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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 19

30/8/2015

Sunday 7th August 2005 – Kyukamura-Setouchi-Toyo to Shikoku-Chuo-Shi (休暇村瀬戸内東予 - 四国中央市)
Presents received – two beers, okonomiyaki, Bantelin

A few kilometres beyond the city of Saijo I passed the aftermath of a landslide, where waves of rocks and mud had poured out from between the trees and engulfed a car dealership. Ghostly headlights and radiator grills poked out from beneath the rubble, and everything had been left as it was, squashed flat and with no attempt made to rescue the crumpled cars or the showroom’s remains. Although the mud was now baked dry by the summer heat and sections of the road had already been re-routed, their neat white lines skirting the tide line of debris, the scene still had an eerie feel to it, as if it were a fresh catastrophe.

From the top of the next headland Shikoku-Chuo-Shi came into view, at the far end of a sweeping bay and overlooking several small islands (Shikoku-Chuo-Shi means ‘Shikoku Central City’, and is one of many cities formed in the early noughties by the merger of two or three smaller towns, hence the rather unimaginative new name).

Its coast road was heavily industrialised, with the cranes and jetties of a busy port on one side, and on the other a line of factories that took minutes at a time to pass. In front of each stood a security guard in his sentry box, and beyond that endless mazes of vascular pipework, steam pouring from every available vent and chimney into the blue sky.

Making my way inland, industry gave way to shops, then houses, then semi-countryside, and I found my campsite tucked away in a steep-sided valley next to a small boating lake. The caretaker was expecting a party of motorcyclists to arrive later that evening, so it might not be as peaceful when I went to bed, but I was due a day off, and booked myself in for two nights anyway. Next to the lake a father was teaching his two small children how to ride their bicycles, and set them off in the fading light along a surprisingly steep stretch of road. Even with stabilisers it was a tough proposition, but the two of them positively relished the challenge – no doubt their next lesson would be ‘How to give your friend a lift on the luggage rack’, I thought, or ‘How to send an email from your keitai at the same time’.

Having asked their father for advice on where to go for interesting izakaya, I spent the next twenty minutes in the side streets of Shikoku-Chuo-Shi, utilising my foolproof system for locating a decent dinner venue:

1) Chains and franchises are a no-no, as they can be too much like eating in a hotel lobby or a company office.
2) So are noodle bars, which although cheap, have too high a customer turnover to foster conversation between strangers.
3) Anything upmarket is off the list, not just because of the price, but also because the atmosphere can be too hushed and formal, and the waiting staff bow too low to put you entirely at ease.
4) Some izakaya are also to be avoided, if it looks as if they might consist too predominantly of private dining rooms, with not enough communal space at the bar.
5) Last but not least, care has to be taken to avoid hostess clubs, which will normally have names like Cherry Blossom, New Rose or Miki’s Place, with a modern, backlit sign in pink, red or purple.

I eventually settled on an okonomiyaki restaurant (お好み焼き / okonomiyaki is a kind of Spanish omelette that is often cooked on a griddle at the customer’s table), which was suitably rough around the edges, with hand-drawn signs in the window and above the door a flashing yellow warning light of the kind you would normally see at a set of roadworks. At the next seat along the bar was Mr Stone River, who immediately took me under his wing, ordering both beer and food on my behalf. He was a big man with a bald head, thus fitting the gangster stereotype rather well, but it seemed unlikely that his job as a paper salesman was a front, particularly when Shikoku-Chuo-Shi, as he explained, was the paper capital of Japan. Next to Mr Stone River was a motley assortment of men and women in various states of inebriation, in whom the alcohol had instilled just enough courage to speak to a strange gaijin, and immobilised just enough motor function to render most of what they were saying incomprehensible. While I had not consumed such an enormous quantity of egg since stopping for breakfast at a particularly memorable burger van about five years previously (in a layby on the A1 near Peterborough, in case you ever fancy a three-fried-egg sandwich for about one pound fifty), I ate and drank heartily, and Mr Stone River gave me his number, suggesting that we go to the local onsen before dinner the following evening.

Back at the campsite, I was confronted not with a gang of leather-clad Hell’s Angels on Harley-Davidsons, but a group of business studies students on push bikes. Having travelled all the way from Tokyo, they were circumnavigating Shikoku in a week at the rate of eighty or ninety kilometres a day, and even at this late hour, the stragglers among them were still arriving. The site was a mess of tents, bicycles, food, drink, clothes and equipment, with exhausted cyclists sprawled on every available patch of ground. I found a group of lads who still had the strength to hold a conversation, and we swapped riding stories and compared aches and pains.

When I mentioned my knees, one of them fished a small plastic bottle from his panniers.
‘I use this stuff,’ he said. ‘My knees have been giving me problems as well, but it seems to help.’
‘What do you do with it?’ The clear liquid was called Bantelin, and came in a small plastic bottle with a kind of roll-on applicator.
‘You just rub it on your knees before you go to sleep. Go on, take it. We’ve got loads of the stuff.’

By virtue of the fact that she spoke the best English, I was introduced to a half-Peruvian girl, who stood out from the crowd because she was tall and skinny with light brown rather than jet-black hair. The students took it in turns to cook for each other, she explained, and were about to tuck in to a hearty supper of ramen, or Chinese noodle soup. She pointed out their leader, along with the strongest and weakest riders, and told me how they were grouped roughly according to ability, agreeing every morning on where to meet for lunch and where to camp for the night. It was hard to imagine British university students organising a cycling holiday with such efficiency – hard to imagine British university students organising a cycling holiday at all, in fact – and I looked on with admiration as they ate, washed up, collected rubbish, consulted maps, erected their tents, showered and cleaned their teeth, all with the minimum of fuss.

