Back in my hotel room something on my bookcase caught my eye. The corner of a magazine was poking out from under some larger books, there was a picture of a high school girl but she looked strangely… not like a high school girl. I pulled the magazine out. The cover had six high school girls all looking rather sheepish.
“OK,” I thought, “this is either a brochure for school uniforms or…” I opened it up. Naked girls filled pages. Explicit but censored in that way Japan insists on – no pubic hair ever: the result of people sitting in warehouses spending their unhappy lives airbrushing it out.
I looked at the cover again, it was called Mekiru, and then in English it said, “Make it love.” I checked the date, it was August 2008, that was next month! As in this was the newest edition, not some mangy old magazine a previous guest had left years ago, this was up to the minute cutting edge pornography.
And the strangest thing was that I was pretty sure it hadn’t been there the day before. It was lying under the hotel information booklet – which I had looked through when I arrived.
This was very odd. Had the kindly old cleaner from this morning left me a present? Had she thought, “Oh he’s a young man all alone, I’ll get him something to keep him going.” Or maybe it was all part of the service - perhaps there is a rule among Japanese hoteliers: If you cannot provide Pay For View pornography on the television then you must provide it in literature.
I looked through the stack of magazines and comics on the shelf wondering if there were any more surprises. A comic called, SON OF HITLER, provided a resounding YES to that query.
“What?” I said to Japan.
Yes, it was really SON OF HITLER. See.
I had a flick through, well you would wouldn’t you. It was not pro Nazi stuff, but seemed to be about a young Nazi who was either metaphorically, or really, the son of Hitler. He was getting up to some unpleasant stuff, branding swastikas on captive women chained to his wall, that kind of thing.
The copy I was holding was printed in 1962, it was old, maybe even an antique.
I came to Tottori to see the only desert in Japan, but that is an exaggeration by the tourist board. The desert is really just some big sand dunes on a beach with some imported camels to star in people’s holiday snaps.
However, before setting out I wanted to do some laundry. On the map of the hotel was a little space marked “Coin Laundry” and it’s not for washing coins. The confusingly divided each floor in two without explaining where they joined up.
I followed the map but seemed to cross an invisible threshold from hotel into house. There were ornaments and trinkets, piles of laundry on the floor. I found a washer, and a drier, but neither had any kind of coin slot, just towels and men’s shirts. I crept out again feeling like an accidental intruder.
It was baking outside at around 33 degrees and there I was making my way to a desert.
The bus from Tottori station to the sand dunes is 20 minutes of glorious air-conditioning before you get out, climb some steps and the view opens up to this
Sand and the bluest sea I had seen for a long a time. This might sound like just a beach but the difference is the sand dunes: they are enormous, like hills.
Everyone was climbing the largest dune and I followed suit.
The view was stunning. The sea was calm like an enormous mirror lying flat across the earth and. A small island poked out from the sea to make the view even more idyllic.
A man was sitting under a blue and white striped parasol. He was alone among sea and sand, the rest of us were just passing through.
I thought he would be meditating or composing Haiku but no, he was listening to horse racing on a radio.
The sand dunes feature strange horizontal lines made by the wind.
On the way back to the road a Japanese woman walking in the opposite direction called me over. “Sumimasen,” I forget what she said next because I didn’t understand a word. She pointed at the sand. Ahh, I twigged. “This pattern?” I asked pointing to the lines in the sand. She nodded. “Over there, there are lots,” I tried to say. She bowed and dutifully walked in the direction I had pointed.
I was pretty surprised that she would even think I could understand such a specific question, I mean I was expecting her to ask about toilets, not something that I’d find hard to describe in my own language. Maybe I looked Japanese to her from a distance; I must have got the walk right.
There was a sand museum, and doesn’t that sound boring. They should have called it, “The Giant Sand Reconstructions of Famous Places Museum” but I guess the sign would have been too expensive.
The ticket was just 300 yen (£1.50) which is pretty cheap, even though it is just sand.
It was a collection of about 13 sand recreations of ancient world heritage sights, mostly from Asia and the Middle East. It was pretty good and I only partly wanted to jump over the rope and destroy the Great Wall of China like a giant in shorts.
After the museum I got the bus back to Tottori and had a shower at my hotel. This was my usual habit, then I would fall asleep and wake up too late to do anything else. This happened today too. By the time I got out again at 4:50PM the gardens and French Villa were shut and they were all I wanted to see.
