Fat Bob

Diary

They called him Fat Bob before he'd earned a single pound of it, and by the time he stood atop Mount Koriyoka he'd made it his life's ambition to prove the name prophetic, one dumpling and one bad decision at a time. He'd gone up there chasing some old bushido notion about solitude clearing the mind, tried to reconnect with the discipline his sword-hand had long since traded for a bag of shrooms and a bag of chips, and somehow the meditation session drifted into a public act nobody asked to witness, least of all the mountain. He found the whole experience distinctly uninspiring, less spiritual awakening and more a soggy anticlimax with a view, and swears his mojo actually left his body and rolled down the slope like a rugged NFT floor price. Now he tells the story at every tavern from here to Edo, laughing loudest at himself, because a man built like a temple bell learns early that dignity is just another thing you can lose weight on. Underneath the jokes, though, there's still a flicker of the old warrior who once meant it when he said discipline, and he's still, hopelessly, comically, trying to get it back.