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 18

22/8/2015

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Saturday 6th August 2005 – Innoshima to Kyukamura-Setouchi-Toyo (因島 – 休暇村瀬戸内東予)
Presents received – beer, snacks

If it had not been for the multi-coloured Mariposa and my multi-coloured wardrobe (I had three t-shirts: one red, one green and one blue), I might have looked like a government health and safety inspector, or the researcher for a Discovery Channel show about The Coolest Bridges in the World…Ever! as I cycled from island to island, snapping the Setouchi-Shimanami-Kaido from every conceivable angle. Ikuchi Bridge covers the seven-hundred-and-ninety-metre gap between Innoshima and Ikuchijima, and Tatara Big Bridge the kilometre and a half between Ikuchijima and Ohmishima. Resembling a slender length of steel held by the twin pincers of a production line robot, the latter is the second longest cable stayed bridge in the world, and certainly the most space age of the seven.

At a more modest three hundred and twenty-eight metres long, Ohmishima Bridge is a sturdy white arch reminiscent of its counterpart in Sydney Harbour, and Hakata-Ohshima Big Bridge traverses the distance between – yes, you guessed it – the islands of Hakata and Ohshima in a hop and a skip, with three hundred and twenty-five metres of so-called ‘steel box’ and eight hundred and forty of good, old-fashioned suspension.

The only downside to all of this engineering has been its effect on the Seto-Naikai, which has lost some of the mystery that Donald Richie evokes in The Inland Sea. That book was written the best part of half a century ago, and once you have shoved a four-lane expressway through a previously isolated group of islands, industry and commerce are bound to follow. The coast roads, therefore, were flanked by factory after factory, in the bowels of which could be glimpsed great hunks of steel, lit momentarily by the blue flare from a welder’s torch. I passed an abandoned bus painted in Electric Kool-Aid hippy colours, a recycling plant whose tidy bays were piled high with cans, glass and plastic, a battery chicken farm that stank so much it almost knocked me off the Mariposa, and a seaside arena from which pounding techno music and DJ patter could be heard. Meanwhile, nature asserted itself in the form of swirling sea currents, which were so strong they seemed about to lasso the islands out into the Pacific, and rushed by faster than a speeding car.

It wasn’t until late afternoon that I reached bridge number seven, and this last link in the chain was a fitting climax to the Setouchi-Shimanami-Kaido. The Kurushima-Kaikyo Big Bridge is effectively three suspension bridges laid end-to-end, two of which are over fifteen hundred metres long, and with a total span of over four kilometres. It took me the best part of half an hour to ride across, and by the time I reached the other end I had almost run out of space for photographs on my memory card, and completely run out of adjectives with which to describe the amazing, astounding and awe-inspiring astonishingness of this very long sea crossing with an equally long name.

In Imabari, the first town I came to along the north coast of Shikoku, thousands of people were thronging the streets for a festival, and many of them wore yukata and hanten: yukata being a cheaper, lighter and ready-to-wear version of the kimono, worn for summer festivals or visits to the onsen, and hanten short, colourful coats, often adorned with a family crest or kanji denoting the wearer’s allegiance to a group or society. For many, the occasion appeared to be little more than an excuse to get drunk, and giggling groups of women were fending off lecherous packs of men, who passed around bottles of saké and shochu, and took advantage of the lack of traffic to stage mock wrestling bouts and acrobatic stunts.

I carried on through Imabari without indulging in so much as a drop of booze, as there was no campsite nearby, and in the midst of all this activity, it would be well nigh impossible to find an illicit spot on which to pitch the Snow Peak, let alone an empty hotel room. But maybe I should have stuck around, as my desire to cycle back to Ibaraki at all costs was beginning to feel a little misguided. Before we parted the previous evening, the Internationalist had offered to take me on a guided tour of Innoshima, and I had turned him down, based on the fact that to stay another night would have meant my journey through Chugoku overrunning its allotted week. In such a perpetual state of passing through, I appeared to be depriving myself of some of the pleasures of travel – of the opportunity to find a friendly island, for instance, and hang around for a while – and perhaps I would do better to allow for the possibility of NOT ACHIEVING MY GOAL after all. Sheltering from a downpour at a lonely conbini outside Imabari, I began to formulate a Plan B, and calculated that should I find myself short of time, it would be possible to catch the same two ferries from Osaka to Tokyo that Mr Sturdy Level had made use of, thus shortening my journey by several hundred kilometres.

Kyukamura-Setouchi-Toyo – the Toyo Inland Sea Holiday Village – was just a couple of kilometres further east, surrounded by trees and set back from the sea by a beach of soft sand. In trainers, tracksuit bottoms and a polo shirt, the young man at reception had the air of a PE teacher about him. I asked if there was an onsen nearby and he pointed to the cream-coloured building past which I had just ridden.

‘There’s one at the hotel.’
‘What time does it shut?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
This still gave me an hour or so, although like museums and art galleries, onsen often have a final admission time, so I thought it best to double-check.
‘When’s the latest I can go in?’
‘I’m afraid it’s already too late.’
‘Oh.’
‘They close the gates at seven thirty.’
There was a gate on the road leading up to the hotel, but as far as I could tell, it was only there to prevent people from driving to the beach after hours, and in any case, the hotel was no more than a couple of hundred metres away.
‘It’s OK, I’m on a bicycle, and if need be I can always walk.’
‘The other onsen opens until ten, though.’
‘What? You mean there are two onsen?’
‘Yes, but you have to be a customer at the hotel to use the first one.’
‘You mean the one that opens until eight?’
‘Yes. Except the gates shut at seven thirty.’
‘Seven thirty. Right. But if there’s an onsen that’s open till ten and I walk up, I can use that one, can’t I?’
‘No, because when you come back down, the gates will be closed.’

What was this guy talking about? First there was one onsen, then there were two, they were both open, and I couldn’t use either of them. I took a deep breath, and spoke as slowly and clearly as I could.
‘What time does the hotel onsen close?’
‘Eight o’clock.’
‘And do I have to be a customer at the hotel to use it?’
‘No.’
‘Really?’
‘Yes.’
‘So when’s the latest I can go up?’
‘Seven-thirty.’
‘Which means I’ve still got half an hour.’
‘No. You’re too late.’

Despite persevering in the same vein for several minutes, I was obviously missing some key piece – or more likely, several key pieces – of information. Remember, this is only an approximate translation of what I think the receptionist was saying, and what I like to think I was saying in reply. To paraphrase Rowan Atkinson from the old Barclaycard commercial, we were both fluent, but sadly in different languages.

