The adventure.
Tomorrow afternoon, I along with my friend and fellow traveler Matt Sabban will commence a journey of epic proportions, never before witnessed in the history of our study abroad program.
Shikoku, one of Japan’s larger islands south of the mainland, maintains eighty-eight (88) temples along the perimeter of the island. For hundreds of years, adventurers and thinkers have attempted to visit every temple along the island, starting in the northeast and ending around the whirlpools of Naruto city. They call it the pilgrimage of the eighty-eight sacred temples of Shikoku. Matt and I, setting out from Kyoto (on the map linked above, about halfway between Osaka and the northern coast), will mount our bicycles and attempt to visit fifty-nine of these temples. We plan to cycle from the first temple in Tokushima to the thirty-sixth, bike north across the island to the sixty-fifth, and end up at the eighty-eighth, entirely in six days. Is this possible? Is this crazy? Or is this necessary? We’re on fall break, so we’ve decided to ignore the answers.
This is the farthest I have been from the Internet in a while, since my seven-day canoe and hike through the mountains in Maine back at the beginning of high school. In Japan, you are never without a cell phone (if you want to send words of encouragement, reach me at a13x@softbank.ne.jp [no more than 140 characters]), but my primary tools will be a pen and notebook. I suppose I’ll see what results.
(photograph by Alex Leavitt, http://flickr.com/photos/alexleavitt/)
The question.
Dear Internet,
I hope that, at least once, every person is faced with a question or problem that changes his or her life. Last week, I may have been asked that question: Would you like to stay in Japan for another semester? Internet, if you have opinions, please relate them to me. If I stay in Japan, I will basically set aside classes, research, internships, conferences, friends, family. I must still deal with jobs, graduation, and grad school applications. On the other hand, I’ve already taken over a thousand photos, traveled around the country, and lost myself in and out of translation, and reveled in every minute of it.
As with any difficult question, I need advice. And if you’re willing to give it, I’d love to hear it.
Sincerely,
Alex