I'm going to be taking you with me on this journey as we go. It's the only way for me to properly process it. Yes, there are a lot of pictures to work through, but mostly I need to re-experience this trip for myself in order to understand what happened. We spent the entirety of our time in Japan at a dead sprint from about 7am to 11pm (at least) every day. I have no idea how many miles we walked.
I remember thinking at the time that I needed to be fully aware as I was going. Eyes wide open. (I'm going to keep saying that.) I knew that we were experiencing too much at once to fully comprehend as we went, and I wanted to take it all in as best as I could with intention to emotionally download everything later. That's exactly what I'm doing. When I close my eyes, all I see are lanterns and powerlines. I feel like my dreams are never going to be the same. They all take place in Japan, at the same frenetic pace with which we spent our time there. My brain is processing through millions of moments and images.
Is this because I'm an artist? Was my brain recording everything for use later? Do my travel companions understand what I'm going through? Is this normal? Is my brain permanently trapped in Japan, waiting for my body to return and get it?
In the meantime, here's what happened next. We were released from the subway onto the streets, left to walk in awe at the totally alien landscape before us. This wasn't even our destination, we're still heading there! Everything in Japan was new to us. Every step was an exploration.
Honestly, it was exhausting. We didn't comprehend how much walking we were doing, and each of us experienced some level of dehydration or physical collapse at one point or another along the way. We all looked a little zombie-like by our last day. I lost five pounds despite eating nothing but beer and fattening food. We weren't getting quite enough sleep, at least I wasn't, but I didn't notice too much during the day. I was running on pure adrenaline and wonderment.
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