In the end I was directed to a completely different onsen, for which I set out just as it was getting dark, and having wheeled the Mariposa over some sand dunes, found myself on another side road, where groups of campers and caravanners were tending their barbecues. Many had petrol-driven generators, so that riding past felt like spying on a succession of dinner parties, as each gazebo rang with music and laughter, and cast an oblong of electric light onto the ground before me.

Turning inland I came to a district of love hotels, which, like the capsule hotel, are an ingenious invention that some enterprising businessperson would do well to introduce to the rest of the world. Because houses in Japan are often so small, and because many young people live at home until they get married, a spot of privacy for the average couple can be hard to come by, and love hotels cater for an estimated five hundred million visits annually, which equates to two per cent of the population every day. Since love hotels are as prevalent in small towns as in big cities, the need for anonymity can be very important, and while their exteriors can be a gaudy mix of neon and faux-historic façade – surrounded by palm trees and spotlit from all sides, the most ostentatious example in Toyo looked like a cross between a Greek temple and a Scottish castle – in certain key details they are designed to be as discreet as possible. Each room will have its own parking bay, which can be screened off in case someone you know happens to be a guest at the same time – after all, you may not want your friend, neighbour, parents, children, or in some cases spouse, to find out that you are spending the afternoon in one – and for added privacy, many have completely dispensed with the need for staff and customers to interact, so that a clock starts running when you enter the room and payment is made upon departure, by the hour or by the night, at an automated till just outside the door. The rooms themselves tend to be well kitted out, with Jacuzzis, big-screen televisions, karaoke, complimentary condoms, and vending machines that dispense food, drink and even sex toys. Many are designed according to a theme – futuristic manga, school classroom or S&M dungeon, for example – and some apparently have a notepad on the bedside table, in which one is encouraged to describe exactly how one made use of the facilities for the benefit of future guests. I can highly recommend a decent love hotel as the venue for a hot date, although my one word of advice would be never to ask the person you are going with if they have been to one before, as this can provoke a very awkward silence indeed.

While condoms and karaoke would have been nice, all I needed tonight was some hearty food and a warm bath, which I found at an upmarket leisure complex composed, among other things, of hotels, restaurants and a golf course. The onsen itself was more on the downmarket side, as on top of the standard entry fee I paid extra for sachets of soap and shampoo (never having been charged for these before, I had left my own toiletries at the campsite), and once inside, the bath was tiny, there was no rotenburo and no mizuburo. I wasn’t exactly entering into the spirit of adventure by being so fussy, and I cannot imagine I would last long trekking through the Amazon jungle or across the icy wastes of Siberia, but by now my on-the-road routine was as set in stone as the one I followed in everyday life, and just as likely to unsettle me should it be disrupted.

Back at the campsite I wandered down to the beach, where a group of twenty-somethings offered to share their stash of beer and crisps. They were from Matsuyama in the west of Shikoku, and having found out that I was English, one of their number – a lanky fellow with long hair and a black, band logo t-shirt – confessed to me his love of Queen.
‘I think Brian May is the best guitarist. He is so cool. Do you like him?’
‘Er, yes. He’s very good.’
‘Do you know any Queen songs? Radio Ga-Ga, Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You…’
‘Of course. They’re extremely popular in England.’

Thankfully no one had a guitar to hand, otherwise they would have been treated to my take on the riff from One Vision, or perhaps Crazy Little Thing Called Love minus the chorus. Racking my brain for some rock trivia, I instead kept the Queen fan happy with stories of how May’s hairstyle closely resembles that of his wife, how he still uses a guitar that he made in the garden shed as a teenager, and how he prefers to wear clogs in the recording studio. With such conservative taste in music, I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised when instead of getting raucously drunk and staying up until the early hours, the twenty-somethings all went to bed at half past eleven.

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 17

17/8/2015

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Friday 5th August 2005 – Higashi-Hiroshima to Innoshima (東広島 – 因島)
Presents received – melon, beer, sushi, ice cream

A group of children started playing dodgeball on the adjacent pitch at twenty past six in the morning, and for the next hour and a half I drifted in and out of sleep, until sunrise turned my one-man tent into a one-man sauna. Five minutes of freewheeling later I sat down to my best morningu setto of the whole summer, in a brand new kissaten where the coffee came from some new-fangled percolator that resembled part of a chemistry set, the toast was from real rather than sliced bread, and even the salad dressing was homemade.

‘This is fantastic,’ I proclaimed, as the chef looked bashful and the waitress smiled shyly, and seeing me polish off every last scrap of food, they presented me with a slice of watermelon that was, inevitably, on the house.
‘Have you been busy since you opened?’ I asked.
‘There are lots of people coming to Hiroshima for the anniversary, so we were hoping for some extra customers,’ the waitress replied, ‘but it’s still rather quiet at the moment.’
They seemed far too nice to be running a business, and I couldn’t help feeling that despite the stylish décor and the quality of the food, their kissaten might not last long. It didn’t appear to be visible from the nearby expressway, and even at eight in the morning, Route 375 was hardly teeming with traffic. Had this been England or America, I would have left a sizeable tip, but settled instead for wishing them luck.

‘Watchy-watchy,’ said the waitress as I left, which I think was some appropriated English, meaning they would wait and see how things turned out. Such doubled-up, onomatopoeic words - like our own ‘tick-tock’ or ‘flip-flop’ - are widely used in Japanese, and as a colleague of mine once pointed out, seem like something carried over from baby talk into adult language. One can be doki-doki (nervous), gari-gari (skinny), or bero-bero (drunk); things can happen toki-doki (occasionally), shiba-shiba (often) or dan-dan (gradually); and as well as being kira-kira (sparkling), neba-neba (sticky) or muchi-muchi (plump), they can be achi-kochi (here and there), bara-bara (in pieces) or gocha-gocha (in a mess).

