Off the Rails (WiK version)

 

 

 

Thank you to Writers in Kyoto for hosting my latest, a musically-enhanced journey though Japan's rail system...

https://writersinkyoto.com/2026/03/15/nonfiction/off-the-rails/

 

On the turntable: Tom Petty, "Storytellers"
 

Indo II: Rajastan

...Not long after the trains pulls out of Delhi, we find the dining car and sit down to dinner.  Outside the windows are some of Delhi's worst slums.  Silhouetted in doorways are women cooking over small fires within, which serves as the only light.  Their children merely stand beside, watching trains.  One by one, each of the passengers pulls down their blinds... 

...The disembodied weirdness of arriving in a city after an overnight train ride.  It's a bit like flying in a way, where there's no interconnection with the landscape, between points A and B...

...In India, the mood of your entire day is dictated by the quality of your stool...




JAIPUR

...teased by the Palace of Winds, which we can photograph, but don't actually get to enter.  The assumption must be that the pax couldn't handle the close confinement inside, but I feel cheated and wished I'd been offered the choice...


...elephant ride up to the Amber Fort, which plays out exactly like a description I once read, as if the animal has eight legs, all moving in different directions.  After lunch, I curl myself into a stone window and doze, as the hot wind brushes over like a caress...

... I read in the heat of the bus while the rest of the group is shepherded into a carpet shop.  Kites fly over the adjacent neighborhoods, swirling and spinning in the sky, as the Red Fort looms beyond.  A man squats beside the road to pee, and pee, and pee, like he'd been holding it for days.  A motorbike pulls up to an adjacent shop, the rider handing over a duck which goes straight into a cooking pot...






RANTHAMBORE NATIONAL PARK

...shy tigers of the reserve offer only their impressive footprints.  It's a delight though to drive through the cool air of morning, up and down the hills that open out onto forever.  Just through the crumbling old stones gates of the park, a troupe of monkeys bare their asses as a way of saying farewell...



UDAIPUR

...bucolic day by the lake, lazily punted out to Taj Lake Palace for tea in the courtyard.  Lunch in the old Palace beside the lake, followed by another doze in a bay window...

..."Everything will be okay in the end. If it's not okay, it's not the end."  Usually attributed to John Lennon but apparently was actually an old Indian proverb...  

CHITTORGARH


...sunset visit to the old fort, which sprawls along the hilltop.  Peaceful in spots, busy in others, a riot of monkeys that watch the clusters of tour groups come and go.  Funneled into a ruined amphitheater to see a light show that never happens.  Never mind, I'm enjoying people-watching.  Far more colorful...

...mobile phones everywhere.  Probably the only way to be alone in such a crowded country as India...

...Large numbers of domestic tourists everywhere.  This, and the obvious improvement of quality of life, hints at a rapidly developing country.  Indians are hungry, and the middle class is rapidly expanding.  I predict that the first half of the century will be China's, and the latter half all India, if their religious differences can be sorted out, or at least ignored.  In the past, being Indian meant to repeat the life of your parents. But that is rapidly changing...

...India is becoming more like the US, and vice-versa...


JAISALMER



...the kids greet us just off the bus, singing Frère Jacques to the beat of an Indian tune...

...the temperature maxes out at 49.2 degrees C.  The guide tells us that if it had hit 50, he'd have called it a day...

...the fort town immediately becomes my favorite city, its narrow winding lanes, the Sufi temples, the airy courtyards of the merchant homes.  Then again, I always love places at the extremes of geography.  But would have preferred less of the motorcyclists zooming around...

...camels much smoother to ride than elephants.  Exciting to be this close to the no-man's land of the Pakistani border.  Beers and a sunset chat with the Scottish Trio, mainly about the complexities of raising children...



JODHPUR

...the fort here the best of the lot.  Somehow feels less trafficked, the blue city below gorgeous.  LYL and I ponder a repeat visit, fewer trains and overnight instead in palaces...



AGRA

...dawn tonga ride through Keoladeo Bird Sanctuary, refreshing in the cool and the quiet, but I am still smarting over not having seen tigers last week... 

...Red Fort impresses with the open courtyards, and views of the Taj.  Wash off the dust with a quick swim in the pool at Clarks Shiraz Hotel, trying not to think about the quality of the water that gets in my mouth...

...And the Taj itself.  What else can be said, since Tagore has already had the last word, with his 'teardrop on the face of eternity.'  Even the most jaded traveller such as myself is overwhelmed.  The Taj is far more breathtaking than expected.   I had long ago planned to propose to LYL here, though it becomes more of a postposal since the wedding has already been planned.  The act is complicated by the distractions of people, who keep wanting to take photos with us.  I finally pull her away for a half second to slip on the ring, and mere moments later, we are no longer alone...

RAILS TO DELHI

...happy that this night is the last on the train, as it is nearly impossible to get a good sleep.  We all walk around in a daze through the hot afternoons.  I wish too that we had had a little more time to ride during the daylight, and watch the countryside roll on.  I missed somewhat the liminality of the journey... 

...final dinner, with the Scottish Trio as usual, which is always a delight.  The English have all found their usual comfort in the confines of their familiar social spheres.  We five are the only non-English, and thus joke about our social ostracism, about ours being the domain of former colonists...

