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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 31

30/11/2015

Friday 19th August 2005 – Iinan Town to Iseshima (飯南町 – 伊勢志摩)
Presents received – can of coffee

Perhaps it was the onset of madness, or just a sign that I had become less self-conscious about being apparently the only gaijin cycle tourist in the whole country, but I had begun to talk to myself rather a lot, and not just in an effort to practise my grammar. I now kept a running commentary for most of the day, which is all very well if your ramblings are confined to the inside of a car or crash helmet, but decidedly eccentric from someone as audible as the average pedestrian, and I received a few strange looks from the locals as I made my way through Mié Prefecture. Here my primary topic for soliloquy was green tea, as there were rows of tea bushes on every available plot of land, all pruned into perfect Swiss roll shapes and curved like the cells of a lilo to allow the maximum amount of sunlight to each leaf.

One final mountain pass led through a series of increasingly dank and dingy tunnels, before spitting me out into a sleepy fishing village, where because I was back at sea level, the midday sun was hotter than I had experienced for several days. With time to waste and my next campsite already close at hand, I took a detour along the Shima Peninsula, whose large, enclosed bay is famous for its pearl farms.

Mr Heaven Valley had recommended Mié for what he described as its ‘saw-tooth coastline’, and it was nice to breathe some sea air without high rises or main roads to get in the way. By pedal power I would only be able to take in two or three such teeth, so went to Kashikojima to catch a sightseeing boat, which passed row upon row of submerged oyster cages before stopping off at a workshop for cultivated pearls.

In their natural form, pearls take shape within the oyster around a grain of sand, but at the turn of the twentieth century, Japanese researchers – two of whom worked in this same area of Mié – came up with the modern technique for growing them artificially. As demonstrated by the workshop’s employees, this involves carefully prising open the shell, inserting a small bead, and placing the oyster back in the sea to work its magic. After two years or so, you end up with a pearl that looks like the real thing, but consists of a thin natural coating around an artificial core (if I was particularly clever, I would use this as an ingenious metaphor for my trip, or for the Japanese psyche, or even for my own psyche, but poetic imagery has never been my strong point, so if you happen to think of a good one, please drop me a line).

At the Iseshima Everglades it was a busy Friday evening, and the receptionist was trying her best to turn me away.
‘You will have to hire a cabin,’ she insisted.
‘How much will that be?’
‘Between five and six thousand yen.’
‘And then I can pitch my tent next to it.’
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t there anywhere I can just camp? I mean, it seems odd to hire a cabin when I’ve brought a tent with me.’
‘No, there isn’t.’
I had been trying to make out what was on the noticeboard behind her, and pointed to the last item on a handwritten price list. ‘But it says there, “Single motorcycle – ¥1600”.’
‘I’m afraid that’s just for motorcyclists who want to have a barbecue during the day,’ she replied without hesitation. ‘It’s not a camping rate.’
It was hard to imagine bikers paying sixteen hundred yen for the privilege of having somewhere to eat lunch, but then again, perhaps this was another establishment that discriminated against those of us who did not arrive using motorised transport.
‘Are there any other campsites nearby?’ I asked.
‘There’s a youth hostel up the road.’
The receptionist produced a map, and was in the process of giving me directions when an older man appeared beside her.
‘Is there a problem?’ he said.
‘I was wondering if I could camp here for the night. I’ve only got a bicycle and a small tent.’
‘Certainly. That’ll be sixteen hundred yen.’
‘Oh,’ said the receptionist, before falling silent and bowing apologetically, as her supervisor had me fill in the paperwork and hand over the money. My pitch was surrounded on all sides by noisy families with barking dogs, and in a position the rising sun would reach early the next morning, but I was glad to have scored another victory against bureaucracy, even as I watched the timer tick inexorably down on another pay-per-minute shower.

The sightseeing boat from Kashikojima had been an elaborate modern replica of a Spanish galleon, and despite Mié having no discernible connection with the country, two of the other passengers worked at a nearby holiday camp called Shima Spain Village. Miss Blessing Effective Child and Miss Freedom Beauty Child were spending their summer as Spanish waitresses, Spanish ticket vendors, Spanish chaperones, even Spanish singers and dancers. They were understandably reluctant to give me a demonstration of the latter, but today being their day off, we swapped keitai numbers, and having settled in at the campsite I caught the train back into Ugata to meet them for dinner. Miss Freedom Beauty Child normally worked at a department store in Kyoto, and Miss Blessing Effective Child had been attending university in Canada for a couple of years, returning to Japan occasionally to save more money. Seeing as they were both working in a service industry, I asked for a lesson in sonkeigo and kenjogo (尊敬語 / 謙譲語), sonkeigo and kenjogo being the minefields that are honorific and humble Japanese.

While Japan does not have a class system in the same way as the UK, one’s social or professional status is probably more important, and certainly more formalised. You will recall that I mentioned the plain and polite forms of Japanese, and how tricky it can be to decide which one to use. Well, there is at least one more layer of politeness to negotiate if you are to avoid causing offence, and despite the fact that it can be heard in all kinds of situations, like the plain form, it rarely crops up in Japanese lessons aimed at gaijin, only appearing in textbooks when the student is at a fairly advanced level. For example, should you be their customer, a shop assistant, receptionist or elevator attendant will not just be polite towards you, they will be very polite – in other words, they will use sonkeigo and kenjogo rather than the polite form – and when you are addressing your boss, your child’s headmaster or the Prime Minister, you will do the same. This means learning several different verbs for the same action, not to mention conjugations of those verbs, and all kinds of prefixes and suffixes, and to further complicate matters, sonkeigo and kenjogo can change depending on whether you are talking to a superior, talking about a superior, referring to your own actions when talking to a superior, or referring to their actions.

