Fushiki to Beijing - Grounded: A Down to Earth Journey Around the World - page 44

rons that cover their stomachs, thighs, and knees, but leave their buttocks and nipples exposed to the world.
Whoever decided that these blubbery fellows should wrestle in what is essentially thong underwear had an
excellent sense of humor. Or, possibly, a bizarre fetish for the dimpled fat of an outsized butt cheek.
SITTING here observing this quintessentially Japanese tableau—eating teriyaki with chopsticks from a
bento box balanced on my lap—it suddenly dawns on me, with a jolt: We have made it to the other side of
the world.
In my mind, I trace our route as a fast-forward flip book. I visualize our path as one smooth glide over
the gray waves of the Atlantic, the crowded cobblestones of Europe, the empty forests of Russia, and the
gentle swells atop the Sea of Japan. It's taken mere weeks to go from sitting on our couch in D.C. to sitting
in this arena in central Tokyo.
True, with the aid of a 757 we could have made this same trip in roughly fourteen hours. But by the same
token, imagine if we'd tried this a few hundred years ago, before modern advances in surface transport. It
took the Pilgrims sixty-six days to cross the Atlantic, for instance. Our freighter did it in nine. Likewise,
before the Trans-Siberian, it took months to hack through the wilds of Russia from one end to the other.
Now, trains cross that same ground in less than a week.
Back when we began this journey, I'd imagined that the surface of the earth would feel enormous. Cer-
tainly, we've earned every mile we've traveled—sitting on the floors of train stations, waiting on windy
piers, muddling through border checks. And by no means do I wish to make our voyage sound effortless,
because that's far from the case.
Still, the most surprising revelation of the trip so far is that the world seems relatively conquered. Even
without a plane, you can get between any two populated regions with comparative ease and quickness. We
could have gone westward overland from D.C. to Tokyo in about thirteen days, maybe less, if we'd com-
mitted to a flat-out sprint. Japan is in actuality a lot closer than I'd thought it was. As of this moment, the
world seems smaller —and, as a result, more connected and fragile—than it did before we left home.
Yet this sense of smallness is misleading, too. In truth, we haven't gone halfway around the world. We
haven't really covered much of the globe at all. We've been zooming along in the middle latitudes of the
Northern Hemisphere, where the sphere is narrower. We haven't dipped far enough south to feel the earth's
true bulk.
We could hop on a freighter out of Yokohama Harbor tomorrow, continue our wussy Northern Hemi-
sphere jaunt, and arrive in Los Angeles ten days from now. But that would be cheating. To fully understand
the size of this planet, we need to halt our eastward momentum. The time has come for us to hang a sharp
right turn and start crossing some latitudes instead of just longitudes.
FOR a 100 percent no-messing-around, officially recognized circumnavigation of the earth, you must ac-
complish three things: 1) Start and end in the same place. 2) Cross every line of longitude moving in the
same direction. 3) Touch two antipodal points.
Antipodal points are two points that are diametrically opposite each other on the earth's surface. The
most obvious example of a pair of antipodal points is the North and South Poles. Hitting antipodal points
eliminates opportunities for circumnavigational funny business, because it forces you to make a “great
circle.” A great circle divides the surface of a sphere into halves. (The most obvious example here is the
equator.) Without the antipodal requirement, you could cross every line of longitude without covering a
significant distance. For instance, imagine two adventurers racing to complete a circumnavigation: One