This is a post about how fun it is to load an Escape Hybrid for bear, jammed full to the point that I couldn’t see out the back, about how I hauled most of our (heavy) gear up and down the three stories from our apartment, and how I spent four days squatting (not kneeling) in the dirt to cook.

This is a post about how my height (5’6″) was just enough to clamber up on the car to fill a Sherpak, strap it down (and by the way, make SURE you wrap the excess strap length enough so it doesn’t knock on your car, it annoyed me), as well as jam that car full. Seriously. Camping Tetris.

This is about how I set up a tent mostly correctly. This is about how I walked miles and miles and got a sun burn and felt great. This is about how my knee? Only needed Tiger Balm once, and doesn’t hate me.

This is about how I drove 500 of the 1738 miles. In a rainstorm that was so bad, my co-pilot (Mrs. Hubbit) was on the lookout for tornados. With wind so bad, the car wobbled. At 70 odd miles per hour, passing people like I was an old hand at it. Yeah, I can drive.

This is about having fun with friends for a week.

This is about not feeling like I’m dead today and I’m kind of stoked about the world again.

Yeah. I had a great time.

One of the many things I love about my new car is that I can plug my iPhone into the audio jack and play through the speakers. The added bonus is that when I use the GPS and it says ‘Turn left in .2 miles’, it will mute the song so I can hear it talk. Best toy ever. We learned this on the trek from Chicago to Cleveland for Thanksgiving. And it was a lovely, fun Thanksgiving. The iPhone was highly amusing, playing it’s best road trip songs, most of which had some relation to where we were (passing Gary, Indiana and we got Michael Jackson songs). I don’t believe in fate or predestination, but I often wonder if God’s just having a field day playing with my iPhone when I’m in the car. Even today, on my way to work, I got “Code Monkey” as my first song.

By my rough calculations, we averaged over 30 miles per gallon on the drive. That’s based on how many times we had to fill the tank (3), how long the drive is (362 miles one way) and the fact that we zipped around town a lot, helping out shopping and picking up siblings from airports. Not to mention parking, oy. I drove through Illinois and into Indiana, until it was realized that the speed limit in Indiana is 70mph and I was, using cruise control, keeping up with traffic. This caused someone to have a heart attack and when we stopped for pee breaks and gas, the keys were taken. I was okay with that.

The Toll Road, by the way, is a $20 pain in my ass. That’s right, it’s $20 in tolls to get from Chicago to Cleveland. You can get it down to about $16 or $17 if you work it right and skip the Skyway, but still, that’s a lot of dough! The worst offender is Ohio, who charged me $9.25 to go from the Indiana/Ohio border to Cleveland. By comparison, to drive across the entire width of Indiana it’s only $6.75. I think it’s something like $12 to go across Ohio, and no, it’s not THAT much wider than Indiana. Annoyance. If you make the drive, you’ll need two 5-dollar-bills, 8 ones, and about 2 bucks in quarters. Just so you know.

When we got there, I drove around Cleveland, parked at Taffy’s a couple times, zipped around town to find a Caribou (thank you!) and generally enjoyed it. I did cause the first ‘scratch’ on the car, brushing up against the freshly painted pillar in Taf’s garage. It washed right off with a hand-wipe, though, so I’m not feeling too bad about it.

I’d write up a lot about Thanksgiving, but I think I’m just going to say this. I love my family.

Then we went home. In a damn snowstorm.

Okay, it wasn’t really a snowstorm, but we woke up to 2″ of snow on the car and by the time we passed the airport, you could barely see 500 feet. The car is an AWD monster, though, and while no one was actually perfectly between the lines, we managed to stay in the clearest part of the road and it was okay. Amusingly to me, everyone was following us, as we seemed to be the only SUV doing well. The accumulation wasn’t actually that bad, and the minute we left Erie County for Sandusky, the snow stopped.

This is where I make a funny point to my gamer friends. See, I’m running a game that takes place in a fictional town by the lake in Erie County. I tell everyone it’s a Hellmouth, it’s cursed, etc. The fact that the storm was pretty much only in Erie County had us laughing all the way to Indiana.

Other than that, what can I say?

Happy Thanksgoosing people.

Excuse me, I need a paper bag to go breath into a few times. I’m sure you understand. If not, watch this commercial and put a pillow under my head.

Actually I’m doing okay, I’m just having mild freakouts once in a while and then a squee of delight. I drove it home, since I knew the way better, and didn’t hit anyone.

So. My mother is amazing, and I’m still just flabbergasted at the cost of cars, but also of the level of her assistance. Without that, we’d probably have gotten a used non-hybrid smaller, cheaper vehicle, and known we were going to trade it in within a few years.

