Dex was my dump stat

Warning: If the stories of other people sustaining non-serious, but slightly cringe-worthy injuries bothers you, please stop reading here!

It started out just a day or so in to the trip. Not sure exactly what I did, but best I can figure, I strained an outer tendon of my left ankle. Never happened to me before in my entire life. But boy it hurt. Especially with all the walking we were doing. And, of course it happened before our skiing day in Hokkaido! For those to have never experienced this before, it's like a burning and pinching sensation every time you have to move that tendon. Which, when you're walking everywhere, is a lot. I had big boots and after some experimentation, found that the most comfortable solution was to undo them and loosen the top portion as much as was possible. But, there was still a fair bit of limping. I also bought 'leg cooling sheets' from a convenience store that helped to relax the area a bit, but caused the skin in the area to burn because my boots had chaffed the skin a bit. But, we moderated our walking level a bit and my ankle is now feeling just fine. We did briefly consider buying different shoes that wouldn't press against the area with every step, but weren't able to find any appropriate ones in an acceptable price range. And, it turns out that a ski boot tightens perfectly on the foot below the tendon and on the muscle above it, so walking/skiing in ski equipment turned out to be MORE comfortable than just plain walking was.

Then, I dropped a ceramic anime character mug on my right foot. Luckily, after some therapeutic exclamations, hopping, and rubbing, it turned out that neither the foot nor the mug was worse for wear.

Not sure if it was starting out with such a persistent annoying injury that just brought the rest of them to the forefront, but the next three weeks involved a disproportionate amount of exclamations as the result of minor injuries.

It got me kind of paranoid. So I started noticing a lot of little things. Which resulted in me almost always seeing those little steps that cities invariably have. You know the ones. They aren't very big so they kind of just blend in with the rest of the street. If you half-step on one it can easily lead to a twisted ankle or falling over and getting some bruises and scrapes. If you're lucky, your stomach just drops a bit or you bite your tongue with the sudden change of elevation. Well, as I said I have been seeing them, but Lance hasn't. And I haven't been seeing them soon enough to give any kind of useful early warning to him. Miraculously enough, the worst thing he's suffered from is a less than graceful stumble and hop as he kept walking on unscathed.

Now that we're on our last night in Japan, I thought we would be free and clear from further injury. We're both feeling a little sad to be leaving and returning home again, so I guess I subconsciously decided to leave part of myself here. A section of skin, about the size of a pea volunteered this evening. The skin started out on the third toe of my left foot, but when I stepped too far forward and then pulled the door open right over top of it, the skin mostly separated from the toe. After some inspection and consideration (and some colourful exclamations) I decided to completely separate said piece of skin and leave it behind. I've mostly stopped the bleeding. (Incidentally, do you know how hard it is to try to balance on one foot without using the aid of your toes? Just sayin'!)