"On the Michi" Part Four

Sunao's socks had begun to smell very bad at this point. His hat also stunk a lot. And his big camoflague coat didn't smell like roses, either. He was, in short, a smelly, smelly man. This is not to say that Nemo and I did not smell bad in our own ways--I myself had not changed my underwear in three days, and Nemo's shirt was well past the point of being ripe--but Sunao's odor was on a different level. It permeated the rooms he entered and dominated the spaces he occupied. Jitsu wa: it attacked the ol' factory as though it were suffocating it with a pillow that had been dipped in a vat of body odor, dirt, and grime. And, of course, things being as they were, Nemo and I took no pains in keeping this secret from him.

All the next morning on the bus, as we crammed our three bodies into a space that was suitable for two small children to sit, we chuckled the kind of laughs that came from trying SO hard to be quiet because other people on the bus were sleeping, but the fact that you're trying to keep it in and also that Sunao smelled SO bad, they inevitably turned into cackles. We oficially became: Those Assholes Sitting Behind Us. I had vowed never to become one of them, but having spent some time as one, I'd have to say it's kinda a fun way to spend a two-hour busride. Sunao especially had us in stitches:

Nemo: "Dude, Sunao, you really reek. John, go ahead and smell his hat."
Me (smelling Sunao's hat): "Ahhhh, good lord! What died?"
Sunao (then smelling his own hat): "Sou da ne! Ore cho kusse, machigainai." Translation: "Oh, you ain't kidding! Make no mistake about it: I smell like complete ass!"

The snow conditions were almost as good as they were the day before, but the day slightly lacked the element of discovery and unexpected-ness that had defined Furano. We got some solid runs in, and then, feeling warmed up, we decided to hike up to the very top of the mountain, from where one could drop into a expansive field of powder and make his way down in style. That is, if one could ski in heavy, waist-deep, damp-flour-like snow, which none of us could. I plunged in first and was immediately swallowed whole by it. Barely able to turn, I soon fell and found myself in an uncomfortable predictament. "Head below heels" was what I called it, as my head was pointing downhill, my pointing boots uphill, and my skis were even father uphill, burried somwehere deep under the snow. I kept trying to get up, but ended up feeling like the kid brother Randy in the movie "A Christmas Story." ("Can't get up. Can't get up!") Fortunately nobody was near enough to hear me in my helpless state. After I pulled myself together, stopped crying, and found my skis, I got the hell out of that field and waited for Sunao and Nemo below, who appeared to have had the same problems indicative of their snow-covered get-up and tear streaks. When they joined me, we all just sat in the snow for a while, feeling sorry for ourselves and whining, and agreeing that that was not such a good idea, in spite of how romantic (now in the "Aspen Extreme" sense) it had sounded before we went down.

Nemo had to catch a plane so we all jetted (get it? jett-ed? HA!) back to the lodge. We exchanged hugs and good-byes with Nemo and his friends , and he was off. Sunao and I were a little pooped from that last run, so we chilled in the coffee shop for a while, talking sleepily about how much fun the last couple days had been. And, then--holy shit!--we realized it was New Year's Eve. This brought a little excitement to our ski-worn bones, and we started to plan what we would do when we got back to Sapporo.

Outside, the sun was setting and the sky was clearing, which gave the mountain and its surrounding friends the ethereal look of massive, pre-historic chunks of blue ice and snow glued to the backdrop of darkening canvas of periwinkle. Across the valley below was an especially large mountain, spewing from white forrest, which Sunao told me was called the Mt. Fuji of Hokkaido. He asked me in Japanese, "Do YOU know what that is?" I was about to respond when he answered in English, "Unbelievable, is what, bro." We waited for the bus in fading, clear winter daylight.

We both slept the whole way back in the dimly lit bus, and awoke in Sapporo feeling refrehsed from the cat-nap. However, the seed of money-trouble had been planted: we were both in dire need of making it to an ATM, as I had only 1000 yen ($10) in my pocket, Sunao even less. In Japan, though, finding an ATM is like going fishing: sometimes you get lucky, sometimes you get massively skunked. Many have inconsistent hours, so you never know when they're gonna close, because why should or would they make it easy to get money? But, luckily we made it a 7-11 ATM, where I took out what I thought would be a sufficient amount for the next couple days. Sunao found an ATM that took his card as well, and we were set.