The next leg of my journey would take me to the island of Shikoku, and across the Setouchi-Shimanami-Kaido, which took more than twenty years to complete and consists of seven bridges that connect Honshu with its southern neighbour, via an archipelago of six smaller islands in the Seto-Naikai (瀬戸内海 / Inland Sea). First up was the Onomichi Big Bridge, which was accessible through a toll booth at the top of a steep and spiralling footpath. Despite being – as the name suggests – Big, the bridge looked a little dated, and was completed around a decade before work began on the Setouchi-Shimanami-Kaido proper. The Nishi-Seto Expressway traverses all seven bridges, and reaches the island of Mukaishima (or just Mukai Island, depending on how tautologous you want to be) via the adjacent and altogether more spectacular New Onomichi Big Bridge, which has a span of over five hundred metres. Being a cyclist, I had to follow a less direct route across Mukaishima, and not having taken this into account when I checked the Mapple, revised my camping plans en route. Instead of island hopping all the way to Shikoku in one go, it became clear that I would not make it beyond Innoshima before sunset. This second island lay at the other end of bridge number two, the imaginatively named Innoshima Big Bridge. With its battleship grey metalwork and suspension cables, this resembled the Kanmon Bridge, only with a longer span and a cycle path. The path was attached beneath the expressway in a kind of cage, whose framework became a magic lantern, strobing images of the choppy sea and surrounding islands as I rode the twelve hundred metres to Innoshima.

Despite being visible from the bridge, my campsite was deceptively hard to find, and could only be reached by wheeling the Mariposa along a narrow, muddy track, up and over the headland. Although there were log cabins and several rows of semi-permanent, army-style tents, the caretaker explained that tonight I was their only guest. Many more bikers than cyclists passed through, he said, before showing me a list of upcoming bookings, which were a good deal more numerous during Obon, Japan’s main summer holiday, and the time of year when people return home to pay a visit to their family grave.

‘I’ll be off in a minute,’ he said, ‘but someone else will turn up at eight in the morning. The showers are over there.’ He indicated a wooden building with what appeared to be a radiator attached to the roof. ‘You can use them whenever you want, although be careful. They’re solar powered, you see, so they can be a bit temperamental.’

My pitch was at the bottom of a small valley with its own secluded, sandy beach, on a damp patch of grass that was surrounded by a drainage channel, and thus looked more like a bowling green. With so much stagnant water on hand, it was also Mosquito Hell, and I was soon peppered with bites. Since that first night in Toridé, I had gradually gained the upper hand in my battle with the mossies, which only seemed to appear when I was indoors (for example in the utility room at Iwakuni Youth Hostel). Here however, there was no escape, and putting up the Snow Peak turned into another weight-loss workout, as I once more resorted to wearing my pac-a-mac with the hood up. Wary of leaving any extremity unmoved, I danced around the bowling green like a boxer around the ring, and ran back and forth every couple of minutes to swat myself down. I then made a dash for the shower block, checking for stray insects before I ducked through the sliding door and peeled off my sweaty clothes.

The showers were in little cubby holes about a metre and a half above ground level, and having climbed a small ladder, I hung up my towel and arranged my soap and shampoo on a slatted plastic mat that covered the tiled floor. There was a curtain across each cubby hole, but no plastic stool to sit on, and the reason for its absence only became apparent once I had pressed a large button on the mixer tap. The water hose stiffened, and there was a split second of suspense as the shower head reared up like an angry cobra, before unleashing a jet of water powerful enough to stop a student demonstration. I was immediately thrown to the other side of the cubicle, and while a timer stemmed the flow after about five seconds, the water was in any case too hot to withstand for longer than two or three. Having pressed the button for a second time, I stood my ground and got as wet as I could without risking third degree burns, before soaping myself up and repeating the process. The sheer volume of water was so phenomenal that the drains couldn’t cope, and within minutes the cubicle was knee-deep in standing water and fast overflowing into the changing area. My soap and shampoo were swept away on the tide, and while the plastic mat had initially prevented me from slipping, it now floated freely on the tide of excess water, and was behaving more like a surfboard or a makeshift raft. It was probably the least relaxing bathing experience I had ever had, and having climbed down to rescue my shoes and towel from the floor, which was by now swimming in water, I was forced into a toilet cubicle at the far end of the block, where the flood crept under the door as I dried off.

Along a path at the top of the valley was a dog-eared old restaurant, with a view of Innoshima Big Bridge through its picture window, and more importantly, air conditioning. As something of an eighties throwback I was fond of my designer stubble, but there is a point – normally after a week or so – at which stubble becomes itchy and irritating, as it begins its transformation into a full-blown beard. Also, the more facial hair you have, the more it absorbs the aroma of whatever food you happen to be eating, and there is nothing worse than being followed around for the day by the mysterious and all-pervasive smell of rank butter or off milk. So the time had come for my twice-weekly shave, and because a conventional razor brings my skin out in a rash, one of the more luxurious items I had packed for the trip was a Braun electric shaver, which wasn’t just heavy but impractical too. If you sweat a lot – for example, in the high humidity of a Japanese summer – an electric shaver no longer glides smoothly across the skin, so I was often on the lookout for chilly shaving venues, and my plan this evening was to cool down over dinner before popping to the bathroom for a sweat-free shave. That is until I realised the bathroom lay outside the restaurant’s front door, and therefore beyond the range of the air conditioning. Almost as soon as I began a recce of the facilities, beads of perspiration began to roll down my forehead, and worse still, a mosquito was buzzing around near the sink. Suddenly taken with the idea of some insect extermination, I followed as it flew across the room and into one of the toilet stalls. After a few failed practice swings, I became aware of a pain in my temple, and upon looking in the mirror, noticed that the whole right side of my face was red and swollen. It looked as if someone had caught me with a left hook and felt as if I was having a stroke, the pain shooting through my cheek and down into my neck. The little fucker must have been some sort of genetic mutant, I reasoned, and he was clever, too, using his partner as a decoy before sneaking up to administer the killer blow. I sloped back into the restaurant like the Phantom of the Opera, hiding the swollen side of my face from the waitress as I paid the bill, and left with my designer stubble still firmly in place.

