When Abandoning is the Best Decision
Shizo san quickly recognized the orange taste in his mouth, it was a strange orange salty taste though. He was exhausted and could not well remember where he was. His eyelids weighted like two stones but managed to open them enough to realize he was in a room. There were two blonde-haired gentlemen staring at him. He quickly closed his eyes to try to understand the where and the why. Shizo Kanakuri, born in Tamana (Japan) in 1891, was one of the two Japanese athletes in the 1912 Olympics in Stockholm. The first ever Japanese expedition to the sports festival. He was a marathon runner and an incredible 1911 mark in the Japan trials had catapulted him into the big Swedish event. The trip from Japan to the Nordic country had taken 17 days, first by boat to Russia and then by rail through the Tran Siberian route to the final destination. These had been two difficult weeks of training, first running laps around the boat and second running on the Russian rail stations every time the...