We were damn hungry, and decided that the perfect New Year's Eve meal would be a fat bowl of butter miso ramen with a side of potstickers. Sapporo is famous for its ramen, and there is a street--an alley, actually--that is wall to wall with yummy ramen restaurants. We could barely see through the windows of most of them because of all of the noodley steam, and the way you judge a good ramen shop is by how many customers are eating in the shop. After sticking our heads in to a half a dozen or so empty or nearly empty shops, we finally found one with a decent number of clientel, and slid up to the counter on the stools and indulged in ourselves in rich goodness. We gave a cheers to 2004, slurped down our buttery ramen and juicy potstickers, and made our way back to the capsule hotel to get cleaned up before going out.

While we were in the bath, it had begun to snow hard again, and we entered into the blizzardy night in bundles, and in search of a reggae bar that had been reccomended to us by Nemo. After about three years of walking around snow drifts and icy puddles in the streets, we found it. It was, in a word, LAME. Sure, there was reggae music. Kind of. Sure, there were young people there. It's debatable, though, whether they were alive or not. Honestly--and I am not exaggerating here--I did not see two people dancing, or even talking with each other at this joint. Everyone was facing the stage, and were kinda doing this head-bobbing-zombie-dance. They weren't really NOT moving, but I wouldn't say they were moving either. It was completely surreal, and I was the only foreigner. We left shortly after midnight and found another, less-enigmatic bar where the atmosphere was friendly and the people warm. Sunao and I promptly pulled our chairs in front of the jukebox, took turns putting coins in, and talked a little about the past year, and our respective hopes for the new one. Sunao, who had quit his job shortly before the trip, was particularly excited about the new year, and the opportunities that awaited him. I, with my own set of crossroads approaching in July, was able to wax philosophical as well about future choices. It was a mellow New Year's Eve, or in other words: a perfect one.

Waking up, we decided it was time to get out of Sapporo and head for the "inaka," or the country-side. At Sapporo station, we bought some ridiculously pricey train tickets to go to a town called Wakkanai, the northern-most city in all of Japan and a seven-hour train ride. Wakkanai is where, as we were told by the ticket salesperson, there is precisely a whole lotta of NOTHING but wind and snow.

"Before we catch our train," I said to Sunao, "we should hit the ATM again because there might not be an ATM in Wakkanai."
"Machigainai."

However, we soon discovered that because of the Japanese people's expansive celebration of the New Year holidays, ALL of the Hokkaido's ATM's would be closed for the next four days, thank you very much. I had about 5000 yen ($50), Sunao about 3000 yen ($30). We got on the train for Wakkanai with a bag of peantus, chocolate colored almonds, and two apples (which was also, irocnically, our breakfast, lunch, and dinner for the next couple days). Luckily, we also had absolutely NO idea where we would stay when arriving in the snowy streets of windy Wakkanai. All was quiet on New Year's Day.

Now, seriously, Japan...

...is it really necessary to promote the sales of a notebook called "The Crotchet-R" in your stationary stores? I saw it with mee own-eyes! That's just downright inappropriate.

Hell, why don't you just start selling notebooks called, "The Groin Master 7" or "The Pelvic Pad," to corrupt the minds of your nation's youth?

John

p.s. Part Four is on it's way soon.

"On the Michi" Part Three

Sunao reports: "Ore wa snowboarding CHO umaiZE, machigaine!" Translation: "I am fuckin' awesome at snowboading, make no mistake about that!"

This was the phrase that Nemo and I were forced to listen to for the duration of the two-hour bus-ride up to the mountain. Sunao was in rare form, making sure to inform us exactly where he stood in terms of his ability compared to ours'. The three of us had never skiied together, though, and where Nemo was humble about his experience and I confident about mine, Sunao downright assured us that he was better than all of us.

Yet, as we climbed higher and higher in the Hokkaido-ian mountains and the snow drifts grew more and more massive, Sunao's jabs quieted, as he realized that maybe, afterall, this was the real deal, no trip down a bunny hill. When we got to the resort and began renting equipment, Sunao also mentioned that he was, perhaps, a little ill-equipped in the area of snow-wear. Nemo and I agreed, as all Sunao wore was a giant cotton camoflauge jacket, a pair of thin nylon pants, a wool hat, and gardening-gloves. We politely suggested that maybe he ought to rent some snowboarder-wear. He knodded in agreement and suantered off to look at the resort's selection of rental jackets and water-proof pants. He soon returned and, having ignored our advice, his new wardrobe consisted of a clear plastic garbage sack worn over his original clothes, holes torn in it for his arms. It was, in short, a plastic tang-top, and he proudly explained that he was now water-proofed. Nemo and I, forecasting the possible amusement we could get of this (in the "I-told-you-so" kinda way), heartily agreed he was now dressed perfectly for the conditions, and we set out for the slopes.

