{"id":12259,"date":"2023-11-19T21:07:14","date_gmt":"2023-11-19T12:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/?p=12259"},"modified":"2026-03-11T00:38:49","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T15:38:49","slug":"trip-notes-9","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/en\/trip-notes-9\/","title":{"rendered":"The Bud | Trip Notes | Kota | Oneness Artist"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Trip Notes: The Bud<\/h2>\n

I went to the sauna with some friends for the first time in a while. We followed the textbook cycle\u2014shower, sauna, cold plunge, rest chair\u2014and kept saying things like, \u201cMan, sauna is the best,\u201d and \u201cThis is totally ganja,\u201d joking and laughing together. At first, we were all in sync, going through the loop at the same timing, but gradually, our pace started to drift. Eventually, we were all doing it at our own rhythm.<\/p>\n

Before I knew it, I was the only one sitting in the rest chair. It was a weekday, so there weren\u2019t any other customers around. My consciousness floated softly, and all I could hear were the distant sounds of someone setting down a bucket or water flowing from a shower. I was staring at a big advertisement on the wall, but I wasn\u2019t actually seeing anything. I was in a perfect daze.<\/p>\n

Suddenly, my eyes dropped to my belly, and I rediscovered a short, small scar. It was from an appendectomy I had back in third grade. I had completely forgotten about it. More than twenty years had passed since the surgery. And yet, the scar had been there quietly the whole time. I gently traced it with my fingertip.<\/p>\n

These days, appendicitis can apparently be treated with medication. But back then, surgery\u2014cutting open the abdomen and removing it directly\u2014was the standard. If I had been born in a slightly earlier era, or in a time or place without surgery or medicine, maybe I wouldn\u2019t have survived. Maybe I would have died back in third grade, at eight or nine years old. Thinking that, a strange feeling sprouted toward this life that had been extended back then. A feeling that was tender, grateful, like a guardian saying, \u201cYou\u2019ve come this far.\u201d And gratitude\u2014toward my mother who rushed me to the hospital in that moment, my father who came soon after, and the doctors who performed the operation. All of that bundled together, tight and whole.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhew,\u201d said one of my friends as he sat down in the chair next to me. \u201cYeah,\u201d I replied, glancing at him from the side. I thought, if I hadn\u2019t survived back then, I never would have met this friend. And maybe he, too, had once been through something that extended his life. With that thought, the strange feeling that had just sprouted inside me seemed to grow a little more.<\/p>\n

\u30fb<\/p>\n

We gathered the group again and all went back into the sauna one last time. I wanted to be together with everyone. The sauna stones hissed and steamed. The scent of mint filled the air. The room was heated to a high temperature. With no phones or clothes\u2014literally naked\u2014men in their thirties laughed like boys, shouting, \u201cHot! So hot!\u201d<\/p>\n

I closed my eyes and breathed slowly. Then, once again, I gently traced the scar on my belly with my fingertip. I want to live in a way that nurtures this strange and indescribable feeling, so it never dries up.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div><\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Maybe I would have died back in third grade, at eight or nine years old. Thinking that, a strange feeling sprouted toward this life that had been extended back then. A feeling that was tender, grateful, like a guardian saying, \u201cYou\u2019ve come this far.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12129,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_locale":"en_US","_original_post":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/?p=12128","footnotes":""},"categories":[38,39],"tags":[67],"class_list":["post-12259","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-trip-notes","category-works","tag-trip-notes","en-US"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12259"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12260,"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12259\/revisions\/12260"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12129"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12259"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12259"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kota-yoshida.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12259"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}