On the turntable:  Govi, "Your Lingering Touch" 
On the nighttable:  William Dalrymple,  "City of Djinns"

Indo I: Delhi & Shimla

Sketches from a one month meander through India last October.


DELHI

...a man crossing the street is nearly taken out by a motorbike in front of the Nizam-ud-din Shrine.  We wander the warren of lanes, trying to memorize our way back out.  The water in the ghat in the middle of this maze is filthy, yet is busy with bathers.  The shrine grounds are packed for the Thursday night qawwali.  A young bespectled student type asks for a voluntary donation, which we give.  Nearby, a dwarf plays with a group of children, in a safe and uncrowded corner...

...chubby man coming down the steps of Jama Masjid quite gingerly, wearing an "Endurance College" T-shirt.  Obviously he flunked out...

...why is there a picture of Gandhi on all the police stations?...

...city bus with an advert for Uber...

...the mosque at Firoz Shah Kotla, is segregated even in ruin. Through the shattered brick walls I spy a handful of kneeling men, bowing forward again and again in waves... 

...a dawn visit to the Red Fort.  A black dog follows me for an incredibly long time, as if he'd adopted me.  Men futilely rake a massive and incredibly littered space out front.  Low-lying Chandni Chowk, like a groove in the city, as if everything in the city rolled away and came to rest there.   I have the Fort to myself, arriving even before the Chatta Chowk bazaar opens.  The fort has seen better days, but still has features that surprise, namely the throne backed by Italian marble (though I suppose the greater surprise would have been had by those executed here).    

...the driver I've hired for the day warned me off walking through the old city, claiming it was too dangerous.  He was happy to arrange a tonga though, but I'd already done that the day before, me eventually taking over for the rider who looked exhausted.  (And rightly so, it is no joke bicycling through the heat and smog of the labyrinth that is Old Delhi.)  There is an uncomfortable moment when I tell him to wait for me at the car, as he seemed to want to act as guide and remain at my side.  It has the feeling of telling a dog to heal, and I don't like myself much. But he mothers me a little too much, and seems anxious when I wander away in dodgy neighborhoods.  In time I realize his concern is more a masked phobia of Muslims. He also seems to have bad eyesight, which makes his navigation of traffic a little too interesting...

...I visit Purana Qila.  There is a zoo next door, but what's the point of a zoo in India, when all you had to do is look out the window. Lots of couples on the open grounds of the Qila, cuddling in the shade.   Now and again a guard will come through and separate them with a holler.  But all is 1950's innocence here, the boys laying with their heads in their girlfriend's laps... 

...a hijra slinks in a feline like way through traffic and up to my car window, palm then rapidly extended.  As I shake my head softly no, I get a nonchalant smile and she sashays away...

...I'm given a boxed lunch on the bus, which I don't particularly want.  I decide to give it to a beggar, but despite my best efforts, I can't find one.  I walk and walk, laughing that I am unable to find a beggar in India...
   
 ...a large gang of monkeys, most of them newborns, dig through a pile of rubbish behind the Secretariat Buildings...

...horses standing around Shahajahanabad's Turkman Gate, adding to the old-timey vibe...

...Connaught Place.  I've been warned to take care here, as it is a haven for the untrustworthy.  Apparently shoe-shine boys will flick shit onto your shoes in order to coerce you into a shine. The ear cleaners too are apparently pretty pushy.   I trace the ring around Connaught a couple of times, the shops closed, yet people are making their way to work.  On two occasions a man will fall into step in order to start up conversation, mainly to tell me of a relative living abroad. Neither of these encounters is threatening.  The second time, my driver pops up out of nowhere.  He's apparently been watching me, and thinking the man is pulling some kind of scan, begins to argue with him, the latter pleading to me to call him off.   I eventually duck down a side street toward the Oxford Book Store, stopping for a chai to kill time before it opens.  It is a little slice of hipster India: tie-less, short sleeved young men with perfect hair hunch over their Macs.  The bookshop too is hip and neon bright, with a young staff and a coffee bar attached.  I find the Kipling section and pick up a Penguin India copy of Kim. I figure it would make a nice souvenir, and it is only 200 rupees.  But then I remember the street kids, and think how much the same 200 rupees would mean to them.  I replace Kim on the shelf...

...a short walk from Connaught Place leads me through quiet neighborhoods to Agrasen ki Baoli, which immediately becomes my favorite place in Delhi.  This step well has all the look of a ruin, yet acts a peaceful oasis from the city, all young couples and a few Asian tourists.  While I wait for a couple of girls to go through their selfie rituals so that I can get a photo, I talk to a trio of boys sitting in front of the old mosque at the top of the steps.  They alternate between friendly and teasingly aggressive, so I leave them.  They later follow me out, still mocking, teasing. I make eye-contact with a long-haired and sympathetic looking taxi driver, and make the international gesture of toking a joint, as if the boys are silly and high.  The driver immediately perks up and asks me if I want to buy some pot.  Shit.  I laugh and walk away shaking my head...     

...protests in front of the main Police Station, with an "interfaith" theme.  But even this demonstration for religious tolerance grows heated, so I quickly leave Jantar Mantar before the swelling crowds cut off my escape. Along the way, I notice a hearse standing by...

