The men lower their net, taut with thrashing fish, into the water. Most of them bolt into the deep, save for a handful of sea bream that nestle contentedly against the nylon threads.
“Why aren’t they moving?” a young Taku Ashino asked his older companion.
“Those are fish that escaped from a farm,” came the reply. “They’re used to being carried in and out of the water by nets.”
The answer struck Ashino like a lightning bolt. It dawned on him that like the farmed fish, he too had been sheltered and shaped by the safety of routine, reluctant to leave the comforts of home. There was only one thing to do. “I decided to drop out of university and become a pilgrim to face my true self,” he said as we sat in his restaurant along Club Street. “I didn’t know what I wanted to be, but I knew I could find my way if I was true to myself.”
Ashino spent the next two years walking the Shikoku Henro, a 1,207-km pilgrimage that links 88 temples across Shikoku Island’s four prefectures. Following in the footsteps of generations of spiritual seekers before him, he roamed the remote trails, discovering not only a different side of his home country but also unknown facets of himself.
AloJapan.com