There is a 100yen loop bus which drives around Tottori, a red line one and a blue. I got on a red one for no particular reason. I was looking through the Tottori information booklet, which reads more like a Geography textbook: “Tottori is the 10th biggest agricultural centre in the whole San’in region and eighth biggest industrial…” yawn. But it did mention a park near a forest with no closing time so I got off at that stop.
It was a beautiful spot with lakes of gaping carp and well trodden paths endlessly curving into the forest where herds of joggers run wild and free. Herd is the wrong word for joggers; they are naturally solitary creatures. Sure they all get together for a marathon but after 10 minutes they’re trying to get away from each other. The joggers in the park were from a school sports team with their coach.
So there was me, joggers and then retired people. This latter group kept walking in the opposite direction and saying hello, which is something I’m not used to. In the small village I live in back home people do the same, and it freaks me out there too. I know people are just being friendly but sometimes they sound like they’re trying to prove something, like “I’ve got a dog and you haven’t, that’s why I’m so much better than you.”
On my walk I took time to think about my trip so far: 18 days old. I had to admit that I was getting lonely and exhausted by moving around so much. Thoughts of home made me excited to be returning so soon, but at the same time miserable that it was all ending. After all the reunions are over, my rucksack empty and the pictures shown I can imagine myself sitting, looking sadly at the walls I left for adventure a year and a half earlier.
Travelling, I decided, is just an invitation for things to miss. It may be places or people, or the things you lost on the way.
Yet hey, this is life and it is not without effort. It took effort to get here and find those things to miss. It will take a lot of effort to restart my old life and make it seem fresh again. But in the interim between Japan and the rest I will squeeze all of the names of the places and people I have met into one breath – a sigh.
This was what I thought whilst walking through the forests of Tottori on the 18th day of my journey. Only lost men do not look ahead.
After checking out of my hotel I boarded the bus bound for Nagoya. It was a return trip for me, I’d come from Nagoya to get to Hida Takayama and now I was going through Nagoya again to go West to Tottori and continue my journey through Japan.
After three hours on the bus I got the Shinkansen from Nagoya to a place called Himeji and then a rapid train to Tottori. I discovered later that Himeji itself is well worth seeing outside of train station platform 7. It has one of the best castles in Japan. Oh well.
At Himeji when I got off the Shinkansen and changed to a normal train something strange happened. I had been given three tickets for my complete journey but I couldn’t make head nor tail of what each one was actually for. The Shinkansen ticket gates are pretty sophisticated though, so you can bung in all your tickets and let the machine sort it out for you.
However, when I put in the first of my tickets the normally open barrier made a noise and then shut – a sign that it was not happy. My ticket came out again, but at the other side. I was about to reach over and reclaimed it when one of the station workers snatched it and ran away.
He ran with Shankensen like speed, to a suited man who had gone through the ticket gate just before me.
“Sumimasen,” as in excuse me, I called out, “it’s my ticket.”
The suited man shook his head at the ticket he was being returned, and that he had never seen before. I called out again in the loudest voice I could muster but the station man seemed to be deaf to my cries. He was now asking all the other people coming through if my ticket was theirs, which didn’t even make sense. As more people shook their heads at him he became more earnest to find the ticket its home but still stupid enough not to hear my calling for his attention.
Getting desperate I was about to put my two remaining tickets into the machine when another station person came over. He seemed to exist in a plain of being more similar to my own, i.e. he could hear me.
I showed him my tickets but his brow suggested that there was something a miss. “Oh sod this,” I thought and since the barrier had now gone back up I ran through and caught the man still trying to give away my ticket. “It’s mine,” I said and took it from him. He seemed disappointed by this solution, like a knight who arrives to find that the princess has rescued herself.
They kept one of my tickets and finally let me go.
The train to Totorri had a TV at the front of each carriage tuned to a camera on the front of the train. It seemed a bit pointless since you can just look out the windows but I bet it keeps kids happy. The only time the TV showed anything particularly different was when we came out from long tunnels. The sunshine was so bright that the camera couldn’t adjust quickly enough to the change. From the tunnel’s darkness the screen lit up a blazing white like we had driven off the edge of the page and into
Soon rain clouds gathered to filter the sunshine and I took a picture of this cloud, it seemed like a good idea at the time.