...A Stroll through the quiet of the Lodi Gardens.  Stopping short to see a family repairing the walk, the children carrying bricks.  The youngest girl must be around my daughter's age, mud splattering her little dress.  I walk away to the shade of Sikandar Lodi Tomb, fighting back tears...

...approached by young men (always young men) to take a selfie inside Shish Gumbad, then step out the other side to a riot of schoolkids.  Beyond them, a group of people perform extreme yoga poses in matching T-shirts.  I wander away toward Safdarjung Madarsa, quiet but for a few girls chatting in the shade.  As I depart, I wade through a large group of schoolkids on a field trip, and my hello creates a roar of children greetings that echo beneath the stone, as their teachers try to quiet them down...

...returning to the hotel, and the body of our tour group.  A number of them tell how brave I am in wandering Dehli's streets, but I feel the opposite, a little sorry that they hadn't... 

...the peaceful oasis of our Maurya Hotel which resembles the Ranganathaswamy Temple of India's south, above the canopy of trees that spreads away in all directions.  Gazing out over the forest it is easy to see why Delhi is considered one of the world's greenest cities.  Beneath the canopy are all the embassies and the villas for government ministers, parliamentarians, and diplomatic corps.  If you limited your sightseeing to just this area, you'd think Delhi one of the most beautiful places in the world...

...the blood red sunsets over the haze...


    
ON THE TRAIN TO SHIMLA

...train pulling out of Delhi, offering a full view of the slums, the worst I've ever seen.  Cows and wild boar eat the garbage strewn everywhere.  Lots of people undertaking their morning ablutions at this early hour, squatting in full view. (I'd be surprised to see many men also squat to pee, but only if they are wearing kurta.) Woman squat too, though a slight distance from the men.  Boys simply stand, bait and tackle free in the breeze...

...on the train, each of the Englishmen is reading a newspaper, as if doing the daily commute back home. Over time I notice that the boldest font is used for tragedies in places that none of us have even heard of...

...a fellow passenger, a very old and dignified Indian woman with white hair, dark face, and a box of freshly jarred marmalade, which I lift for her onto the overhead rack, her cautioning at the fragility.  Life at either of its extremities certainly simplifies what truly is important...

...the fresh wheat cut on the Yamuna plain is stacked into domes that resemble the tops of minarets. Harvested rice fields are burned into tan and black stripes. The simple and tidy earthen farmhouses, many with a satellite dish. One has a massive advert for "Hero" bicycles painted on its side... 

...the uniform white of Chandrigarh in the distance, like bleached bones...

 

SHIMLA

...Shimla's roads and arteries like pasta spilled down the hillside.  The fainter traces of trails like lacework....
 
...Away from the traffic, Shimla is like a college town, with its lovely little pedestrian mall lined with shops, cafes, and cheap hotels.  I admire the church from afar, and later kick myself for not going in after I heard that Kipling's father designed the stained-glass windows...

...road works done by white-garbed Sikhs in bright orange vests...

..The drive down to Chandrigarh. While Taiwanese drivers are considered the world's most dangerous, Japan has the worst, and India the most foolish.  Buses overtake on blind curves through the mountains at speed. Apples for sale everywhere.  Shimla's now closed airfield like a plaster on the hillside. A man on the roadside pulls his chainsaw toward his sandalled foot.  Traffic slows to a crawl due to a puja.  A man nearly gets left behind by his bus as he pees obliviously on the roadside, and upon noticing, races uphill after the receding vehicle. (I certainly hope that he had finished his business first.)  A fleet of Mercedes overtakes the entire flow of traffic, some political bigwig aboard, flanked by bully-boys who scowl and gesture at the drivers to pull the fuck over. (Most of the worst traffic snarls or delays I experienced while in India were due to politicians moving from point A to B.) Lone bicyclist with a Czech flag rides through the dust swarms as he ascends slowly. Driver on a mobile makes a half-assed attempt to pull off the road, fouling four entire lanes of traffic.  And the fundamental disappointment that Chandrigarh's railway station is eight km outside town.  I was hoping to get a glimpse of the town that La Corbustier designed, India's first planned city.  I've heard the city called both stunning, and hideous.  Next time...


On the turntable:  Gypsy Kings,  "The Very Best of the Gypsy Kings"
On the nighttable: Rudyard Kipling "Plain Tales from the Hills"

Linear Equation

What are trains but numbers made manifest?


On the turntable:  Art Pepper, "Lost Life"

An Occurance at Cinnabar Bridge

The whistle blew shrilly and the train came to a complete halt.  It was just the other side of the crossing, with the conductor and the engineer looking down from the front window.  Oh no, I thought, a suicide.  

The conductor climbed down from the train and helped escort a young man who had been stuck in the no-man's-land between the drop gates.   The train then began to crawl toward where I was standing on the platform.  