An hour later, after falling down the first few runs, Sunao admitted that a.) maybe he was kinda, just a little, talking out of his ass that morning about how good he was and b.) that he was really fucking cold and wet. We all returned to the rental shop where he rented the proper gear, and we supervised the process this time to assure that he did not return with gobs of toliet paper wrapped around him in place of a jacket, saying that it would keep him warmer. Checking himself out in his new gear, Sunao offered:

"Don't I look SWEET now!?"
"Yes," we replied, "You DO look COOL. Finally."
"Machigaine!"

A gorgeous powdery snow fell hard that day, and by the afternoon, we were waist-deep in the best powder I have ever had in my life. And hailing from the ski-resorts of eastern Washington and western Idaho, this is no small statement. It was effortless, gliding through the soft granular snow. Your turns were already being made for you it seemed, and if you fell, it was into a giant, mountainous cushion of fluffy joy that ignored any possibility of pain or emabarrasment. The track under the chairlift we rode most of the day had not yet been touched, as Japanese skiiers and snowboarders will be damned if they go out of bounds, so Nemo and I thought, "fresh meat!"

The next run, we debarked from the lift, ducked our heads under the ropes, and were about to float down when the lift-operator...growled...at us. It was not a "you can't go down there," or a "that area's restricted!" It was:

"GRRRRRRRRRRRR!! GROOWWRRRRRRRRR!!"

This was enough to bring us back to the main runs. Halfway down, Nemo stopped and called me over to him.

"Hey, wait a minute. Did we just get growled at?"
"I'm afraid we did."
"Did he know we were foreigners?"
"I don't see how he could have."
"I can't believe he growled at us. Dick."

And we continued down. The rest of the day was spent in the much of the same manner: giggling and sliding down the pillowy slopes, spraying Sunao in the face when he fell, trying not to get growled at. Lumps of sugar on pine-tree arms.

When the resort's night-lights began to softly glow on the ubiquitous snow, we decided to finish up, and went down to the bottom to meet Nemo's two other friends. Gear was returned, and enthusiastic exclamations were made about the day's unbelievable conditions. Upon getting on the return bus to Sapporo, Sunao immediately zonked out, and Nemo and I had a nice, catching-up kind of chat as we returned to the city. Everyone, it seemed, had reached that euphoria that is attained only when there is a perfect collision between exhausted-ness and ultimate satisfaction.

When we reached Sapporo, were all desparately hungry. I myself had somehow made it through the day with only a rice-ball and a granola bar in my system, Sunao just on coffee and a few pieces of candy. Deciding that we could not possibly wait to eat, we went straight to a nice restaurant where we had already made reservations the night before. Walking into the restraunt was a scene--our nylon pants sweeeeeshing louldy, hairs sticking straight-up from sweat and moisture as we took off our ski-hats, snowboards and skiis were stashed in the corner. The other guests made a conscious effort to ignore our ruged-ness, but were visibly jealous at the look of comradery that comes from shared-contentment. Dark beers were ordered, and we relaxed into the night.

Next to our table was a group of young Japanese women, who were talking loudly about their breasts. Nemo, who is always encouraging me to show my magic tricks to strangers, suggested that I go over and put on short show for them. In anticipation, he had secretly bought a deck of cards at a convenient store right before we came in. I smiled at the idea, but shook it off out of shyness and the desire to just relax with my beer: "Nawww. Not tonight, man."

However, I quickly found myself forcibly picked up by Suano, him guiding me over to the table with his arm around my shoulders. He kindly asked for the girls' attention, and then informed them that he was seriously turned-on by their previous conversation regarding the size of their breasts. This, somehow segwayed into his introduction of me, a professional magician who has not only been on T.V. but who has traveled around the world earning his living as a street-performer. I had no idea I did that, but the girls cheered and giggled loudly (as only Japanese girls can do) and I put on a short show for them. Luckily, it went over quite well, and at the end I found myself having pictures taken of me with their cell-phones, and them writing my name down should I appear on Japanese T.V. someday. They said they were rooting for me; I even signed an autograph.

