fuck this. It was so painful. But that was the only time I really wanted like straight quit. Say it again. What

exactly, was it that painful?

Well, that’s I’m saying I don’t know is one answer as I got a splinter in my foot that I was not able to take out by myself. And the doctor gave me an anaesthetic, which at first was incredibly painful. And then it was numb. She took out the splinter, like in a half a second. She’s like, Ah, it came out, you know, in Japanese. She’s a doctor. It’s out. And I was like, Yeah, I don’t think you needed all that anesthetic to do whatever you just did.

But

so i don’t i don’t know what why it was so painful. There was no visible like scar or like, she didn’t carve it out with a knife or anything. I mean, no real indication, but it was incredibly painful. That’s all I can say.

Maybe also exertion. I mean, that’s a lot of

Yeah.

A few is 400 kilometres. I mean, you should be proud.

Thank you. Yeah.

It’s amazing.

It is amazing in our current world, and also just like it’s normal in the few 100 years ago world. So people had to walk everywhere. Without there was no cars. And you know, I guess I had horses and stuff, but it was common to walk. And there are even

things were very different than no one walks. For no reason. I want to walk 400 kilometers because I have two people used to travel from one city to the other to do business or

Well, I mean, yeah, fine. Whatever the reason is still, they did walk long distances. And so in that regard, it’s like, Yeah, whatever. But yeah, I agree. Nowadays. It’s kind of ridiculous. And I’m glad I did it.

Because I mean, it’s also you put a lot of physical stress on your body. Yes. Like, people don’t just go walk barefoot. Right. Right. And.

And to be clear, I was not barefoot the entire time.

about most of the time, right?

Yeah, about about half I think about half and half. Yeah, for a significant time. barefoot, for sure.

That’s amazing. Honestly. If it was not in Ramadan, I would have definitely joined you for a couple of kilometers. Good.

Next time, I’ll try to schedule it better.

Yeah. I know. I didn’t even really realize that it’s really bad. Scheduling as you can probably already be surprised when my family told me Oh, it’s Ramadan next week?

Yeah, well.

There will be other ones.

A week or two to fully integrate that.

Yes.

What did you how did you get enough sleep? Like,

you know, some way of speaking? No, I didn’t. Because I was really exhausted by the end. But at the same time, I didn’t have most days. I did not have an alarm that woke me up. I just woke up whenever I wanted. But yeah, there were some days that I was hella tired and didn’t get enough sleep. I think

one time did you usually go to sleep like at night?

like seven or eight?

That’s good. Yeah. But also, I think, I mean, you’ve been walking in so many different places. So your brain haven’t seen all these things. And now it’s just integrating. I mean, I don’t know about you but for me when I’m in a new place I feel I feel so it must be guessing without the whole exertion must be amazing. To be just an environment for 21 days.

Yeah, that there was an there certainly was that kind of element of it’s a new thing. And wow, at the beginning of the trip, but by the end, I was like fuck this Fuck this. Fuck this and just wanted it to be done each day.

Yeah, I think it became more of a chore than

Right.

I mean, it is a long it’s, it is very long. Yes.

Like, I had to be careful to like keep taking photographs of things like Alright, this is cool enough to photograph to what’s on

social media. You needed to give

Oh, well, yeah, even that but for like my own, like memories of my own book and my own journaling

kind of thing.

Is that okay? It’s okay.

So I don’t know, what’s your most memorable, memorable moments from the walk? The

Fortunately, the last two hotels were the best two hotels in that order as well. Because the like the second to last was the best for the price, tag, all the amenities that I that I can want, and including, like, nice toothbrush and nice toothpaste, which is like, Wow, that’s cool. Thanks. You know, kind of thing is only 3700 yen for the for the all the amenities. And then yeah, and then next night, I was at a guesthouse. And the price was a little bit higher, but I had the entire like place to myself. And the owners were like, now that you’ve checked in, we are going to go to our restaurant, which is one minute walk from here. And they said, Come, come, have fun. Come join us and have fun. Said I salvini. Keep the NA. Have fun and join us. And I was like, if he had just said come your kid DNA. I wouldn’t have done it. I mean, like, Yeah, whatever. But because he used the word fun in that sentence as well. I was like, Alright, let’s just see what they got going on. And it was really fun, because they were really friendly. They’re also travelers, they also have Japanese, they’ve they’ve gone, like hiking around countries that I haven’t hiked around, but like South America and such. Yeah, so it was really cool. And they said, we wanted to create the same kind of friendly environment as the best places that we stays there. And bring that to Japan. I was like, Wow, cool. And so

are they traveling or living?