In practical terms, the studious gaijin should start off by listening to what is said when he or she buys something at a conbini, pays to enter an onsen, or joins a guided tour. Not that it is possible to translate with any great accuracy, as English does not possess a direct equivalent to sonkeigo and kenjogo, but here are a few variations on the theme:

ASSISTANT AT MOST SHOPS IN THE UK
Next.
(Keys price of item into till. Extends upturned palm while gazing out of window. Receives customer’s money. Puts customer’s money in till. Puts items in bag. Hands bag to customer.)
Next.

ASSISTANT AT SOME SHOPS IN THE UK
All right mate? I’ll do you next.
(Keys price of item into till.)
Two pounds.
(Receives customer’s money. Puts customer’s money in till.)
Ta. D’you wanna bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag. Hands bag to customer.)
There you go. Cheers.

ASSISTANT AT TINY MINORITY OF SHOPS IN THE UK
Who’s next, please?
(Customer arrives at till.)
Hello.
(Keys price of item into till.)
That’ll be two pounds, please.
(Receives customer’s money. Puts customer’s money in till.)
Thank you. Would you like a carrier bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag.)
Here you are.
(Hands bag to customer.)
Have a nice day.

ASSISTANT AT SOME SHOPS IN JAPAN
Welcome to our shop.
(Customer arrives at till.)
I’ll take care of this for you.
(Keys price of item into till.)
One item at four hundred yen. That will be four hundred yen, please.
(Receives customer’s money.)
Five hundred yen. Thank you.
(Puts customer’s money in till.)
That’s one hundred yen change. Would you like a carrier bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag.)
Here you are.
(Hands bag to customer.)
Thank you very much. Have a nice day.

ASSISTANT AT MOST SHOPS IN JAPAN
Welcome to our shop.
(Customer arrives at till.)
I shall humbly take care of this for you.
(Keys price of item into till.)
That is one honourable item at four hundred yen. I humbly beseech you to provide me with four hundred yen.
(Receives customer’s money.)
That is five hundred humble yen.
(Puts customer’s money in till.)
Please do me the favour of receiving one hundred yen in change. Does the honourable customer require an honourable plastic bag?
(Customer nods. Assistant puts items in bag.)
I hereby hand over your honourable item.
(Hands bag to customer.)
Thank you very much. I humbly prostrate myself in the face of your honourable custom.

Because so much importance is placed on respecting authority and knowing your place within the social hierarchy, the Japanese are incredibly interdependent, and exist in such a state of harmony that even in big cities, good manners and politeness are commonplace, and there is very little in the way of crime or anti-social behaviour. Indeed, and as evidenced by my experience at the Everglades campsite, most of the trouble I had encountered over the summer was the result of a Japanese insistence on sticking to the rules, and not any inherent rudeness on their part.

‘But don’t you think that will all disappear?’ I asked Miss Blessing Effective Child. ‘Since Japan opened up, more and more foreigners have been coming here. Even if it’s just as tourists, we still bring a philosophy of individualism, and the Japanese must be influenced by what they see in films, on the internet and so on.’
‘I don’t think so. The school system is still the same, the language is still the same, and we’re still very proud of our country.’
‘What if young people get tired of traditions and start to ignore them? In England we’re becoming more like America, and in Japan, because you’re not as isolated as before, attitudes are bound to become more westernised.’
‘Maybe some things will change, but not all of them. I’ve been living in Canada for two years, and even if I stay there, I’ll always feel Japanese. Also, when foreigners come to Japan, they start to behave in the same way as us. They send their kids to Japanese schools and take part in Japanese festivals. They bow when they say hello and use chopsticks when they’re eating.’
This was true, and I intended to take many such customs back to the UK: kneeling on the floor instead of slumping on the sofa, for example, taking my shoes off in the house, and not starting a meal until everyone else at the table has been served.

‘Since you came to live here,’ Miss Blessing Effective Child continued, ‘what has surprised you the most about Japan?’
‘That’s a tricky one. You expect it to be different when you move to a foreign country and I think I’ve managed to take most things in my stride. As for something that has genuinely surprised me, though, I’m not sure.’

All of this English and sociology was shutting Miss Freedom Beauty Child out of the conversation, so we reverted to Japanese, and after a quick photo call, she and Miss Blessing Effective Child headed back to Spain on their staff shuttle bus. My train came on time, the Mariposa was still where I had left it outside Anagawa Station, and I arrived at the campsite late enough to have violated the curfew, sneaking in under a chain which had been drawn across the entrance.

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 30

23/11/2015

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Thursday 18th August 2005 – Mount Yoshino to Iinan Town (吉野山 – 飯南町)
Presents received – umé-boshi, Kyushu miso, free camping

In a nightmare my room at the youth hostel became a rollercoaster, as I hurtled down the mountainside, swerving to avoid a collision on the assault course of clothes and camping gear hanging above me, and by the time Mr Reach knocked on my door to say goodbye, I was lying sideways across the futon, disorientated and agoraphobic in such spacious surroundings.

‘Muzuhashi.’
‘Mr Reach. Come in.’
‘That’s OK, I was just about to leave.’ Mr Reach stayed by the open door and gave an apologetic nod. ‘Sorry, did I wake you up?’
‘No, not at all,' I lied.
‘Thank you again for the Mapple. I'll use it on my next holiday.’
‘You’re welcome.’
‘Take care on the way back.’
‘You too. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.
Mr Reach gave another bow, and as he left I did my best to reciprocate from my position beneath the duvet.

