dan in japan

Just before I pulled into Ashinomaki, I came to the conclusion that a) I was on holiday; b) I was in Japan; c) I had 10 days to go and only 200kms to cover; and d) I was a $100 1-hour train ride back to Tokyo if I ran out of time. With that in mind, I relaxed a great deal and have taken the trip pretty easily since. I treated myself to a fantastic onsen on the side of a cliff, took a few little off road adventures and spent more time attempting to talk with locals and learn about the areas I was riding through. I’ve given myself more time to soak in the scenery, relaxing and chilling out a whole lot more and taking the ride steady rather than attacking every hill in a desperate rush.

Welcome to Ashinomaki

The town of Ashinomaki was a sneak peak into many of the other styles of towns I was to ride through on the way to Tokyo. There main business was onsens, hotels and defying gravity. Seriously, these buildings clung to the sides of staggering ravines and peered down from dizzying heights. I peddled out from there around 3pm and got back onto the 121, the main road I’ve been following these last few days and thankfully without insanity hills from previous days. Around 5:30 I head off the main road and start looking for a place to camp. A little corner of a field here. A nook in a cranny there. My tent doesn’t take up much space and just looks like another pile of firewood covered with a blue tarp. People seemed not to have minded me camping so far, but if given the chance to meet the farmer, asking was certainly something I do. I followed a few little windy roads, crossed a bridge, went past a shrine and the up a small hill leading to an orchid. I find two people, a man in his 40s walking out of sight just as arrive and a woman in her 60s working the field. I say konichiwa to her and she looks up from what she’s doing. Immediately her face cracks into a big smile a she starts laughing as I mash my way through asking if I can camp on the land. The man approaches and he knows a little English and greets me. I give him my story and repeat my question. They chat for a moment and they point to a shrine poking out from behind a nearby hill indicating that I should camp near there. I start to ask how I get to it from where we are standing and there seems to be a bit of confusion. The man perks up and says simply “you stay with me”. I’m told to follow him on my bike while he drives his tractor and we go down into the small village at the base of the hill and soon we’re standing in his driveway.

After we stow the bike in the shed, he directs me to the front door and asks me to wait while he rallies his wife, son and daughter and does a quick tidy of the sitting room. I’m offered a spot at the table, a hot cup of Japanese tea and we all introduce ourselves. Sato is a semi-conductor engineer for Fujitsu during the week in near-by Wakamatsu, but on weekends he works the farm with his mum, who I met earlier. He asks what sort of food I like. I say all Japanese food except for nutto is good with me. It’s decided that Sashimi and Okonomiaki are the go. It’s also decided that only after 20 minutes of meeting one another that we should go for onsen while his wife and mum prepare the meal. Ok then.

While we’re sitting there naked in the hot bath he tells me that he would like his son to learn English well to help him in life. I agree, saying that I have been really lucky to have been born into a language that has also been adopted as the international language of commerce and communication. We talk about travel and the places each of us have been to. We chat in a very limited way about semiconductors, onsens, Australia’s attitude to public baths and nudity.

When we return to the house, the living area and adjoining rooms are now one, with sliding walls pushed back to create a new space much more open and spread out than before. Also, there is a futon made up in the next room and grandma gestures to it, laughing at my bad Japanese and our misunderstandings. It’s funny. I’ve always stuck my nose up at the bad tourist stereotype of the white person going to some out of the way place and expecting people to speak English, then annunciating every syllable loudly as if the local is going to magically understand them. Well, I can tell you now, when people have taken the time to speak to me in Japanese like this, I’ve usually got the gist of what they’re trying to tell me. That combined with charades, hand gestures and animal sounds has crossed many a language gap on this trip.

Meet the Shoichis in Shimogo

The meal is fantastic. Fresh sashimi and cooked on a hot plate on the table okonomiyaki. Yum. We chat about life in our different worlds. We talk about the work-life balance in Japan and Australia. I tell them about the 888 concept. 8 hours work, 8 hours life, 8 hours rest. Australian’s really don’t know how good we have it. 8 hour work days is something Australian’s take for granted. In Japan this is very much the exception, with people regularly working 12 hour days, with the occasional 16 hour day thrown in. The Japanese have bugger-all annual leave, but do have one of the highest amount of public holidays in the world. We touch on gender politics and bodily functions as daughter lets a fart slip out. After a very quite moment, everyone bursts out laughing, with the parents apologising for their daughter’s outburst. I say not to worry and that my sister is exactly the same at the dining table. Once translated, this get another round of laughter and we continue to eat and talk throughout the evening in high spirits.

Sunday morning arrives at 6am with the sound of what could be best described as one of those electronic greeting cards amplified by Spinal Tap. This is something I’ve discovered about rural Japanese life that shatters the idyllic image I’ve had when flirting with the idea of teaching English here. I remember watching a doco on North Korea about 5 years ago, and a siren would play at 7am every morning in Pyongyang to inform people that the working day had begun. I thought at the time that this was incredibly backwards, but as it was communist North Korea, then this was one for all territory when KJI says get up, you get up. Fast forward to modern day Japan, and almost everything that runs on electricity has a clock in it. And most of those have an alarm attached to them. So why is it necessary to let everyone know that it’s time to wake up, time to eat lunch and time to eat dinner. The last two aren’t so bad (unless the lunch-time one catches you dozing at a bus stop directly under the siren), as they usually indicate when places are open for lunch or dinner, but 6am? Fark! I’m on freaking holiday here. If I want to wake up at that time, I’ll set my phone to wake me up, and keep my 6am wake up misery to myself. Actually, now that I think about it, this links in with something I’ve noticed as I’ve ridden through the rice fields. There are no young people tending the fields. I can honestly say that all the people I’ve seen hunched over in the fields taking care of the crops have been people in their sixties, seventies and eighties. Perhaps all the young people are leaving the country because on Sundays, when they may have gone out the night before, probably don’t want monotone muzak versions of Yesterday, How can we be lovers or Whitney Houston disturbing them from their hangover at 6am. Yes. They even play that shit on weekends. Dan, the American guy in Inawasharo I stayed with says that is some of the parts of Japan he’s visited, they fire those things off at 5am, 365 days a year.

Ok. I digress. I get out of bed and sit down to a lovely breakfast with the family. We chat about the usual things (what do Australian’s eat for breakfast? What is winter like there? Does it snow in Melbourne?) and then we get onto politics. This requires the help of yahoo and google translation, and we bounce a few ideas around on the computer screen, getting to know one another’s view points of the world. A very interesting discussion, with some intriguing insights. Apparently whale meat is quite bland tasting but is eaten more for its texture. North Korea’s government are loonies. US broke the world’s money machines. What stops people wanting simple peace with each other. You know, the basics. I leave their house about 12:30, loaded up with home made rice balls and warm fuzzies from the experience.