As I waited reading my book, I felt a rather abrupt shove on my right arm.  I thought that someone might have run into me on the near empty platform,  but I turned to see a woman in her 70s smiling at me.  I thought that she must have mistaken me for someone else, but then she stepped in front of me to enter the train.  I took a seat further down the carriage, but she immediately came and sat beside me.  I no longer tech English for money, let alone free, I quickly said to her, I'm sorry but I'm not much in the mood for talking.  I am, she said.  So I quickly disembarked and walked to the next car.  From my new seat, I could see that she too had moved, to the end of her car, and was now staring at me through the glass door.  

What is it about foreigners that attract the mentally ill?  Over the years, I seem to be a magnet for them, a plaything they find on the street.  I'm not complaining, but am curious.  What do they read in us that makes us approachable?  The woman's behavior was harrassment, hands down.  I thought that if she were to approach me again I would ask her what she wanted, curiosity begining to win out.  

The train pulled away from the platform, seemingly in the wrong direction.  Weren't we now heading back toward Kyoto?  But my stop was the very next one, and the correct one.  I disembarked unmolested, heading toward the gates to begin the day's walk, alone.


On the turntable:  !!!, "Louden up Now"
On the nighttable:  Simon Arlitage., "All Points North"

Looking for the 'There' There Pt. II

I stand amongst the graves stacked up the side of the hill.  Most are black, new, the numbers upon them written with the expected date.  They look over the town where they had passed and lost their lives, a town that was no longer there.  Instead all that remains are the weeds dull in the mist, and the gentle lapping of the sea beyond.  

The rain continues, having probably never stopped during the night.  While the clouds of yesterday had hung low and oppressive, they'd moved in even closer this morning, dimming all visiblity.  As I move deeper into Ōtsuchi, I can hardly make out the edges of things.  The only building still intact seems to be the town office, paired with a makeshift gas station with one pump.   Workmen come bicycling out of the mist, headed toward projects that I can't see.  Other workmen are walking in pairs, ever in their bright yellow jumpsuits, ever willing to say good morning.  On the wall of one of the construction trailers hangs a sign showing what the town will look like when rebuilt, all neat and tidy and ringed by a canal to offset any future inundation of water.  The plan is quite ambitious and surprisingly 'eco' for Japan.  But I know that somewhere unseen in the mist is a large wall being constructed, behind which would be the sea.  

The rain is growing heavier, but it doesn't stop me from getting my first ride of the day.   The driver is a young man coming off the night shift at Japan Auto Federation.  Kubota-san tells me of his wife and children, now living an hour away in Tono, relocated after their home was washed away.  He wanted to return here to rebuild, but his wife refused.  His father on the other hand insisted on staying near the place that had been his home.  This young man comes to visit him everyday after work, before returning home to his own family.  Though tired, he is quite friendly, and shows a definitive spark when discussing his passion for motorcycles.  He is also studying English, since he had wanted to talk more with the international rescue teams who had spent months here in clean-up, yet he had lacked the ability to do so.  As we pass through Kamaishi, he sadly mentions that it had once been a beautiful place.   

I had wanted to visit Kamaishi myself, but he drops me off on the far side.  It isn't long before I am picked up by a young workman heading to oversee a construction team that is digging a drainage system for the large bypass being built through here.  Route 45 was the only road along this stretch of coast, and after it was destroyed by the tsunami it was decided that this long-proposed highway project be pushed forward in order to create an alternative route.  For dozens of miles I'd seen the machines hard at work high in the hills above, scattering trees down into the flatland below.  It truly felt as if man was punishing the landscape for what had been wrought. 

I stand watching the machines as the driver has a brief discussion with his team.  Above me, badly twisted metal reveals what had once been part of a protective tsunami gate.  The train line over my head is no longer there.  My driver, Takahashi-san, addresses these as we get back in the car, and further along points out that this year's rice was the first since the disaster.  He too is quite friendly, and his enthusiasm for his hometown of nearby Hanamaki grows so contagious that I too will pay it a visit many days later.   He likes picking up hitchhikers since years earlier he used to hitch back and forth from his university in Tokyo to visit friends in Osaka.  But these carefree days seem behind him as his position in his construction company has grown to the point that he travels all over the region to supervise the rebuilding.

Ōfunato surprises me in how unaffected it looks, despite the town having lost a third of its structures.  Yet closer to the harbor I begin to see the signs, or again, the spaces of things absent.  For the first time in two days the rain has stopped, revealing finally the nature of the construction going on.  Massive blocks are stacked atop one another to form what immediately brings to mind a Pink Floyd record cover.  I don't mean to sound flippant here, but that's exactly what it looked like.  The Wall.   

Ōfunato was twice leveled in the tsunamis that destroyed Miyake, and again in 1960 to a five meter wave that originated with a massive earthquake in Chile.  I can understand why people find security in the idea of a wall.  As I ponder this, I walk the tell-tale yellow stripe laid upon a brick sidewalk, the raised ridges specifically designed to enable the blind to slide their canes along the grooves between.  Now the sidewalk is a meter below the road upon which I'm walking, and I'm pulled from thoughts of the past with the sudden recognition that this had once been a bustling shopping arcade.   The only thing that remains are the little benches of concrete and wood built so that people could stop and rest and have a little chat.    This had all been constructed at the water's edge, and for the first time on my walk I can actually see the sea.