In Tottori the tourist info booth gave me a map, a leaflet and a bus timetable. It was raining torrentially outside, but at least it was warm rain with that distinctive smell.
I took out my travel umbrella; it’s ridiculously small so good for fitting in bags but not good for much else. For instance I have to decide whether I want to protect myself or my backpack: it can’t cover both. But still it has protected me longer than any other umbrella in Japan; even my fish umbrella eventually swam away :(
There was a hotel where there should be my hotel, but I couldn’t read the kanji on its sign. I went in and was about to ask what the name of the hotel was when the woman behind the counter said: “Heavy rain isn’t it.” “Yes…” “Two nights, is that right?” “Yes” “8000 yen please”
It was so smooth and simple that asking any questions would have broken a perfect moment. It was the right number of nights at the right price, who cared if it was the wrong hotel.
Where the other hotel had been full of plants and aphids this one was full of manga: Japanese comics. It was piled up on all possible shelves and horizontal spaces, even going up alongside the stairs.
I turned the key in the lock of room 307, the door was now locked. I turned it the other way and the door opened for me. It was the biggest room yet, two beds, bath, shower, TV. It was at least 3 times bigger than my Nagoya room, maybe 4. I was happy.
I showered, changed and set out for food. The rain had stopped falling but was now hanging humidly in the air making me feel sticky. Tottori seemed like a small town but its shopping streets were long and disjointed. I found 3 Lawson convenience stores and a bank: I was settled, that was all I needed.
I was waiting to cross a road when I heard a quiet voice say, “Hey man.” I looked around not sure if I had really heard it or not.
An American guy on a bike waiting to cross in the other direction turned out to exist and be the owner of the voice. “Hello,” I said. We shook hands, his name was Jay, mine was Nick. “What brings you here?” he asked me. Annoyingly and facetiously I answered him with, “A train,” then quickly continued, “I’m here to see the sand dunes. How about you?” “I live here,” he paused, “it’s always interesting to see a foreign face.”
He pointed out that our lights had turned green but we both hesitated. I was lonely; I wanted someone to talk to. He was friendly and clearly interested in meeting other foreigners. But I crossed my road and he crossed his – we were both too shy to make the first move toward continuing the conversation.
I was annoyed with myself, I was just looking around, any direction would have done. I guess I will never know more about Jay of Tottori, well, unless I ask Google. He probably has a blog where he recounts his tales at length and overuses words like probably, pretty, maybe, as etc.
As I walked away, I thought it was probably pretty likely we could meet again maybe.
He was speaking over a tannoy system that I hadn’t heard before. He didn’t sound like the sleepy man from the day before, he sounded like a drill sergeant. “506 has gone, 208 has gone,” he called out. He didn’t call my number but he nearly did, “402, no, 403.” I was safe.
It sounded a bit like a TV show. Perhaps this hotel was so cheap because there was a ravenous monster capable of jumping through walls and devouring guests at whim. The room numbers being read out were the ones whose occupants hadn’t made it through the night. Well anyway, I felt bullied by the voice and the cleaners who barge in. I got dressed and left.
I was planning to finish the walk I started yesterday, but before that go to see Shokugawa Go, a rural village further into the mountains with a Unesco World Heritage collection of old farmhouses.
It cost £20 to get there and I was immediately disappointed. The place was not that scenic, I was hoping it would be high up in the mountains but no, it was in a valley like Takayama. I guess that’s not surprising when you see how steep the mountains are in Japan.
There was a long bridge leading into the village.
The whole place was jam packed with tourists. I crossed the bridge and bought an ice cream, I wandered to the back of the village where a narrow road led into the mountain.
Licking my ice cream I walked slowly up the road and into the welcome shade of tall cedar trees. Within seconds there were no tourists in sight, barely any sound too besides the birds and insects.
I turned back to look at the World Heritage site I had walked straight through.
Apart from the threat of speedy cars coming around the tree lined bends and killing me, it was a peaceful walk. It was still not what I wanted; I wanted to walk up, amongst the trees, rather than along roads. I found a path into the forest, or as near as I was going to get - it was just tyre tracks. They rose steeply up the slope and I rose wearily with them.
As I got deeper into the trees the screeching of insects seemed more insidious. The heat was getting to me and I could feel my checks turning a fiery red, the kind that takes at least an hour in an air-conditioned room to bring back to my natural pale.