Among its other peculiarities, the hostel only had squat toilets, so having checked out I headed straight for the public loos in Yoshino town centre. On one of three doors was the wheelchair symbol for ‘disabled’, and beyond this the western-style toilet I had been looking for. I am not registered disabled, I do not have a disabled badge on my car, and I would like to take this opportunity to apologise to any disabled readers for the indiscretion, but such a symbol not only denotes a spacious cubicle with coat hooks and hand rails, in Japan, it also denotes the ability to sit down on the job as nature intended. To my shame, I did once jump the queue at a club by nipping into the disabled loo, to be confronted upon my exit by a woman in a wheelchair, but at eight in the morning on Yoshino's deserted main street, the chances of the same thing happening were very slim. Also, I knew that my knees would otherwise be unable to withstand the punishment, which in my book counted as extenuating circumstances – as temporary disability, in fact.

There was no lock on the door, but thankfully no other tourists around – disabled or otherwise – to disturb me, nor to overrun Mount Yoshino’s shrines and temples, one or two of which I investigated on my way through the town. At these there were smouldering incense sticks, gold Buddha statues, stone troughs overflowing with spring water, bells to ring after saying a prayer, and collection boxes in which to drop a coin or two, although in the same way that most visitors to Yoshino will come for its cherry blossom, what impressed me more than the spirituality of the place was a particular aspect of its architecture.

Grandiose, sweeping and topped with ornamental ridges or antenna-like protrusions, shrine and temple roofs are works of art in their own right, their slopes curving to a ski-jump stop at the eaves, which in turn are lined with intricate wood carvings. Not content with just the one roof, architects will often stack two, three or more on top of each other, and in such a seismically volatile country this is asking for trouble. Even the roof of an ordinary bungalow, when clad in traditional ceramic tiles, can weigh as much as two tons, and many unfortunate people have been crushed to death as they slept – or prayed – through an earthquake, beneath the weight of something so out of proportion to the walls supporting it.

On a stretch of shingle by the Yoshino River was a temporary campsite that if only I had known about it could have saved me all sorts of time, trouble and money the previous evening, and the road east followed the same river on its twists and turns upstream. Stopping for breakfast at an old-style village store, I was served by an oddly androgynous shopkeeper, who was no more than five feet tall, with a high voice and his last few tufts of grey hair tinted to a reddish brown. As it happened, he was selling quite the best pain au chocolat I had ever tasted, which would have been unusual in a big city, and was the equivalent of finding a chunk of kryptonite this far out in the wilderness.

A few minutes later I was overtaken by a familiar blue Mazda, from which Mr Reach emerged after pulling over to the side of the road.
‘Muzuhashi, hello again.’
‘Mr Reach, long time no see.’
‘I’ve just been to the Sasa Waterfall. Would you like to see my photos?’ Mr Reach showed me a series of new shots on his SLR, of him miming his amazement at the waterfall or befriending fellow tourists.
‘Before I go, I have something for you,’ he said, fishing a small bag of umé-boshi out of the glove compartment.
‘Thank you very much.’
‘You’re welcome.
It was getting to the point that I ought to offer another gift myself, but I hadn’t even saved a spare pain-au-chocolat.
‘Well, take care on the drive back to Tokyo.’
‘I hope you reach Ibaraki safely. Goodbye.’
‘Goodbye.’

About an hour later I pulled in at a soba restaurant, and what should be the only other vehicle in the car park but the same blue Mazda. Inside the restaurant, Mr Reach was polishing off the last of a large bowl of noodles.
‘Mr Reach!’
‘Muzuhashi! How are you?’
‘Good, thank you. How long have you been here?’
‘About half an hour.’
By now, our ability to catch each other up was making things a little awkward, and Mr Reach felt obliged to stay and talk while I ordered my own meal of zaru-soba.
‘I shouldn’t think I’ll see you again,’ I said, as we gathered up our belongings. ‘The road from here looks pretty steep.’
‘Yes, it does. Good luck.’
‘You too. I’ll send you an email when I get home.’
‘Thank you.’

At this point the chef came over with the bill, and before we knew it had offered us two free bowls of what he described as Kyushu miso, which took another twenty minutes to eat. After a final farewell in the car park, I took things easy for the next few kilometres, just in case Mr Reach had broken down, stopped to take more photographs, or bought me yet another gift.

Despite my recent enthusiasm for cycling, I had come to two wheels relatively late in life, and being a hopeless coward, only learned to go without stablisers as an eleven year old. I started riding my Raleigh Spider to school not long afterwards, and the bigger boys were soon teasing me about its bright yellow paintwork and hi-vis luggage box, to the point where I had to sneak through the back gates in order to avoid them, and ultimately stopped riding it altogether. While they were popping wheelies, I was prone to falling off when doing little more than riding in a straight line, on a dry day, and with both wheels firmly on the ground. At the time the BMX was king, and another of the Spider’s accessories that opened me up to accusations of being homosexual were its mudguards. The mudguard is a brilliant innovation, which not only prevents many of the component parts of your bicycle from rusting, but also your backside from acquiring a brown stripe of grubby rainwater whenever you ride in the wet. Unfortunately, it would seem that whoever designs and manufactures modern-day bicycles suffered from exactly the same kind of bullying when they were young, and is still subconsciously terrified of having A Gay Bicycle. Ironically enough considering its name, the Mariposa was a typical product of this climate of fear, being blessed at the time I bought it with fat tyres and bouncy suspension but no mudguards, and in this sense, mountain bikes are a lot like four-by-fours: designed for appearance rather than practicality, with most of their owners never daring to venture any further off-road than a gravel drive.

