To Nagasaki

Me and my rucksack were on our way to get the last coach of our trip. It was to take us East about 5 hours, around to Nagasaki on the nook of Kyushu. There we would be welcomed by Yoko and I could finally rest my weary feet in the last destination of the journey.

I stood at the correct bus stop and a coach pulled up marked for Nagasaki. I showed my ticket to the driver as he stood by the door and he nodded, marking my ticket with a squiggle.

I stored my rucksack in the bowels of the coach and climbed aboard to my seat. The coach gradually filled up with people and I closed my eyes. The driver was suddenly standing next to me, he bowed an apology; this was not my coach.

I stood at the correct bus stop and a coach pulled up marked for Nagasaki. I showed my ticket to the driver as he stood by the door and he puzzled over the squiggle. He didn’t say anything, but squiggled over the squiggle and that was that.

It was a long journey to Nagasaki; the scenery outside was all becoming identical, the tracks on my MP3 player all too familiar and the sight of strangers everywhere a sea of sameness that only a familiar face could punctuate.

As the coach pulled into Nagasaki I was smiling excitedly, I felt like I had come an enormously long way to get there. In the hiss of the coach doors, the last hunt for my luggage and the final feeling of being in an unfamiliar city, my long journey from North to South came to its final destination.

And there, was Yoko.

“Hello,” she said like an angel, “are you hungry?”

We went to a family restaurant in the mall next to the coach station. Family restaurants in Japan can be recognised by the very standard food, buttons on the table for calling the waiter and a Drink
Bar where you can help yourself to unlimited drinks in the most unnatural colours.

We ate pizza and talked for a few hours about what Yoko had planned for the next few days and the hotel I would be staying in. I sat cheerfully digesting this information with my pizza.

I told her about my journey, showed her the leaflet that Mitomi had given me. Yoko was surprised how tired I had become of travelling, how much I was looking forward to staying in one place for a while without having to worry about anything.

It was about 10PM when we walked down the street to the Toyoko Inn hotel where I was staying. From the large reception area with its computers, breakfast tables and shiny surfaces I could tell that this was going to be a nice stay. Yoko had asked for a certain amount of money that I gave to her in cash when I arrived. However, as she stood at the reception and gave them the details of the booking I could clearly see that she had grossly undercharged me. Yoko’s generosity knows no bounds but I vowed to make it up to her.

The receptionists began to explain something that would have thrown me if I had been on my own. I would have thought it was regarding some terrible problem with my booking and asked them to repeat more slowly. With Yoko there she simply turned to me and said, “What free gift do you want?”

I chose the socks.

We made plans for the next day, Yoko was going to pick me up in the morning from the coach station where we had met. This would be the first time I would see her driving, which she warned me, was very bad. “Don’t talk to me when I am driving,” she advised, “or we will both die.”

I ascended to my room and felt the familiar new room excitement, though this time it had more grounds than for my usual hotels. The room was lovely; double bed, spacious ensuite and when I turned on the television I Am Legend was playing on the movie channel.

The downside was that the film was in Japanese and about halfway through. Well, actually, I had no idea if it was halfway, and being entirely in Japanese the story confused me. By the end I really wanted to see the beginning.

I didn’t know it then but for the next few nights I would turn on the television and always see the film from the same point amidst much frustration.

I turned out the light and got comfortable for a good nights sleep before a free breakfast and a day out with a friend. Finally I felt like I was on holiday.

A noise was passing through the wall from the room next door. It was the sound of snoring. This cemented a new scale of hotels in my head: 2000 yen gets you a shared room with someone snoring loudly on the floor next you, but 5000 yen gets you a thin wall of protection from the snore.

What vast amounts of money, I wondered, would you have to pay for a snore free night?