Nagasaki Day One

Cleaners in Japan just won’t leave me alone but at least in this more expensive hotel they call ahead. “I’ll be out by 11,” I yawned down the phone.

Yoko was meeting me at 11:30 but before that I went hunting for quirky T-shirts; making use of Japan’s idiosyncratic fashion for what little time I had left.

And I found a few.

One featured a long extract from Treasure Island about Blackbeard the Pirate but with the text arranged into the shape of a skull and crossbones. Another I bought was green with a solar system octopus reaching its eight tentacles out to the planets. Being old school I thought, “Eight tentacles? But there are nine planets,” before I remembered Pluto and its recent demise.

I met Yoko and climbed into her car. It was a box shaped silver Daihatsu that suited her very well, not that she is box shaped. She told me that we were going to a restaurant for lunch and we sped through Nagasaki to a restaurant overlooking the sea.

Our meal was a proper one, unlike I had eaten in a long time. A tray was brought to me with a whole menagerie of Japanese food that looked like a miniature city; bowls and plates of different shapes and contents. It was hard to decide where to attack first: Tempura slopes, Miso lake or Sashimi…. pile of dead fish.

Next, we drove to Yoko’s parent’s house, but just drove there, going in will happen on another day I’m told. We hit a road out of Nagasaki to a place called Sotome.

The road wound tightly along the edge of the sea which spread far enough out to meet the sky. Proper houses dotted the mountains, not the apartment buildings of Tokyo but actual individual houses facing the sea. It was not a landscape I had seen before and yet I felt I had seen it before from films and TV shows.

We were heading to a museum that was right on the edge of a steep hill with almost 180 degree views of the sea.


In the distance large chunks of rock were poking rebelliously out of the sea and in its effort to reclaim them the sea had even worn one into an arch.


The museum was dedicated to Endo Shusaku, a Japanese author who died in 1996. He was also a devoted Christian and the museum had French hymns continuously playing. There were no English explanations, except for the Exit signs and a leaflet which at least let me know whose museum I was standing in and how much I had to pay.

There was a strange window looking out to sea through blue tinted glass.


Its edges were mirrored so that to look left and right you were seeing reflections but it appeared continuous with the real scenery. I am sure there was a point to that somewhere.


I decided that I liked Endo Shusaku because he was smiling in most of his pictures. In one he was even wearing a fake white beard and moustache - the bushy white wise-man beard that everyone from God to Gandolph has had thrust upon them.

After I had looked at all the pictures I sat in a room at the corner of the museum. Two of its walls were large windows looking out to the sea and surrounding hillside. There were comfy chairs too so it was an ideal place for a quick nap – I told Yoko she could take as long as she liked.

I felt unnerved in that room though; it was the view. The sea, in all its enormity of size and crashing violence against the rocks was making no sound at all. The large hawks riding the sea breezes around the museum were also mute. The glass of the windows was so thick that it let nothing in but light.

There was a large piece of glass opposite the window and I took a sillhouetey picture of myself in the reflection.


What with the Christian music playing too it felt eerily like the scene outside was just an illusion, a video recorded in widescreen with no sound. Or like a different world, a Heaven that I was separated from and could never travel to, like when you see a landscape of clouds from a plane window. When Yoko came to fetch me she understood my feeling.

Only now that I re-read the leaflet I was given do I notice that Sotome was the setting for Shusaku’s novel “Silence.”

The café attached to the museum, but not physically, had the same silent vista and French Christian music. It had less effect because of an ice cream float (ice cream floating in coca cola) which one of us was enjoying and the other just envying.

There was a beach which we tried to drive to but all the roads seemed to lead to each other. Eventually we parked and found a beach of large boulders. We stood and gazed at the sea and the sea cockroaches.

This is Yoko gazing at the sea.


Back in the car we drove to a spot that to see the sunset from.


The view is so good that they built a restaurant in the carpark so that you can stare at the setting sun and eat, like popcorn at the cinema.


The restaurant had a great buffet, or in Japanese ビキング, pronounced biking and coming from the word ‘Viking.’ The Japanese clearly see Vikings as men and women who would feast on great meals together, wash it down with gallons of liquid and then queue up to pay at the end. It’s a pretty quirky name for a buffet, but doesn’t help English speakers who come to Japan and struggle to understand the signs, “Biking?” oh it must be about bikes.” I suppose many cultures apply new meanings to words from other languages like this, I mean the word buffet originally meant a type of furniture.

We drove back into Nagasaki and then up to a mountain to see the nightview and a firework display down on the river. There before us were all the lights of Nagasaki from cars, buildings, fireworks, boats sailing in the river and… a lightning storm.

We were definitely in the right place at the right time; my eyes kept darting from fireworks on the right to lightning on the left. The storm was behind some mountains at the edge of the city, the flashes would light up the cloud but occasionally you could see the lightning itself. It was more than spectacular and made up for the rubbishy cloud I had seen at the Hakodate nightview.

Shame I didn’t take any pictures though.

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?

Kumamoto

The problem with tourist leaflets is that sometimes they are unhelpfully enticing. For example the Kumamoto leaflet featured this picture.