Everything else is gone.  As I continue to walk along the sea, new homes and factories begin to appear.  The only thing of any age still standing are the old kura storehouses, built upon remarkably sound architectural principles centuries old.  I pass a few people as I go, and my inability to make eye contract betrays the sense of shame I'm still carrying.  On my last ride with Takahashi-san,  we passed an obvious long-distance bicyclist, and another walker with a big pack.  I wish I had been able to meet with them and find out what it was that had drawn them here.  

When the road begins to pull me away from the water's edge, I look up a low rise and see a train station.  It looks clean and  newly built, though I know that the trains themselves are not running.  I climb a flight of stairs and am amazed to see that the train line has been paved into a road as narrow as a bicycle path.  Mere minutes later, a bus pulls up, headed in my direction.  I climb aboard and begin the swift ride along the coastline, looking down at broad bays striated with oyster beds.  It all feels like some part of a fantasy novel, along something that is neither train line nor road.  A ride at Disneyland is the closest, I suppose. 

I disembark on the edge of Rikuzen-Takata, walking past rice fields.  Occasionally, gulls raise their white heads from their job of clearing the fields of insects.  I find the rail line and begin to walk atop it.  Ironically, a few days later at the history museum in Tono, I'll meet the president of this very Sanriku rail line that these buses have replaced.  It is a chance encounter initiated by him, as he was curious what I was doing in such an out of the way place.  Our conversation will continue for an hour, at the end of which he'll invite me to return with him to the devastated area in order to share with me more stories.

But in a few moments I'll have another encounter that will change the nature of the entire day...



On the the turntable:  X, "Live at the Whisky A Go-Go"
On the nighttable: Ian Buruma, "God's Dust"

Mise-en-scène

I recently came across my first journal entry written in Japan, penned on a train as I rode north toward the city that would be my home for the next 12 years...

Sept 10, 1994 

Train through the countryside toward Yonago.  Rice paddies give way to mountains.  Running along rivers, blue herons everywhere.  Villages nestled between hills.  Scarecrows with straw hats bent over rice.  A baseball game in a small city.  A VW beetle welded to a ramp appears ready to hurdle the stream.  A woman bends to pick rice while her husband sits on a tractor nearby scratching his forearm.  A trainload of sleeping Japanese pulls alongside.  Piles of rice dry in the sun.  Trees hide a small shinto shrine.  Fishermen wade in streams, casting a line from a rod over four times their height.


On the turntable:  The Rolling Stone, "Stripped"

    

A Life in the Day

The wonder we feel in seeing the opposite end of a train on which we are riding is like a baby discovering its own limbs...

...a husband hobbled by his wife's tongue...

...stone grave markers extending from the earth a monument to the death sentence we receive at birth...


On the turntable:  Smashing Pumpkins, "Siamese Dream"

Five p.m.

The tree trunk was swinging back and forth, back and forth, in an ever increasing trajectory.  It took a few moments before I saw the man whose hand was on the rope, moving the trunk with the strength  of his black-clad back and shoulders.

The end of this wooden striker was getting closer and closer to the inevitable point where the momentum, aided by gravity, causes it fall forward and strike emptiness, an emptiness given tone, as defined by the iron that surrounded it.  

Dwarfed by the high glass and steel of the city looming above him, the man was standing upon an almost anachronistic platform of wood, nearly the height of the elevated concrete platform upon which I was passing.  This train was of a similar elongated narrow shape as the striker, and it was similarly propelled forward by the hands of a single man.  The train too was operating according the dictates of the clock, and the man with the hands on the controls and the man with his hands on the rope were fated to pass one another in the sky at the same point in the day, though not of the day, as such things are defined by the movement of bodies far larger than those of the two men. 

And as the front end of the train struck out over the front edge of the river, so did the front end of the striker make contact with the iron bell, the sound just audible over the roar of the city and the train and whatever was spilling from my earbuds, a sound that is the traditional marking of time by a religion that doesn't believe in such concepts anyway.    


On the turntable:  Live, "Mental Jewelry"

Going home...

Unlike the deliberate movements of the ancient ticket seller in Narai Station, the hands of the young guy in Tokyo Station move like a spider on a hot skillet...

...the woman sitting next to me on the Shinkansen is incidentally tapping her foot in rhythm to the Furry Lewis song on my iPod...

...guy next to me on the Kyoto subway, tracing a universe with his hands. He's either practicing sign language, or he's a ninja, working through the 'Kuji-in' in an attempt to become invisible, public invisibility being a common goal for the Japanese commuter...



On the turntable:  "Princess Nicotine: Folk And Pop Sounds Of Myanmar (Burma) Vol. 1"

Japan hail

I like how the JR ticket machines have that cute animated woman who pops up and gives you a little wave as you take your ticket, thus 'humanizing' the process.  

On the turntable:  一万 Maniacs, "Our Time in Eden" 

Groups

Drifting into Umeda by train, bluegrass in my ears, the rhythm of the picking moving us forward.  The banjo player on this old classic, 'Lonesome John,' picks as if playing a bodhrán, and is thus the engine of the piece, navigating along a line that extends back to the old country.  And the train is thus propelled into Hankyu Station, above a shrine squat and angular against all that towering glass.  A block away is the Toaster building, with its thin squinty windows.  

