Today I rode to Akita. It was only 40 km, but I'm shattered. Yawning all day long, I somehow made it to Akita.

In the morning, someone at a convenience store treated me to a tsubuan (sweet red bean) bun! I was really tired, but that kindness gave me a boost.

I also met a man called Tsukuneru-san, who's doing a lap of Japan. Even though he has a wife and two children, he quit his job and is cycling around the whole country over six months. He has a YouTube channel for his tour too, so please do follow 「つくねる　日本一周　感謝の旅」.

For lunch I had a karaage and ramen set, but I was so hungry that I forgot to take a photo.

I've been moved by the people I've met who are doing a lap of Japan, but I have a hypothesis. During their tours, they may not be thinking very deeply. I think it's like being in the zone, or a state of intense concentration. They become absorbed in the tour and nothing else. The man I met today said he'd ridden 170 km in a day. He rode his bike flat out from early morning until the middle of the night. I thought, to do something like that, there's no room to think about anything else. I may be wrong, it's only a hypothesis. Riding about 100 km every day is of course physically possible, but wouldn't it be a waste not to experience your surroundings first-hand? It's a balance, so each person can decide for themselves what kind of tour they want to do. Sometimes I just want to sit and think about pointless things. Even so, I may be comparatively immature. The people I've met have all been adults from middle age upwards, with rich life experience, so they may have been through tougher things than I have. They've worked as members of society, so they may have got used to that state of concentration. I'm like a child: I ride loads only when I want to ride, and do nothing when I don't. When I'm older, this approach might put too much strain on my body. Still, when I met today's man, I suddenly wondered whether there are really that many hours in a day. Editing videos while riding 100 km a day?! That's amazing, and I respect it. Meanwhile, I sometimes eat ramen 🍜 at lunch, get sleepy, and don't want to ride my bike. I really am an idiot.

Why do I prefer writing a blog or a book?

With video I might feel restricted. Because I'd have to do it, I'd feel tied down. I wouldn't be able to practise my Japanese either. A blog suits my personality better. I can write whenever I like, and what I write is up to me. Because it's not video, I feel like nothing is expected of me. It helps me sort out my head too, so it's good for me mentally as well.

During the first Covid lockdown in 2019, I started two hobbies. The first was studying Japanese. I became interested during the pandemic and started picking up words little by little. Looking back, I learned nothing in that first year. After about a year of rather inefficient studying, I finally started studying properly. So when people ask, I always say I started in 2020. Even so, although I didn't improve much, it may be precisely because I kept up my interest that I was able to study more seriously later. For that reason, it was worth it. But this isn't a story about Japanese. The second was that I started writing a diary. Covid spread, and my first year of university was suddenly cancelled. I'd had all sorts of new experiences in the first term and grown as a person, and I thought, why does it have to be cancelled now? It was self-centred, and bigger problems were happening in the world, but looking back, that time was hard for me personally. I went back to my hometown, Sheffield, and spent a long time on my own. My exams were cancelled too, so I had time on my hands. I thought I might write a diary to sort out my emotions and thoughts. At first it really helped. I found dreams fascinating at the time, so I kept a dream diary too. I'd heard that dreams reveal unconscious emotions, so I also thought that if I wrote them down I'd learn something. Every morning, the moment I woke up, I wrote down as much of my dreams as I could, and pondered what they meant. They were all weird, so I had no idea what they meant, but it was fun. Sometimes I drew pictures of my dreams too. I always get absorbed in my hobbies, sometimes to an unhealthy degree, but that's my personality, so I may not be able to change it. I wrote that diary every day, but the amount of information gradually grew, and I ended up writing down everything I did that day. It was as detailed as "woke up, went down the stairs, opened the kitchen door." Whatever I do, I have this tendency, and I suppose Japanese was the same. Japanese is different from a diary, though: you can dig deeper forever, and the deeper you dig, the better you get. Anyway, I wrote that diary for six months, and the time I spent writing gradually went from 20 minutes to 3 hours, and I thought, this is bad, and quit. I'm glad I quit, but I decided never to make the same mistake again, so on this blog I only write what I want to write. If one day I really don't feel like writing, I won't. Even if I met the Buddha and we shared an oyakodon, if I didn't want to write about it, I wouldn't. I'm writing this blog to keep myself sane, so cut me some slack. By the way, for some years now I've been writing down what I'm thinking as a habit, so I have 1,380 notes on my phone! I don't use folders, so I have no idea what's what.