It’s a bridge which looked to me like it had water shooting over it but the truth is that the bridge is a 150 year old aquaduct. Every so often ducts in the sides are opened that let the water flow down into a river, which cleans the water channels.

The woman in the tourist information appeared concerned when I asked her how to get to the bridge. She calmly turned aside to get out a map and laid it on the counter. A second later she replaced that map with another one because the scale wasn’t large enough.
“We’re here,” she said as she circled Kumamoto city, “and Tsujunkyo Bridge is all the way ovvvvver here.” Her hand seemed to move about 300 miles across the page and drew another circle in the middle of nowhere. “So I don’t think you should try and go there today.”

So it was that I found myself at Kumamoto castle, which is a huge and elegant construction surrounded by gardens and picturesque views.


The long climb to the top of the castle was worth it when I looked out of the window at the shadow I was now part of.


Some other pictures


This is a model of what the old city used to look like, back when the castle was by far the tallest building around.


The castle walls are built to be deliberately curved. It almost looks like you could climb them, maybe that’s the point.


And that was my day in Kumamoto.

To Kumamoto

Today I was crossing from Shikoku to the final island of my trip, Kyushu.

The third bed in me and Ray’s room was occupied by an older chap who left at 6 in the morning. I know this because he made it very noticeable. His tactic was to get packed noisily but fast, rather than quietly but taking longer. I don’t know which idea is better, it’s the old opening a crisp packet in the cinema problem – either annoy all the audience for a second, or just the people around you with half a minute of fumbling.

I got up at 7:15 and went down to the showers. The one I used that morning had a smaller cubicle and I entered it backwards for some reason. Water immediately started spraying at me before I had closed the door. “Is this another Japanese invention; an automated shower?” I wondered. But no, on walking backwards into the cubicle my posterior had pressed the on switch without my noticing – I’ve never said that before.

I had been given orders by Ray to wake him up in time so that we could both go down to the station together. Unfortunately he is quite a deep sleeper and waking him was a bit of an effort.

I stooped over him and tried his name. “Ray,” I said, “Ray, it’s 7:30, time to wake up.” He stirred, meaning that he opened his eyes, looked at me, stretched, rolled onto his side, murmured and fell back to sleep. “Damn.”

I tried to delegate the role to my alarm clock but it was even more useless than I was.

I called his name again and he stirred, but with one eye open long enough to see that the other bed was empty. This kick started the Tell Anecdote part of his brain and he was awake.

Apparently his foot and that of the other guy had touched during the night. Ray had thought it was a mouse and jerked his foot away with a big kick, probably giving the guy a free souvenir bruise.

We got ready and left about 8:30, which was cutting it fine for my 9:11 train.

On the tram to the station I remembered that I still hadn’t told Ray my name.
“You don’t know my name, do you?”
“No, I was thinking about that actually. It was going to be the last thing I was going to say. You know,” he continued, “we could make a game of it, I could guess.”

So he guessed. How long would it take someone to guess your first name? He got it in ten, much to his surprise. I never knew I had such a standard name.

Our goodbye was cut short because it was 9:10 and I had one minute to run to the station, buy a ticket, find the train and get on. Needless to say, I didn’t make it.

The lady at the ticket window treated my rushed questions about where the 9:11 train was with unsympathetic calm. It took her a frustratingly long time to talk to me because she was also checking the tickets of everyone entering and leaving the platform. She told me to hold on a few times too and when I heard her voice suddenly behind me I realised she was doing the announcements as well.

The one woman train station did inform me that I could get the express train which would get me to Yawatohama in half the time but double the expense.

At 11AM the express train was slowing down for arrival in Yawatohama. I looked out the windows gloomily at the lack of shops or potential ATMs for me to use. I only had 80 yen (40p) on me and needed money to buy a ferry ticket. Credit and debit cards are very hard to use in Japan, especially foreign ones, so cash is a must.

I was actually willing shops and convenience stores to appear, as if they could just pop out the ground brimming with cash machines.

Yawatohama seemed to be a very narrow place; it’s built in a tight valley with steep hills tiered with farmland in neat rows. I had not seen that kind of landscape in Japan, it looked more like Spain to me.

I got directions to the town’s ATM from a station person. The ATM charged me for my transaction but at least it spoke English – literally it greeted me and thanked me with pictures of people bowing.

I had to find the bus to the ferry and not the port – this was an important distinction.The station had a travel agency for booking cars and holidays, not really a place for giving advice to tourists but I thought I would try my luck.

“Follow me,” said the lady behind the counter after I asked about the bus. “I’m leaving for a moment,” she called out to a hidden colleague.
“Where did you come from?” she asked me on the way out.
“Matsuyama”
“Why are you going to Beppu?” she said this in English and with a fascinated tone like I might be going to fight great creatures, collect a magical energy known as Manna and return the realm to nature’s order.
“Holiday,” I shrugged.

The bus stop was not the one she thought it was. “Wait here,” she gestured and then ran off around the corner.

A lady sitting at the erroneous bus stop asked me where I was going. I told her and she indicated that I should go around the corner my guide had just run towards. The lady said lots of other things too and I just said “Ohh” and walked around the corner. She was one of the only people who helped me on my trip that I forgot to thank.