In a distinctly otaku kind of way, I had therefore developed a minor obsession with which varieties of tarmac threw up the most spray and which were more absorbent, and while my backside was protected by the luggage rack, the frame, panniers and tent would still get spattered with dirt. As the afternoon progressed, claps of thunder began to echo around the valley, and in conditions such as these, I would freewheel along with my feet in the air in order to prevent my trainers from getting soaked. Fortunately, though, the bulk of the rain confined itself to the mountains, and when the storm had cleared, cotton wool balls of cloud rolled along the hillside until the sun poked through to evaporate them.

My evening in Iinan Town was blissfully devoid of hardship: I reached the campsite well before dark, and it was in a field next to the Kushida River, with no climb to negotiate. The caretaker allowed me to camp for free, and wary of rain and the muddy ground, even let me erect the Snow Peak in the covered barbecue area. The campsite's showers cost two hundred yen for a luxuriously extensive five minutes (although not for the first time, I managed to pull the emergency cord thinking it was the light switch), and there was mains electricity with which to charge my keitai. To top it all off, no more than three minutes’ ride away was a restaurant that stayed open until ten, whose amiable proprietors – two local women with grown-up children, who had risked their savings to start a business with no previous experience – were happy to engage in some Japanese conversation. I called Mr Swansea to warn him of my imminent arrival in Nagoya, cleaned my teeth in the luxurious site toilet block (new fixtures and fittings, motion-sensitive lighting, air fresheners, vase of flowers on the windowsill), and was lulled to sleep by the soothing sound of the river.

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The ALT Insider guest post!

16/11/2015

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In the space of little more than a year, ALT Insider has become the one-stop-shop for those of us who ply our trade as token gaiji...er, I mean English teaching assistants in Japanese schools, and seeing as James - the man who rules over the ALT Insider kingdom - was kind enough to let me write a guest post for his site, in the spirit of reciprocity, here's his contribution to the United Kingdom of Muzuhashi. Read, enjoy, and if you're an ALT in Japan, I strongly recommend that you check out ALT Insider (for example, probably my favourite post is this one about how to skive off work without incurring the wrath of either your vice-principal or your dispatch company).

Friday 13th September 2015 – My home to the 7-11 (自宅 - コンビニ)
Presents received – receipt, smile, several hundred pictures of college students

On a random Friday in a September like any other, I took a break from the endless hilarity that is Japanese TV and walked to the fridge to grab a drink. Upon opening it, I realized my only thirst-quenching options were the remnants of a slightly expired quart of milk, and a large bottle of Sirachi hot sauce.

I considered my options. I could take a chance on the milk being okay to drink, but the potential downside would leave me hunched over and unwell. I could sip on the hot sauce, but aside from that not being very thirst quenching, a mistake could force me chug the milk, adding another monkey wrench to the equation.

Without an appealing option, I decided that I was going to take action to improve my situation. I was going to make the trek to a convenience store. I knew the path well. I wouldn’t need any supplies other than a bike and the clothes on my back. I took a quick shower, gave myself a pre-biking massage, and began to squeeze into my biking shorts.

A mere 45 minutes later, I bid farewell to the cat and locked the door behind me as I left. As I heard the twist of the lock, I felt that familiar feeling when any great quest begins.

What awaited me on my journey? What characters would play a part in this tale? How did that cat get into my house? What treasure was awaiting me at my destination? Seriously, though, whose cat was that?

As I pondered those questions, I arrived at my bike garage. Okay, it’s not actually “mine,” but rather more of a community garage over which I claim ownership to feel better about myself.

Anyhow, in my glorious garage, I was presented with a pair of options:

The first was a pink beauty I nicknamed The Stallion. No gears, no basket, no rules.

The second was an orangey yellow stunner upon which I bestowed the name Puddle Dancer. It boasted a basket, a semi-flat tire, and a locking system that isn’t functional.

Since I felt like living dangerously, I hopped on Puddle Dancer and prepared to depart. I input the address into my iPhone, and I was ready to roll.

Departure time: 3:15

If everything went well, I was scheduled to arrive at the convenience store at 3:17, but I’ve been on enough of these bike trips to know that you should always expect the unexpected. I pressed on.

After I pushed the pedals a few times and breathed in that smooth Japan air, my jitters quickly disappeared. I was officially on my way. Sometimes on these epic quests, that feeling of, “Wow, this is really happening,” doesn’t show up until the middle, and sometimes even later than that. On this trip, however, it came nice and early, which is a great feeling. I took a selfie to commemorate the rush of adrenaline.

About half a minute later, now that I was within viewing distance of my destination, I picked up the pace. Was it excitement about being so close to my goal? No, it was something deeper than that. There is this really huge dog that scares me, so I speed when I go through his domain.

(Hand-drawn from memory)

With Cujo in my rear-view mirror, I foolishly sighed in relief. The feeling wouldn’t last.

As I turned onto the road with the 7-11, a huge herd of college students appeared, blocking my path! I could have probably cleared them out through my usual tactic of acting like a lost foreigner asking for directions in English, but these quests are defined by their uniqueness, so I chose to wait it out.

After waiting countless minutes for them to pass, I pulled into the 7-11 with a feeling of sincere satisfaction. Not because most of the students were wearing skirts and it was a windy day (or at least not exclusively because of that), but because I had made the effort and took the risks to get what I wanted and to grow as a person.

There are too many people out there who don’t go after what they want. I’ve met so many people who, if put into the same situation as I was, would have just settled for that two-day-old milk or the hot sauce. Probably more people would have just settled for tap water. It takes a bit more to be someone who leaves the safety of home and treks to the great unknown to satisfy a thirst.

I set the bar higher. And I know you can, too.

The next time you need something, don’t settle for tap water (or your situation’s equivalent). Go for it. Make the effort. Take that selfie. Wait for those students. Go to that conbini.