We got the car from Perillo Motors, and worked with a lovely man named Horacio Gomes (whom we recommend, he’s very nice). Unfailingly polite and understanding. When we expressed concerns, he said ‘take time.’ When I said I was willing to gamble that the car wouldn’t sell between Monday and the time it took to both sort out money and work around schedules (he’s off Wednesday, I’m ‘off’ Saturday), he understood that. His manager didn’t push either, they accepted and I told them the truth: No matter what, I will call you no later than Thursday about the car. I called him Tuesday, Thursday night we went to finalize everything and sign papers.

And yes, it’s an SUV. Shut up everyone.

Why an SUV? Honestly, I would have been happy with just about anything, I suspect, but we’ve found it’s easier to drive to Mississippi or Cleveland than to fly, even with gas prices and traffic. The train is nice, but if you do that (or fly) you still need a car when you get there, or you’re at the behest of your family. And I love ‘em, but then you’re always on their dime and time. Oh and rentals? Are expensive! They add up, and they smell, and they aren’t always helpful. Which doesn’t answer an SUV, does it? Except I think that looking at the distances, it kind of does. Its first trip will be Thanksgiving. I’ll have to tweet the drive. The point, and I have one, is this. Yes, the streets are skinny in Chicago, and yes, parking is insane, but I’d rather road-trip across the US than fly, even in this economy. An SUV can haul my bike, a tent, and anything else. And a Hybrid SUV still uses less gas than a Toyota Corolla (which is a great car, please don’t knock it!). I don’t have to buy a navigation system (“How do we get there again?”) which is nice.

Why was this car a deal? When I say “fully loaded” I mean it. Navigation system (US and Canada, thank you), parking sensors, running boards, roof rack, privacy windows (which by the way, make it weird looking out the back), auto-lights (for daytime running), four wheel anti-lock brakes, fog lamps, engine block heater, actual outlets (not lighter chargers). The radio also comes as a satellite radio, which I’ll never use (can’t be buggered), but it also has an audio jack. That means the cable you see on the right there is all I need to plug in anything, laptop, iPod, iPhone, Zune, to my car’s stereo. It costs $5 and I had one in a drawer. And yes, it worked fine. The first song I played was “Low Rider.” The last song, as I pulled in to our deeded parking spot, was the randomly chosen Billy Ocean “Get Outta My Dreams (and into my car)” with a dose of Texas Tornados and “Hey, Baby. Que Paso?”

Did I learn anything important about this whole ordeal? Yeah. I learned that you should walk away. Even if it’s your dream car, walk away, think about it, sleep on it. If it’s a used car and it gets sold, that’s okay. If it’s new, they’ll get another model in. Also, you may want to purchase a burner cell phone for the duration, because I currently get a lot of phone calls from people we didn’t end up buying from, and I’m tempted to change my voice mail message:

“Hi, this is Mika. We bought a car and if you didn’t know that, it wasn’t from you. Please leave a message if you’re anyone else.”

No, that won’t go over well. At this point, I’ve managed to call back everyone (yes, I called them, I told them I would!) and told them the bad news. A few people, with whom I’d only emailed, got the generic ‘We went with someone else’ message. Only Northside Toyota (a very nice place as well) wanted to know who I picked and why, and I understand that.

Sidebar. I’m always willing to talk to someone about why I made a decision or do things in a certain way. I vote Green/Libertarian, and lately Chicago’s been hit up with polling people asking if we’re going to vote Republican or Democrat. Invariably, I take a moment to explain that Illinois has three viable parties: Democrat, Republican and Green. Only once has someone been confused by this. So when Toyota asked me ‘Why not the Highlander?’ I told them: The Highlander is expensive, it feels small, it rides like a sedan, and it jerks when it jumps from EV to combustion engines.

I feel bad for car dealers, though, and most other service places. See, even in this crap economy, most people who buy stuff work. And most of us work ‘regular’ hours. That means I can’t get to see my car until after work, which means Horacio has to stay late. Mind you, his hours are till 6pm, but still, what terrible hours! And worse, Illinois is a “Blue Law State” so there’s no major business on Sundays. If that’s new to you, the way it works is that since Sunday is a ‘holy day’ to Christians, you can’t buy booze before noon or purchase major commerce. Like cars. In most places, these get called unconstitutional and repealed, eventually. Illinois is down to two: Car sales are prohibited on Sundays and horse racing is prohibited on Sundays unless authorized by the local municipality. So in Chicago, you can get drunk before noon, but in Cleveland, my dad will fold his arms and refuse to order anything at 11:59am.