I sat on the grass to rest. My romantic notions about a walk in the forest were fading into shadows: this was not like a Ghibli film, or the forests of Rashomon. This was more like a forest that wanted you to get out, owned by the invisible with their screeches and clicks as loud as cars but all around.
Still, it was a unique atmosphere for me. I considered taking a photograph but it wouldn’t have expressed the place. I made a recording instead and here it is.
I headed back to the road.
It got even narrower, still a road rather than a footpath but if a car came I would have a hard time giving it right of way.
The road/path began to slope upwards and bend around the edge of the mountain. The view through the trees was improving and I was surprised to see how far I had come.
A few abandoned tractors sat amongst the trees and every now and then a driveway to a house would bud off from my road, but I didn’t see anyone at all. I did see lots of mosquitoes though; one in particular seemed to catch up with me whenever I stopped walking. Invisible spider webs broke around my arms but they may have just been paranoia and my arm hairs tickling each other
Another path led prettily up into a grassy area of the mountain and I started treading that way. Then I remember that Japan has snakes and suddenly the tarmac road seemed again more inviting.
The road ended, literally, next to some paddy fields.
It was a pretty idyllic setting and made a good end to the walk.
I headed back to the Unesco World Heritage site that I had ignored and caught the bus back to Takayama.
Some time later I was back in my hotel room, and asleep. Some time after that and I was waking up and looking at my watch in surprise. Again I had slept longer than intended, again I set out to finish the Hida Takayama walk in the fading light.
The dog that had barked at me so ravenously was sitting quietly this time as if it were not on duty yet.
With a fast pace I entered the trees and was immediately confronted by another confusing two directional sign.
I went one way, which felt wrong and so turned back and found the right way. The path went up through a temple where there was no one about. It pointed up some steps and then pow, a vague sign if ever there was one. The arrow pointed downwards but it made sense to be either backwards or forwards. I tried backwards but that seemed to be wrong so I went forwards, that seemed to be wrong too. I went backwards and little further and found a signpost. The next destination of my map seemed to be an Amusement Park and thankfully the signpost mentioned this place too.
The walked seemed even more Zen now, like a lesson being whispered in my ear by the wind and the trees, “you can only know the right way once you walked the wrong.”
The “amusement park” was a run down kids’ play area. Amusement park was a bad translation, amusing park would have been better as you could laugh at its lameness. Still I played on the climbing frame to vent my frustration with who ever designed this walk.
I found some steps that I will never know if they were the right way or not. It seemed that the people who so eagerly filled the first part of the walk with signs could not be bothered to walk up the hill and continue there.
A choice of left or right confronted me, both seemed wrong. I chose right and ran along the forest path, racing the fading sunlight.
It soon came to a clearing with a big map. Every single one of the place names on the map was different to those on my tourist map, it was aggravating. But, one patch of green on my map looked a lot like a patch of green on the other. “Honmaru,” it said and there were signs pointing the way.
There was also a public toilet, which according to its sign was either unisex or for some man-woman half creature. Anyway, the toilet had everything: air conditioning, a sink, mirrors, a light but no light switch. I looked around trying to find it, I even tried clapping and something scuttled in response.
Perhaps there was a reason not to use the light.
I ran towards Honmaru, stopping every hundred metres or so to check the next sign, it felt like the Crystal Maze.
Eventually I was there, the end of the walk. The lights of Takayama were below me and finally I saw another friendly two arrowed walk sign. “Where were you when I needed you,” I shouted.
Feeling at ease now I looked around the area a bit. I found a place called Ohte Mon. Mon means gateway and there were two huge stone walls with a grassy patch between them where a gate used to be.
It was eerie in the near dark, the walls looked like the clenched fists of some dead giant. It was stone quiet now but I felt as though I should be able to hear the clinks of past swords and the murmurs of the people who once travelled through this place. I didn’t stay long.
Back in the city I was in a different part of Takayama, a more pretty part with old houses and the main temple. A full moon shone over the river and stone lanterns stood at the side of the road.
At that moment I realised that I really wanted to get out of Takayama. Sure the stone lanterns were nice but they somehow reminded me of how much I disliked the place. It was hot, full of tourists, the walks were confusing, the restaurants unfriendly and the hotel people mean.
I was leaving the next day, and looking forward to it.
My day started at 10am when a cleaner burst into my room. She didn’t even knock, her philosophy must be, “Why knock when you have the key?” I was half sleeping at the time, the kind of sleep where you keep looking at the clock to see that what felt like hours of drifting of sleep were just minutes in real time.