I’m James Winovich.

James Winovich is the creator of ALTInsider.com, a website all about helping people have more fun in Japan. Lesson plans, a podcast, and a huge archive of articles are waiting for you there. Have more fun during your time in Japan.

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 29

9/11/2015

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Wednesday 17th August 2005 – Mount Koya to Mount Yoshino (高野山 – 吉野山)
Presents received – one can of coffee, two Cup Noodle, half a bag of peanuts
Presents given – Kyushu Mapple

‘Grunt grunt.’
It was seven in the morning and the caretaker had come to check on my welfare after the storm. Only about eight hours too late, I thought, but still, it was a nice gesture, and having slept for another hour or so, I packed and left as quickly as I could, in the hope of avoiding a hungover Mr Peace Field on his way to work.

Mr Snow Praise was waiting for me at Kongobu Temple, which is the headquarters of a branch of Buddhism called Shingon, although I was disappointed to discover that he worked in the admin side of things, and wore jeans and a t-shirt rather than a monk’s robes. Our first stop was at the temple’s Zen garden, whose rocks and raked gravel – like those of the more famous Ryoanji in Kyoto – are strategically arranged for maximum meditative effect, and whose composition is supposed to resemble a dragon flying through the clouds, although to see this probably requires a little more faith and concentration than I was able to conjure up.

Inside were numerous screens and sliding doors, hand painted over three hundred and fifty years ago and depicting scenes of the koyo or flocks of cranes perched on snow-covered cherry trees, all highlighted with great swathes of gold leaf. As was the case at Himeji Castle, it was necessary to take our shoes off before entering, and the silence of stockinged feet enhanced the atmosphere of hushed reverence, making me feel much less intrusive than if I were tramping through in muddy trainers.

As well as fielding my somewhat random questions, Mr Snow Praise called a friend of his to arrange free entry to the nearby Tahoto Museum of National Treasures, where the exhibits were mostly carved figures of various shapes and sizes – some serene and portly Buddhas, others black demons with bared teeth and fiery eyes – although I rather sped round, as my goal for today was Mount Yoshino, a similarly lofty assortment of temples and shrines some fifty kilometres away.

A storm gave me ample time to digest lunch at a michi-no-eki on the way, and as salvoes of thunder rang out overhead, to sit on a long wooden bench and write my diary.

Beside me a couple of motorcyclists were wringing out their wet clothes, and one shared a coffee and a chat, while the other abandoned any pretence of being able to dry out, rejoining the traffic in as bedraggled a state as he had left it.

I checked on the rain with an outstretched palm every few minutes, and once the downpour had turned to drizzle did the same thing myself, although I was now way behind schedule. Low cloud cleared the mountaintops and car tyres hissed by on the wet tarmac as I skirted around streams and puddles, and soon the tributary I had been following fed into a wide river valley, its green hills turning blue and purple in the twilight.

Having been out of range since leaving Koya, I stopped in a lay-by and held my keitai to the sky with its aerial extended, which was just enough to catch a quivering chevron of signal.
‘Hello,’ said the woman on the other end of the line, ‘this is Mount Yoshino Youth Hostel.’
‘Hello.’ I held the phone between thumb and fingertips, standing on tiptoe and leaning in what I hoped was the optimum direction to avoid our voices becoming lost in the ether. ‘I’m afraid my Japanese isn’t very good, so you’ll have to bear with me, but would it be possible to book a room for tonight, please?’
‘For how many people?’
‘Just one. I was caught in the rain, though, so I’m running a little late.’
‘Where are you now?’ She already sounded slightly dubious, so I continued to be as polite as possible.
‘I’m only a few kilometres from Mount Yoshino, but I shouldn’t think I’ll arrive until about seven o’clock.’
‘I’m afraid that we cannot accept guests after seven in the evening.’
Damn. I could almost hear the sound of a rule book hitting the reception desk.
‘Really? The thing is, I’m cycling, so I may well get there before seven. I just can’t be absolutely sure.’ The woman hesitated in her response to this, so I changed the subject before she had another chance to fob me off. ‘Do you serve an evening meal?’
‘No, we don’t, I’m afraid.’
‘How about restaurants? Are there any nearby?’
‘Yes, there are one or two.’ I could sense that she wanted to return to the topic of check-in times, but by now I was on a roll.
‘OK, I’ll see you at around seven o’clock.’
‘Er, all right. But what if…?’
‘Thank you very much!’
‘Thank y…’
Oh dear. Either the signal had died or I had inadvertently hung up. The woman at the hostel hadn’t said that I could stay, but then again, she hadn’t said that I couldn’t stay, either, so on towards Mount Yoshino I went.

My route took me into another, smaller valley, and as seven o’clock approached, darkness fell and the forest seemed to close in around me. No problem, I thought, Yoshino is just around the corner – only a couple of centimetres on the Mapple – I’ll be there in a jiffy. Pretty soon, though, it was becoming difficult to distinguish the road in front of me from the trees on one side and the no doubt perilous drop on the other. After flirting with the latter on a couple of occasions, and with the Mariposa’s token front light barely penetrating the gloom, I was forced to don my headlamp. Gradually the slope steepened, and when it did finally materialise, Mount Yoshino was as hilly a town as I had come to expect for the end of a day’s riding, to the extent that two old ladies out for a stroll had to help me push the Mariposa up the last, seemingly forty-five-degree slope to the hostel.

It was too late now for the manageress to turn me away, but when I asked again about food, she had changed - or at least modified - her story, and insisted that while there were restaurants in the area, they had now closed. In between ferrying damp bags and equipment into the foyer, I kicked up as much of a fuss as I could muster, and her father eventually offered to drive to the nearest conbini and buy me a Cup Noodle, although tonight I made a point of not mentioning my pescetarianism.