On the far side of the campsite I found a beachfront café with a table-full of diners outside, who were soon plying me with beer and sushi. It was perhaps understandable that this lot had welcomed me with open arms, as one of their number introduced himself as an ‘internationalist’. A dapper and well-preserved pensioner in pressed trousers and a button-down shirt, he told me the story of how his grandfather had lived for several years in the United States, building up a successful business in Seattle. Travelling to America to visit his grandfather, the Internationalist was inspired to work with the Lions Club, organising student exchanges and the like, and his family had recently played host to an eighteen-year-old girl from Latvia, although he admitted that her inability to speak Japanese had made life a little difficult.

Wary of being bitten to death should I go for a pee during the night, I hadn’t intended to drink too much beer, but it is the Japanese custom to keep your guest’s glass – or in this case, paper cup – full at all times, so I was soon decidedly merry. Despite an average age of around sixty, the partygoers were still going strong when a neighbour came to complain about the noise at eleven o’clock, and only reluctantly agreed to wind things down. I was sent on my way with another paper cup - this time containing soft-serve ice cream - and realised that I was beginning to suffer from a kind of reverse compassion fatigue, whereby I secretly longed for someone to overlook the opportunity to buy me a drink or neglect to offer me a share of their meal.

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 16

8/8/2015

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Thursday 4th August 2005 – Iwakuni to Higashi-Hiroshima (岩国 – 東広島)

At one point on the road towards the city centre, the traffic had been halted to make way for a procession of around a hundred people. Many of them wore Buddhist robes, and together they were pulling a long metal frame with a wooden trailer at one end. According to the leaflets they were handing out this was Stonewalk Japan, and the trailer contained a seven-hundred-kilogramme memorial stone that was to be placed at a church in Hiroshima. Several of the participants had lost family members in the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, and their pilgrimage was in honour of the many and nameless civilian casualties of war. Having already taken in parts of the USA and the British Isles, this was the final day of a six-hundred-kilometre trek from Nagasaki in western Kyushu, and seeing such selfless dedication to a physical task put my own rather inconsequential summer holiday in its proper perspective.

I was heading for Heiwa-Kinen-Koen, or the Peace Memorial Park, which today was dominated by a newly erected stage, and echoed with voices and music for a sound check before hundreds of empty seats. These would be filled the day after tomorrow with a host of world leaders and dignitaries, although a few hundred metres away stood a more permanent reminder of the events of 6th August 1945, in the Peace Memorial Museum.

As nations, we have all committed barbaric acts in wartime, but in dropping the first atomic bomb on Hiroshima – in using hundreds of thousands of human beings as guinea pigs for what was effectively a scientific experiment in mass murder – the Allies conceded the moral high ground to Japan. From the moment of its destruction, Hiroshima became a symbol not only of the lethal power of nuclear weapons, but of our own barbarism in being the first and only people to use them in anger. No matter that more Japanese were killed through conventional firebombing elsewhere in the country, and no matter that they too had perpetrated all kinds of atrocities on Chinese and Singaporean civilians. In being chosen as the first target for the atomic bomb, Hiroshima came to represent a defining moment in human history: the point at which we crossed over into the nuclear age, and when even if the bomb was never used again, its mere existence had changed the way we looked at the world. A second bomb was indeed dropped on Nagasaki, but there is much less awarness of that city in the public consciousness, something that demonstrates how we grant significance to events based on their symbolism, as opposed to the suffering they entail or the number of lives they claim. In the same way that, for a few years at least, 9/11 put the United States almost beyond reproach, so Hiroshima has meant that whatever the Japanese did in the past or may choose to do in the future, if we criticise, their response will always be, ‘Ah, but what about Hiroshima? At least we didn’t drop the atomic bomb.’

Because my mother was such a committed socialist, I was taken on several CND marches as a child, although political activism was long out of fashion by the time I went to university, and the intervening years were spent feeling powerless in the face of Thatcherism, which seemed to prove that such activism would be ineffective. So despite still agreeing with much of what my mother stood for, I have grown up to be a cynic, and couldn’t help but feel that the more sermonising aspects of the Peace Memorial Museum had a hollow ring to them. After World War Two, Japan renounced its right to form a conventional army and to use military strength to exercise its influence abroad, and as such, its was effectively forced into becoming a peace-loving nation. So when the Japanese speak earnestly of their desire for world peace and nuclear disarmament, although I agree with the sentiment, I can never be entirely convinced by it. And when they are threatened by North Korea, for example, I find it hard to believe that they would not prefer to have nuclear weapons themselves.

Those who witnessed the bombing of Hiroshima first hand, and those who were directly affected by it, are the people we should listen to when we decide whether or not it is a good idea to continue our love affair with – and our spending spree on – such weapons, not the politicians or the people for whom it represents the justification for an opinion, even if they too happen to be Japanese. In keeping with this, the most moving exhibits at the Peace Memorial Museum, and thus the most powerful evidence it presented in the case against nuclear war, were those that resonated on a personal rather than a political level: a wall onto which the silhouette of a human figure had been etched by the blast; a satchel with its contents of charred schoolbooks; a child’s tricycle, its paint blackened and its tyres melted.*

Also in the Peace Memorial Park is the Genbaku Dome – literally ‘Atomic Dome’ – although before the war it had been an exhibition hall. Practically the only building in the city centre to have survived the attack, it remains largely untouched, and like the everyday objects in the museum, its grey façade seemed to reflect back the suffering it had witnessed: behind a perimeter fence the ground beneath the dome is strewn with fallen masonry, its walls with their empty windows have never been redecorated, and its skeletal framework is still exposed to the elements.

Once Hiroshima had been stripped bare by the war, it was rebuilt in a similar fashion to many British cities, with the emphasis on cars and concrete. So with little else to keep me here, I headed east along wide, straight streets, past office blocks, shopping malls and a digital readout that displayed the current temperature: it was thirty-seven degrees centigrade, and time once more to head for the hills.

While the dual carriageway of Route 2 carved its way directly along the Seno River valley, quieter side roads took me through a succession of small towns and villages. Trucks rumbled past on the slow ascent towards Higashi-Hiroshima (in the same way that Kita-Kyushu means ‘North Kyushu’, Higashi-Hiroshima simply means ‘East Hiroshima’), and at the point where Route 2 veered south-east, a spaghetti junction of newly built flyovers hung in the air like frozen vapour trails. Having reached the centre of Higashi-Hiroshima, I located a sign pointing the way to my next campsite, Ikoi-No-Mori-Koen, or ‘restful forest park’. A caretaker was already closing the front gates to the campsite when I finally arrived, and it took some persuading for him to allow me in. This may have been because he knew how long it would take for me to check in, as I kept him occupied for at least twenty minutes, filling in forms and taking a tour of the site.

