What goes up, must come down

I was visiting my family on one of our trips back home while living in Japan. My sisters' faces portrayed complete disgust and I saw they didn't understand. I was explaining how beautiful death by ritual suicide, seppuku, was.

I read a lot of Japanese literature while I was in Japan and had amassed a good collection of books. I had to leave these behind when we moved to London but their sense remains with me, particularly the works of Mishima Yukio. I didn't model my life on his, far from it. How could a gaijin, a foreigner understand the mind of a nationalist, imperialist, Japanese fascist? But his sense of art and beauty struck a chord with me. Before I had come across his works, I had always thought that the development of the mind was not superior to that of the body. I had always wanted to take up body building but it was not until I was 38 that I had the chance to do so.

Life had been good to me in Japan. I had arrived thinking I would stay a couple of years at the most. I had traveled a lot as a child with my family due to my father's work. I somehow thought it was in my blood to continue to move, not to settle anywhere, but Japan got under my skin. My first day there was of a day of joy and this feeling rarely left me during my 15 years there.

It wasn't all a bed of roses and the shit was mostly of my making but the positives dominate my memory; Noriko doesn't share this with me and I can understand that entirely.

...

It was December 2005 and I was back in England with my young family to embark on a new chapter. I had returned in the summer to find a job, a place to live and a school for our 11 year old boy Jun.

I was about to turn 41 and had been pursuing a fitness regime that I had started three years before. I had shed 25% in body weight of fat and had built up 13 kilos of pure muscle. I had gone from 100 kilos and 35% fat to 69 kilos and 5% in two years and built up to 83 kilos over the following year. I was training five times a week and was running 200 kilometres a month. Before work. I was counting my calories and balancing my diet, I was eating six times a day and burning more than 6,000 calories. I had done the Tokyo City Half Marathon in February 2005 in one hour and 35 minutes at the age of 40 and I had only been running for six months after an hiatus of more than 20 years. This time put me in the top 3% for my age in the world. I was preparing for the Christmas Honolulu Marathon and was aiming to do it in under three hours.

I was on top of the world, I had the fitness of a teenage athlete and I was coming to London, the capital of capitalism where I would make my fortune.

On the 3rd of August, while messing around at football with my nephew in my aunt's neighbour's garden, I snapped my cruciate ligament.

I was due to fly to Japan the next day to bring my family back to London. I had to postpone the flight - I was in a plaster caste from my hip to my toes and wouldn't be allowed on the plane.