Notes from Kyushu and Back

3/16/07

16:49

First train of eight trains
I take my shoes off and watch
how the lake keeps pace.

17:08

By now Gillian
is at home watching French films
drinking gin with M.

17:14

At Maibara station I watch a woman open a vending machine with a key (as if it were a door), which she steps into (because it is a door).

18:23

I sit with no words
(on a night train filled with them)
staring at the dark.

19:47

Stopped in Himeji
but the white-egret castle
goes black in the night.

3/17/07

06:05

Mihara was a nightmare through which I couldn’t even sleep. This wretched town was the last town of the night—as far as the rails would take me for one day. I would have to recommence my slither toward Nagasaki at 6:46 the next morning, and in the meantime I would meander around Mihara and haphazardly look for a warm-ish place to spend the night. I decided to leave my pack in a locker at the station since it was heavy and made me out to be a tourist (which I was). I didn’t pay the 400 yen to actually lock the locker—I just shoved my stuff inside and closed the door, leaving the key-for-hire lodged in its hole. I would only be gone 20 minutes. I set off on foot down Mihara’s main strip, which was dubbed, according to a sprawling archway, “Marine Drive.” On Marine Drive, haughty businessmen clopped arm-in-arm with giggly women half their ages, stepping in and out of snack (hostess) bars. Stationed at every corner was a cluster of girls in mini-skirts and stilettos blowing hot breath into their frozen hands and making eyes with passersby; however, the cold stare and subsequent spatter of harsh-sounding syllables they offered me was startling and reproachful. I hadn’t yet been treated as so indelibly an “outsider” as I was last night. This feeling carried through as I began to hunt for a cheap room. I was shooed from five business hotels, whose typical guests, I assumed, were those lingering in the cold, awaiting their next patron. I was freezing, so I gave up and headed back to the station to retrieve my pack and find a bench to sprawl out on; however, all of the doors were locked. The station had been closed. I jogged around the perimeter until I found a station agent leaving through a back door. I kindly explained to him (in fragments of Japanese) that I’d just stopped into the konbini next door to buy a can of beer and that I left my bag in a locker, unlocked. That was the key part of my babbling as far as the station agents were concerned because within moments another man, older, in full Japan Rail authoritative garb, came bursting through that back door barking the most vile Japanese at me and making a great to-do about the 400 yen I’d neglected to drop into the locker (even though I’d just spent 6,400 traveling to this unfriendly shithole). Finally, after suitable chastising from the station agent, he agreed to let me have my bag back. OK, but still, I didn’t have anywhere to sleep. It was nearing 2 AM and the only establishments open were seedy snack bars and 24-hour konbinis. I found a small plot of grass surrounded by waist-high hedges about a kilometer from the station, so I decided to camp there. The ground was cold, moist, but soft, and the spot was pretty well hidden—good, since hobo-ing around suburban Japan is generally unheard of, and I really didn’t want another unintelligible tongue-lashing. Within minutes, though, the cold had seeped through my clothes and I was shivering uncontrollably. I couldn’t sleep there. I got up and started walking, just to start moving again. Prostitutes were still idling on the sidewalks. Lonely men were reading comics inside the 7/11. I walked for a spell and finally stumbled upon a karaoke joint. I went straight in, signed up for a membership card and paid for 3 hours in a private room, where I stretched out on the dingy vinyl sofa and slept to the sounds of many amplified voices crashing against all four walls of my own dark and songless room.

08:46

Past Hiroshima
the sun splashing in the bay
wakes me from half-sleep.

21:44

Nagasaki trams
mutter over tilted streets
I get lost walking.

21:52

By now Gillian
is out dancing the tango
one whole day away

3/18/07

(at the atomic bomb museum)

The Euphemistic Shadow:
“Silhouette of a Lookout and His Ladder”
“Shadow of a Clothes Rod on a Wooden Wall”
“Shadow of Leaves on a Scorched Wooden Wall”

“Helmet w/ Remains of a Skull”

“The heat instantly carbonized human bodies and vaporized their internal fluids.”

11:02

Hands of all the clocks
were frozen at this time too
after the bombing





































15:00

Had a meaningful Japanese conversation with a three- and five-year-old (brother and sister, respectively) regarding cats and dogs. My conversation abilities are well below those of even a three-year-old, but the three of us got on great all the same, stroking the friendly stray cat we’d found to fill any awkward silences. Later we played a riveting game of Aimlessly Throw and Kick the Ball.

18:00 ~ sunburned and sore from walking Nagasaki, I head over to the public baths.

Female janitors
weave between nude male bodies
their dark eyes unfazed.

19:30

Ate amazing Indian food in a neglected upstairs café.

Found nothing unique about Nagasaki at night, so I headed back to my room to read.