Out on the city streets, I have a Ferris Bueller moment when The Smiths enter my ears.  "Good times for a change."  I'm not alone in finding refuge behind the music.  One girl is singing as she strolls up the street.  Here is another difference I've noted upon my return.  Two years ago, young women were criticized for putting on makeup on the train, the current generation's means of blurring the lines between public and private, lines that give definition to this particular culture.  These days, already dolled up like their favorite pop stars, they've taken to singing their songs in front of everyone, the "i" in iPod threatening the wa. 

I too feel a desire to perform, to whip my furled umbrella out like a sword, using some of my finest iaido moves to knock the cigarettes from the mouths of those smokers who walk past.  And the lines again undergo a further blurring, as iai (居合) means literally to, wherever you are, whatever you're doing, "fit in" to your surroundings. 

On the turntable:  Brendan Perry, "Eye of the Hunter"

On the nighttable:  "Forty Stories of Japan"

Earache My Eye

I think the size of my earlobes are changing.  (Is this common with age?)  For a long time I've used those in-ear rubber earbuds, but lately, when I take the earbuds out, the rubber piece stays in the ear.

Last week as the subway pulled into Shijo Station, the cord snagged on a piece of clothing and again pulled the earbud out of my ear.  As I reached up to remove it, I found that the rubber bit had entered the ear canal completely.  I didn't want to miss my connecting train, so I walked up to a couple of workers manning the Hankyu wickets.  Asking them to help me remove it, they merely looked at me with horror, one of them going so far as to say,  "いやだ、いやだ!" a couple of times.  So I asked them for the pliers lying on the desk, after a few tries, pulled it out myself, careful not to get my elbow knocked by the steady flow of people walking behind me. 

Made the train, and didn't miss a note!

On the turntable:  Elysian Fields, "Queen of the Meadow"

On the nighttable:  Richard Louv, Last Child in the Woods"

Silver and Gold

Suburbs thicken the landscape toward Tokyo.  The Sky Tower beckons for the final leg into Tokyo. 

 The city in its usual Golden Week post-Apocalyptic mode -- the Yamanote with ample seating, the streets near empty.  Nothing moving at 6 am Sunday morning.  

Mindful of the undead, I cross the street and board the Shink, a silver bullet pointed towards home...

On the turntable:  George Winston, "All the Seasons of George Winston"

 

Slouching toward Shikoku

9/19/09

...we awake at 5:30 and walk toward Oku-no-in as temple bells begin to peal. The cemetery looks almost two dimensional in the fog. Three monks are chanting at the Gōkyo, slower and deeper and even more Tibetan than at the service yesterday. We go around to back to Taishi's tomb and meditate awhile. Then a quick prayer asking for protection as we're about to trace his footsteps across Shikoku. On the walk back, sunlight begins to spot some of the mossy stones, animating them.

We have breakfast, pack, then get a bus for the cable car down. We are standing in front, the car submitting to gravity, moving down the steep pitch as if an automobile in idle. The driver has little to do but brake and inch us into the station.

On the next train, we lurch through the mountains toward the River Ki. We are once again back in the wild land of the gods, and I can see how this formidable range kept out invaders. Back on the plains, today's invaders are the other passengers. I hate that we have to pass north of the Ki and out of the land of the dead, then return all the way back to Osaka. I'm not ready for city yet. The bodies hem in much too close, and I can't quite concentrate on my book, having been too relaxed by all the space I got these three weeks on the road and in the mountains.

Then on the ferry. I spend most of the crossing filling in my journal, but feeling the need for perspective, I go out on deck. If I go from dry land to dry land without a glimpse of water, I'll never be sure I actually left Honshu. It is windy, the waves high, large freighters rolling as they pass through our wake. Tall shafts of white reach up Awaji's rocky southern sides. I cross to port and look past the bow at the shoreline of Shikoku which we'll walk for the next few weeks or so. I go back inside to pee, my stream drawing a crescent moon as the boat breaks the swells.


On the turntable: Fleetwood Mac, "Roadhouse Chalk Farm"
On the nighttable: Frederick Barthelme, "The Brothers"

So Much Water So Close To Home

My last day in Yonago, I went to see a Doctor of Chinese Medicine about my knee. He told me that my body has too much liquid, and gave me some herbs to remedy that. But how can I escape all this water?

It is beside my train, in the form of a river along which a tug pulls a barge loaded with dirt from what was once a mountain. This train stops at Kinosaki, its passengers disembarking for a three day weekend soaking in hot baths. My next train follows the Sea of Japan, whose rocky shoreline is carved by more water, both serving as natural defenses against ancient enemies.

In Yonago, I spend a few days feeding on crab and other things that this water offers, as if trying to instantaneously recoup the 7 kilograms lost during a 10 week walk.

Another train struts along other water, trapped in rice paddies now plowed into hourglass shapes. At Gotsu I follow the Ko no Kawa south to spend a couple days with Jake. On one of these we watch the water leap and rush through the narrow Senjokei. A month ago, Kagura performers mimicked this movement as they danced in the surrounding shrines now quiet on this warm autumn afternoon.