I made a lot of use of the internet to research this car, and went quickly from a level where I defined cars by their body shapes to understanding the difference between 4 and 6 cylinder engines, AWD and FWD, and what a powertrain is, mostly. I’m certainly not a car genius, but I know enough that I think I’ll be okay up to the point where I need to change my oil for the first time. And yes, I plan on doing that. I will accept an Idiot’s Guide to Car Maintenance, as well as an air freshener, for holiday presents!

Next up, since insurance is gotten and plates are on the way (generic random number) is a city sticker. Silly city stickers. Hate it, but what’re you gonna do?

I didn’t scan in my own since it has a new fancy reflective thing on it, which makes it hard to scan. Anti-theft being what it is, I can’t really say I’m upset about this. Oddly, when I first moved here (at age 20), a red background on your license or ID meant you were under 21. Now they have a vertical license (photo on top, info underneath) for the kiddies. I suppose that makes it easier to catch, but they’ve ‘redesigned’ the license at least 4 times since I’ve been here, and I’m sure it just makes everyone more confused.

Yesterday I took my road test, passed it, and now I have a brand-spanking-new drivers license, proclaiming me legally permitted to drive around the USA. Fear. And you know what, fear was a great deal of why I didn’t do this sooner. Fear and a bit of rebellion against everyone who said I ‘had’ to do this because that’s what was done. One of my favorite books is Tom Brown’s School Days, and in it, Tom’s best friend East wasn’t confirmed with the rest of his friends because he felt that they only did it because it was what everyone did. “‘Twas ‘because the Doctor liked it’; ‘no boy got on who didn’t stay the Sacrament’; it was the ‘correct thing,’ in fact [...]”

When I was young, I really felt like that a lot of the time. People demanded you do things without explaining why it was needed or good, just that ‘everyone does it.’ I hated it then, I hate it now. I want to know why this versus that, how come one way and not the other. And when people just say ‘because’ I get annoyed and mulish. To make matters worse, the higher people’s expectations of me regarding a test, the more like throwing up I feel. It’s diagnosed as ‘Performance Anxiety’, but I’ve figured out that it’s expectations. No one knew I was going to take the written test, and while I was nervous, it was manageable. Multiple people knew I was going to take my first lesson and I was terrified. More people knew I was taking my road test, and I was living off TUMS yesterday.

My friend Rae (to whom I am eternally grateful) was all gung-ho about this, got me in touch with Northwestern Driving School so I could take lessons. I admit, my cardinal rule about companies is ‘A crap website means I probably won’t shop with you.’ I’m picky about that, but it’s 2009 and I have my hangups.

Speaking of, CyberDrive Illinois has had a nice facelift in the 12 years I’ve been in Chicago, and things go pretty fast. Actually, I’ve never had an unplesant experience at the DMV in Illinois. Everyone is very nice, polite, and the one time I had a bitchy woman (yesterday afternoon), I looked her right in the eye and said “I know it sucks for you to work late today, but I am very appreciative and I do not take this for granted.” She blinked, grinned, and then I asked if she could please make sure I was correctly identified as a female on my drivers license. That cheered her up.

Oh yeah, for some reason my permit said ‘Gender: M’ on it. Which is wrong, and my tatas would like you to remember that. Thank you.

So we got to the Chicago North offices, Rae loaning me her car, and I went in to fill out the last forms and get ready. The written test in Chicago is pretty simple. Memorize the shapes of the signs (you’re not permitted to miss any) and remember to always pick the most restrictive option on the multiple choice questions, and you’ll be okay. If you’re ready, you can take the road test then and there, but I wasn’t and took driving lessons. Six hours of lessons at $50 each. They gave me the ‘youth’ discount since I was a first time driver. John, the instructor, is a great guy. He’s smart, educated, well spoken, and calm. He taught me to drive, to parallel park, three-point-turn, backup, backup and turn, merge lanes … the whole nine yards.

John also walked me through the driver test three times. Seriously. He knew exactly what the test was, exactly where you’d be driving, and he took me through it. If you’re on the North Side of Chicago, go to Northwestern Driving School. Period. Send your children, send your grandparents. Tell them Mika says hi. They’re good.

The road test itself is dead simple, too! You get in, fill out the forms, show them proof the car is insured, and pull around to the ‘Road Test’ area. While you wait, they check your car lights, signals and if you can start and stop the car. Then you wait a little while longer until your road test judge comes out. I had Joe C., who was a bit hippie-ish like my father is, and was very nice. Joe’s instructions were just like John’s, and it was easy.

