The report for 15 May 2024! (Three days left until the start!)
My adventure kicked off with a genuine misadventure arriving in Peking the day before… and today, finally, all the entrants gather,
starting with a meeting — and yet after handling one irregular situation after another right from the start yesterday,
I was so worn out I passed out cold, still fully dressed… (laughs)
Starting off like this before things have even begun — how's this going to go???
But I pulled myself together! And headed over to the hotel serving as our meeting point!
Today was the first meeting with every single entrant gathered together!
And there, a whole string of happy reunions was waiting for me. From the warm-up event, the “Sahara Challenge” —
a reunion with the friends I'd spent those twelve days alongside there.
Thanks to keeping up my Instagram posts! Even meeting people for the first time in person, there were people who already knew who I was —
which honestly caught me off guard!
Getting famous in reverse, through export, maybe?! (laughs)
As always, we couldn't understand each other's language, but it made me happy that they remembered me anyway.
You can see this whole scene on video too. Enjoy the atmosphere and the energy of it.
My passport, in a sense, for someone who can't speak English? Everyone standing on this starting line surely carries their own story, their own drama behind it, but for me, among the many hardships that piled up before I could make this challenge real, there was my fight with cancer.
This reckless challenge, taken on barely five months after surgery…
and even so, the dream I'd wanted so badly to make real is just about to stand right here.
Before departure, a senior driver who'd once raced the Paris-Dakar
told me, “that newspaper article about you taking on this challenge without letting cancer beat you — that might just work as your passport when you're crossing borders!” Advice I took to heart honestly and immediately — I'd brought an English translation of the article with me from Japan.
Getting cancer, and the surgery right before all this, was never something I could look back on and laugh about, and yet…
if I look at it as just one more part of the whole story of this drama, then — bring it on!!
That kind of fighting spirit welled up in me. And with a language barrier all around, this article
genuinely became my own self-introduction, and I was grateful for it.
Turn absolutely everything into a story to enjoy!
The car hadn't arrived yet, so there wasn't much to do… a rare, quiet day…
so today I decided to properly enjoy some delicious Chinese food!
China means — hot pot!
Loaded with vegetables! And even eating this much came to about 2,000 yen a person.
The farewell gifts everyone had given me before I left meant so much, right about now.
I also stocked up on cheap water at the local supermarket!
So — starting tomorrow, it's picking up the car, getting a Chinese driving license,
and it's about to get busy, so today I filled my stomach with great food and let the night settle over China…
Continued in the two-days-before-start report!