The hostel was a traditional building, its ground floor divided by rows of sliding doors – here sadly devoid of gold leaf and flocks of cranes – which could be drawn aside to create a large communal area. Yoshino is famous for its hanami (花見 / annual festival for viewing cherry blossom), and while there was room enough here to accommodate scores of sightseers, tonight there were just two of us, and I found my fellow guest in the bath a few minutes later.

Mr Reach was what someone less charitable might have described as otaku, otaku being a word that through a rather convoluted etymology has come to mean ‘geek’ or ‘nerd’. He worked as a computer programmer in Tokyo and lived with his parents, lavishing his spare time and money on a sporty little blue Mazda, which coincidentally had been parked right in front of me as I waited for the rain to stop over lunch at the michi-no-eki. When Mr Reach wasn’t driving, he was taking photographs with a digital SLR much more expensive and sophisticated than my own, and was particularly fond of its self-timer. As a consequence, alongside technically impressive landscapes and advertising-style close ups of the Mazda, many of the shots in Mr Reach's laptop slideshow were of him striking comical poses: with people he had met that day, in front of famous landmarks, or while wearing a rented samurai costume.

Otaku are renowned for their singular dedication to hobbies such as animé, manga, cosplay, (a contraction of ‘costume play’, this veers slightly more towards fetishism and S&M than what we would refer to as fancy dress), collecting limited edition toys, following pre-pubescent pop groups, and even good, old-fashioned trainspotting, but Mr Reach’s photo essays were so idiosyncratic they were almost works of art, and I urged him to create a home for them on the internet. He may not have had a girlfriend or a cool haircut, but whereas the stereotypical otaku will shy away from social contact, or from making an exhibition of himself, Mr Reach – admirably so, in my opinion – embraced both. As he orchestrated some suitably surreal photographs of us in the common room, the manageress’s father arrived back from the conbini, and Mr Reach was even kind enough to show me The Way of the Cup Noodle (pour in boiling water, cover, and leave to stand for three minutes before eating).

My appetite thus sated, it was time to take advantage of the hostel’s washing machine.
‘Here you go,’ said the father, having led me to a back yard cluttered with mops, buckets and bicycles. ‘Put a cup of powder in and press this button. It only takes about twenty minutes.’
‘And where’s the dryer?’
‘Dryer? Oh, we haven’t got a dryer. You can hang it up, though.’ A couple of clotheslines were stretched across the porch in the muggy night air.
‘But I’m leaving first thing tomorrow morning. I can’t imagine my clothes will be dry by then.’
The father shrugged his shoulders, and I headed back inside with my t-shirt recycling facility untouched and unwashed. Mount Yoshino may have been charging more than the other youth hostels I had stayed in, but I couldn’t help thinking that a separate group of unseen guests was getting a better deal. If it wasn’t even possible to order breakfast, then why was there such a large kitchen? And if my only option for an evening meal was a trip to the shops, then who got to drink those big bottles of Asahi in the glass-fronted fridge?

Back in my room, I was using my trusty piece of string to construct an outsized cat’s cradle on which to air the Snow Peak, when Mr Reach knocked on the door to present me with half a bag of peanuts.
‘They will give you energy for the ride tomorrow,’ he said, and I thought it an odd thing to do, particularly at eleven o’clock at night, until I realised that by presenting Mr Reach with my Shikoku Mapple earlier in the evening, I had unwittingly obliged him to offer me something in return. Having purchased its replacement near Osaka, the Mapple was of no use to me any more, but in keeping with the tradition of giri (義理 – the ongoing exchange of gifts or favours between friends, neighbours and relatives, around which a complicated set of rules and conventions has arisen), the gesture had to be reciprocated, not matter how modestly.

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 28

4/11/2015

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Tuesday 16th August 2005 – Osaka to Mount Koya (大阪 – 高野山)
Presents received – dinner, two beers, fee for campsite

To celebrate the end of my final year at university I went to the Glastonbury Festival with a group of friends, with the intention of getting thoroughly wasted for the entire weekend. By the time we arrived the site was a quagmire, as it had already been raining for several days, and after a yomp from the car park worthy of the march on Port Stanley, we huddled in the cold, desperately hoping that things would improve. One of the poles on my brand new tent had already broken, and I didn’t sleep a wink for most of the night, as a high wind pressed the roof to within inches of my face. At about six in the morning, cold, tired and thoroughly pissed off, I gave up, packed everything away, and walked to the bus stop without even telling my friends that I was leaving. Radiohead looked and sounded so much better from the comfort of my living room sofa, and I vowed never to camp again: why, after all, did humans invent bricks and mortar, hotels, heating and hot baths, if not to avoid communing so closely with nature? If God had intended us to live in teepees, He would have bestowed a more agreeable climate, and provided far more luxurious toilet facilities than are to be found at the average music festival.

It had only been financial constraints that forced me to go back on my word this summer, and yet, to my surprise, after a month on the road I was almost beginning to prefer life under canvas to life between four walls. Shin-Osaka Youth Hostel was the noisiest place I had stayed in so far, and the air inside it was parched from over-zealous air conditioning. To open the window would have allowed in the white noise of the city, and my sleep had already been disturbed by all sorts of bumps, bangs, alarms and snoring, even before piped elevator music began drifting through the PA system at seven in the morning. Plus, having continued to avoid them in the wild, I was once again plagued by mosquitoes now that I had reached a conurbation, and had been bitten once as I waited to go up Kobé Port Tower and again outside the elevator to the hostel. Still, I was able to find out the result of the Third Test (the hostel charged a hundred yen for fifteen minutes on the internet – it was a draw), and to talk to one of the few Japanese guests over breakfast, who was in Osaka on a baseball pilgrimage, to see the river in which the most fanatical Hanshin Tigers fans went for a swim when their team won the national championship (a river that, according to Mr Swansea – a Tigers fan himself – is little more than a muddy canal clogged up with old bicycles).