The caretaker didn’t know of an onsen nearby, so I braved the coin-operated showers, which with my remaining small change would allow me precisely three minutes’ cleaning time. Particularly in Japan, where hot water is normally so plentiful, I had never before had to think about bathing in terms of speed, and approached the task as if it were a military operation. Not a single second could be wasted, lest I should find myself stranded with shampoo in my hair, soap all over my body and nothing to rinse them off with. Already undressed and with one hand poised over the soap, I leaned out from behind the shower curtain to feed my precious hundred-yen coins into the slot, before racing to wash every part of my body as quickly as possible. A timer whirred away from somewhere within the cubicle walls, but there was no way of telling exactly when it would wind down, and I made it with seconds to spare, the water clunking to a halt as I massaged my knees with the remaining hot water.

My allotted pitch was opposite the shower block on a level area of soft grass, with its own sink, water tap, night-light and mains electricity, and had I driven it would have been necessary to bring provisions, as the site was closed from five in the afternoon and the nearest shop probably thirty minutes away on foot. On the Mariposa, however, I could simply sail past the front gates and back to the town centre, or in this case what appeared to be Higashi-Hiroshima’s red light district.

It is best to be aware before you venture out of an evening that the English-derived words snack, fashion health and soap house signify respectively a hostess club, blow-job bar and brothel. But while Japan’s sex industry is larger than most, many gaijin are unaware of exactly what the phrase ‘sex industry’ signifies. Although it may seem ludicrous to a westerner, who need only go to a pub or a club to meet members of the opposite sex, Japanese men will pay good money for the privilege of simply talking to girls, and in the majority of hostess bars for the majority of the time, talking is all that goes on (recent decades have seen the inception and increasing popularity of host bars, whose female customers pay to be chatted up by handsome young men, and rarely for anything more intimate). For example, I know of a hostess club in London that has banned non-Japanese customers because its British clientele too often assumed there was more on the menu than just booze and bar snacks, and hostess clubs in the more colourful districts of Tokyo will employ plenty of security, as a means of ensuring that matters do not get out of hand when a drunken gaijin realises the pretty girl he is sitting with has no intention of escorting him to a hotel room after closing time. Another consequence of this crossing of cultural wires is that it is all too easy to get ripped off. Hostess clubs will normally look no more exotic than a Western-style bar or a Japanese-style izakaya, and should you wander into one unawares, you could find yourself with a jaw-droppingly expensive bill at the end of the night, when all you have done is talk to a girl and bought her a drink or two. Although the owners of many hostess clubs are considerate enough to warn their more naïve customers of this before they sit down, a friend of mine was on one occasion marched to the nearest cashpoint by two very large men with shaven heads and tattoos, and forced to empty his bank account of several hundred thousand yen, after what he had assumed to be a normal night out.

Not wanting to end up in the same predicament, it was quite a while before I plucked up the courage to enter a restaurant, and even then, I only did so on the recommendation of some rather shady looking characters who were loitering on the street outside. It certainly didn’t feel like a hostess club, as the lighting was rather harsh, and the majority of seats were at wooden tables with menus and cruet sets. There were no female members of staff and no female customers, and neither chef nor waiter was large, shaven headed or tattooed, so after a meal of yakizakana (焼き魚 / grilled fish), my bill came to just two or three thousand yen, and I breathed a sigh of relief for not having been caught out.

* I did not read Alan Booth’s book The Roads to Sata – A 2000-Mile Walk Through Japan until I had already written the first draft of Gaijin on a Push Bike, and while his description of the museum and what it means to him is far more eloquent than I could ever hope to achieve, one passage is remarkably similar: ‘It is not the vastness of the destruction that moves you so much as the relics of individual suffering. These speak with the most eloquence: a melted desktop Buddha, a burned watch, the scorched blazer of a thirteen-year-old schoolboy…’

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 15

1/8/2015

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Wednesday 3rd August 2005 – Hikimi to Iwakuni (匹見 – 岩国)
Presents received – can of beer, peach

The day dawned clear and bright, and as I packed and prepared for the climb to Misaka Pass, a guest from one of the log cabins took my picture and gave me another beer. I could do without the weight of a half-litre can, and getting drunk on the way to the pass would not be the most sensible way of re-hydrating, so I discreetly poured it away behind the dining hall a few minutes later, in anticipation of the kind of sustenance I really needed. This failed to materialise, however, as Grandma and Grandad apologised, confessing that today they would be unable to provide me with breakfast. It appeared that my policy of freeloading had finally backfired, and although I hadn’t exactly assumed they would come through for me, stupidly, I also hadn’t thought to buy any supplies the previous evening. Misaka Pass was this side of Hikimi, and I couldn’t face the thought of cycling to the shops, and then back up the hill past the campsite.

‘Don’t worry,’ I said, ‘I’ll just buy some drinks from the vending machine.’
But Grandad could tell that I was putting a brave face on things, and began rummaging around in their cool bag.
‘There isn’t much left, I’m afraid. We need to do some shopping today,’ he said, and produced a large peach from the bottom of the bag. ‘You can have this if you want.’
‘That’s mine, grandad! You said I could have that one!’ The granddaughter was indignant, and I waved away the offer.
‘Go on, take it.’ Grandad thrust the peach towards me.
‘That’s not fair! That was my peach! I wanted it!’
I didn’t want to deprive the girl of her peach, but at the same time, it would have been rude to turn down such a gift.
‘Are you sure?’
‘Of course I am.’
‘Grandad! You promised I could have it!’
‘It’s OK, we can always buy some more.’ While Grandad tried to reassure the girl that more treats would be forthcoming, I tried to reassure myself that she wouldn’t be too upset,
‘Oh well, if you insist.’ Seeing me accept the peach, she stormed off and shut herself inside the tent. I had actually made a small child cry.
‘Don’t you want to come and say goodbye to the nice man?’ asked Grandma, to which a reply came between loud sobbing noises.
‘No!’
‘She’ll be fine,’ Grandad shrugged, and I thanked him effusively, although it had put a bit of a dampener on things, and as I waved goodbye and wheeled the Mariposa across the rope bridge, even the grandson was subdued.