(Another side-note: isn't that what a true friend is, someone who unfailingly knows and understands your talents and good points, and furthermore is always pushing you to pass them on to others, even if, initially, you don't want to do it?)

To the relief of all, we left the restaurant in much better shape than we had the previous night, and we returned to our capsules without incident. Nemo remembered to wrap a towel around him before we made the trip to the spa, and we all chipped in and kept a tight watch on his key. Before entering the giant bath, I was shampooing my hair at one of the washing stations, and it was quite curious that the more I rinsed my hair of the shampoo I had put in, the more it lathered on my head. It got to be too much--my head was a giant foam ball, it was running down into my eyes, and I seriously thought it was some crazy-ass shampoo the hotel staff had placed in the bottle out of revenge for Nemo's hairy-nakedness the night before. But then I heard giggling, turned around, and found the 28-year-old Sunao with a giant bottle of Shampoo, half of which he admitted to having dumped in my hair. It took me about thiry minutes to completely wash it out, and even then it still lathered a little.

The rest of the night, the three of us sat in the giant hot-spring, shooting the shit as we were prone to do. It all seemed so new and fresh, and that's exactly the way we went to bed and woke up the next morning before we left for Niseko ski resort.

"On the Michi" Part Two

On the ferry, we slept in these little cupboards, the boat swaying up and down, but not in a malicious, stomach-churning kind of way. It was just kinda like we were sleeping in a big rocking chair. But in a cupboard. On a boat.

Upon arriving the night before, Sunao and I decided that the first thing to do, of course, was to explore the boat. We tried twice--and got caught both times--to get up to the captain's tower, but evidently it was, like, a restricted area or something, which is stupid cause that's the best view on the boat. I asked one of the men who caught us if he could arrange a meeting with the captain, like when you were a little kid riding a plane and the stewardess would arrange a trip to the cockpit to meet The Man, but he said no. Unfortunate as that was, we retired to our little beds and slept the night through, undulating to the ocean's rhythm.

We woke up the next morning a little groggy, but nothing a couple cups of coffee didn't fix. Mountain cliffs and snow-grazed hillsides of Iwate prefecture were off one side of the bow, the other side: infinitesimal ocean for days, maybe striking the Oregon and Washington Coasts in the way-distance. Sunao and I were quiet that morning, perhaps reflective and internal due to the change in scenery. After coming from urbania, seeing stretches of land without buildings and neon-lights tends to offer a nice window for quiet time. Sunao took occasional cigarette breaks outside on the deck throughout the morning, and I read my book. By noon we were ready to eat and talk excitedly about what to do once we reach Hokkaido's shore later that evening.

Nemo, an old college roommate of mine who is also living in Japan as an english teacher, is the reason for mine and Sunao's meeting a few months ago. When he was 18-years-old, Sunao took his last year of high school in Nemo's small, northern Californian town, Miranda, and that's where their friendship began. The two hadn't seen each other in over ten years, but when Nemo came up to Tokyo to visit a while back, he miraculously got a hold of Sunao, whom, ironically, lives only twenty minutes away from me by car. We all hung out a couple nights, and Sunao and I hit it off. Fortunately, Nemo arranged to be in Hokkaido the same time we would be there, so it worked out perfectly that the first leg of our trip was spent in Hokkaido's largest town Sapporo, skiing during the days, getting after IT during the nights.

We arrive at the ferry terminal. We see snow. We freak out, because where we live it is only cold, we are not afforded the accompaniment of beauty with the bitterness, so we did what anyone who had not seen snow in a while would do: we got in a huge snowball fight. That lasted for a while until we realized our ages and also that we didn't really know how to get to Sapporo, as the ferry had dumped us off in the industrial park of a city of which I can't remember the name. Thus, we headed for the taxi stand, but there were no taxi's and about ten people waiting. Luckily, one of the other passengers had the phone number of the service, and a couple taxis arrived ten minutes later. We shared a taxi with two other folks and headed for the station. The other riders, seeing that I was a foreigner with a big orange backpack, immediately started asking me what I was doing in Hokkaido, where I was from, how old am I, my blood-type, etc. I started to answer, but Sunao quickly interjected for me, saying that I was, indeed, from Canada, and was a professional skier and he was my personal photographer. Incidentally, I was there to make my debut in a international ski magazine and wish us luck, please. I knodded, not having the japanese vocabulary to continue the outrageous lie, and we arrived at the station with them in utter awe of us.