22:00

New roommate is a study-abroad student from California living up in Sendai—from where he came by local trains (9 days)—named Stan. While I read in bed, he mercilessly beats on his Nintendo DS, trying to fix it, ironically, after having dropped it the other day.

He’s traveling to Kagoshima next, but not via ferry like I am. We agree to meet up for a drink, if he “makes it that far,” which gets me worrying about my own plight the next morning.














3/19/07

11:30

After 2 hours on single-car trains brimming with old folks, I arrive in Shimabara, a peninsula reaching out toward the main hunk of Kyushu. The train station’s dilapidated, vaguely attended, but I can see the ocean, so I walk toward it, and, sure enough, there’s an old green ferryboat nodding in the bay. I buy a ticket and wait a while.

11:44

The fishermen throw
out their nets but the ocean
slips through the spaces.




12:29
Gulls flanking the boat;
I could reach out and slap them
back down to the waves.

13:57

From the bus I watch
The Phenomenon of Tide
pull the city out.

18:16

Spent hours on a single-car train from Kumamoto City (where I ferried in), winding alongside a broad river dug deep in the ridges of the thickly spread mountains sashed in white fog. Now, in Hitoyotoshi, halfway to where I’m going, it’s raining and I’m delayed for over an hour, realizing glumly that I’m going to lose my reservation at the inn. When I arrive past 11, my only hope will be a lonely love hotel for 1.

For now I’m drinking wine in an “Italian” café in Hitoyotoshi, awaiting the next leg.

Next leg:

19:46 Hitoyotoshi
|
|
20:48 Yoshimatsu
21:02
|
|
21:53 Haiyato
22:31
|
|
23:07 Kagoshima

20:00

The train is old, and at each stop it makes the sound of a rotary telephone ringing, briefly.

3/20/07 ~ volcano in Japanese = kazam

13:53

Wincing from the sun
the volcano swallows clouds
and coughs up the shade.

13:57

Perched on the pier before the massive volcano, a man shaves his head with a safety razor and a fat kid chases pigeons.




16:31 Kagoshima
|
|
17:27 Kirishima-Jingu

17:10

Back on the railroad
and old Sakurajima
exhales to ashes

3/21/07

In Kirishima National Park, I share a room with a man named Ando. He gets overly excited about meeting an English-speaking tourist and subsequently drops all of his plans in order to spend the following day hiking around the volcanoes with me. I’m kind of dismayed, having envisioned this trip as some kind of solo adventure, but overall happy to have the friendly company. Ando’s 34 years old, out of work, and has plans to study English in Canada, where he hopes to find a wife. I join him for dinner and talk a while, but I’m sleepy after spending the previous night in an Internet café, so I turn in early. The next morning we take an early bus to the trail heads, hike around for a while, throw snow at some Japanese children near the summit (provoking an all-out snowball fight, yuki gassen!) and then we hitchhike back to the train station. We walked for about an hour before an expressionless man in a BMW gave us a lift. Ando thanked him and bowed a bazillion times, then the two of us took a train back to Kagoshima City.

That night Ando (who says I can call him Andy) and I were joined by a friend of his, a lovely woman named Ayumi, and the three of us ate amazing sashimi and drank homegrown shochu (alcohol made from sweet potatoes), all of which Ayumi insisted on paying for. Then we went out to a jazz bar that had no live music but were playing an Ellington record over the stereo, so we stayed a while drinking gin cocktails until, after numerous gin rickeys, Ando took off on a borrowed bicycle for Sakurajima volcano, where he was beginning a 5-day cycle journey. After Ando had pedaled off, Ayumi took me to a “nostalgia” café (not so nostalgia-inducing for me since I didn’t understand anything the memorabilia was referencing—a unique spot, nonetheless).





















3/22/07

15:41 ~ nearing Aso Caldera

From the window seat
wind turbines cut listlessly
through panorama.

17:47

walking through aso, 3 puppies chase a dog and a little girl points at me w/ pulled flowers in her hand.






3/23/07

11:45 ~ leaving Aso

Nothing is sadder
than this dormant volcano
erupting with love.









3/24/07

04:58 ~ after a long nutty night in Fukuoka

Pulling the curtains
around unclothed thoughts of you
I climb into bed.

09:30

Awaking to leave
my head is sore having left
you behind in dreams.


19:13

Asleep on the train
I watched you through a small crack
in the door between.
20:04 ~ arrival from Fukuoka

Hiroshima rain
slides sharply off my lost face
but my beard remains.



3/25/07

11:00

Hiroshima survivors still find shards of glass lodged deep in their bodies, from time to time spurring on great bouts of pain.

3/26/07

Home again, home again. Bippity bop.