Backpack contents:
wad of cash
combat knife
hippie pillow
ukulele
neuroscience textbook
suspenders
mp3 player loaded with 2pac
socks
Mission: survive 21 days without paying for accommodation and floating objectively though Japan's Westerlillies, bum-style.
I left the comfort of the red-light district, hopped a midnight bus and woke up listening to the rose that rose from concrete singing about 'my ambishunz az a ridah'. In the old Western capital, Kyoto, my first two days were spent washing myself in the river of history that flows from the countless temples, manors, pavilions, pagodas and shrines. It was a history overload that was nicely complemented with my nights spent in a riverside rain shelter. Kyoto has a modern center that vibes and flows like any of Tokyo's busiest streets but maintains many islands of classical culture; a perfect archetype of the overarching theme of contrasts that is developing in my conception of the Japanese way of life. However thick the culture, I was really itching for something less mainline after two nights.
The wanderer's route took me into the rugged stone forest prefecture of Wakayama. Down, down along the coast, I made calm beaches my home and mountain tops filled my days.
It was a lonely and rugged time where the depths of some overdue thoughts were released in the nightly silence. I spent several days on top of a holy mountain in a Buddhist village, sleeping on temple floors and walking the torchlit nights in the pure silence of the cultivated mind. A lot of pain and a lot of healing is only possible alone. Living off of tea and tofu, my mind was bent by a fast intended to wring out my soul like a sopping wet towel. I was purely at peace and sat, cold and empty, like a porcelain vase. 
However, even peace has its limits. Dedicated to extremes and driven by road, it was only a matter of days until I arrived at the southernmost and scathingly hot tip of the peninsula.
Kushimoto town, the little settlement at the crux of the mainland and two wooded islands became my food resource as I set out on a challenge to circumvent the two islands in a meditative hike. In the early morning smoke, razor rocks rose like knives of giants and cast their darkness and power over shallow tide pools and black sands. The cliffs were severe; the solid throbbing heat and dense weight of the scenery raged like the bulging pulse of a tiger in a life or death struggle. This same pulse beat through two young lovers as they threw themselves off a jagged ocean cliff to a shared, gruesome end. It would happen that I was approaching the outcrop as these two heavy birds flew without wings. The red pulp of bodies floated in the churning tide as the whomping beat of a rescue helicopter swooped over the scene. The bodies were covered and, undoubtedly, flown to the morgue. I was planning to camp here...decided to move on through the night.
Sometime in the next few days I am picked up by a pleasant millionaire sweatshop owner and introduced to his lonely wife. We drank aphrodisiastic (and as tastes go, un-fantastic) poisonous viper liquor. We ate whole fish, drank whole bottles, laughed with our guts, inhaled the air like a hallucinogenic smoke and sang and danced to the hentai beat of twisted Japanese desire.
Pried out of the doldrums of solitude by this crazy couple, I moved towards a neon bordello, dreaming of the Osaka sun. I spent a few days bumming around a popular beach, playing my ukulele in a sideshow of a love-hunt. It wasn't long until I had a wingman pick me up as an asset. Together we swept the beaches, me with my ukulele and him with...well, the ability to speak Japanese. It was too easy; we nightly escorted piles of bikini's to evenings of beer filled restaurants. We were dynamite-fishermen in teaming seas.
Too much sun drove me into the dark caves of metropolitan all-nighters warmed by litres of souchu and sake. The bizarre and dark heart of 3am Japan is rich and thick like the sweating of blood; I was swept up like a cell through an unbearably powerful artery of hedonism. Dingy, hole-in-the-wall freak shows. Moonlight sake fountains. Sleepless skateboard hooligans. Raunchy bums. Passed out business men. The search for a quiet corner to sleep. Osaka's finest.
The local train back to Tokyo with work on the other end...it was justly drawn out. 12 hours of scenery from mountain passes to vibrant rice fields to the monster of Fuji and finally the familiar buzz of the Tokyo commute; time to get to work.