Route 488 soon became steeper, hugging the contours of the valley, and the crest of each turn took me higher, until the river rushed along far below. Very occasionally I would spy an abandoned building, overgrown and deep in the forest, but to all intents and purposes my surroundings were uninhabited, and this was as wild as anywhere through which I had yet ridden. One of the locals had told me that the road is high and narrow enough to be impassable for most of the winter, and I wondered if it might have been a good idea to bring a bear bell – after all, the kanji for Hikimi do mean ‘animal watch’. Even today I encountered just three other vehicles en route, and the beauty of the place was surprisingly difficult to photograph, as there was just too much greenery to allow for any kind of perspective, the valley looking like a soft hammock into which you could lie back and be enveloped.

It was a climb of two halves, with one long zig to a hairpin bend at the halfway point, followed by one long zag in the opposite direction, and after an hour and a half, I had finished my can of orangeade and bottle of water, not to mention the offending peach (screw the kids, I thought, I should have stolen their lunch as well).

Eventually the landscape began to open out, and I found myself above the level of one or two adjacent peaks, although there was still that nagging sense of disappointment, when what you think is the highest point turns out to be just another small ridge, beyond which the road continues uphill. I could feel myself becoming impatient, and tried not to anticipate the pass. The secret of successful climbing, I decided, is Zen: to keep pedalling one turn at a time, to think not of the future but of the moment, to concentrate on the journey rather than the destination. My knees may have been painful when I set out, or when the slope became severe, and there may have been times when I felt dizzy or began to wheeze from the strain of turning the pedals, but if I kept plugging away the effort became automatic, and I reached a point where I didn’t notice that I was cycling at all. This is the goal: not the pass or the campsite or the kissaten or the conbini, but the state in which you cease to be aware of what your body is doing, and your mind becomes clear of anxiety and conscious thought. On a bicycle in particular, you can go beyond simply taking in your surroundings, and to feel as if you are a part of them and they are a part of you. While I am not a religious man – in fact, I am a staunch atheist – on climbs such as this, I do feel that I attained some small moment of spiritual enlightenment. I hadn’t proven the existence of God, or Buddha, or any sort of parallel universe or heavenly kingdom, but I had come to realise the supreme benefits to be gained from throwing all of one’s being into achieving an objective, and how that can lift your life out of the ordinary, if only for a short time.

It had taken more than two hours, but when eventually I did reach Misaka Pass, which marked the border between Shimané and Hiroshima Prefectures, a sign told me that I had climbed for fourteen kilometres, and to nine hundred and sixty metres above sea level. It was an unspectacular spot, and somehow didn’t feel commensurate with the achievement of having reached it, being too hemmed in by the surrounding forest to afford much in the way of views. But I basked for a few minutes in the glory of my own adrenaline rush, photographed the sign as proof that I had been there (‘Beware of falling rocks on the road to Hikimi,’ it said, which would have been useful to know before I set out), before getting back on the Mariposa and carrying on down the other side.

There was another more modest climb before the road descended further and faster towards sea level, and a motorbike roared past at ridiculously high speed, leaving a screaming trail of engine noise in its wake. A little later, the same rider returned to roar through a series of hairpin bends, and while I negotiated the descent as quickly as I dared, here was the genuine article: head to toe in black leather, his visor reflecting a rainbow like spilt oil, and on a space-age machine of streamlined chrome and shiny faring, looking for all the world as if it could mutate into a robot Transformer.

Seeing this made me nostalgic for my own biking days, when I would pootle around London on my 400cc Honda CB-1 (authentic Japanese import, of course – none of your British-made rubbish for me), imagining that I looked pretty cool, when in reality I was nothing of the sort, in my luminous yellow jacket and plain white helmet for extra visibility. In fact I never felt entirely at ease on a motorcycle, partly because riding one is so dangerous, and partly because all of that Gore-tex and Kevlar is uncomfortably hot in summer, never quite warm enough in winter, and incredibly inconvenient once you have reached your destination and have nowhere to put it. I was also in the habit of dropping the CB-1, and kept on having to replace broken wing mirrors or pay for engine repairs as a result. What I really missed was being part of the Brotherhood, and having each passing biker flash his headlight or nod his head in greeting – something that, in the UK at least, cyclists are not in the habit of doing – although it was also nice to be reminded of how a biker will ride purely for its own sake, and that roads such as this, with its Monte Carlo curves, are the kind along which he will ride back and forth all day, just for the thrill of the centrifugal force as it drags him through each tight corner.

On the way into Hiroshima, the road was once again lined with pachinko parlours and used car lots, and from the brow of one final hill, the city itself came into view, baking in the afternoon sun. Iwakuni Youth Hostel lies in the western suburbs, and despite standing out perfectly well on the Mapple, proved much harder to locate in three dimensions. I knew where I wanted to go, but trunk routes and twisting junctions kept blocking the way, before a ludicrously complicated sign described the designated cycle route in a squiggle of twisting arrows, which led up, around, onto a footbridge and over a railway line. Thinking I was home and dry, I instead found myself stranded in a supermarket car park, my last remaining options being to turn back and re-cross the footbridge or jump in the bay.

It was time to ask for directions, so I approached an old man who wore what can only be described as department store golfing gear, and was walking so slowly that it almost didn’t count as forward motion at all. ‘Youth hostel, you say? Well, well, well. I’ve lived here all my life and I never even knew there was a youth hostel. No idea, I’m afraid. Sorry.’

When I did finally arrive at the hostel, it came as no surprise that the old man had been unaware of its existence, as it was in a small, grubby building with only a photocopied sign in an upstairs window to distinguish it from the surrounding apartments and offices.
‘That will be ¥3500,’ declared the warden, who sported a ponytail, a long, grey goatee beard and tatty pink shorts that were constantly sliding down his waist. ‘You must bring your bicycle inside and put it here, but please lock it.’
‘Do you serve food?’
‘No. But there is a kitchen if you like.’ He pointed to a dark corner of the common room that was a mess of greasy units and rusting utensils, its gas cooker encrusted an inch thick with baked-on grime.