My semi-day off had me reinvigorated, and the sun shone on the empty bank holiday streets of Osaka, as I rode past the same transvestite tramp I had seen the previous evening, crash landed on another street corner and still ranting away to no one in particular. Crossing a bridge a few minutes later, I could have sworn that Sunny Boy passed me by, in a shirt and tie and riding his mama-chari to work, but by the time I had registered who it was, we were too far away from each other to warrant turning round and giving chase.

Having reached the outer limits of my second Mapple, I scoured the suburbs of Osaka for a decent bookshop, and was directed to the cookery section in one establishment, when an assistant misheard my request for chizu (maps) as chiizu (cheese). I even provoked some road rage when I cut across a main road to turn right, and a man in a four-by-four leaned out of the driver’s window and told me to ‘Kiero!’ seemingly irate that he had been forced to accelerate in his efforts to run me down. (‘Kiero!’ is often translated as ‘Fuck off!’ but means something more like ‘I strongly urge you to disappear!’ and is therefore a good example of the enduring and fundamental politeness of the Japanese language. Similarly, the most commonly used put-down is ‘Baka-yaro!’ whose literal translation is no more risqué than ‘You stupid rascal!’)

Apart from the small matter of a ‘No Cycling Beyond This Point’ sign on the way up, which I chose to ignore just as two police cars came along in the opposite direction, getting across the Kimi Pass to Hashimoto was easier than anticipated. Having sailed past my reserve campsite at two in the afternoon, I was ready to carry on to Mount Koya, which was another item on my list of recommended tourist spots, being eighty kilometres south of Osaka, and beteween eight hundred and a thousand metres above sea level.

Koya’s cluster of peaks contains a town, a university and a pilgrims’ paradise of Buddhist temples, and the road there wriggles its way up a narrow valley, mirrored by a single-track railway line opposite, whose cute little two-carriage trains pop in and out of caged tunnels overgrown with climbing plants. As highlighted by a series of red dots on the Mapple, the route was beloved of motorcyclists, long lines of whom sped past on their Harleys, Hondas and Kawasakis, no doubt relishing the experience of so many hairpin bends so conveniently close to a big city. Not for the first time, however, I had failed to properly prepare for two hours’ hard slog up a steep hill, and despite carrying enough water, was in dire need of solids by the halfway point, with not a shop or a restaurant in sight. The attendant at a gasoline stand eventually came to my rescue, producing three blackened and over-ripe but very welcome bananas from her house next door, for which she refused to accept any money.

On one particularly sweeping bend near the top of the climb, a disembodied voice called out to me.
‘Hey,’ it said. ‘What are you up to?’
‘I’m on my way to Mount Koya,’ I replied, my gaze drawn to a white mini-van on the other side of the road.
‘What was that? Come on, come over here.’
The driver of the van hadn’t bothered to pull over or even turn his hazards on, so I stood by his open window, and our conversation continued as the traffic manoeuvred its way around us.
‘Where are you from?’ said the driver, who I could now see was grey haired and weather beaten, but as animated as someone half his age.
‘I’m from England.’
‘And you’re cycling up Mount Koya?’
‘Of course.’ I patted the Mariposa’s handlebars, just in case he had failed to notice what I was sitting on.
‘Ha ha! You foreigners are crazy. Who the hell would want to cycle up here?’ He reached over into his glove compartment and took out a large can of Asahi, and I sensed there was another, already open and half-drunk, somewhere close at hand. ‘Go on, have a beer. You deserve it.’

A grand archway leading to the first of Mount Koya’s temples marked the top of the climb, and I made my way to a campsite on the opposite side of Koya Town, where a group of junior high school students was staying for some kind of sporting summer camp (altitude training, perhaps?). One of their teachers chatted for a while and passed on yet another can of beer, before directing me to a tatty little bungalow beside the potholed track to the site’s entrance.

‘Excuse me, I was wondering if I might be able to stay here tonight.’
‘Grunt grunt.’
Short, wide and with a glum face and a fishing hat, the caretaker resembled the kind of mysterious old man you see in Miyazaki films like Spirited Away or My Neighbour Tottoro.
‘Grunt grunt.’
‘Sorry?’
He lurked in the shadows behind the mossie screen to his front door, and after a few more grunts, disappeared into the darkness to leave me standing on the doorstep, before reappearing just as suddenly to get into his car
‘Grunt grunt,’ he shouted, and I had no choice but to follow, as he drove to a grassless playing field a few hundred metres away. With a sheltered barbecue area, a distinctly utilitarian toilet block and no sign of anything as luxurious as a shower, this must have been an overflow for when the main site was full.
‘Grunt grunt grunt,’ he said, by way of explanation.
‘How much will it cost for one night?’ I asked.
‘Grunt grunt.’ He waved away the question and got back into his car.
‘Before you go, do you happen to know if there are any restaurants around here?’
‘Grunt.’
‘Pardon?’
‘Conbini.’
‘Ah. OK. Well, thanks very much.’