My guide had found the bus stop and was smiling profusely. She seemed like quite a character, I could imagine her growing onions as house plants and laying a place for her cat at the dinner table.

I thanked her doubly to make up for bad karma and she ran back to her office.

The heat was sweltering, so hot that people actually dress up to protect their skin. A woman cycled passed me wearing long sleeves and gloves, and, even holding up a black umbrella.

Fortunately there was a seat in the shade for me and after a while I was joined by another character.

Her name was Mitomi Yoshikumi and she was an actress who had just finished her 105th performance of something or other in Tokyo. She gave me a leaflet for the something or other, I still have it, a musical about a man called Botchan.

Well anyway, she was cute, confident and cheerful in that way Japanese women sometimes are. She had no apprehension about talking to me and she seemed interested in everybody.

We were both getting the same ferry and she helped me buy a ticket. It was so nice to have someone else to do the hardwork, I had really missed being a backseat traveller.

In the queue for the tickets Mitomi San advised another woman about tickets. Later, upstairs when we went to eat something Mitomi struck up conversation with the woman again and she invited us to sit at her table.

They both quizzed me about my journey, teaching English and Japanese food. I’ve gotten more used to being the centre of conversation in Japan but it still unnerves me a little. I mean, they are both Japanese, they can say lots of in depth interesting things to each other about the nature of space and time, or just say, “Hey, what about our Prime Minister hey, he’s all forehead.” Instead they just concentrated on me and my simple Japanese answers. We fell into silence with me thinking that I’d failed somehow.

The woman, let’s call her Ladyshy, seemed a bit taken aback by our entry into her life. She had never travelled abroad and didn’t reveal what she did for a living. I think it was a bit of a shock for her to be lunching with an actress and a foreigner she had met only five minutes before in a ticket queue.

Ladyshy left the restaurant for the boat before us, she had already finished eating and other generic excuses for just wanting to be alone. I think she hid from us on the boat too as we didn’t see her.

On the boat I and Mitomi took pictures on the deck.


Everything looked stunningly perfect from the boat. That is the great thing about Summer, everything shines.


Conversation with Mitomi was easy because she peppered her Japanese with English, and I did the same.

After a while we went back inside and found a large room with comfortable floors but no chairs. It looked like a cheap tatami room, but with carpet instead of weaved matting.

We both fell asleep, in different parts of the room. Talking together we might have looked like a couple but in sleeping I noticed that my arm was reaching out. I looked over and saw that Mitomi was also reaching out, and neither of us toward each other but to some absent others.

I awoke to find her staring out of the window like a child who has never been on a ferry before.

“Good morning,” I said

She showed me pictures of the cast she had been working with. They had rehearsed in Aimori, in Northern Honshu, and even lived together, all 13 of them.

She was also carrying fan letters which seemed a bit egotistical to me but they must come in useful if you lose faith in yourself on the way to the shops. She didn’t seem egotistical though, I think she was the kind of person who actually replied to her letters.

Time passed quickly and Beppu soon scrolled into view across the windows.

On the way out we met Ladyshy again and Mitomi insisted we take pictures of the 3 of us. She was so eager that it crossed my mind whether she needed the pictures for an alibi or something.

We three were going to the train station and Ladyshy relaxed a little.

At goodbye Mitomi gave me her details, and I gave her mine, Ladyshy had already gone.

Alone I bought my ticket and got on my train after some bready lunch. Waiting on the train platform the sky was full of dramatic clouds.


The train was old. It had red rusted metal on the outside and wooden floors within. But the furnishings were new and it was wonderfully comfortable. It was the rapid limited express, which meant it didn’t go to many places but did go to them quickly and expensively.

On the way to the toilet I was thrown left and right by the speed of the train along perhaps uneven rails. I enjoyed the feeling; it was like a roller coaster, though made urine trajectory management more of a challenge.

I felt exhausted on that train. “It’s the last train of the trip” I told myself. I had a four hour bus ride the day after next and a plane ride the week after but this was the last train and that seemed significant. All in all though I wanted a holiday from travelling, I was knackered.

In Kumamoto at 9PM with no tourist information open I had to find my hotel. This naturally leads on to a long boring story about another trial, but no, I did it and that’s all that matters.

I had an idea for something to do in Kumamoto, a special pilgrimage I wanted to make.

I had been reading a book called Hokkaido Highway Blues by Will Ferguson throughout my trip. It’s about the author hitchhiking from the Southern most point in Japan to the most Northern. It was the complete opposite to my journey, in both direction and transportation. I was doing it the easy way, with just confusing train timetables and G8 Summits to contend with. However, Kumamoto was one place on both our journeys.

Anyway, Mr Ferguson mentions writing graffiti in the toilet of a bar in Kumamoto called the Rock Balloon. The book was written in 1998 but my guidebook still had the bar listed, even mentioning the graffiti. Another factor on my side was that coincidentally I and Mr Ferguson are the same gender, an important factor in toilet pilgrimages.

I got changed and made my way out from the hotel I had just checked into. It was 10PM and the man at the front desk said “Oh,” like a grandfather just waking up from a doze as I gave him my key. It made me smile.