You pull out and up to the exit, where there’s a stop sign. You stop once at the big white line and prepare to turn right. Since you can’t see if it’s safe to merge with traffic, you pull up to the third white line, poking the nose of the car out. Once it’s safe, you pull out to the right and watch out for the signal about two car lengths down. You’ll drive along (the limit is 30, stay UNDER it), until you get to the stop sign, where you’ll turn left. There’s a side street before the stop sign, so turn your signal on AFTER you pass it.

If you’re under 18, they pull you over after that and make you park. Once the car is parked, they ask you these wonderful questions. “If you’re parking uphill with a curb, which way should your wheels face? What about without a curb? What about downhill?” You’ve taken the written test, you should know the answers are ‘Away from the curb’, ‘toward the curb’ and ‘toward the curb’, respectively. Then they tell you to continue on. Back up a little if you need to, remember to turn on your left blinker (my teen-aged friend made sure to remind me of this), check your mirrors, and pull back out. You’ll drive down the street to the light, turn right again (I went a little too fast there, forgetting Rae’s car has a ‘need to MASH’ brake). Drive down that street to the next light where, again, turn right. This turn is a sharper angle, and you need to have the right mix of slow and speed. I nailed it perfectly.

Finally you drive back to the DMV, go to the end of the parking lot and drive through 50 feet of cones. Then you reverse the 50 feet. Don’t hit the cones and don’t over adjust. Drive back out of the cones and take a right to park. Reverse and turn left as you do so. Then you drive up and park on the right side of the waiting building, go in to get your certificate of non-failure, and ehad over to the main DMV for your license.

Since they’d goobered my gender on the permit, they canceled my permit and issued a new one, so I went to the Supervisor, who had a new update this license thing issued and sent me to the cashier. Since my permit was still new, they didn’t charge me an extra fee and sent me to the pre-photo line. There they took all my info, officially corrected my gender (and yes, I did remind every last person there about is so they’d be aware), and sent me to photo-guy. Apparently sicne my hair was long 5 years ago, when the last photo was taken, they wanted a new one. The new photo, I look tan and a little stunned in, which is appropriate. And it says female.

I went back to the car, where Rae was in the passenger seat reading, I drove and picked up Judith and Jill, and went out to dinner.

I’m a driver.

I am 32, and for 15 years, I’ve not had a drivers license or permit.

I am 32, and at 18, I once failed the written drivers test.

So yeah, there’s one part of my life that’s always been a ‘failure’ in the sense that I never achieved the goals my family had for me, and that was in driving. I just don’t. I don’t like it, I don’t even like being in cars.

But here I am, 32, and it’s becoming a bit much to cage rides or take cabs and buses and so on.

So on Friday the 7th, without telling anyone, I went and took the written test, got a permit, and signed up for some lessons.

The lessons are because it’s been a long time since I’ve last driven. I vaguely recall driving, illegally, my step-uncle’s car the mile or so down a deserted country road. I clearly remember my family friend, Peg Lauer, giving me stick-shirt instructions (yes, I learned on a stick) while I drove us to the res to go swimming in the summer. I used to be able to start the car pointing uphill, back down the hill, take a left and head on out. So really, this is all stuff I’ve done before, but never officially.

The exam itself isn’t very complicated. Start a car, back up, turn about, park uphill, start uphill, park downhill, start downhill, obey the rules (per The Rules of the Road). But that’s stuff I’ve not done in so long that I felt it was most responsible of me to actually get a total stranger to teach me.

Sunday I hit the road.

I won’t deny that I was tense, really tense, like death-grip on the wheel. And an automatic is generally a bizarre feeling. I kept listening for the car to need to be shifted and right when I heard it, the automatic tranny flipped over. It took me about 30 minutes to stop trying to shift. It also took that long for me to relax and not be terrified “Oh God, oh God, we’re all gonna die!” It’s a testament to my teacher, John, that he was able to calm me down and keep me relaxed. I stopped babbling and got better about checking my mirrors (looking up every 10-15 seconds was hard to remember).

But the biggest revelation of the day was I’ve finally been able to pinpoint why I hate driving. It’s clearly a case of my frontal lobe finally developing past the ‘I don’t like it’ point and into the ‘because’ additions. The real reason driving, and cars, have always been difficult for me to cope with is really quite simple.

I can’t HEAR.

Seriously! The make cars really soundproof these days, which is silly since we’re supposed to use horns and other audio cues, but it’s those lack of cues that make me nuts. Even with my headphones on, when I’m walking on the street or biking or rollerblading, I can hear traffic, I hear the engines, horns, brakes, etc. I listen to what’s going on. In a car, it’s more a visual thing. You have to be looking all around you constantly, and my brain just doesn’t like doing that so much.

