It was 21 years ago that PSU Assistant Athletic Director for Sports Medicine Jim Wallis made his first trip to Japan, a trip that changed his life.

That trip to talk to the forerunner of the Japan Athletic Trainers Association for Certification (JATAC) led to a globetrotting career he couldn't have imagined would be in his future.

It all started in 1994 when Milan Svoboda, then chair of the PSU School of Exercise Science, was invited to make a presentation in Japan.  His presentation was enthusiastically received and he was asked to return to do a second talk on athletic training.

He suggested they ask Wallis, who had been PSU's athletic trainer for six years at that point.  And, they did.    

"So, the best way to be an 'expert' is to be from somewhere else.  I was just a nobody athletic trainer from Portland, Oregon, but since I was an outsider, they assumed I was important…an 'expert'," recalled Wallis of this first trip.     

Kenzo Kase, the inventor of a new kind of tape and taping technique called Kinesio taping, was in the audience. "Since I was supposed to be this big time international 'expert', he asked me if I would consider promoting his tape and taping method around the world, in addition to my job at PSU," Wallis said.  He still remembers being wined and dined "like never before or since".     

It was a bit of a gamble, he admits.  The tape and taping method were unproven, "but I decided it was potentially a great opportunity."  And, so it proved.     

Over the next decade, Wallis introduced Kinesio taping in Australia, Portugal, Spain, Germany, France, Italy, England, Scotland, Canada…as well as parts of Japan.  He did indeed become an international expert.  And, the tape and taping method proved effective and popular.     

"I'd take my vacation to go put on an introduction, have my then wife (he's a widower) and son join me and we'd travel around where I'd done the introduction," he said.  In that manner, Wallis discovered the wonders of traveling which he still does every chance he gets.     

This last year, he made two working trips to Japan.  He vacationed in Germany and used the excuse of a plane stopover in Iceland to spend a couple of days in its capital city of Reykjavik.  This coming year, he plans to get married (fiancé:  Barbara, a school psychologist in the Portland Public Schools) in Paris…in April, of course.  His son Kyle and wife Jordin and 18-month-old grandson William and Barbara's two daughters, Jessica and her husband Ricky and Hannah (who is living in Germany) will also be there for the event.     

His trips to Japan last year, however, were anything but fun.  Both times, he left on Thursday and returned on Monday, which included 20 hours in the air and no chance to adjust to time differences.    

In September, Wallis spoke again to the JATAC on rehabbing athletes during a season.  He used a PSU freshman volleyball player as an example of successfully doing that during a period when college trainers are seeing more freshmen athletes arriving from high school with incompletely healed injuries.     

"If they've had a season-ending injury, they're done for the year, but many are of shorter duration and you want to rehab them and get them playing again safely that season.  With kids right out of high school, you find there was often an injury that sort of went away without serious rehabbing.  But, suddenly they're in a situation where there is double or triple the workload and the old injury flares up.  Our job is to figure out what the old injury was, rehab it and the player back to his or her sport," he said.     

His second trip to Japan was in November.  He spoke for the sixth or seventh time (he doesn't remember exactly) to the 30th Annual Kinesio Association Meeting.      

Without the support of the various PSU administrations he's worked under and the PSU coaching staffs and athletic training staff members, none of this would have been possible, he said.  For example, his first trip to Japan in 1994 was during football season and he had to get permission from the Head PSU Football Coach Tim Walsh to have an assistant cover for him while he was gone.      

His second trip last November was during basketball season "and Tyler (Geving) allowed me to go.  One of my graduate assistants covered for me in Texas and, coming back, I flew straight from Japan (through Seattle) to Reno and joined the team there.  I've also got to give a special shout out to my staff (three full-time, one part-time athletic trainers and four graduate assistants) because they've had to cover for me."     

That's happening less these days because the number of "experts" in Kinesio taping has multiplied greatly.  And, at age 57, Wallis is glad of that.     

"The first time I thought it was a one-time deal. It was serendipitous. It changed my whole life. You never know," he said looking back.