(A side note: this was a continual theme throughout the trip--us (or Sunao, really) lying about what we were doing in Hokkaido and who we were. In the duration of our trip, depending on who we talked to, we were mountain climbers, book and movie translators, crab connoisseurs, and Russians.)

On the train to Sapporo, we were chatting about what to fill our nights with when Sunao noticed a cute girl sitting behind us. He immediately kicked into his spitting-game mode, and by the end of the train ride, our chairs were swiveled around facing her, and he had a phone number and a personal guide to the city, although neither of them actually panned out.

We said our goodbyes to the girl at Sapporo station, and we made our way through the city to the hotel where we would be staying with Nemo. Nemo and his two friends came to meet us at the station and the greetings were warm, snow falling hard in the Sapporo streets while we hugged and wrestled. The hotel, as we found out, was not actually a hotel, but a capsule hotel, which pretty much meant that our "room" was a numbered-plastic box with curtains around it, stacked in grid of other capsules. Waking up in one of those capsules is much like how Keaneu Reeves wakes up out of The Matrix, minus all the plasma and gunk, but complete with all the rank smells. But, whatever, we said, and stuffed our bags in the hotel lockers, and ventured out into the Sapporo night for food and drink.

The rest of the night and the next early morning are slightly hazy, but the overall highlights are: a hour long wrestling match between Nemo, Sunao and I on the floor of the restaurant we went to (Nemo's two older travel companions abstained from the wrestling, but eagerly rooted ooohh's and ahhhhh's when one of us pulled a good move on the other two, or hit our heads against something hard); the scars that we would all carry for the next few days (Nemo's being a bruise on his back, Sunao with a couple cuts on his chin, me with a gooseegg on the side of my head); Nemo falling on the ice outside and refusing to get up for five minutes, claiming that the snowy street was "comfy"; Nemo spearheading a trip to the hotel's spa at 2 a.m; Nemo losing his key after opening his locker and putting his clothes in it; Nemo walking BUTT-NAKED out into the hotel lobby to politely inform the capsule hotel staff that he had, in fact, lost his key and couldn't find it anywhere; the hotel staff helping him find his key, which was in the pocket of his discarded pants; the suppressed laughs of the hotel staff when we came down he next morning to leave to go skiing.

We laughed all the way up to the mountain that next morning, recalling the previous night's charades, agreeing that is was both SOTOU hilarious and YABAI. Many many machigaine's on that cold December morning before we arrived at Furano Ski Resort.

"On the Michi" Part One

Part One
What's funny is that after you've lived in a place--namely, a foreign country (or any country for that matter)--for an extended period of time, your definition of travel typically excludes running around the place in which you live. Your ignorance always looks beyond your immediate parameters, and often you fail to see the infinte travel opporuntines under your nose because you think you already know it all, have seen it all. Having lived in Japan for almost two and a half years now, I seemingly forgot that any travel around Japan, for me, was still, essentially, international travel, and when I decided to make my fourth, week-long run into Japan's northern island--Hokkaido--I thought that I was compromising the adventure-er's spirit by staying too close to home. My first year in Japan I traveled to New Zealand, my second year was to Thailand, and this year...Japan. I thought it was kinda like saying you're "traveling" to California when you live in Washington, but really it's, like, a jaunt at best.

But, what I soon realized was that the definition of "travel" has no exclusions in the way of place, time, experience, or people. My revised defintiton of travel says that it is any movement into an unknown territory, a left-turn down a street you've never been on, traveling with someone that you already know but, now, because you're on the move, your relationship exists under different circumstances. It's anything that opens your senses to something new, thereby changing everything you've thought about everything up until this point in time. In short, travel is...well, I don't think I can do the short-summaric definiton thing today, but I'll relate an experience and then you can judge whether it's "traveling-proper" or not.

God, I can't believe I'm about to do this, but I'm sure I'm not the first writer to compare his journey to Jack Kerouac's "On the Road." But, seriously, is there a traveler in the world whom has read that book that doesn't draw occasional parallel's between his or her own journey and Jack's, however cliche it might be? The fact is that there is a Sal Paradise, a Dean Moriarity, and a whole cast of eccentric charcters in every damn country in the world, regardless of the era and culture, who are ready to have the rock under which they are turned over.