Then again, now that I’ve been biking in the road, versus rollerblading on the Lake Shore, I’m more in tune and aware of the visual cues. Like the driver on their cell phone is something I see and react to as easily as the sound of a car with bad brakes (both get extra distance). I was able to, when I came to a complete stop at one point, glance into my rear-view mirror, see a woman flip me off when I was checking traffic all around me, and lazily mutter “Yes, ma’am, I apologize for being a student driver who comes to a complete and legal stop before proceeding. Your children have missed months of school.”

So lesson one is done, and I feel a lot better about this whole thing than I thought I was going to. Thursday is lesson two.

Stay off the sidewalks.

Yes, that’s right. Construction workers.

At the time I saw one, we were on the bus from Shikoku back to Kobe and I was a little tired and drained, so all that happened was Boone and I commenting on the samurai guy on the scaffolding in a magazine we were reading. The advert at the bottom of the page had a URL for tobi.jp. Sadly the website was all in Kanji, and I tossed it aside for later.

Later on, I found PingMag.jp, who had an old post on Construction Worker Fashion! They pretty much explain everything, so the only thing I have to say is that I am so jealous! The clothes those guys wear are totally awesome! Can you picture life in Chicago with our construction workers dressed like that? No more butt-cracks!

The shoes are called tabi and the pants are sagyo gi. The workers who wear this outfit are called “tobi”, after the pole used during the Edo period in Japan. The shape of the pole looks like the bird, Tobi, and as with all things, the nickname stuck and now scaffolding men and women, who work in high places, are called Tobi,

The Flikr stream has a nice run of the images that will probably explain why Boone and I found them so fascinating.

Eight days of walking. Eight days of being a stranger. Eight days of eating what food was presented to me. Eight days of not speaking the language. Eight days of sleeping on futons on tatami. Eight days of bathrooms that were really bath rooms. Eight days were one of my daily quests was finding the Western toilet.

Eight days were now at an end.

Everyone was drained. At one point or another, we were too hoot, too tired, too sore, and so on. And yet not a single one of us were sorry we did this. Most people were nice to us. A few were indifferent, but none had been rude to me. I was tired, sunburnt, bug bitten and sore. Every time I moved a different muscle protested anew, and my collar bone was rubbed raw from my pack’s chest strap.

And yet.

I think I understand why people do this more than once. It’s something quite extra-ordinary in 2008 to be able to make this kind of a journey. To quest without an obvious end goal readily in sight. To wander through a rural island on a nation considered to be little more than the glittering pinacle of the modern world. And it is, but it’s also the old, traditional ways, with gardens in backyards for food by every house and a bonsai in the yard. It is a different world, a culture that remains unfamiliar but now makes a little more sense.

To state the obvious, the Japanese are people. They can be funny, erudite, mean, nice and crude. They wear a veneer of helpful politeness as they want us to enjoy our stay in a way they think we’re familiar with, but they’re delighted when we eat new foods without fear. They avoid us at times, but accept our personal prostrations of apology when we make a mistake. Maybe this was because I walked O-Henro and I tried hard not to be that ignorant gaijin who only eats familiar food. Maybe it was just because I’m me, and a strange halo surrounds my adventures.

Things were different there, but the same, thank you Bill and Ted. I felt more human and humane than I had been for months. I was inspired to wanderlust, but I knew how content I’d been to get home with my friends, family and cats and enjoy a damn pizza. I missed TV and Radio in my native tongue, but I knew I’d miss things like a commercial where hot women in bikinis turned into dudes with goatees, still in the bikini.

You can’t make these things up.

From temple 22, we walked to the train and then up 500 meters of (mostly) stairs, to 23, back down them to the train, and the train to home. Some of us went, by train or foot, to temple 24, 70km away, but we went home. The rail to Tokushima and then a two hour bus to Kobe. Somewhere along the way I gave up on shoes and went to flipflops.

I was sad, as we reached Tokushima. I already missed the quiet, and the city felt unreal, fake, as if it was the Disneyland version of the world; a place that was only what I made it out to be. Yet there was no Disney joy or childlike exuberance. I was merely the 16th century man in the 21st century world.

I wrote ‘A Gaijin’s Journey’ once. That’s not what this became. I didn’t tour as a gaijin, or explore as a tourist. I slept on tatami, mastered a Japanese toilet, ate the local foods and enjoyed the local beauty. I’ve been to a natural spa and climbed 750 meters above sea level. I found that just because my journey wasn’t for my religion, it wasn’t made any less spiritual and moving.

There is no conclusion, no earth shattering retrospective to say ‘Aha! This is who I am!’ I’ve always been pretty aware of my self. I just hope I’m lucky enough to go back again.