Thumb south to Tomo no Ura and Sensuijima floating in the Seto-Naikai. I hike around what the locals call `kemono no michi,` or trail of beasts. Where there are views, I sit and squint at the words on a page in the glare of sunlight reflecting brightly on water. I`ve always had a great attraction to these waters, love to walk the desert-like hills high over the waves. I often escaped down here with friends long returned to their homes, far away where water merges with other water. And I too will be soon gone, and the sentimentality I feel is a weight heavy, like the Bizen cup from which I drink my beer. I toast these ghosts, and then again. There is always the feeling of aware in off-season beach towns, yet mine is compounded and I often feel near tears. Leaving this country is like a breakup with someone I`m still deeply in love with.

There is other water too: at the end of the narrow alleys of Tomo no Ura; along the waterfront of Onomichi, above which I wander the hills between old temples; forming the spread fingers of the Hiroshima delta; at the southern edge of an overly built-up town facing Miyajima, where I spend my final days.

And the sentimentality lasts, though it could be that I have far too many minor chords on my iPod, making up the nostalgic songs that themselves flowed through all the different lives I`ve lived here. As an English teacher well-enthused at an expat life. As the husband and father. As a hollow shadow, trying to pull myself from the wreckage of a life destroyed. As a person in reconstruction, rebuilding myself in a new city.

Escape from the water. Tough to do on an island. Today I will cross over it, to see where the flow goes once beyond its limits...


On the turntable: Beatles, "Rubber Soul"
On the nighttable: Robert Stone, "Damascus Gate"

Let Me Get Back to the Sea IV

The train was the first of the day, and it led me west along the coast. One beach lined a crescent shaped cove, but the ends had been lopped off and concreted. A beautiful old wooden station had lost its view of rice fields and forest to a five meter high pile of dirt upon which a questionably necessary bypass will be plonked. Two stations further on, a simply immense television drones on to an empty parking lot. It was fast becoming a depressing morning. I am glad to see a bit of the countryside before the central government completely fucks it up.

I got off the train at a small rural station where the only sign on life was a cat sleeping on the wooden rail where the ticket taker usually is. (Shape shifter?) I walked to the main road and was able to hitch a lift up to Matsunoodera, a lovely old temple with 1300 years of history present in its statuary. It was deserted but for a lone man busy at work on new carvings. The radio at his feet kept him up with the baseball at Koshien.

I got my nokyo stamped, number 31 on my Saikoku Kannon pilgrimage. On the road back down the mountain, I passed a trio of monkeys, the male seemingly upset with me about something. Not a single car passed on this quiet road, and even on the busier highway below it took about 45 minutes to get a ride. A Nagoya family were on their way to the beach, but the weather had other plans. The sea and rivers that we passed were the color of mud, with all sorts of flotsum bobbing along the shore. We passed through Maizuru, such a lovely name, for such an ugly town. Along the way, I dropped quite a few hints to my driver about how nice the view was from above Amanohashidate, which was a short walk from my destination of Nariaiji. They didn't bite, and I eventually found myself at the station. I'd wanted to use a boat, cable car, and bus to get up to the temple, but the rain had caused a landslide and the cable car wasn't running. There was a road up from the other side, but I needed a car to get there. A taxi was my option. For 31 temples, this was the only time on this pilgrimage that I compromised on one. Throughout the ride I was kicking myself because I'd forgotten my nokyo when I came this way last year. An oversight costly in time and money. This road too had seen many slides, with road teams pushing dirt and rocks into the streams below.

At the temple, I paid my third visit to Nariaiji, but was disgusted that they'd started charging admission, which must have helped fund an ugly new pagoda that rose from beside the parking area. Amanohashidate was hardly visible with the mist, which rose to veil the surrounding peaks. I started the long walk down , passing the odd jizo on the way. I stepped over fist-sized stones which had come down during the night, above swift streams running white and brown. Fresh landslides gave my mind something new to ponder. A few cars passed, but none stopped. I thought this ironic as they'd all been returning from a visit to a temple dedicated to the Goddess of Compassion.

A minute after arriving at the main road I was picked up by a man who had seemingly made a U-turn to do so. A retired salesman, he'd driven this region for decades, and now did little more than fish. Seemingly lonely, he was really enthusiastic about me joining him for a visit up to Ine, a lovely little village that I'd visited with Miki last year. He then changed tactics, wanting me to stay here in town and drink with him and his friend. It took some doing, but I finally got him to drop me at the station.

The rain and floods had fouled the train schedules. (Arriving home I found that it had been a typhoon which had killed 13.) I finally made my way south toward home, through valleys so wet and cold that the train windows fogged, and our arrival time grew more and more distant.

On the turntable: The The, "Dusk"

Let Me Get Back to the Sea

It started with a photograph. It is captioned, "Just north of Kyoto, setting out to walk to the Japan Sea, late April 1961," and shows Gary Snyder doing just that. For years I've had that photo in my mind, and thought that I wanted to do the exact same thing. Miki and I had tried to do the walk last September, but a typhoon changed our tune. This time, she was busy so I set off alone, along the old Saba Kaido that once brought mackerel to Kyoto from the sea.

