I’m Fast in Japan

This will eventually be a blog documenting and reflecting on my training to run 5 half marathons in 4 weeks in 5 states next summer, but I’m still in a walking boot (pending an MRI tomorrow), so in the meantime, enjoy some classic stories and thoughts about running and other topics. If you’d like to learn more about my running project and the charitable work I’m trying to use it to do, click on the Home button.

I moved to Japan in the summer of 2004, when I was 24 years old. I would end up living there for two years, teaching English to junior high and elementary students, travelling around Asia, and drinking a lot of Sapporo beer. I rode a bike everywhere I went for most of the time I lived there, and I started learning judo two nights a week, so I ended up in the best shape of my life. I made some really good friends, had some big adventures, and watched every episode of the Sopranos multiple times on bootleg DVDs I bought in Vietnam. My time in Japan was a real coming-of-age experience for me—- I went to a small, all male college in a small town for undergrad, so my two years overseas pushed me to learn a lot about myself, how to interact with other people, and how to interact with the world that my relatively sheltered life up to that point had, well, sheltered me from.

When I first arrived in Japan, I barely spoke 50 words of Japanese and didn’t know anyone who lived in my small town. I learned the best way to bike to work and where the grocery store and video rental place were, but without a car the surrounding neighborhoods were a mystery to me for the first few months. One evening, a few weeks after I arrived, I went for a run that forced me to confront some realities of living in the big world, although it took a while for the lessons to sink in.

I went out for my evening run at twilight, hoping to do a 3-4 easy miles around town. As one of the only Westerners in town, I stood out, and as I jogged the familiar streets groups of students were constantly shouting “Hi, Paul!” at me because they had seen my 15 minute personal introduction lesson that I was performing as a travelling road show at all the different area schools. My confidence was high and I felt like I had this whole “living abroad” thing under control. I ran the familiar route to the city town hall and back, and the sun had set by the time I got back to my apartment building, but I decided I wanted to get in another mile or two. I kept jogging past my apartment and around a corner I hadn’t explored yet, planning on making four left turns and ending up back where I started.

There are very few straight lines or right angle intersections in small Japanese towns. Everything in a warren of twisting, interconnected streets packed densely with buildings and identical looking rice fields. Many streets don’t even have names—- my address for my apartment just had a number and the name of my neighborhood, the idea being the postman learned where everything in their assigned section of town was and didn’t need a street name. I didn’t really appreciate all of that until I made my first left turn and vanished into the night.

The road I was running on twisted left and right, climbing up and down hill, without presenting me with a clear major intersection that would help me get oriented back toward home. I remained confident though, and thought that I was keeping track of when the road veered left or right so that I knew where I was pointed and where my apartment was. This was 2004—- years before google maps or phones with GPS. I was wearing a tshirt and shorts, with no money, ID, or cell phone. I knew my address, but next to no other Japanese. When an opportunity to turn left presented itself, I took it, still fully confident that I knew exactly where I was.

The new street I was on was as knotted as the one I had just left, and the buildings were all both identical and unfamiliar to any landmarks I recognized. I jogged on, and after another half a mile or so of running, I finally started to realize that I didn’t know how I could keep going and improvise my way back home. So I doubled back to retrace my steps. But everything looked different in the dark and from the opposite direction, and I couldn’t be sure which of the cross streets was the one I had come from. After what felt like the right amount of time had passed, I took my chances on what I was pretty sure was the street I had turned off of, but after a few more minutes of running it became clear that I was on a new, third, unfamiliar street.

I thought I knew what direction I was heading, but I couldn’t be sure. I ran for a long time, taking a series of turns that felt like some prehistoric innate sense of direction was letting me know which way to go but were more likely random panic. I remember running past a school with lit up soccer fields that I had never seen before, which worried me because I had been to most of the schools in town. Had I run out of the city limit? When it finally started to sink in that I was lost, in the dark, with no way to contact anyone or even communicate with strangers, I started to panic. Instead of stopping to consider my options, I kept running.

Eventually, I had to recognize that I really only had two options: I could stop somewhere like a bus stop and literally stay there all night until the sun came up and I could hopefully find my way back, or I could flag down a cab and try to explain that I didn’t have any money but could he please drive me home and then I would go up and get my wallet and pay them… The first option was unfeasible, especially since it was starting to get cold. The second option would have worked, but would have been very embarrassing. As one of the only “gaijin” I was a kind of a local celebrity and news of my misadventure would definitely find its way back to my boss. In Japan, work culture is very hierarchical and supervisors take a paternalistic approach to their employees. If my story was repeated around town, I would get a lecture and might even be told that I shouldn’t be out running anymore, or I would be “encouraged” to go running with some middle aged teacher in the district instead of being on my own. That prospect made spending the night sleeping in a rice field sound appealing.

And then, I went around a corner, and I was looking at my apartment building. It had been over an hour since I decided to run a little further and do some exploring, so I had travelled at least 6 miles. I had made god knows how many turns. And somehow, by blind luck, I popped back out where I started. Years later, I used Google Earth to try to figure out the route I had taken that night and couldn’t make any progress at all. All I know is that I ended up safe and warm in my apartment, soaking in a hot bath and drinking a Sapporo.

Looking back on it, the lesson I should have learned was that I needed to be more cautious, that I wasn’t as competent as I thought, that living in a foreign country was not just an “adventure,” it was a real place with real consequences that I didn’t necessarily understand. But, since everything had worked out fine in the end, I didn’t have to learn that lesson. A few weeks later, I did almost the same thing—- I was visiting a town on one of the other islands, by myself, and the guidebook (remember, it’s 2004) mentioned that there was a nice youth hostel “at the top of the hill.” That evening, I set out from the train station to find this youth hostel, even though I didn’t know if the hostel still existed, if it was open, which hill it was on top of, or even what the specific word for “hostel” was in Japanese. And somehow, I ended up sleeping peacefully on a youth hostel bed that night. My heterosexual white male confidence had defeated my stupidity once again!

I’ve got stories about times where my blind confidence ended up costing me big, but they aren’t about running and they aren’t fun stories, so I will save those for another time. I like to think that I’m older and wiser now, and maybe I am, but at least technology has caught up my foolishness and I always have my Garmin and GPS phone with me when I’m out running. Maybe I should throw a 500 yen note in my pocket too, just in case.