Along the road, we avoided someone spraying pesticides in a space-suit (really, it looked like the Intel Bunny Guy – I used to have one, but someone stole it off my desk), accepted Ossetai of tomatoes and cucumbers (and salt! She gave us a salt shaker!), and we found a Grateful Dead sticker on a car. This last novelty prompted me to start singing all the Dead songs I could remember, as well as any camp songs.

The trip was hard, don’t get me wrong, but once we got on the mountain and off the road, I was doing much better. It was steeper with fewer switchbacks than anything we’d yet done. At one point, we walked up some small stairs rather than follow the trail because it was easier. Mountain King Boone met his match, and by the time we got to the temple, everyone was beat. We ate some ‘salad a fresco’, the last granola bars, and chugged our water.

We had arrived at the temple just as it opened, and a priest ran out to show up the fresh water (which was from a hose, so naturally there was a little spraying of personage involved). The place was cool, safe and very wonderful. We listened to the early morning serenade of nature and in general we were pleased with ourselves. A couple little old ladies had driven up, and gave us the stink eye that we’d beaten them (or that we were gaijin, it was unclear). Dad helped everyone tape up knees and feet while we relaxed. It was only 10:30AM, but already it was in the mid 80s (F), and we had another mountain to climb.

That was the plan, at least. We were intending to hike back down 20, follow the road around the mountain to 21, and the up 21. Boone and I speculated on how this wouldn’t happen. As we made the short (2.6km) trek down, the steepness was brutal. My knee was holding up okay, though, because it wasn’t as twisty turny. That and it was taped up. Boone’s feet started to swell up, sadly, and nothing was helping them. The really hard part was when we got to the Giant Steps. They were so wide you always ended up stepping down on the same foot. It was like playing Mother May I.

Even taped up, we all petered out at the bottom. Too hot, too tired, too sore, and it wasn’t even noon! One member of our party couldn’t tie his shoes. He had to wrap the laces around the whole of his shoe instead! Thankfully, while Shikoku is remote and lacks WiFi, it has a great bus system, taxis and phones. One 11km car ride later, we were at the Minshuku for the night. The rooms were, surprisingly, ready, so we stashed our gear and took a Gondola up the back side of 21. Had we walked, it would have only been 6 or so km, but the Gondola only comes up the back of 21.

Temple 21 is, by far, the richest of all the temples. It was so huge and sprawling, Boone and I got lost trying to find everything. After wandering and exploring, we found everything and everyone, including the party members who opted to walk. We took the Gondola back down just as the rain started. It was a nice drizzle and quickly turned into a downpour when we hit the hotel. The valley, as Dad explained, was in a micro climate, and thus was totally different than the rest of Japan.

I was, yet again, the only woman at the hotel. They were expecting a group of women who were Henroing by bus later that evening, so I was asked to wait for my bath. I was fine with that, and figured out how to pick up Sumo on the TV. We watched with the sound off while Dad and Boone and the boys got their bath in. I had to wait over an hour, but finally around 5pm, I got my turn. After all that fuss about making sure the Gaijin Girl didn’t have to bathe with the boys, what do you think happened? A dude walked in. I was shaving my legs, like you do, and washing my hair when in walked the guy. He went to the far corner of the the bathroom, I stayed in mine, and we didn’t look at each other. I really could have done without it, truth be told, but I was in Japan, and that’s just how it goes.

Sumo was still on when I got back, and I told the boys what had happened. Dad was pleased that I hadn’t lost my hippie bohemian ways living in Chicago. Generic nudity is something I can easily separate from sexual nudity. Boone was a little surprised and I think worried. He’s 17, it’s hard to tell concern on a teenager’s face sometimes. The joke turned out to be on the dude, of course. Five women went in after me, his tour group, and proceeded to give him shit. He was apparently supposed to wait until they had finished. At dinner, he was pretty much mortified about the whole thing.

The students that were on the train were, for the most part, on their way to clubs or extracurriculars. They still wear their uniforms, which prompted my father to make the inevitable Sailor Moon comments. But here I was able to flaunt my knowledge and trump him in JapanLore (Natural 20!) because I knew that their uniforms change based on school, season and occasion. Much like my first high school, they have regular and dress uniforms. That said, unlike Canadian Academies (and apparently like my old school is now), they don’t get options in the uniforms.

Of course, this doesn’t stop the girls, and it was mostly girls. They were just like any high school student I’ve ever met. They joked and teased each other, rolled up their skirt waistbands so the hem was above the knee, crammed in last second homework, etc etc. Some of them slept, but for the most part, it was kids going to school.