They live there, but they also travel. So for like, months at a time. Maybe that’s why they go to South America. Like if it’s like winter here, maybe they shut down their shop and they go down traveling in the summer? I don’t know. But they said it’s different now because of Corona. But they can’t imagine they would travel. And I was like, Wow, so cool. And they were they were asking really like cool questions, you know, beyond like, you know, do your feet hurt? But, like, what prompted you to, to settle down in Japan? And, you know, what have you learned during your walk kind of thing. So, it was, it was cool to meet some fellow travelers that had us had a sense of what questions would be interesting to ask. So it’s, it was really neat to and also the food was great. So and, and, and they they had said, If you come we’ll give we’ll give you a free pizza or free pasta. So I kind of expected that they would buy the pizza for me. So I ordered some drinks so I can pay them some money as well. I ordered like, uhm, a shoe. Some liquor basically. And, and some ice cream. Cuz he’s like, Oh, you like to drink? I’m like, No, but I like sweet drinks. He’s like, Oh, cool. Try this one. Try that one. Try it. And so he was giving me like, you know, a peach, peach liqueur and plum I plums already there. Apple and peach. And one other one I didn’t understand. And it was like, Wow, thanks, you know, trying all this alcohol and it was kind of too much. So it was like, do you have any ice cream? And she’s like, sure and gave me a bowl of ice cream. You know? Do you want chocolate on top? Like No, just the ice. And we like kept on hanging out and I got another bowl of ice cream and a anyway, at the end. I was like okay, you know how much for the drinks and they’re like, No, no, no, no, we got it. We got it. I was like what? I specifically ordered all these drinks so I can pay you Money, but they just they just said, you know, get out of here go and you’ll go back and sleep. I was like, wow. Yeah. So I felt really blessed by that. And a lot of had a lot of fun free dinner and free ice cream. So it’s really fantastic. And so that was

that’s very uncommon here in Japan, right?

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I would say so. quite uncommon.

very uncommon. Like I noticed that when I am with Muslims or Arabs, like we have, like a Japanese between us and we’re fighting who pays they always surprised like, Why what? Why do you do that? I was like, I don’t know. That’s how we write.

So yeah, I was definitely surprised because I didn’t expect it by any stretch. And fortunately, that was the last hotel before the final day. The next morning, I woke up early. They had asked what time you plan to leave blah, blah. But so they also woke up. They made me lunch away and yeah, they get Yes way. And like, um, it was just sandwiches, quote unquote, just but it was it was sandwiches. And she. I guess it was the woman who wrote the note but she wrote a note is like, ham and cheese. Something else and cheese, Turkey and cheese because they knew I love cheese. So I ordered the cheese pizza. So they put cheese on all three sandwiches are up. Yeah, three sandwiches. And then they’re all of them were cut into halves. And each individually wraps. I had six individually wrapped half sandwiches, all of which were labeled, you know? And it was like, Oh my God, thank you. thing. Such a sweet, generous

couple.

So that’s Yeah, highlight it was the last night and the last morning.

You don’t meet that kind of people. Easily,

right. And it was all because of the name of the guest house. The name is Moses is Gugu Gee, oh gee, oh, in English. And I asked him about the name. And he said, like, he planned. The whole thing that based on the name Gugu means is the onomatopoeic sound for hungry stomach in Japanese. So that he made the restaurant. It’s also the the onomatopoeia word for deep sleep like a snoring sound. Goo Goo is for sleeping. So he had the restaurant and the guest house based on this word Gugu because it means deep, hungry and deep sleep. like wow. And so I specifically went there because of the funny name. I’m like, What kind of place is this with a funny name like that? And it turned out to be the best place so I was really happy about it. Yeah, you found

really interesting people. Yeah.

And so the next night, Lynn and I were at a hotel right at the edge of the the, at the coast. But on the way back, we stopped by their restaurant and had dinner at the restaurant. And she loved them and love the food and said you know it was maybe they did it just for us but wasn’t the food very ample for the price and all of that. And so it was a great place. So I really highly recommend Gugu as a as a cool place to go. If you’re ever up in Niigata

the Yeah, definitely. I’ll make it

nice. Actually, this coming like in early June. In that area, there’s going to be a festival a large Kite Festival. where two teams each fly a kite? And they they the kites are fighting and try to see which kite can knock the other kite out of the sky kind of thing. That’s my understanding.

How do you fight with kite?

I don’t know. I don’t know. I have no idea. But they had pictures of like, look like 100 guys holding the rope. The whole disk. It’s two by two meters or three by three meters. It’s hard to tell from the photos because it’s like, but they’re just big ass kites flying above the river, you know, crashing into each other.