I wasn’t in any state of undress so I just looked at her confused. She said, “Oh, what about cleaning?”
“It’s ok not to clean today,” I said and she left.
This hotel is a little odd, they demand that you leave your key at the desk when you go out but they get annoyed when you actually do that. Sometimes they hide the keys under boards with Japanese kanji scrawled over them. The first time this happened I had no idea what the board said or even what it might say so I rang the bell for assistance. It’s a classic bash it on the top silver bell but it seems to be muffled by something so just makes an emasculating clunk noise.
A sleepy guy came out from around the corner and grunted so I took the key, “I can’t read kanji,” I explained pointing to the boards half apologetically but he was already plodding back to his sofa.
Hida no Sato is a collection of old houses rescued from different parts of Hida. Why would you rescue a house you may wonder. Because of a dam is my guidebook’s reply. They rescued about 30 houses, shrines etc, took them apart and built them again to make a village museum called Hida no Sato.
As soon as you walk in through the ticket gate you know it was worth coming. A large pond lies at the front of the village with the houses doting the grassy slopes behind. A solitary swan floats in the water, its reflection floating beneath just as vividly. A stream flowing down the mountain powers a water wheel that makes oddly familiar creaking noises.
I was taking pictures of all this when a woman wearing a name badge said to me, “Free photo service for your camera.” She had spoken to me in English but I still thought, “What?” Then I realised she was offering to take a picture of me using my camera, for free. “No it’s ok,” I said.
This might sound like a terrible stereotype but Asian people love taking pictures of themselves, their friends and family in famous places. It seems strange to me because I know what I look like and I go to places to see them, not what I look like with them behind me. On the other hand you may well ask what is the point of just taking generic pictures of places, when there are already so many in existence. I guess the answer is the hope that you can take a picture that is different to all the rest and reflects your individual journey, without you actually needing to appear in it. Or something.
The leaflet I was given detailed a strict route around the houses. Though no one else seemed to be following it.
The first house had a great smokey smell from a small fire burning inside. The descriptions were very detailed on this: the fire not only added atmosphere but kept the house dry and the ropes holding up the roof tight.
There were big houses, small houses, houses with two or even three floors, large tatami rooms, enormous family shrines and one with a bored looking woman sewing things for the gift shop. She kept sighing and I wanted to sit down in front of her and say, “Tell me your life story,” but I didn’t as that phrase isn’t in my phrasebook.
One house had this in.
I didn't
So it was beautiful and interesting. The view of the mountains was good too. It looked like snow in the distance but it might just be rock.
In summary it was like Heidi.
After returning to the hotel, eating and sleeping I ventured out into the heat again to do the Hida Takayama walking tour. My town map from the tourist information office included this walk and its many places to start from.
The nearest starting point was at the cemetery I visited the day before. I walked up the steep steps to the shrine, already sweating. I was looking for any sign of the walk but there were none. I walked down two wrong paths and then surveyed my map again.
Retracing my steps, quite a lot of them, I found the official beginning of the walk. In a Zen like way it was also the end of the walk and as such all of the signs pointing the way showed two directions.
The first part of the walk took me through about eight shrines. One after another they came as the walk kept turning left and right through Japanese gardens, over little bridges, down steps, along the street to the next shrine. It was so random that I thought it might end up going into someone’s house, up the stairs, out the bathroom window and over the roof of the next house.
After shrine land the walk went along streets that gradually became narrower and narrower. They were the kind of streets where, if it wasn’t for the walk, residents would wonder why on earth I was there.
In the heat most of the houses had open doors where, walking passed, you got tiny glimpses into people’s lives. The smell of food, the clattering of plates, women talking outside the back door, dogs barking, children watching anime.
I got lost in the atmosphere of the walk and eventually realised that I was actually lost too. The light was fading.
I found a shop selling remote control helicopters and planes. I nervously slid open the door and asked for directions. The man behind the counter puzzled over my map and then took me outside to explain the way – which was backwards.
He spoke good English and told me that he used to be a pilot. There were lots of countries he had planned on visiting like America, England, Australia and Russia. We both agreed that Russia would be pretty hard to visit and stared at the floor for a moment. He asked me where I was going next and I struggled to remember Shokugawa Go, but we got there in the end. He mentioned a local scandal: someone had sold some bad meat in town.
