Just before midnight on Thursday, January 29th, I arrived with my family in Asahi-mura, Nagano Prefecture. The little village was blanketed with about 40 centimeters of snow and the temperature was minus one degree Celcius. However, the sky was so clear, we could see stars all the way down to the mountainous horizon.

The 240-kilometer drive from Tokyo had been exhausting. All along the way, my six- and ten-yearold daughters had forced me to endure an endless loop of nursery songs on the car's audio cassette player. I was looking forward to finding our lodgings at a local ski resort and settling in to a deep sleep. After all, tomorrow was going to be big day. I was going to be carrying the Olympic flame as one of 1,100 torchbearers in a relay that had started in December 1997 in Greece and would end on February 7th with the opening of the 18th Winter Olympic Games in Nagano City.

I had begun my preparations for this tremendous occasion back in July, when I learned that my company, as an Olympic Sponsor, had been allotted ten torchbearer slots. Oddly enough, very few people in our office were interested in running, and I was happy to volunteer to participate in what I knew would be the experience of a lifetime. Almost from the very day I signed up for the honor, I began training. I swam a kilometer each day throughout the rest of the summer, then began jogging in September. I ran in a 5-kilometer race in Chicago in October, finishing with a time of 27'32", so I knew I was in condition to run my 1,600-meter segment of the relay in under ten minutes, as required by the organizers. The only hard part was maintaining my training regimen for the next three months, avoiding illness and injury. I wanted to be in top form.

The week before my scheduled run, I was staying at the Sheraton Kowloon in Hong Kong and had the opportunity for a "dress rehearsal." I ran two kilometers on a treadmill in the hotel's health club while carrying a two-kilogram dumbell to simulate the torch, which weighs 1.6 kilos when loaded with a full gas cannister. I found it would be impossible for me to hold the torch aloft with just one hand throughout the run, so I practiced switching the dumbell from hand to hand and discovered some comfortable positions for my wrist, elbow, and shoulder joints. It was easy enough to cover two kilometers in eleven minutes. I knew I was ready. And so did the other hotel guests who were exercising in the health club.

"Are you practicing for a torch relay?" one American woman asked me. I explained that I was going to be running for the Winter Olympics in Nagano. Then, much to my surprise, she told me about her own experience running in the relay for the U.S. Goodwill Games several years back. She said she had hardly even noticed the weight of the torch or the length of the run. She had been enthralled by the crowds of spectators who were cheering her on, especially small children who were so excited to see the flame pass by. "What I remember most," she said, "was wishing my part of the run had been longer."

The night before the run, I piled up my running clothes, all of which had been bought a few days before especially for the relay: new shoes, socks, underwear, training pants, a down vest, ski gloves, and an Olympic cap with my company's logo on it. Then, before going to sleep, I sat with my wife and children on the futon (Japanese floor bedding) and talked a bit about our family. We each ate a small macademia-nut chocolate, honoring my mother who lives in Hawaii, and drank a toast in honor of my deceased father, who had been an alcoholic during his lifetime. My wife and I each drank a straight shot of vodka. My ten-yearold had a thimbleful, which she said burned on the way down, and my little one licked a drop from the tip of my finger and made a funny face (before asking for more!). As we performed this ritual, I explained that we are each torchbearers. We carry the flame of life that our parents have given us, and we pass that flame on to our children. I'm sure this story was lost on the girls, but my wife certainly understood. Honoring one's ancestors is a deep part of Japanese culture.

Warmed inside by the vodka, I slept soundly that night and woke quite early on the morning of January 30th. The sky was a perfectly cloudless blue and the temperature was still hovering around zero. I had determined to shave off my moustache for the relay, so as soon as my daughters were awake, I had them each use my manicure scissors to clip a bit of moustache off, then I shaved clean, the first time my face had been bare in nearly a dozen years. I was a bit concerned that my daughters might be shocked by the change. That's why I had them help me trim the hair off. But as it was, they scarcely noticed the difference. Their father was still their father, and they were getting hungry.

We dressed, packed, and drove off to the Asahi-mura town hall, where the relay organizers were waiting for us with o-bento (box lunches). I met one of the other torchbearers, a CBS newsman from Atlanta who had come all the way to Japan just for this run. I would be carrying the flame first, from the town limits to the next runner, a local high school student, who would in turn bring it to the town hall for a ceremony. The CBS man would then run the flame to the other edge of the town where a new segment would begin for a different village. The stage was being set for a ceremony as we talked and ate. In front of the town hall, a huge mound of snow was piled up, carved and colored in the form of a "snowlet," the official mascot of the Nagano Olympics. It was clear that this was a major event for Asahi-mura. There would be TV crews and reporters on hand to cover every step of the relay.