Ankle issues, desperation, and a family connection
I type this blog entry from an internet cafe in Imari, a town in the suburbs of Hakata, the biggest city on the island of Kyushu. For those keeping score at home, that's a totally different island than Shikoku, and I`m at least 100km or more from the Shikoku coastline. The story of how I got here leads us back to the city of San Bruno, California, before the start of the pilgrimage.
My target date to leave for Japan was the first week of May. Knowing that I would have to put in long days of cross country trekking, I started to train. As it turns out, this was a bad idea. Not training, but training WRONG. It turns out there`s a proper technique to WALKING that I was not aware of. A couple days in, I strained my ankle ligaments. I promptly stopped my training, and my fiance Kristine instructed me on the correct way to walk with low impact. Good advice, but the downside is that, due to my injury, my training would have to be put on hold indefinitely, until I was literally on the ground in Shikoku.
The disastrous first day of the pilgrimage, primarily as a result of a comically oversized backpack, resulted in a re-strained ankle, dehydration, fatigue, blisters, and some extremely painful rashes. Thanks to Mr. Okuda and the hot springs I was able to nurse myself back to health, but the ankle strain was there. It didn't really ever quite go away, but for the moment it wasn't giving me any problems. After the brutal mountain climbing of temple 12, my primary concern became my knees.
This changed after temple 32. A slip off a rock on my way down a hillside severely re-strained the ankle, and as the day wore on, I experienced a relapse of everyone of the nasty symptoms from the first day. I was in pain, and by temple 35 the next day I kind of was unable to walk downhill. A ride from a fellow pilgrim helped me get down to 36, but the brutal truth was, I was adventuring with a strained ankle. Not severe enough to derail the quest, but painful enough that I needed to consider every option available.
With my friend Mr. Ozawa`s assistance, we took the bus down to temple 38, and then I decided to do something crazy. My ankle desperately needed rest, but I don't wanna just sit around in a hotel burning through money. Who do I know in Japan that I can mooch off of for a couple days? My old translator buddy, Mr. Hayakawa? No he`s got a wife and kid, I don't want to impose. My navy buddy, Koichi Fukuba? No, I don`t want to get in the way of his rampant womanizing. Ted Kitamura, my pseudo cousin? No, I don't even have his address. He`s probably meditating in a cave or something. There was only one option.
It was time to hit up my long lost aunt, Emiko Kitamura, in Imari City. To do that I would have to take a midnight ferry from the shady port town of Sukumo to the ancient island of Kyushu. CONTINUED IN PART 2
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