Within 15 minutes I was standing in the street of the Rock Balloon. I started the search hoping it wouldn’t be a scary place with big burly bouncers at the door wearing lipstick; you just wouldn’t know how to act would you.

So what was this graffiti that I was on a pilgrimage to see? Well according to the book it reads, “What is konnyaku? Where does it come from and what does it want?”

To answer this first question, konnyaku is a kind of grey gelatin that looks pretty strange and doesn’t taste very nice. It is used more for its texture than taste and I have experienced it mostly in school lunches where it gets cut into small cubes from which you could build a little gelatinous igloo.

The Rock Balloon was proving hard to find. The map in my guidebook was unclear about which street it was on as it was shown between two streets. One of these streets was part of an enclosed shopping area which had buskers playing despite the late hour of the night.

I couldn’t find the bar on either street. I walked down both again more slowly and managed to find a restaurant listed on the map so I knew I was in the right place.

Two white guys had been talking in the shopping area and they were still there when I was on my second round. I asked them if they knew the bar. They did, or rather they used to.

“It closed down.”
“Oh”
“Are you using Lonely Planet?”
“Yep. 2005”
“It closed down about 5 years ago. I’ve written to Lonely Planet about it and other things in Kumamoto that aren’t here any more, other people did too and they’ve finally updated the new edition.”

I was really impressed. Lonely Planet is like a binding soul between foreigners visiting Japan and that conversation proved my theory. From my simple question he knew why I thought the Rock Balloon was still there and even which edition I was using. He could have whispered, “Number 20, page 644 is a lie” and walked off mysteriously and I would have understood.

And so my pilgrimage came to a disappointing end. The guy did tell me about another rock bar nearby but it wouldn’t be the same unless they happened to have shipped over the toilet walls from the Rock Balloon, seemed unlikely.

I made my way to my newest home disappointed at not getting to see the reality behind the book I was reading, the author’s own handwriting no less. But the moral is that time changes all things, and that Lonely Planet takes a while to keep up.

Matsuyama

I first saw the owner of the award winning-hippy hostel when I was using the Internet. The computers were in a large room with a kotatsu in the middle (low Japanese table you kneel at) where he was sitting. He had a bushy beard that joined a cloud of puffy grey hair on his head. He was wearing a robe of some sort, looking very relaxed, care free and middle aged in that way where you can tell in an instant that there’s no wife around.

Someone arrived, a younger man, and they both greeted each other affectionately. This was all going on behind me but I could tell that they didn’t want me there; I could almost hear the eye rolling and head shaking. I left them to it.

Ray was still in bed when I got back to my room. It was a little past midday and each floor was a cacophony of noise, mostly vacuuming but also some banging from workmen on the large terrace outside the window.

I had met Ray the night before in the bathroom when we started a conversation whilst brushing teeth, yes it is possible. I went back to my room and tried to sleep when he came in and got ready for bed. Not seeing that as an appropriate time to start a conversation I waited. I was just about to say something when he turned off the light and there the opportunity was lost.

Hours passed, I couldn’t sleep and I don’t think he could either, there was no snoring or heavy breathing, just that awkward silence when every movement makes the bed squeak and you feel frozen to whatever position you found yourself in when the light went out. After a while I couldn’t hack it any more and got up to walk around the dark and silent corridors for a while.

I still couldn’t sleep when I got back in bed, but not long after Ray got up and left. On his return I took the opportunity to say, “Can’t sleep?”
“No,” he said in such a sleepless voice that we both knew we were on for a chat.

We talked for about two hours, until 3AM I think. He was Irish and had been in Japan for about a week, he had two or three weeks left on his Japan Rail Pass and wanted advice on where to go.

The Japan Rail Pass is like the golden ticket of rail travel, it allows you to use pretty much any trains, including the Shinkansen, as much as you like throughout the whole country (though not including subway trains like Tokyo Metro). As such they make it pretty hard to get one, you have to buy it before you come to Japan and it is hideously expensive. So when you have one it creates a dilemma: on the one hand you want to use it as much as possible so travel quickly from place to place, but on the other hand you end up not seeing anything, except in the Impressionist’ style of a train window.

We talked about Japan, Japanese language, food, people etc. I got some catharsis from telling him of my experiences, like when I told him about 6 year old children trying to reach into my anus on my first day of teaching, he didn’t say “oh yeah that’s called kancho, what did you expect you ignorant foreigner,” he said “what the fuck?” and I felt reprieved.

Psychologically, or socially, or something lly it was a weird conversation. For one because I didn’t tell him my name, and for another because it took place entirely in the dark. He was just a silhouette against the window and I was a shimmering edge from the light passing under the door.

When I got back to the room after using the Internet there was a knock on the door. A Japanese man was stood outside, he looked at me, said “eh” and then walked off shouting, “Gaijin.” This word means foreigner and is the short form of the word Gaikokujin. It actually has rude connotations that I tried to forget about.

A moment later the English speaking woman with the nice voice from the day before came along. She explained that we had to leave the premises between midday and 5PM. This was news to me, she hadn’t explained that to me the day before. I pointed this out to her, but it didn’t make any difference, I didn’t get a complimentary organic DVD or anything.

