Hokkaido Highway Blues

Winter reasserted itself with full force, and I called my supervisor to tell him I was stranded. He said, “We will have to reconsider our options.”
    I was on Rishiri and unable to get to Rebun. The end lay out of reach, and retreat was not possible. I couldn’t go forward, I couldn’t go back. My movement had effectively come to an end; there was no momentum left to maintain.
    At Cape Sata and again at Cape Sōya, I had written in my journal: the end of Japan. But I would never reach the end of Japan, because the end of Japan was unreachable. The best I could hope for now was that someone would rescue me. All through the day and into the night, the winds lashed my room as I sat, huddled in front of the heater, waiting for the spring to arrive.

    1 enkai: office party
     
    2 ichi-man en: ten thousand yen; approximately one hundred U.S. dollars
     
    3 Before Kūkai it was assumed that women had an extra rung to climb and could not achieve Nirvana until (a) they were reborn as men, and (b) became priests. This rule was made by men who were priests.
     
    4 I did. They weren’t.