I'd start from Kuruma, since a previous walk had already taken me that far. I got to the train platform to find that the schedule had been halved, with Kurama bound trains going every twenty minutes now. Due to the sagging economy, Japan has ben cutting costs where it can, but at the risk of undercutting its legendary efficiency. The train finally came. At each stop, more and more kids got on, headed toward their kindergarten at the end of the line. An old man sat nearby, looking much at peace with the world.

Off the train, I walked beyond the village, up a paved road which climbed steadily to the north. It was a tough slog, but thankfully this turned out to be the most challenging part of the day. I could feel how out of shape I'd become in the few weeks since the Mie walk. The past ten days had been the worst, mostly sitting idle on the film set waiting, followed by a series of dinners with friends, loading up on too much food and beer. It was a punishing 90 minutes, but I eventually made the pass. I was happy to see a clearly marked Saba Kaido sign, which led me up a road that, while sealed, was narrow and felt more like a proper trail. I wasn't too worried about keeping to the proper route this time since my real goal was simply getting to the sea.

Atop the ridge now, I was rewarded with the view of a sliver of Biwa. The trail stayed flat for awhile, keeping to a road that was beginning to wash out. In more than a few places, the road had become pond, with tadpoles and water skimmers rippling the surface. Here and there was the obligatory illegally dumped trash. (I am now firmly convinced that I live amidst people who most definitely shit where they eat.) During the day, I also came across a dozen abandoned cars, including a white jeep far down the hillside, its grill and headlights rising from the mud like a grinning skull.

The road continued, tracks in the mud alluding to traffic of auto and swine. I finally came to an ancient shrine with a few people picnicking out front. This inspired me to have my own lunch near a small lonely farm. More and more homes began to appear, teasing me into thinking I'd come to village, but before long, I was in forest again. It wasn't hard to feel that I was truly in the middle of nowhere. I reached a junction, offering the choice of continuing along this road through the valley, or up a steep path to a pass. I stared at the characters on the sign. 'Valley' (谷), looking like a comfy monopoly house, under a cozy layer of snow.　Or 'pass' (峠), all spikes and angles. A no brainer really. But my guidebook stated twice that the mackerel bearers (great blog title!) had come over the top, and so, by the grace of cod, did I, all the while muttering, "I'm gonna regret this." A hot sweaty ascent once again brought me to the warm fuzzy road, upon whose grassy fringe I sprawled awhile and stared at the sky. A trio of insects raced around my head in a crazy rendition of the Indy 500.

Along this next level part of the trail, I found a fully inflated balloon that had been launched from Mii-dera, a good 50km away. A note was attached, written by an elementary school student (judging by the handwriting, which was still favorable to my own.) and wishing for world peace. My needs were more modest, merely lunch, so I stopped beside Hacchodaira, a very ancient swamp going back to the Jurassic. I wanted to lay on the ground again but the viper warning signs kept me in motion. Soon after I arrived at Ogurozaka pass, and faced a mercifully pleasant descent along long switchbacks. A black snake shot across the path, marking the only life I'd see today, barring the odd bear warning signs. Even the cicada had little to say. At the bottom, I soaked my feet in a small stream, then moved down through the road to Kuta Village, where I'd sleep. It was still only 3 pm. I'd expected a 10 hour day but had done it in less than eight somehow. I had some trouble finding my minshiku but an old man had explained it to me as I tried desperately to sift through the dialect. I finally found it, a lovely old farmhouse under thatched roof. I read the afternoon away on the veranda, wondering when I could have that bath. The clouds came over to erase the day's course, backlighting a row of dragonflies queued along a power line. An old man armed with a fishing pole and optimism set off to catch dinner. Some younger folk from the city were dressed in a way they thought their country relatives did.

I finally got my bath, in a tub that was perfectly adapted to my height. While washing up, I found that my ankle was bleeding quite badly, and it took mere seconds to realize that when I'd soaked my feet in that stream, I'd picked up a hitchhiker -- a leech. This explains the strange stains on my socks and on the tatami in my room. The area where the leech's head enters the body takes the blood hours to coagulate. I can now better understand why many cultures used leeches as a way to release those pesky humours from the body. I worried now about my sheets tonite. In staying in a minshiku, you are basically staying in a stranger's home, and it always feels that that person is a distant aunt you hardly know. ("Don't touch the hummels dear.") To complicate things further, dinner came. The first course was fantastic -- deer meat and river fish. Then came sukiyaki. It never ceases to amaze me how even after 15 years here, I still encounter food I don't know how to eat. In those same years I've had sukiyaki maybe twice, and didn't at all pay attention to the process. When my hostess brought me my complimentary glass of blueberry liquor, she let out an audible gasp at the sight of me poking around in the bubbling brown sludge. Things escalated further after dinner. I read out on the veranda again and returning inside I saw that the 100 gnats I'd inadvertently let in were now happily crawling around the tatami. Thinking myself clever, I turned off the light, hoping that they'd migrate toward the lights of the room next door. But while brushing my teeth I heard a familiar sound. Before laying out my futons, the hostess started vacuuming up all the bugs. To the next foreign guest of Kunoya Minshiku, I am truly and deeply sorry.

On the turntable: Donald Byrd, "Blackbyrd"

On the nighttable: Kunal Sinha, "An Ordinary Traveler"