I caught the tram into the centre of Matsuyama, I wanted to get a look at the city from a higher place so found a department store. It was a boiling hot day, the sun was high in the sky and so I was surprised when the lift doors opened to the roof and I saw this.


An ice sculpture competition at the height of the Summer, odd but it adds a certain drama.

There were rows of blue seats and a stage where it looked like the winner would be announced later in the day. At that time there was a small crowd watching the busy sculptors.

I am not sure what this one is, it looks to me like two dogs kissing but I think it was supposed to be something entirely different.


Offcuts.


After the department store I walked through the network of covered pavilions to get some shade from the sun. Inside were lots of trendy Tshirt shops, the kind of places that, in the UK, I might feel a little apprehensive before going into, but in Japan there was no such feeling at all. I’m not sure why.

I was looking for Tshirts with comically bad English, but I couldn’t find any; annoyingly everything was spelt correctly. One Tshirt I did buy was of a Japanese comedian called Kojima Yoshio. This guy.


He looks stupid, wearing only a speedo, and has a stupid dance that is infinitely copied by kids across the country. However, he is a graduate from Waseda University, one of the most prestigious in Japan. I think this intelligence behind buffoonery makes him Japan’s Sacha Barron Cohen.

Anyway, I bought a Tshirt with an image of him on it, so that back in the UK Japanese people will nod and smile at me knowingly. However, I wouldn’t wear it in Japan because people would shake their heads and frown at me.

When the sun started to set I headed for the Western style fort. I could see it on the hillside as I made my way through tiny avenues between houses and crossing main roads until I got to the hillside. The sun was low in the sky behind the clouds and it looked quite mystical.


There were multiple paths leading up the hill, most seemed to enter a large graveyard that I didn’t think was the right way. Japan, I decided, was terrible for finding your way, be it because of signs with two conflicting arrows or just not enough signs at all.

I eventually found a good solid concrete pathway that snaked directly up to the fort with joggers running down and crawling up. It only took about fifteen minutes to reach the summit, but the walk was pretty steep.

Nearer the top the view of the fort turned into this.


And then from the top, this.


Rubbish isn’t it. It looked like a Disneyland ride.

The view was good though.


On the way back down there was a children’s play area that I hadn’t noticed on the way up. There was no one about so I went down the slide. But I didn’t, slide that is, I was so fat and so frictional that I had to pull myself down, accompanied by a sound like two balloons rubbing together.

A little further down the path and I noticed this guy.


It was a beautiful but eerie sculpture made out of bits from a local pottery company. The sculpture was so suited to the place that it looked not like a piece of art, but some creature with more right to be there than I.


I was quite mesmerised and spent a while trying to get the right angle for a photo.


I eventually decided this was this angle…


but I couldn’t hold the camera still enough because I was standing in a swarm of mosquitoes. The light was fading and my camera was on Night Mode, while I was on Oh Shit mode.

I couldn’t keep still long enough for a good picture, I walked away with only blurs and bites.


An hour later I was standing outside a small supermarket talking to Yoko on my phone. It was about 9PM and the supermarket was closing. As I spoke to Yoko a cat plodded up to me and let me stroke it. I described the cat to Yoko and she was jealous.

I was tickling the cat under its chin when it suddenly tensed up and stared in another direction. I looked over and saw another cat about 6 metres away. My cat stood up to face the other, who was standing tall with its back arched and its fur sticking out like the stereotype.

The other cat uttered that special cat noise, the nnnnnnnnnnnnugghh; like the moo of a cow with its mouth closed. Ok, maybe that description isn’t very good.

The sound is like the cat equivalent of DEFCON3, the one that comes after is the hiss sound which is DEFCON2 and then the actual tooth and claw fight is DEFCON1.

My cat reacted to DEFCON2 with the most pitiful and pathetic mew I’ve ever heard. It was the sort of sound you’d expect a kitten to make when it wants you to lift it up so it can lick a dripping tap.

The other cat responded by Running Away. I mean it didn’t just walk away, it ran, fast and deliberately away.

I thought about this for a moment and came to the conclusion that my cat must be some kind of a psychopath. You see, it had acted in a way that went completely outside the norms of expected behaviour, but in doing so it really frightened the other cat beyond any desire to fight.

A short time later I was sitting with another cat outside the hostel. This cat seemed very pampered and used to a lot of attention but he was happy to be stroked on the patio outside the main door. I was alone out there; the dining area was full of the other guests who could see me sitting outside through the window. An Austrian guy came out and smiled at the cat, and possibly me as well but we got talking anyway.

He was on a trip through Japan with friends who had been there before, so it was a stress free trip for him being led around. Being roughly the same age we talked about the scariness of future life and all that. He was just as introverted as I was, maybe more so, so I took a liking to him. We talked for a while too, in the international language of computer games, it never fails.

Back inside I checked my email on one of the three computers. To my left sat an oldish Japanese woman who worked and lived in the hostel. She was resolutely detached from everything going on around her; instead of reality, she was absorbed in a game of Solitaire on the computer.