In this case, my travel partner, my own personal Dean Moriarity, was a Japanese friend named Sunao (Sue-now). At 28-years-old, Sunao is a hefty, portly fellow, standing about six feet tall, and has dark skin even for a Japanese person. He is currently working at a company in the heart of Tokyo that sells jet-fighter parts. He's also a surfer, complete with every image that comes with that label, and speaks American slang amazingly well. Oh, and he's pretty good at regular english, too. After spending some time with Sunao, I have come to fear the world simply because there is a person like him selling missiles, rockets, and all sorts of crazy hi-tech machinery which a person like him, as you will come to see, should have no responsibiltiy selling. A fan of beer, cigarrettes, and spitting game at anyone who will listen, Sunao has a vast repertoire of slogans, both in japanese and english, all of which he employs with impeccable consistency. They have inevitably rubbed off on me. Among them:

"Machigaine!" ("Make no mistake about that!")
"Sotou yabai!" ("That was beyond fucking yikes!")
"Cho daiski sore wa!" ("I can dig that!")

and my favorite:

"Jitsu wa..."
The direct translation of "jitsu wa" is "to be honest" and Sunao typically starts every sentence with this transition. For example, "Jitsu wa sore wa sotou yabai! Machigaine, John!"
This roughly translates to: " To be honest, that was fucking sweet! Make no fucking mistake about that, John.")

When we talk, it's always in an interesting hybrid of english and japanese, with slang and random vocabulary inserted into the dialogue where we feel it is most appropriate. Another example:

Me to Sunao: "Dude, check out this yuki! This is way yabai, NE?"
Sunao to Me: "Jitsu wa...machigaine, dude. Totally. Kore wa chou awesome da yo!"

Half the time I don't realize that we're speaking in this idiosyncratic dialect until I see the faces of the surounding train passengers or people in the restaurant squinting their eye-brows and crunching their foreheads, trying to figure out just what the hell we're saying, which language we are speaking in.

So, it was Sunao--the slang-spitting-jet-fighter-part-selling-Japanese-surfer-dude--with whom I set out for Hokkaido. Wanting to travel both economically and romatically (in the Kerouacian sense, NOT as in the two-gay-dudes traveling together sense, not that I have anything against gay people but I wanted to be clear that we are a.) not gay and b.) romaticists...in the Kerouacian sense) we decided to take a twenty-hour ferry ride from Ibaraki Prefecture to Hokkaido, the Alaska of Japan. Our ferry was to leave at 10 p.m. on a Tuesday, so Sunao and I decided to meet in Tokyo at 6 p.m. and take the two-hour train ride together to Ibaraki, figuring this would be playing it safe in terms of time. I show up in the busiest inter-section of the world, Shibuya, at 6 p.m., toting my giant orange backpack, negotiating the slew of Japanese people rushing home on the last day of work before winter-break, looking for Sunao. He shows up at our meeting place at 6:30 still in his work suit, no backpack, and immediately suggests that we go get dinner and some beers.

"Sure, but are we gonna be on time for the train to Ibaraki? And what about the ferry, and where's your backpac--."

"Dude. We'll be on time. Machigaine."

So, we head out and grab a few beers and a bite to eat, and then he says we have to go to his office to get more beers and his backpack. We show up at his place of work around 7 and the lingering workers curiously ask about where we're going, what time. etc. When we tell them, they sternly inform us that there is no way we'll make it on time, are we crazy? Sunao just smiles, sips his beer, and says it all be alright...machigaine.

We barely make the train and feast on rice balls and chocolate covered pretzels, giggling and bullshiting loudly for the duration of the train ride. We arrive in Ibaraki, a more rural region of Japan, and it is as though the pressure of the city is immediately lifted, and we can know potential once again. We barely catch the next train--this one is only two cars long, as opposed to the standard 12-car trains in Tokyo--and it takes us to the ferry terminal. We dash, we weave in and out of other people, we accidently hit them with our big backpacks, and we make the last boarding call for the ship. Sunao looks at me, and expresses one of those I-told you-we'd-be-alright-machigaine looks that I will see a thousand times before the trip is over. And it is right then and there that I decide that I will leave everything to Sunao, trust him unconditonally, on this trip.