Nothing phased me anymore. No place to sleep tonight yet? No problem. Tall mountain ahead and no food? No worries.....I got it, I would say, with a smile on my face. But now.... when you find yourself taking two hours to dress and shower, when you can't go an hour without feeling some kind of stabbing pain, when it hurts to sleep and it hurts to stand....you change.
It is funny. The flat tires back in Hokkaido....how devastating they were at the time. They were my deepest and worst fear back then. How simple and ridiculous of a problem they would be now. And the nights I would find myself lost, with no food or shelter, under the pouring cold rain, on the mountains....how good those times were compared to this. The sounds of the animals in the forests would put me to sleep, my brothers of another specie, struggling to survive just like me, while the passing cars nearby would reassure me that civilization was still a stone's throw away.
I remember the wet clothes. Being in them for days, in the cold. Happy to find shelter after 6 to 10 hours of cycling, sitting sore in my wet dirty tent, hiding from others with my knife and pepper spray ready just in case.
And all the bushes, leaves and plants that stick out into the road. How many hit me on my way here. Slapped in the face so many times by them, as if life was trying to smack some sense into me each time. How many times I laughed or cried my heart out alone, the only one on the road, for kilometers and kilometers thinking about my life and the people who fill it.
To my left, always the vegetation, or the ditches, the curved walls of the tunnels, and the drops where the mountains end and the sky begins....to my right, the empty asphalt, or the constant roar of the cars and trucks of strangers I will never meet, carrying all their life's stories with them, past me...past that lonely guy in the middle of nowhere, trying to reach some place, for some reason.
And what about the cultural differences? At first, Japan was so different from what I had seen that I seriously considered that I did not know Humanity anymore. In time, I realized that, although very different, the Japanese are the same deep down in their hearts. Something that has greatly soothed my spirit since....to know that we are all the same....that there is afterall a common ground somewhere buried inside, past the cultural differences, the traditions and the opinions. We are all the same. Exactly the same.
I remember how many times I have met people of different backgrounds here. How many different languages I had to converse in to get my point across and understand theirs. Regardless of this challenge, all my encounters ended with me having a new friend. A stranger turned into a fellow human being with a soul and a story. Some kind of value. Not just another body to fill the space between us. Every time I would say to them "The problem with this world is that we all speak something else. No wonder we don't get along!" A conversation I once had with my own dog Max, and my cat Tigre. Of course they looked at me with a look of confusion....but that just reinforced my point, and I nodded to them and smiled.
How many friends I've made here. More than I could ever have imagined when I began. What a country this is....Japan. I came here with an appreciation for its culture, but never realized what kind of place this really was.
It is not the first time that the unexpected has turned out to be better than the planned. Some of the most beautiful times I had here were not on my list of to-do's. Yui meeting me by chance on some street in Hokkaido...me going south, her going north, Horii the restaurant owner who first made fun of me for being foreign, then brought me out for my first drink, bar hopping, talking about life and its beauties. Hite, the young biker traveler who out of Kimochi (heart) brought me 30km back to Sapporo to fix my wheel, and 30km back to my bike. Getting shipped to the wrong city, but then seeing a village's festival and helping the locals with their struggle, not to say, meeting Shigeru the monk, meditating with him in a bus stop, trying to find happiness in this mess called life. Seeing the sea of Japan after weeks of rain and mountains and having the strength to do 150km in a day. Being angry at my flat tires while in the disaster zone, and seeing a Japanese man standing next to his destroyed house, smiling like everything is going to be ok. Understanding that I can do anything I put my mind to because I have survived everything that was thrown at me. I came here to see the country, and to help out. But I also came looking for answers. Life... is a miracle. I don't believe in magic. Nor do I believe in the impossible. I respect you if you do, but I do not. I am one small dot in an endless expans of moving stuff, but I am also a massive universe myself, with smaller things within. Life is a miracle because anything that is highly unlikely to happen, but happens anyways, is what we humans call a miracle. The one in a billion shot. The one thing that will never happen.
Think about it. 99.999999999999999999% of the universe is not the Earth. As far as we know, this is the only place with life. It took billions of years for life to survive and thrive, improve and get to this point. And out of all the creatures, it was us who made it to the top, to be the best, because we wanted it more than anyone else. It is man who is the king of all animals, not the lion. Furthermore, out of all the people who have ever lived, you and I both have a direct lineage to the beginning. We would not if we were not alive. Everyone before you had to survive for you to be here....your parents, your grandparents and so on virtually for ever. If this was not enough, you and I in the pool of millions of sperms and eggs are those who managed to get to the finish line first. AND, each and every single day since, we have managed to stay alive here on this Earth.
The actual factual scientific and mathematical probability of you reading this post is something that is borderline close to the impossible. But it is not. Because it happened regardless. Life is beautiful as it is. Just being alive is a miracle. Just live. It is enough. Strive on to the best of your abilities. That's it. We all have the choice of living the way we want to and it is not my place to tell someone else what to believe, nor is it really my problem. I can worry about what comes after life all my life, and forget to live in the first place....or I can live, and one day die with a big smile on my face.
So, I find myself doing what I always do when I have some time to myself...think about life. I don't feel sad at all strangely. This is just another enemy to beat. The strongest one yet, but invincible, certainly not. The problem is that it is up to my body to get better fast, or I will never see Cape Sata. For now I rest. But I am not giving up. I will get to Sata one day, with or without my bike.
I can leave early and give up. But why?
I can rest here for two weeks, and try to continue on bike, but that is highly unlikely.
I can extend my stay and continue on somehow once I am better.
Or I can figure out something else.
I am not taking a train to Cape Sata. There is no point in that. I might as well just leave now if so. Sata is my challenge. There is nothing there to see but my satisfaction. I need to prove this to myself before anyone else. I am not leaving without seeing the end of Japan.
I can't help but feel like this was meant to happen. Of all the places....I find myself at the foot of Mount Fuji, the most recognizable landmark in Japan, the tallest mountain, with the kindest people, total strangers who have shown me nothing but warmth and care. I am a little past half way, but I feel like the finish line is around the corner.
I am not the same anymore. Not because I have given up, but because I get it. This is not a game. Life is not a game. You can hurt and kill yourself in the process, things don't always go as planned, and everything can change in an instant. Back at the beginning of my trip, when all was still new, people would ask in disbelief "Aren't you afraid of sleeping outside, in the dark, alone, without the safety of your home?" and I would answer them "Yes. I am scared. I have a lot of fear in my heart... but I have more courage."
This is just the next hurdle...
Mount Fuji is outside my window under the moonlight. Time to rest. Nite.
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