I could imagine her sitting there every night of the week, as reams of people from all parts of the world came and went, she would remain constant. Her fingers would be sorting the cards into their families, a spark of consciousness when she thought she was going to win, but when she can’t it’s just two clicks and a whole new game appears. A new game, one she had never played before, plucked out of a universe of chance and coming loaded with possibility. I wondered how many other people there were in the world playing Solitaire at that moment, right across the world sitting in front of their screens in the morning, midday or evening light. As you read this she is probably there right now, working through a combination of cards as random as the people sitting next to her.

Later on I was in the bathroom with Ray and a tall American guy. The tall American guy was talking, giving his advice on where Ray should go on the back of his Japan Rail Pass. He spoke as if he had been to lots of places but everything he said sounded vaguely familiar. He had only been in Japan for a few days and as he spoke I recognised what he was saying from the Lonely Planet guide to Japan. I could almost here the new paragraphs and page turns as he spoke, the little extra detailed bits inside the black boxes and the switches from Getting There and Away to Eating and Sleeping.

Speaking of which.

Shimanamikaido

Getting up to catch the 7:02AM train from JR Hiroshima station is not easy, though I suppose it’s easiest when you’re in Hiroshima. The train carried my sleepy carcass to Onomichi, the start of the Shimanamikaido. For this day I was to attempt to cycle from one of Japan’s main islands to the next via this system of bridges connected by small islands. Here is a map.


The whole thing is 77KM (48 miles) but there are hostels and so on along the way. I had done my preparation work; I knew to get the map from the tourist information office at the station and then I would rent a bike from the Municipal Parking Garage behind the Green Hill Hotel, 5 minutes walk from the train station. All planned out.

I got to Onomichi station at about 8:30AM and rushed over to the tourist info booth. The lady at the counter gave me the map but apologised because it was all in Japanese.

And indeed it was. All the place names in difficult kanji with a big scary diagram of the whole bridge network. There were some friendly cliparty pictures of people cycling though so that gave me hope.

I had to explore for quite a bit before I found the Municipal Parking Garage for bike rental. In my search for it I came across Pontefract.


In case you don’t know, Pontefract is an English town in the county of Yorkshire. It is also where my mum is from and so I have been there many times to see relatives and so on. It isn’t particularly famous or particularly pleasant a place (sorry relatives) though it does have a Morrisons. Anyway, I was frankly astounded to find it in Japan.


It was the name of a plant shop, a “Herb House.”


As you can see it was closed when I was standing outside it in confusion. There was no one to ask about why on earth this shop had that name, nobody to finally demand that Japan make sense. But really, the minute Japan makes complete sense it will wink suspiciously and then fly into space.

When I did find the bike rental place, it was underneath Pontefract, there were some polite ladies choosing bikes. The owner of the place, a large but small man in a white Tshirt, was barking orders at them. I saw one of the women make a, “what’s wrong with him,” face which I was also included in. As the women chose theirs bike I walked around wondering which one I should get. Not having ridden a bike for around 6 months I was feeling nervous about this whole idea.

It wasn’t long before the women were gone and the man in the white T-shirt beckoned me over. He sat down at a desk and I sat on the other side, there were forms to fill in.

The Shimanamikaido has many good things about it. Bike rental is pretty cheap, you can get the bike at one end and leave at the other and there are signposts and the leaflet. Online there is not much information, but somewhere is a Japan Cycling Guide with pictures and so on that I had looked through.

I was filling out the form as best I could, writing my name in katakana, the alphabet used to write foreign words. In katakana my name is ニク　グリルス The bike man looked at what I had written, sighed and demanded, “Don’t write in English letters.”

Now I don’t know about you but I think there’s a big difference between my name written in English, Nick Grills, and in Japanese, ニク　グリルス.

“It’s in katakana” I complained to him, he didn’t seem to hear me.

We struggled through the rest of the form and I handed over the money. He explained lots of things to me for which I used my pretend-to-understand nod.

At some point he became nice because as I got on my bike he got on his to show me where the ferry port was.

I couldn’t get my bike to unlock though, all the bikes in Japan have inbuilt locks that you use a tiny key for. Probably any 5 year old in the country could do it, but not me. He smiled and did it for me. “It’s different in the UK,” I said pathetically.

We cycled to the ferry for the first island, which was about two minutes bike ride from the shop. He checked I had the correct money and then shook my hand. The ferry left a second later with me on board clutching my new stead.

Two minutes later the ferry had arrived, it was a pathetically short journey but all the advice online says to get the ferry from Onomichi to the first island, Mukajima. There is a bridge between the two islands but it is not very cyclist friendly.

I got off the ferry and found myself on the bend of a road, there was hardly anyone, or anything, around. A picture of a bike on the pavement indicated the cycle lane which I thought must be the right way. I started cycling, picking up speed and easily balancing myself with my backpack aboard my back.

It was starting to get hot but there was a breeze, things were fine…

but not for long. After about 15 minutes I was unsure whether I was going the right way, there were hardly any signs and it had been a while since the last one. There being cycle marks on the pavement was nothing much, in Japan everyone cycles on the pavement. I stopped outside a small restaurant and went in to ask for directions.