So it’s quite big. Yeah,

yeah, yeah. Yeah. And I noticed while walking, there’s a significant amount of wind, as I Ah, okay, they’re using this natural resource for a sport to have these kite fights. So anyway, that’s coming pretty soon. And if you happen to have time off, what? No, no, no, I’m not. Maybe next year. But yeah, it’s certainly seems like a cool thing to see.

So reminds me of I want to this place here in Japan, and they have a festival when they pull this huge rock. I forgot how much it weighed. But it is a pretty big rock. And we were like, tons of people pulling. But if we didn’t pull out the exact same time the rock wouldn’t fall, right? It wouldn’t move. On when it moved, like you could see the flames of the smoke from them. So they lined the ground with whatever. What? So Oh, and you can see the smoke coming out of it was a huge rock. Interesting.

I haven’t heard of that.

That was also a very strange story. So I’ll just give.

Okay.

That’s neat. Wow, cool.

400 kilometers.

It’s probably about 380. It turns out, but yeah, it was a lot.

Finished 20 kilometers today or tomorrow.

Right? I know. Yeah. It’s, it’s the point of like, it’s flat just didn’t quite make 400 for that actual trip. And there was a segment in the middle where I wasn’t able to walk because my phone was dead. And that’s a frustrating story. I’ll tell you later, but had to run around find a new phone. Yeah. didn’t walk that segment.

I got it. First, you had the wrong message. So you must have confused a lot of people.

How do you mean?

Well, you said that the message you had written in Japanese was kind of confused.

Oh, with the words I spoke in Japanese was not correct. But But yeah, yeah, that’s right. So I thereafter I knew the correct word to use is I was using the word plan instead of reservation. Say

might have confused that a lot of

only the only one one guy. Just I was tired the first night before I did it correctly, I believe, or I didn’t have to do it at all. Anyway. Yeah. He was very interesting. I tell you that story. He, he was it was a love hotel. So we were speaking through a little tiny like, little very small window. That’s usually just for like the money transaction. And he was asking about, or I told him about my walk. Hey, I walked here from Yokohama. He’s like, fuck you talking about really, you know, kind of thing and I was like, yeah, Here’s my card. And I gave him the card. He’s reading it. He’s like, Wow, this is so cool. And then he turned it back. And it talks about suicide. He’s like, Oh, my God, he’s like, did you know that? women, young women have a higher increase of suicide since COVID? And I was like, Yes, I did know that. Why do you know that? That’s not something that most people know about. And so he said, Oh, well, I like to just stay abreast of what’s happening in the world. which sounded almost like a, like, almost like a lie kind of things like whoa, why? Okay, you know, but it was I’m not gonna fight him on that, as I know, here.

But

it, it was interesting to hear that and he knew that into, he was talking about how it’s the the current financial state is causing lots of misery as well, because they’re, like, poverty is so prevalent around the world. The money exists, the resources exist, but people can’t get to them. And he’s like, that should be a crime. Poverty should be a crime. And I was like, yeah, how are you going to prosecute that? But I was like, to him, I was like, Yeah, I know what you mean kind of thing. But well, in terms of like, oh, you’re poor, you have to go to prison. But poverty is a crime. But so yeah, I, I know what you mean. But it was this funny the way he was saying it.

We have something similar. So in the past, like if someone steal something to a certain amount, they cut his hand. Right.

Right.

But if people in the countries that stealing because they can find food, when it’s there, head of the leader. So in that sense, yeah, poverty should be a crime.

Creating poverty is a crime. How about that? But So anyway, it was cool to talk anyway, the point main point is that it’s a guy at the love hotel, and we’re talking about World Financial, politics and stuff. Until like, an actual customer came in.

Probably really, really bored.

Yeah, yeah. I

can imagine.

Like, is basically an ATM.

Right? Right. Right. Right. So it was it was very cool to have a chance to talk to him. And then some customers came up out. You guys are real customers gotta go. He’s like, Okay, bye, you know, kind of thing. And he

told us really shady. It’s, it’s not it’s not innocent. I mean, he’s in a position where he might even know people that happened to possibly one of the idiots in the Japanese government who made a joke about after this thing, there will be a lot of beautiful women working in girls girl’s bars and whatever.

Oh my god, I didn’t know that.

Yeah, yeah, he’s I think he’s a minister or something. He feels they’re gonna lose their job they’re gonna lose their savings and then they’ll have to prostitute themselves

that country’s he should fucking lose his head man. That’s fucked up.