We were conversing pretty well and I wondered whether he would ask me if I wanted to eat dinner. “Have you tried the ramen yet?” he asked me.
“Actually, no. I’m a vegetarian.”
“Ahhh,” his face fell, but he did say that it was a healthy way to live.
I thanked him and headed back. I wondered if it was the normal occupation of ex-pilots to open model shops, or maybe it was just his way of keeping his tie with the skies. He didn’t seem that old, he had a youthfulness about him so I think he’ll make it to his dream destinations. Perhaps my visit to him will have reminded him of the joy of travelling or encouraged him that foreigners are not so foreign. Or maybe he will devoutly stay in Japan, “Vegetarians,” he will whimper at night hugging his blanket. “They’re real.”
The light was fading fast as I hurriedly retraced my steps. I didn’t know how many to retrace though. A woman was stopping traffic to let high school students cross the road. It was about 7:30PM but many students stay late for sports training.
I showed her my map and asked her where I was but with the lack of light and the vague directions of the map she really wasn’t sure where I should go. The next point on the map was an obscure bridge somewhere or other. Two high school girls came along and joined in the map staring. Together they managed to figure out which route I should take.
“Go straight,” said one of the girls in English, much to the admiration of the others. She explained the way and drew a map too.
I set off again waving my thanks to them. I found the little bridge and then another sign pointing in two directions.
The direction it led me went up a steep hill and into some dark trees at the edge of a forest. I made my way up the hill to get a better look. A dog on a leash attached to a washing line ran at me barking viciously until it ran out of washing line to pull.
The path into the trees was just as dark up close as it looked from far away, I guess that’s how Physics works. The sensible part of my mind said I should head back to the hotel and try again tomorrow. The reckless part said I should go for it; I could use the light of my phone as a torch until the battery ran out. The sensible part retorted with two words, “Blair Witch,” and won the argument.
I found my way back into town and decided I should eat in a restaurant tonight. “Stop being such a coward,” I told myself.
I was looking for Tempura or Soba restaurants. I found one that advertised Soba but had pictures of ramen on the tiny menu outside. I stared, at the menu; it seemed to have only four choices: “Noodle Soba” big or small and “Beef soba” big or small. Thinking that there must be more choices inside I entered the restaurant.
It was horribly quiet, I was the only customer; I was either too early or too late.
There were actually only four choices. I chose noodle soba big but it turned out to be ramen with a big slab of meat on top.
I ate the vegetables beneath the meat while the husband and wife owners of the restaurant went back to watching TV and waiting for me to leave.
I finished quickly and got an ice cream from a convenience store. “Ahh convenience store food, I love you,” I said to the shelves of pre-packaged goodness. And as ramen and Ice Cream danced the diminishing dance of digestion in my stomach, I slept.
Since I’m travelling through Japan you might expect me dream about the Buddha beckoning me down lonely roads, or giant Japanese cranes crossing mountains in single footsteps. Instead I dreamt about video games.
I was talking to a Japanese person, in my dream, who was telling me the ending to a scary survival horror game. As he described it I saw it vividly in my mind. He said that in game the last enemy had been a huge spider. On being defeated it disappeared into the floor and it was the end of the game.
The final boss of the second game in the series was a man of some sort and he also sank into the ground on defeat. But this time you got a closer look and actually he was falling into an enormous black pit. There, in the pit was also the spider from the first game but ten times larger than it used to be. In the dream I said, “Wow what a cool idea,” and as the image of the giant spider waiting in the pit re-emerged in my conscious mind I thought exactly the same thing.
Another dream I had that night took place on a big fairground ride. It was slowing down at the start of the dream but the man in control asked if we wanted to ride again at a new seeing that they were trying out. Everyone cried, “yeah,” in that overly enthusiastic way groups of people do. The ride started again and was notably faster. Gradually it became too fast and since I had no seatbelt on I felt myself being sucked out and was holding on for dear life.
When it stopped we got off breathless. Someone yelled and pointed to the floor. There were people who had nearly fallen out gripping onto the edge of the carriage, which was high above the ground. Susan from Neighbours was one of those people; she was trying to save herself from falling off the edge. Someone went to help her but she said something like, “I can’t be bothered with this anymore,” and promptly fell out of my dream. Perhaps I wasn’t paying her enough for a cameo.
