Email from Tom
Okinawan Cane Farmers
I am working on farms around Japan with my girlfriend and that is mainly what we’ve been doing since we arrived here from China. We’ve had the odd week off here and there as a “holiday” for sightseeing and that, either staying in hostels which is kinda expensive, or wild camping and sleeping rough. The latter isn’t as bad as it sounds since Japan is dead friendly and safe and there are so many hot springs and other bath-houses around.
After spending the coldest part of winter on a dairy farm in Okinawa, we went up to Tokyo briefly for the Tokyo Marathon (finished it, yay!) at the end of February and then have been moving slowly down the country again, farm by farm, doing about 2 weeks at each. We are now at a farm near Okayama, which is very close to the Shikoku island.
This is very fortunate since we are now going to have a rest from farm work and attempt to walk the famous 88 temple Shikoku pilgrimage. It’s something like 1400km or 1600km by different accounts and considering how fucked my legs were after doing 42km for the marathon, I don’t quite know what to expect. A lot of eating food from convenience stores and sleeping in bus shelters I guess. Apparently the locals are very kind to pilgrims and give you food and digs and that so I’ll have to try to cash in on that one.
Hope all is well at the dojo.
Tom
That sounds amazing! What’s he living on out there? Epic-ness?! A marathon and a 1600km pilgrimage is pretty damn impressive! Pass on my best. x