Alarmingly, they had never heard of the Shimanamikaido, even when I showed them my leaflet they both looked worried – on my behalf. “Good luck” they told me as I left.

I carried on the way I was going and then turned left onto a more main road that seemed to be the right way. The going was hard as I was cycling on proper road now and it started going up hill. The sun was high in the sky and I was already very sweaty.

After 15 minutes I came to a carpark with some trucks but no drivers. I hid from the sunshine in the shadow of a truck and drank some precious water. I got going again.

On and on. The road became more scenic and sloped down next to the edge of the sea. I felt better now, and as I went around the corner I saw a bridge to the next island which I recognised from online.

But when I got over the bridge I had a left or right decision. Both looked the same. I looked at my map but after trying to fit the red lines on the map to the roads I had been on I realised that I wasn’t even sure what island I was on. I went right and followed the road down between fields and orchards. It was pleasant now, downhill and quiet, the road became much smaller and led into a small cluster of houses with a shop.

And another junction. I went left.

Onwards and I found myself having to stop more often to rest. The road came to a pitch black tunnel that I could see the end of, but was fairly long and looked unsafe with no lights. A steep path led up the side and I ditched my bike and mustered the energy to climb the path and see how easy it would be to avoid the tunnel. It wouldn’t be, so I braved the tunnel.

I came out the other side unscathed and grateful for the shade.

The road sloped down by some houses and then a large truck came along, it was going down the same road, next to the sea. I was just metres from the water, the view was beautiful.

The truck stopped in a car park with other vehicles digging at the ground. The road I was on turned into a hill and I soon had to get off and push.

A voice in my head, called Reason, was telling me to stop. I was already exhausted, hot and honestly didn’t know where I was. I was certain that I was lost but I didn’t know how lost I was. I also had the unnerving feeling of being somewhere I really didn’t belong. This was the back end of the middle of nowhere; there were houses but no one around, not one solitary figure. The signs were unreadable, my phone had no signal and the map was useless to me. It was all going horribly wrong.

Resting in some trees I decided it would be all or nothing and that I had to act either way and stick to it.

You know all those films, or should I say all films, where the central character has something they have committed themselves to doing but there comes a point where he or she nearly gives up. Well Western culture keeps this idea running strong: in order to achieve something you have to stick at it, you get out what you put in, never give up. In any story anyone ever tells you where this situation occurs you expect them to tell you that they put in the effort or they found the solution and got there in the end.

Well not this story.

I decided to give up, not just go down the hill to the tunnel, not just go back to the bridge or the first island. I decided to go right back to the man in the white T-shirt and give him his bike back. It was clear that this was beyond me. As I cycled back there were no people, no cars, even the trucks were gone.

I got more lost trying to find the way back. I cycled along roads desperately trying to remember any familiar houses or trees or anything. After trying many identical roads I eventually found the tunnel and it was my hallelujah, I knew the way from there.

Back near the shop, well I thought it was a shop but it was actually a house with large windows and a vending machine outside, I got a drink and sat in the shade. I remembered staying in tiny villages in France as child and having a fear that I would wake up and my family would have left me. This was years before I knew any French and the sense of fear and helplessness the idea gave me was very powerful. Somehow I had gotten myself into a similar situation.

Back over the bridge and I saw a rare sight, a westerner. He was a proper cyclist in lycra, reflecting sunglasses and basically everything that proper cyclists wear. He was going the other way to me. I stopped and watched which direction he went at the end of the bridge. Instead of going right he went left and I watched as he rode along a flat road following the sea, it looked like a beautiful road; it looked like the correct road. Again I asked myself if this was the right path for me. I answered no and stuck to my guns.

Back on the road next to the parked trucks it got even harder, I hadn’t realised how steep the hill was but once I was over the crest of the slope the rest was easy and I sailed back to the ferry.

I was elated to get back to my starting point, back into a place connected with the parts of Japan I understood: trains, restaurants, shops, airports. The whole excursion from it had lasted over 3 hours and got me nowhere but upset and exhausted.

I stopped outside the bike place to remind myself of some key Japanese expressions for the conversation I was about to have.

“I got lost” I announced as I cycled in and the man in the white T-shirt looked up from his paper. He seemed surprised to see me, and then flustered. I was just hoping to park the bike and walk away but he insisted on getting the paperwork out again.

He needed me to sign to say that it was now all void, he seemed very nervous about this until I got out my Hanko – my Japanese name stamp, equivalent to a signature. He was then concerned that he could not give me my money back, I told him that it was fine, I did not expect any money back. He did give me my 1000 yen deposit though, which was a plus, and then I got the profound luxury of walking away.

On the way, cycling back just before the carpark with the trucks, I had looked up and seen a road sign about 10 metres above me. It said in English, “Shimanamikaido” and pointed up a steep fly road that joined onto a larger road. So most of my day had been spent entirely on the wrong path and although I then knew the right path it only confirmed my decision to take the train. The moral is, if you are on the shimanamikaido follow the cars and look up a lot.

I was so happy to be free of the nightmare of being lost in the back end of Japan.

