Little trip

My minor chord of heartbreak managed to coincide with the long awaited arrival of my parents; the same, unchanged, a little older. Roles inverted, Row and I flexed our Japanese for a week, touring western Japan by car and controlling the Family Agenda. Rural Shikoku, narrow roads and villages perched on the lips of valleys, clinging to hills; the swathes of vegetation dotted with massive concrete scars. Japan's construction industry is a massive force perhaps corresponding to the military-industrial complex in the States. Since Japan hasn't been trusted with an army for fifty years or so, the main job-creation engine in rural areas is construction. Massive freeways erupt from hillsides going nowhere special, a few token cars; vast concrete barriers pin back mountains to let the road go through. Japan's backwaters - overrepresented in the parliament - are paid back handsomely in jobs and largely pointless work. There are stories of roads being built only to be ripped up and rebuilt two months later, to keep the work coming. Seeing Japan by road made me more than a little sad; the countryside is often ugly, marred and pockmarked by a form of progress which resembles war on nature. It seems a lot of the Japanese personality is about controlling those things which are controllable and enduring the rest stoically. A sleepless night camping by the side of the road in Shikoku led to Hiroshima and the Peace Museum, a nauseating experience made surreal by emerging into the light to see the city stretching away in all directions; modern, new, busy. A Japanese-American couple wandered the museum hand in hand, awkwardly together. Hiroshima gave way to Miyajima, one of the Three Famous Scenic Spots in Japan, which largely lived up to its name. Inland to Tsuwano, where my father nearly managed to walk into a con; a Filipino woman and Japanese man inviting us to their town to stay in their house, so friendly, so inviting; he a poor sculptor, look at my sculptures, perhaps, and dad saying yes yes sounds great and mum and I baulking and sensing a push, a drive which didn't fit with their pleasant offer.

A gas station, my father opening the door and absentmindedly asking attendant to fillerupmate which was greeted with silence; sumptuous feasts of sashimi and sushi, nameless clusters of vegetables, finely cooked fish; a Buddhist temple-come-youth hostel, the owner, a grandmother and her small grandson, afflicted with spina bifida, dragging his useless legs around the table and worming his way into our affections; skindiving in 15 metres of water, the foreign underwater sounds of underwater, strange cracks and pops, terrified of sharks as always; a fisherman darkskinned and smelling of sea shinning down into a rock crack for us and emerging with fresh seaweed for us to eat.

It was great; it was a trifle stifling, like living at home again; it was my first time being a tourist, living off my father's job; I was depressed, awaiting final word from Kiyono. I thought a lot and perhaps from that I want to come home. I feel if I leave now, Japan has won, outlasted me, given the lie to my endurance, my strength, but I have the taste of the place in my mouth, I can walk the streets like a local, I will come back to live in Kyoto, the city of cities, a world city not in the sense of New York or Tokyo which are moneyed places, but a city which is steeped in culture and carries its years with pride. I want to come back when I can speak Japanese, when I have access to the culture in a way which I can only dream of now.