The only odd thing about the train ride was that at the the transfer hub, they took off the last two cars, in order to make things more efficient. I demanded this be explained, and apparently they’ve been doing train studies in Japan since forever, and know where each train rider is at all times, within a reasonable error rate. This explained why the train was still crowded, even though there were fewer riders. They had less cars in the ‘off’ season! The entire system is a finely tuned … machine.

From the station, the hike to Temple 18 was murderous. It was almost 90 degrees on some of the ugliest stretches of road I’d seen yet on Japan. The landscape was dull and boring, the architecture was uninteresting and really I could have been anywhere. When we finally got to some shade, the track was muddy and Boone got his feet wet. Then we had an uphill that was pure pain and made Dad miserable. Oddly, I was feeling much better than I had at Temple 12, but really that wasn’t saying all that much.

Temple 18 used to be off limits to women, until Kobo-Daishi came with his mother (who I think was a nun at that point). He sat outside and prayed for a very long time, possibly did some special spell or chant, and then suddenly women were allowed. The translations for some of the histories were a bit rough, so you got to make up your own reasoning for a lot of the Temples. Now that women were allowed in, the Temple became known as The Mountain of Gratitude to Parents. Boone and I told Dad ‘Thank you’ a lot as we walked back down.

As hard as the hike up had been, going down was worse. My knee had held up pretty well on the flat ground, but it was a return to stabbing pain in the outside of my kneecap with every step. I ended up walking backwards down parts of the hill to take the pressure off my knee, which everyone found amusing and worrying. Still, all our spirits were high when we hit the flat ground and starting cruising along again through the town.

Temple 19 was one I had mistaken for the one with a bunch of crutches in the yard. The logic was that at this one temple, people were magically healed of walking injuries, so they’d leave their crutches and stuff. Instead, this is the temple where I realized I’d lost my Space Pen. I even dumped my bag out to try and find it, but alas, it was lost in Japan. For the first time since my arrival, I swore. As soon as I had, I started to laugh at myself, whipped out my backup ballpoint pent and returned to my notes.

We all decided a break was in order, and Dad taped up Boone’s feet while I wrote. The poor boy’s feet had started to swell up, he had bugbites and blisters and he was overheated and tired. I was trying hard to keep hydrated and by lunch I’d downed over two liters. We had 10km let to get to the hotel, but everyone was so grouchy and at some level of miserable. Too hot, too sore, too tired. I could pound out the miles on flat ground, so long as I was staying hydrated, but Boone the Mountain King was dying. He’s just not build for this heat, as his British Isles genetics have dominance over his fair complexion. In short: Boone’s Whitey McWhiteStein. At least I’ve got some of the Mediterranean in me.

The last 10km were a slaughter. The map said it was 10k, and the signs said it was 10k, but after an hour of hiking, the signs got to 7km left and stayed there for another hour. I knew that I could run a 5k in 30 minutes, and walk it in an hour. That meant that after the two hours, we should have been a lot closer than ’7′. And yet. We had to stop to buy breakfast and dinner, since the hotel had no kitchen, was just one more damn thing going on. As the weather hit 32C and we stopped for the nth time to breathe, I staged a rebellion. Give me a bus, or give me death. My knee was extra painful, Boone had turned taciturn in his flip-flops, and Dad was grumpy, loathe though he was to admit this.

The hotel was small, lacking a kitchen, but they had a huge eating area and a small sitting room. The bathing room was decent sized, and as I was the only woman in the joint (again), I went last and got it all to myself. At dinner, Boone and I geeked out and talked about RPGs while we ate ramen and other convenience store crap food. We watched TV for the first time in Japan, since our brains were too awake and we were physically tired and uninspired. The show was a political soap drama with a fellow who looked like Robert Downey Jr. and a man who was faking his own death (there were also newspaper reporters, long lost siblings and other regular soap crazy stuff). Then we watched a kids sports competition show with a game that was a cross between badminton, football with a paper airplane and cosplay.

I did not make that up.

From Temple 12 to 13 was 13k on it’s own, but the bus zipped us along a welcoming river where, even at 8am, families were camped out trying to beat the heat. There were innertubers and swimmers, people setting up coolers and barbecues, and then, of course, folks just relaxing. Even from the bus we could see the trout jumping while the swans and cranes got their feet wet. I was struck by a mad desire to get out and walk, just to better admire the day. My father wanted to go fly fishing. Neither of us did these things.

At Temple 13, we four became six and change, when our friends from the last hotel decided to hike with us. Obaa-san and the young man, as well as the fellow with swollen feet, and another young man who was camping outside everything, walked with us for the entire day. This was normal, to pick up traveling companions as you went along. The walking was much easier, even though it was hotter and less windy. I didn’t even mind we were walking through towns. Most likely it was because there were no hills, but also the company was nice. I began to think of the day as a stroll. On the hike to Temple 12, I’d had no idea how far I’d gone or how long I’d been walking far, or how far we had left to go. I had existed in a little, surreal, bubble. Now I was easily measuring distance, time, and my own pace.

