While learning a language there are words that I've come across at that become crystalized in early vocabulary. They come to me a times where there's a better word suited, but it demands to recognition, and this is one of those words.
I learned about "Daikichi" when I was taking the Shinkansen with a friend from Tokyo to Osaka to visit his family. The sandwich I bought  had a little tab in the packaging that showed the kanji and romaji "Daikichi." It means great blessings, or best luck as my friend told me. 
Luck, blessings, fortunes are on a sliding scale in a way, they change as time moves, they go up and down depending on when you receive them. There’s a ritual of receiving fortune slips that speak to your fortune at the time. These are either held onto and returned when you’re ready for your next dose, or tied up outside of shrines and temples for the winds to take. 
There are a handful of words that go with kichi to indicate where it’s at, middle, low, and Daikichi is the top. When I found the concept it was my first time spending a long stretch of time in Japan. It was the start of a two and half year period where I would be coming and going from Japan setting up workflow for Edwin Arthur’s. Over the first two months I made the fundamental connections that have supported me and helped guide me to where I'm at now. 
Since learning about "Daikichi" I've gotten other "Omikuji" - fortune slips and my fortune levels have changed. It's part of life, either a reflection of how we see ourselves, or perhaps how the world is seeing us when we ask for some recognition. Traditionally you pull your fortune from a large container of Omikuji and pull out whichever is meant for you, but sometimes they come in less expected places like the non reserved car of the Shinkansen traveling with an old friend. 

It was somewhere in the first year of the brand I learned the phrase "Tabi no Tochu desu." At the time I wasn't living anywhere full time, but then I was living at a friends office in Sendagaya. During the day I would go out into the city to find places and ways to occupy myself. I was always meeting people and connecting with different places around Tokyo. I'd started conversations with the sock manufacturers, and just finished samples to fine tune the pattern for our first T-Shirt. 

In the evening I'd come back to the office and unfold the mattress stored in the the closet and call this place home. One night my friend was at the office late and had his pals over. It was when my Japanese was still pretty transactional, so often when people around me would get into chats I'd just try to catch words and see what I could understand, then occasionally my buddy would break and fill me in. 

It's a curious place to be, not a tourist, not a local, and lines of a favorite blues tune, "I'm a stranger here, I'm stranger everywhere, I'd go home, but I'm a stranger there." kicked around with me like an old friend. Sometime in the conversation they were having the subject turned to me and what I was up to. Sometimes you don't need to know the words to get the context of a conversation, especially when it turns to you. 

After some chin scratching, my friend told his buddies, "Tabi no Tochu desu," and shortly after told me its meaning. He said it would be an interesting, kind of mysterious way to tell Japanese people what I'm doing. Tabi means journey, and by extension, Tabibito means traveler. Tochu means to be on the way, or in the middle of something. Together it means I'm in the middle of a journey, or I haven't arrived at my final destination. 

It took me ages to learn the simple phrase, and longer to use it with confidence. At the time I learned it I would always struggle, even in English, to explain what I was doing because I didn't know where it was going. A few years ago I would snark at the idea of starting some sort of brand expression, but we don't realize the journey we're on while we're on it sometimes. We don't know when the journey starts sometimes, but I knew when I heard "tabi no tochu desu," that I was in fact in the middle of it. 

There's a hope we're doing our best, it's not something to definitively know we did, only  something we feel about ourselves, the options we had, and those we took. I love the concept of a word that is solely for expressing this concept. Ganbaru, ganbatte, gambarimasho, and the other variants of the verb are used to encourage ourselves and others that there's always a best we can strive towards in our interaction with life.

I can't place when I learned the word, but I remember really getting in the swing of using it while climbing Mt. Fuji a few summers back. A friend and I buggered our departure from Tokyo and arrived past noon at the start of the hike. It's a long series of switchbacks at the beginning and it seemed like there were a thousand people on the trail. We were ambitious to climb it and get back to the last bus by 6:30, so from the jump we were at a hurried pace. 

By the time we reached the middle section it only felt like a couple hundred people were climbing. The switchbacks were shorter and steeper until we hit the middle third of the climb. At this point there was a bit of scrambling and chain, perfectly suited for a billy goat, and then it felt like maybe 50 people were climbing. 

All along the trail we'd call out "ganbatte," do your best, to people we passed and other encouragements. When we reached the section where people spend the night in little capsule like yurts so they can summit with the sunrise, we pressed on, and it seemed like there were only 10 of us climbing. The trail turned to long, steep switchbacks, and at some point my friend turned back. 

As I reached signs that read 750m, 500m, and so on, each step felt like an accomplishment, and then it was only me climbing. There wasn't anyone to say ganbatte to, only myself. 

When I reached the summit I had. a few minutes to catch my breath and take in the view. There was a little over an hour to descend. From the top there's a long stretch of the patch filled with volcanic stone that slides away under your feel. With loose rock like that you can let your stride go and sort of glide down. The stone turned to soft earth, and trees lined the trail that was once quite barren. 

I reached the base with enough time to buy a tenegui from the gift store and a beer for the bus ride back. During the ride to the station my brain and body weren't talking to each other, and I watched the trees get denser as I overheard others on the bus talking about their best efforts of the day. All ages and walks of life take the opportunity to climb Mt. Fuji, it's not necessarily a difficult climb, but it does require your best effort, whatever that means.