I went back to the tourist information office to ask about buses. It would take two buses to go across the 77KM of bridges and get to Imabari Station

I changed my clothes from the sweat rags I had on in a toilet. On the way out again a cleaning woman looked at me and said, “That was the women’s.” We both laughed.

I put my bag in a locker and went to Mr Donuts. I felt such elation; it was like a massive problem had been lifted from my shoulders. I mean it had been replaced with the problem of how to get across to Shikoku by other means, but this would not involve peddling around purgatory anymore.

I was getting my bag out the locker again to catch the bus. I put my water bottle, freshly bought, on top of the locker where it fell over when I pulled out my bag. But it didn’t just fall over; it rolled, backwards, till it hit the wall. The lockers were already taller than me, and when I jumped I couldn’t get my arm far enough over to reach the bottle. I thought about stepping inside one of the lockers when I saw a big security camera on the wall right next to me. I did sort of try stepping onto one of the lockers but had nothing to hold on to when I tried to reach over. All in all I probably looked really stupid to who, or what, was watching. It goes without saying that I couldn’t get my water back, I had to buy a new one L

I caught my first bus ok; it seemed to be full of shouting teenagers. I listened to music to drown them out. The bus drove out of Onomichi and over the islands that I was meant to be cycling over. The views were stunning though, the sunshine so strong that everything looked new.

But then I was in doubt about whether my bus stop had passed. I went up to the driver at the next stop and showed him my ticket.

He explained that oh dear, my stop had been the one before that one. A familiar feeling of helplessness crept up on me, it was like I had been getting away from the place but was now discovering that it was just an illusion.

Two Japanese ladies appeared behind me claiming to have the same problem. The driver thought about our dilemma and thank god had a solution. Down the road there were some steps leading up a verge. He told us to go up those steps to a bus stop and wait there.

Getting off the bus I lead the way, partly because I wanted to get to the stop as soon as possible in case there was a bus leaving that moment.

The bus stop had a tiny shelter next to it which was a welcome bit of shade in the mid thirty degree sunshine. Studying the timetable, and listening to the two women who were going in the same direction, the next bus was not for an hour and a half. I sat down and started reading my book. One of the ladies did strike up conversation with me but it didn’t last very long.

The day was feeling like a huge struggle, the worst part of my whole trip by far, the worst part of my year and a half in Japan.

Eventually the bus did come, accepted my ticket and my destination was also the bus’s final one so I could relax. It took over an hour and I tried to get some sleep. The two women got off before me and nodded a courteous goodbye.

At Imabari Station I got a train to Matsuyama, somewhere near enough to where I was but also on the way to the ferry port where I could get to the final island of my trip, Kyushu, in a few days time. The train was slow and it was about 7PM when I arrived in Matsushima. I had nowhere to stay but asked at the tourist information, I was hoping that the guy would call hostels for me – I had heard that people did that for you in Japan. Instead he just gave me some leaflets and wished me luck.

I browsed through some of the leaflet and one place caught my eye. It sounded like a hippie hostel, where you could learn about astrology, aromatherapy, spoon bending and pay extra to talk to the owner about UFOs (in Japanese only alas). It had also been voted in the top ten youth hostels in the whole of Japan.

I called them and a friendly woman informed me in English that there was a bed if I did not mind sharing and no problem to come in the next hour. Things were looking up; I even had the directions to the place in the leaflet, by tram no less.

A large three story traditional bath house was next to the tram’s final stop. Looking at my map I followed the map up a steep road. Tennis courts and what looked like doctors surgeries passed me on both sides. The street lighting was sparse on this road but out of the darkness I walked into the light of some large hotels and the hostel right next to them.

Inside I took some slippers and met the owner of the kindly voice. She told me the rules of the place, there was a sort of curfew at 12, food at certain times and showers on the second floor. She gave me my linen and then up I went to my room.

There were three beds, two were made and the other was covered in things but nothing alive. I was trying to work out where this person came from, they seemed to have some documents with Japanese on them, but then I saw that they had a bottle of shampoo from superdrug which clinched it for me.

The showers in the hostel were odd. The shower heads all contained small green balls that the water ran through, I guess to invest it with minerals or some such. You could buy this special shower head and some green balls from the shop. I didn’t feel much difference but it was great to be in a hostel that cared to provide it.

I went out for some food and a look around. Everything seemed very traditional around the bath house, there were even people walking around in bath robes and sandals. A long enclosed pavilion of shops led on for quite some way selling souvenirs.

And there was a Lawson, I got my convenience food.

On the way back to the hostel I noticed a shadow. It was of a traditionally designed street lamp, but the shadow was caused by a bright flood light from the side of a tennis court.


I went up some steps to get another picture of the shadow but ended up with a blurry image of the bath house.


Then I noticed another shadow, of me this time, going down the steps between a stone torii.


Back at the hostel I ate my food in the now deserted dining room. Up in my room the other bed’s occupant was still absent. I got changed and went to brush my teeth. In the communal bathroom I got talking to a friendly Irish guy.

Back in my room it transpired that he was the one sleeping in the other bed. But this took several hours of darkness and both being unable to sleep to establish.