Handwritten signs were pinned to every available surface and detailed, among other things, how much to pay for a cup of tea, where to put the money and in exactly which bin to place the teabag once you were done. As I gathered my things together and went upstairs, the warden was sifting through the rubbish and muttering to himself that someone had had the temerity to dispose of a plastic bottle in the wrong bin. Having showered and put my clothes in the washing machine, I returned to the lobby to use one of two ageing PCs. These were as low-tech as everything else in the hostel, and once you had slotted your hundred-yen coin into a metal box that was bolted to the side of the monitor, a little yellow bulb lit up and an on-screen clock counted down the seconds from thirty minutes.

If you were being charitable, you might say that the place had a run-down charm all of its own, although that was more than could be said of the warden, who was quite the most inappropriate person to be running a youth hostel, being a miserable old git who found his customers’ every request a massive inconvenience. A steady stream of guests came through the front door while I was checking my emails, and I eavesdropped as he patronised each one of them in turn. Ironically enough for someone who belonged to an organisation whose facilities are open to members from anywhere in the world, he reserved his greatest venom for gaijin, to whom he spoke English as loudly as possible, regardless of their nationality, and as if to an unruly child. Each tentative query or slight misunderstanding was greeted with a roll of the eyes and an increase in volume, and he was unwilling to credit any foreigner with the ability to speak Japanese, so that even when someone tried – as I had – this Basil Fawlty of the youth hostel business just ploughed on regardless, in ever more irate English.

‘The door will be locked at ten thirty, so you must be back before. I cannot open door after that,’ he bellowed as I left for the nearby ferry terminal, from which regular services sailed to Japan’s second most famous landmark after Mount Fuji – something I had described on my list of recommended attractions as the ‘big red gate thing’.

It was dark by the time I reached the island of Itsukushima – also known as Miyajima – and most of the day’s sightseers had already gone home.* Souvenir shops were closed or closing and the footpath almost deserted, although I was momentarily startled upon noticing who was there to keep me company. At first they were just a couple of silhouettes poking out from the flowerbeds, but the more my eyes adjusted to the subdued street lighting, the more of them I saw. Some were lurking in the shadows, others were scavenging down alleyways, and they ranged from fully grown adults to youngsters less than a metre tall. These were the deer of Itsukushima, which are free to roam wherever they please, and seem unperturbed at living in such close proximity to human beings, no doubt because this guarantees them a steady supply of food. It doesn’t necessarily follow that human beings will be unperturbed, particularly when some of the bucks have rather large antlers, so it was reassuring to see that the public toilets had been fitted with specially designed deer-proof doors, as I wouldn’t have wanted to be charged down at an inopportune moment.

There is a classic scene in Only Fools and Horses, in which Trigger relates how the council has presented him with a medal, in recognition of the fact that he has been using the same broom to sweep the streets of Peckham for the past twenty years. The punchline is that during that time he has replaced the handle fourteen times and the head seventeen times, and this is a theory that could be applied to many of Japan’s most famous monuments. Itsukushima Shrine, for example, which is a complex of low buildings, walkways and jetties at the water’s edge, was founded in the Eighth Century, and due to both natural and man-made disasters has been rebuilt on countless occasions. Its centrepiece is a sixteen-metre-high arch, which rises out of the sea just offshore, and which has also been rebuilt on many occasions since it was first constructed in the Twelfth Century. Which I suppose would make the shrine the head of Trigger’s broom, and the arch as its handle, but anyway, I was glad to have come here in the evening, as quite apart from the lack of tourists, the arch itself looked stunning, its paintwork lit to stand out against the night sky.

I made sure to return to the hostel well before ten thirty, and was chatting with a softly spoken Japanese woman in the common room when we were interrupted. ‘You are lucky,’ said the warden. ‘If you come a day later we are all booked. Tomorrow is a national holiday, and two days after that is the anniversary. All hotels are full for the whole week.’ The woman had come to Hiroshima for the commemorations, which were to mark sixty years since the atomic bomb was dropped, although I didn’t get the chance to find out much more, because when the warden spoke it was only to address her, and when I spoke he refused to acknowledge what I had been saying. It would have taken a great deal of energy to force my way back into the conversation, and as he pontificated about his extensive travels, I finished my can of beer, made my excuses and went upstairs.

The room was small and stuffy, with three bunk beds and as yet no other hostellers. A dusty air conditioning unit protruded from one wall and the windows were painted shut, so my choices were to sweat the night away in a sauna, or to risk waking up dehydrated and with a sore throat. I chose the former and was nodding off within minutes, only to be snapped back into consciousness when the light came on and a young man with curly hair and rectangular-framed spectacles walked in. Once he had found out that I was from the UK, he began to natter away in English, and once I had found out that he was from Switzerland, I realised why he was already fluent in four languages. After some lessons and a bit of self-study back home, he was now well on the way to making Japanese language number five, and had spent the day chatting to strangers in bars and restaurants, despite this being his very first visit to the country. While part of me wanted to find out how the human mind could hoover up such a huge amount of grammar in such a small amount of time, another part of me wanted to go to sleep and not wake up for the next eight hours, so it was something of a one-sided conversation, and I fear that in the end, I may well have nodded off mid-sentence (his sentence, that is, not mine).

(*As with the jima of Oumijima, the shima of Itsukushima means ‘island’, so what I am really saying here is ‘the island of Itsuku Island’. While this may seem ridiculous, it would be odd to refer to Itsuku Island when it is already well known as Itsukushima, and unless you happen to know what shima means in the first place, how are you – the non-Japanese-speaking reader – supposed to deduce that Itsukushima is an island? Moreover, many places whose names end in shima or jima are not islands at all, but cities or prefectures, and you wouldn’t want to refer to Hiroshima as Hiro Island, because that would just be silly.)

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 19

Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 18

Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 17

Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 16

Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 15

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