Anyway, Hida Takayama is a smallish city about 3 hours by bus North of Nagoya. It is near a large area of mountains known as the Japanese Alps. I had decided to go there because I wanted to get out of the cities.
It’s always frustrating when from a bus or train window you see a place you’d really like to visit but have no idea where it is. For example, we passed this intriguing tower which I don’t think I will ever get to visit.
The scenery for the rest of the journey didn’t disappoint. There were whole ranges of tree covered mountains rising up around the road, which determinedly tunnelled through them. Wide shallow rivers flowed between the mountains, the water white with the chaos of rapids and rocks. A few fishermen stood equidistant from each other with optimistic baskets hanging from their arms.
Later the ground dropped far below the road and I realised we were on a huge bridge supported by pillars as high as office blocks.
Takayama city seemed to suddenly appear after the last tunnel. I looked at it from the bus window trying to gage hot it worked. Was it large? Did it have tramlines on the road and lots of convenience stores on the streets?
At the bus centre I rescued my rucksack from the bowels of the coach only to stuff it into a coin locker a moment later. I had an hour and a half to kill before I could check into my ultra cheap hotel: £15 a night ensuite! I was expecting it to be run by roaches, literally a large cockroach would be at the desk to greet me, wearing an apron and speaking such polite English that I would feel unable to mention that anything seemed strange. Then in the lift they would get me. “3500 yen a night,” they would chant in scratchy voices as the lift walls and doors broke apart to reveal themselves to be an army of camouflaged roaches, “you brought it upon yourself.” “It’s true,” I would sob as everything became green.
Jeez, you can tell I don’t have an editor can’t you.
The tourist information centre was a wooden hut in front of the station but as institutions inside huts go it was really amazing. The woman behind the window filled my map with crosses for the places I wanted to go to, she even knew where my hotel was.
I took to the streets but after 10 minutes I realised I had no money in my wallet and there were no 7/11 convenience stores to get any. I went back to the tourist information hut. “You’re back,” she said in surprise.
She confirmed my finding, no 7/11s at all. This was the first place I had been in Japan where this was true and it was a shock. Japan has more 7/11s than America; it would be like a town in the UK with no pubs.
She offered me a good solution, there was a place that did money exchanging and had lots of ATMS, another cross appeared on my map. Life proved her right, it was exactly what I needed, I felt like I should get her a card or something.
To waste more time I followed my map to a walk mentioned in my guidebook, the start appeared to be a cemetery with this toori gate marking a path to a shrine. It was a beautiful spot but I was too tired to start the walk so headed for my hotel.
I thought it was a flower shop at first, there were so many flowers and plants outside the entrance, and it didn’t help that it was next to a real flower shop.
The woman behind the counter was reassuringly human and gave me my key, 402. The lift was reassuringly lift like and stutteringly took me to the fourth floor. My usual hotel room hide and seek excitement couldn’t help but ignite as I found the door and put in my key.
The door opened to a room so large that it had two beds. It was clean, spacious, the bathroom was where you’d expect it and everything. “Wow,” I kept saying to no one in particular. I surveyed my new domain, and it was good.
Sleep, shower, sun cream, explore. Takayama features old streets, more shrines than it seems you really need, shops and lots of bridges. Ugly statues live on one bridge.
This one appeared to be insistently pointing at something but all I could make out from following its finger was a dead crow on a TV ariel.
It got dark pretty early and I sat in the cemetery at 8pm waiting for my nightly call from Yoko and wondering why I was sitting in a cemetery. I had wanted to find somewhere off the main street but this was ridiculous. Up the dark dark steps and through the dark dark trees the shrine was lit up. I tried to relax, not imagine ghosts floating above me or psychotic killers creeping behind me with the urge to bludgeon.
A cold wind broke my nerve; I headed back into town and took the call there.
There is a convenience store here called Timely, I have never seen it anywhere else. I ate Timely sushi alone in my room, as is my usual eating habit these days. Being unable to read Japanese, being a vegetarian and being alone I don’t really want to go to restaurants but I feel like I am missing out on something.
Whenever you ask a Japanese person whether visiting a particular city or area of Japan is worth it they say, “Oh yes it is famous for its ramen,” or some other kind of food I can’t eat. This just doesn’t happen in the UK, people don’t say, “Oh yes, you must eat the steak and kidney pie in Blackpool.” It’s like Japanese people learn the geography of their country not by famous sights or history but by food. Still I can recommend Timely sushi.