Yeah, wow. It’s disgusting. The government’s nothing happens. Right? This is very strange that

that was the median him that night was the first night that I kind of I injured my feet walking on very painful sidewalk. I lost the lens cap to my camera that night. And I had to wear scent. I chose to wear sandals because it was dark. And I could not see what I was stepping on. As some points of the of the walk. I was like, well, it’s a safety issue. I’m going to put on my sandals and when it got to light did it Light again. There was some street lights I put, I took my sandals off.

Yeah,

exactly. So at that point, I was like safety first and otherwise, like, do it. But then later I’m like, no fuck that is too painful. Comfort first. barefoot later. Yeah, that was I still kind of want to go back that was only that was day three. I could be there on a train pretty quickly. Probably an hour and a half. I could be there. And look for that lens cap, which I might do. Friday or satellite? I don’t know. The camera lens cap. Yeah. Right. I I know right where it fell, but it fell down into a construction area. So it might be impossible, quote unquote, impossible to go inside there. To get it back. Well, it was dark, and I was being stupid. I was trying to take a picture of the dark area and like testing the camera to see if I could turn up, like, use a long exposure to make a photo work. Even though there’s not much light. And it was still black. I was like, Damn, you know, so I try to feel around for more. And then I heard the lens cap fall off. And it fell down into that. I was like, Fuck, that’s why it was black because the lens cap was still on.

Was it just the cap?

lens cap? cap is like 500 yen. Well, it’s this was more than 500. Again, it was like Val felt felt lined, etc, etc. So it’s not just a plastic cap. It was a nettle. Anyway, there can it can be replaced, but I’m just curious if I can go back and get it. Because I would like to see that area while not in agony and able to see it during the light as well. Over the interesting area.

I’m paying for my groceries. Give me like five minutes. The groceries.

Welcome back. So there was one little thing about shopping because you’re shopping. There was a place that I was. There was like no convenience stores in the area. And I went into a little shop. And I I asked the lady if she had protein. And she lady. Yeah, I was like anything like cuz they had like candy and whatever. I was like, do you have protein? And she’s like, no, no protein. I was like, ah, shoot. So she said we have this we have some fruit, which was closer. And I looked over and they have like these tins, cans of sardines and different like canned chicken and fish and stuff. I’m like dude, protein right here. So

protein, so it’s a fish

fishes protein. So anyway, I ordered I didn’t order I chose a can of fish.

And she probably thought that you mean the body builders.

Yeah, yeah, that could be as well. But anyway,

no one goes to a shop and ask for protein.

I didn’t. I guess I could have asked for meat. But then she was like, nope, no meat. We only have fish. So

if I was a cell phone as someone just gave my own protein, I’ll just kick you out.

Oh good. I won’t go to your shop then. Good, I won’t go to your shop. kick me out.

I can hear it.

It’s windy here too. Oh, yeah, I drove my car and I took a bicycle. Bear. Well, barefoot was too much. So next time we’ll just be walking and not not like trying to say I’ll do it barefoot, but barefoot was certainly slow enough to account for me to go slow.

With the proper shoes will be more enjoyable. I guess.

So. Yeah.

So what about food? What did you eat for the whole time? Did you just

basically, yeah, went to restaurants a couple of times. But at the convenience, I just would get like, steamed steamed chicken, like a chicken breast that’s ready to be cut and put into salad. That’s how it’s branded. And then grab, like 100 yen bag of cabbage.

To

get some vegetables so basically Yeah, a little bit not much. sound super windy. No.

Sorry about that. Holding the headphones. So I’m guessing. So how did you feel the first night where you went back home? I find the manual but

basically sad and depressed and like, oh my god.

Well,

one of my friends explained it like it’s I it was a loss of identity. Which makes a lot of sense to me is I had this identity that I’m the guy walking across Japan. And now I’m not and so now what and that’s what I wrote in my journal into like, what just happened, you know, kind of thing and so it also was like didn’t Was it worth it or anything? Like all these different things that I started this whole conversation with? is like, so that’s why I think

I think my take on this because if it was sense of loss of that one thing it would have been I am the guy walking about Japan to I walked through Japan, so I still have that you accomplished and it’s yours. Yeah, maybe there is something that I think one of the public recognition by hearing get is maybe the one is heavier. I’m not sure

no, it’s that’s not I don’t I don’t think so. It is now like now I have to change in order to like to do my listening work that I want to do. And listening. What’s it like when I listened to you talking about stuff? I think that’s my purpose in life.

Listen to people.

That’s a big part of it. Yeah. To offer that blessing space where it’s all good to offer that acceptance.

I see. That’s interesting. Yeah, what’s your next weekly? No, I haven’t talked to him.

I saw your message on, on slack. But I haven’t talked to him.

Because I haven’t heard from him in a while. And so what’s next? With all of this?