The caretaker drove off, and I asked the same question of a girl who was walking her dog around the playing field. Her name was Miss Peace Field, and it just so happened that she was studying English at university.
‘The restaurants around here usually close in the evenings,’ she said.
‘Are any of them open until late? It's just that the man from the campsite told me to go to a conbini.’
‘I’m not sure.’ Miss Peace Field thought for a moment or two, and I tried not to look too desperate or forlorn, knowing that it would be very presumptuous of me to expect what I thought she was about to say. ‘Maybe you can have dinner with my family – we only live next door.’
‘If it’s not too much trouble, I’d love to.’ I came over all Hugh Grant and bashfully grateful, but was inwardly relieved to have been rescued yet again by some unprompted generosity from a total stranger.
‘I’ll just go and check with my parents.’

She soon returned to confirm the invitation, and by the time I had changed into my cleanest t-shirt and knocked on the Peace Field family’s front door, it was pouring with rain and bolts of lightning were flashing across the treetops. This made me feel even more grateful for having been spared a meal of microwaved food, although when I found out what was for dinner, I regretted having been so honest with Miss Peace Field when she asked about my dietary preferences.

In that typically modern, middle-class way, I eat fish and seafood, but not meat – a pescetarian, to be precise – and there were one or two more dishes to which I had acquired an aversion after an unfortunate night out earlier in the year. Having just flown back from England after the Christmas holidays, I found myself in a cheap izakaya in Tokyo, and after a fortnight of fish, chips and mushy peas, was desperate for some traditional Japanese cooking. Following a meal of sushi, tofu and edamamé (枝豆 / green soya beans in their pods that are often served as a bar snack), I came down with a nasty case of food poisoning, and kept my friend Mr Cambridge awake by projectile vomiting into his toilet for most of the night. Ever since, not only did the sight of sushi – an ageing batch of which was the cause of the food poisoning – make me feel queasy, but so too, by association, did everything that went with it. And what else had Miss Peace Field’s mother prepared for her family this evening but beef stew, sushi, tofu and edamamé. There was no time to lay on a special menu for a fussy gaijin, so Miss Peace Field’s enquiry had been rhetorical, and one that I should have answered with more consideration.

It was with some suspicion, therefore, that her father eyed me as I forced down a neat slice of raw octopus for starters, before moving onto the beef stew with the cheerful assertion that ‘I don’t mind eating a bit of meat once in a while.’ Mr Peace Field was the person I most needed to impress, with ultimate authority over who did or did not get invited to dinner at short notice, and cannot have been too pleased that I had sent advance orders decreeing that most of the evening’s food was unsuitable. As if to reinforce my sense of unease, the family poodle had become territorial all of a sudden, and having ignored me when we were outside, went berserk as soon as I walked through the front door.

‘Don’t worry,’ said Miss Peace Field’s mother. ‘He’s always the same when there’s a stranger here.’
‘What’s he called?’ I had to shout to make myself heard above the racket, as she dragged the dog into another room.
‘President. We call him President because he runs the house.’

Miss Peace Field had lived in Oregon for a year when she was in high school, and was in the process of writing her dissertation on W.P.Kinsella’s Shoeless Joe. She had recently attended interviews for a job at Narita Airport, as what she called a ‘brand hostess’, which involved dressing up in traditional costume and posing or handing out leaflets on behalf of one sponsor or another. Although she was very pretty, this struck me as a waste of her talents, as she was clearly intelligent too, and even jumped in with some quick mental arithmetic when we got onto the subject of average wages in the UK and Japan. She had inherited her looks from her father, who was slim and tanned, with a twinkle in his eye and a lustrous quiff of hair that showed no signs of greying. Despite initially being charming and inquisitive, however, the more beer Mr Peace Field drank, the less appealing he became.

Along with a Rolex, one of the things I inherited from my own father – or rather, from years of observing him – was the ability to sniff out an alcoholic. He could be articulate and modest one moment, rude and boorish the next, simply because he had knocked back a couple of glasses of wine in the meantime, and if there is one thing an alcoholic knows, it is how to spoil an evening. Thus the atmosphere around the Peace Field family dinner table gradually transformed from friendly and jovial to nervy and strained, as Mr Hyde emerged from Dr Jekyll’s shadow, and the conversation became more and more one-sided. The sleeves of Mr Peace Field’s t-shirt were rolled up to the shoulder, his head bobbing and his eyes glazed over, as he gesticulated to emphasise his point, which seemed to be something along the lines of, ‘It doesn’t matter if you’re rich or poor, you’re still going to die’. I nodded politely and asked for a translation from Miss Peace Field, who pretended not to understand what he was on about.

‘Let’s all go to England next year!’ said Mr Peace Field for the fourth or fifth time, and as dinner drew to a close I felt sorry for his family, who had surely seen the same performance many times before, and had to suffer not just the consequences of his drinking, but perhaps even worse, the dread of the inevitable that precedes them. He was eventually banished to the living room sofa, and sat there in silence, brooding in front of the TV like a clockwork toy that has wound down. It was a complete contrast to the man I had met when I arrived, and that is the fundamental difference between a social drinker and an alcoholic: when most of us drink, it magnifies aspects of our personality that were already apparent; when an alcoholic drinks, he becomes a different person entirely, a wretched creature that even his close friends find it hard to recognise.

After all their generosity, the family still insisted I make use of their shower before I left, and Miss Peace Field’s brother-in-law Mr Snow Praise, who had joined us for dinner with his wife, Miss Peace Field’s sister, offered to act as my tour guide the following morning. The rain had stopped by the time I said goodnight, and although the Snow Peak had stood up to the deluge, when I crawled inside to unpack my sleeping bag, the playing field beneath it was so sodden that water began to ooze through the groundsheet. I spent several minutes trying to break into a large storage shed, but had to relocate instead to the concrete floor of the barbecue shelter, dangling various towels and clothes around and about, although I very much doubted they would dry overnight.

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Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 31

Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 30

The ALT Insider guest post!

Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 29

Gaijin on a Push Bike - Day 28

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