Still, the heat was painful on our joints, and we stopped frequently to pick up cool water at every opportunity. At one such 7-11, the owner insisted we stop and partake of his fresh, home-grown, tomatoes. We ended up carrying them along in our packs, as we couldn’t eat that many.

After having been to only one temple the day before, the subsequent five were so close that we zipped past them in almost a blur. Temple 14 was the moon landing temple, and was only a half kilometer away from temple fifteen (which had been newly rebuilt after burning down). Sadly, at this point we ran into hordes of bus and car Henro.

We lost our hiking companions between 16 and 17, because we made a pit stop at our hotel. Most minshuku are open from 3pm to 9am, and they’re much more like a B&B than a hotel. You get 2 meals, bathing privileges, and a room with tatami floors and thin mattresses. The problem was that since we’d taken the bus partway, we were hours too early. It was only noon! The rooms weren’t ready, and we didn’t want the owner to fuss over us. We did leave our bags, as a promise to return and stay there, and went on to get lunch in town.

This was the first, and only, time on Henro that I did not eat Japanese food. Instead, we had Chinese. The only real difference between Japanese style Chinese food, and American style Chinese food, that I noticed was the food was less saucy. It was wonderful, though, and as chance would have it, our walking partners caught up with us! Since the restaurant was empty, we politely waited for them to eat and cool off before taking them to Temple 17.

At lunch I kept thinking that nothing I had read or been told sufficiently prepared me for Henro. Even having read Oliver Statler’s Japanese Pilgrimage after my trip, I feel like the only thing I know about Henro is not enough. By this point in my journey, I’d walked two-thirds of our intended route along the Dojo of Awakening Faith. I had to begin accepting the possibility that I, a self-professed writer, was unable to explain or prepare anyone for Henro.

The devout Buddhists I asked told me that Henro was simply Henro. The pilgrimage is a private journey, and while anyone cal tell you what to pack and how to travel safely, no one can tell you what to expect on an internal voyage. When my time is shared with my brother, we learn about our shared loves — comics, TV, RPGs, and music. We trade stories about school, life, religion, our father and his wives. But while we may spend an hour or five talking, we spend at least equal time in our own silence.

And that’s what I can’t explain.

At Temple 13, I talked to the fellow who was camping outside everything. He was about my age and planned to visit all 88 temples. He and I chatted about religions and America, while we waited behind a woman who was getting books stamped for the dozen people in her tour group. He wanted to know how many people in America knew about this (few) and if we were all Christians (mostly), and why I was there. While we parted ways at Temple 17, I spent a lot of time thinking about his questions.

Temple 17 was frustrating and really interesting at the same time. There were hordes upon hordes of tourists there. While I cheerfully accept people who choose to bicycle, drive or motorcycle Henro, the bus people who were being led by guides bothered me. It’s not that it’s an invalid way to visit O-Henro, and in truth I’m thrilled that these people are getting out there. They were just so damn noisy. It was almost like being back in the US again, with the sound of chattering and gossiping, and then sometimes prayer. All the serenity was sucked out of the experience. We took time to look down the well where, if you don’t see your reflection, you’ll come to a bad end soon. I wanted to bring some of the water back for my cousins, but Dad reminded me I’d never get the liquid past security. Instead, we talked about imagery, reflection and dream visualization, pulling in Helen Keller and The Who’s Tommy as our references.

The day ended up being a cooker, in the high 80s, with no humidity, and it sucked the life right out of me. The hotel’s bath was so hot, I could barely get in it and had to soak my body by degrees. The rooms were huge, though I later found out they’d given us two rooms due to the hotel being mostly empty. Even with a good, long rest at Temple 17, we were still at the hotel a little early, and ended up showered and soaked with two hours to go. I didn’t feel as tired, but I ended up falling asleep before dinner. After dinner we watched baseball.

Dad’s favorite team is the Tigers, who are a mix of the Cubs, Indians and Red Sox — everyone loves them, and they always lose. Two or three years ago, they had the best record in baseball, and lost the series in four straight games. And they lost big. We’re talking 10-2 and 13-4 big. The game went very fast. They start at 6pm and have to be done by 10pm, so everyone can catch a train home and be at work tomorrow at a decent hour. They’re by far superior to the current level you see in the US, and yet they have rules limited the number of gaijin you can have on a team because it’s an advantage. If they only knew.