Well, I’m right now, this is why I’m recording my voice here is to put together begin putting together a memoir of like, what happened? And what did I What did I gain from it? What would I do differently? What do I recommend for people kind of thing? and begin to put all that together to start writing my book for this experience?

Yeah. I don’t really have any other questions if you have anything.

Okay. Yeah, one,

there was one interesting, like us. I don’t know if it’s interesting or not, but I walked along Shinkansen line. And that was like, literally, a straight line for my walk was like 14 kilometers. And the Shinkansen line was exactly straight. It went straight across a river which the I could not easily so I had to walk around a little bit, but it was simple in terms of like, not having to pay attention to the map. But then it was like so long, like oh my god, it’s like walking, walking, walking for many kilometers without much to see or nowhere to eat. kind of thing is like walking along the train tracks and occasionally hear the train rumble by very quickly speed by. So it was kind of I kind of romanticize it as like, wow, I’ll be walking right next to Shinkansen line. But it’s two stories up above me so I can’t see anything. Just hear the rumblings zoom. Okay, the train went by Yeah, so what? Who cares? I can’t see it. You know, can’t

Yeah, yeah, it

was there, there was one curious thing that I saw a few times that I haven’t decided yet what the purpose is, but some of the concrete columns were wrapped with rebar, like rebar is like metal conten, no, sorry, steel bars, which are about two centimeters in diameter. Two, maybe even three centimeters. And just like literally just wrapped like inch squares around the columns, the square columns. So I was thinking it must be for like to keep lightning from hitting the head there has to be a house in between it in between the four columns. So I guess it’s for lightning to keep it off the house because it wants to go and tends to go on the outside of the electrical cage there, but it

also didn’t

look like a lightning rod. Exactly. But that’s the best thing I’ve come up with. It must be a lightning rod of some sort.

Whatever is closest,

right? It’s um, I mean, maybe it’s just I don’t know like to. Yeah, so that’s exactly. So I don’t know what the

purpose of them was, but that’s the best I’ve come up with. But they I saw them several different times. I took some pictures. I’ll show you eventually. Once I find them again.

Yeah.

But that was during the mind numbing walk for 10 kilometers along the train line. Very beautiful background though.

What? Like, yeah,

like it was like rice fields. And then with a backdrop of mountains on one side, like snow capped mountains on one side and others on the other side and just a wide plane.

Yeah.

There was a river with a little miniature, I believe it was a toilet. But it was shaped like a, like a roof had a I had one door. It was just big enough to be a toilet. And it just like, drops straight down into the river. And I was like, I wanted to, like open the door and use it actually. But the door was locked. I was like, why would they lock a toilet? Is it a toilet? And I you know, so? It was it was strange. Yeah, exactly. But it was very, very small. Like you. I wouldn’t have a desk inside there is too small for even a single desk. But big enough for a single chair. Like, that must be a toilet. And it’s like very disgusting to just drop straight into the river. So it’s like, oh my god. But

security guard. I mean, in university there is this box.

Yeah, yeah. is he’s not what he’s guarding the rice fields at that point. And why would they put it right above the river? I’m sorry. Yeah, picture. And y’all understand.

Right, right.

So yeah, several just weird things that I saw during the walk, which was fun to see those. But Gosh, I saw I told you about snake right. I saw this saw snake. Alright, really? Die. It was. It was harmless. It was it was big. It was like I guessed 130 centimeters long. But it’s Yes, about four centimeters in diameter at the largest. Then the neck was a centimeter and a half, I guess.

But it was Yes. big snake. Turned out to be what’s called, colloquially a Japanese rat snake. Because they apparently eat rats. It was green. What is neat, not like emerald green, but like

army green kind of color is pretty neat animal. And I thought about picking him up but I thought it’d be more polite to just let him go on his way. And someone on Reddit. Someone on Reddit said no I got to do is say pardon me when you pick them up. I was like, Okay, thanks. So next time I can pick them up. Just say Pardon me.

I’m gonna let you finished your recording. Okay.

Thank ya. Thanks for your time and your questions very helpful to help me get the stories out. Okay, great. Have a good one.

Be well bye bye

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.

Just today I got the entries sorted by Title. This was something I have wanted to do for a long time!

Now, when I visit https://www.robnugen.com/en/books/slow-down/ I can see the whole smattering of entries prettyyy much in the order that they happened.

It’s been a whole year since the midpoint of my walk. In fact, a year ago I was navigating with paper maps after my phone died.

Today it’s raining. How glorious is the timing that I didn’t need to use paper maps on a rainy day?

This entry will be committed to my website repo just after 32ac2a5028fbcd6d04735ceee5e66b15ea0c1c1f