March 1

I left on an improbable direct train to Nagoya, the “Urban Liner,” rolling leisurely through valleys and rice paddies without a single stop until Nagoya.  I read most of the way, in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go.”  The story deals with abstract, but not-too-distant problems in an incisive way, and without ever mentioning current topics such as abortion, genetics, stem-cell research, or nanotechnology, offers a commentary on them or at least a new point of view from which to think about them.  At one point the narrating character, Kathy, reported how another character, Ruth, said something, but Kathy knew she meant something else; at another point, Kathy mentions how she could see someone else get himself ready for a certain reaction.  Throughout the book, Kathy reveals herself as keenly perceptive of the concealed feelings and true desires of other people.  I realized, after one such instance, that this sort of insight eludes me completely, and wondered: am I immature in that respect, or incapable of empathy, or just plain self-centered?  Or are people like Kathy a convenient literary device that allows an author to develop characters, but doesn’t exist in real life? 

In Nagoya, I changed to the Rapid to Nakatsugawa, where I changed again for a few more stops to Nagiso.  Nagiso has no convenience store, only a supermarket, where I bought two drink bottles and some chocolate, because I was about to hike to Tsumago and had read in a few places that there are no places to buy food there.  That turned out to be untrue, but I had bottles in plastic bags dangling from my backpack for the next two days. 

I had heard of Tsumago and Magome from Quirky Japan and was hoping to get away to someplace quiet for two days.  The two towns lie on the old Nakasendo postal trail between Tokyo and Kyoto and have been restored to Edo period looks.  Behind the Nagiso train station a little sign points to Tsumago, and soon the path rises sharply out of town.  Fortunately, it levels off, but the first climb had me peeling off layers and walking with even more stuff dangling from my backpack.  With my laptop inside, I imagined myself an urban heir of the old messengers. 

The hike to Tsumago from Nagiso takes 3.7km, so it’s short.  I took a detour 1km from Tsumago when I followed the side trail up to the old site of the Tsumago castle.  The castle and any immediately recognizable ruins are gone; the only intimation of a former castle comes from the odd network of paths around the flat top of this spur.  The top is now fitted with picknick shelters and offers a view of the whole valley the train runs along as well as up the side valley down onto the town of Tsumago.  If I blocked out the roar of traffic form the main valley, the castle site stood silent, and I felt alone and peaceful for the first time in a long time.  I also felt it’d be even better to not be entirely alone, but to share this place, this discovery, this quiet with a friend.  Of course, I didn’t stay serious and pensive for too long, but started to consider the things to do when completely alone in this place.  Why, I could moon a whole entire village without them being any the wiser! 

I didn’t.  I ate brittle chocolate and headed back down and into Tsumago.  At the tourist information bureau I asked about accommodations.  The lady showed me pictures of several minshuku, literally “people’s lodgings,” and I picked the smallest one with an irori, a square hearth in the middle of the main room.  The lady phoned the Kohshinzuka and asked if they could accept a foreigner for the night – though she did add that this one spoke Japanese.  I later asked the owner what they did when someone didn’t speak Japanese.  “Egao de,” “with a smiling face,” he said. 

What I didn’t realize was how far the lodging was in the direction of tomorrow’s goal, Magome.  Walking there took me halfway to Magome as counted from the Nagiso train station and well away from the Tsumago town, into the older settlement of Otsumago.  I got there as the sun had already set and dusk was settling in over the valley, and was greeted by the owner’s wife, who seems to run most of the hospitality operations.  Four generations live in this house: the owner’s mother, who cooks; the owner and his wife; his son and wife; and their children. 

The first thing I did was take a bath in the hinoki (cypress) ofuro.  This cypress wood exudes a fragrance that in itself already relaxes a bather; the warm water does the rest.  As the only guest that night in a place that takes up to thirteen, but usually limits itself to eight because the women do the cooking themselves, I could take as much time as I liked. 

Well relaxed, I sat down in the irori room in front of a meal of local food: mountain vegetables like Haruna with its subtle, rich taste, mountain roots, dried persimmon, salted and fried nijimasu (rainbow trout).  With a few exceptions, such as the shiitake mushrooms, everything was fresh and homemade, and everything tasted like it, in particular the gohei-mochi, rice balls on a skewer fried with a walnut sauce. 

During the meal the owner, who does roadwork for a living, came to talk with me, and even sang a song about life in the Kiso region, how it’s cold in summer, but still a great place to travel to and through.  His granddaughter Haruna (different characters from the vegetable) sang and clapped along.  He explained and showed how the suspension system for the kettle above the irori worked and was made of three different trees and incorporated a fish for good luck.  First, from the rafters above, a bamboo pole hangs down.  From its top a rope goes down to a fish made of pine and ties around the fish’s tail.  A stick of plum tree with a hook on its lower end fits through a vertical hole in the fish’s head and is guided by being stuck up the bamboo pole above.  The kettle hangs from the hook on the plum stick, and because of the friction in this system the plum stick can be lowered and raised as the flame grows and subsides. 

I slept a deep sleep that night, until the heater switched off and the room cooled down to a crisp 9°C, which made my scalp cold.  This was the peaceful, quiet place I had been looking for, a family that lives for hospitality in a house over 100 years old, with a smoke-blackened main room that contains things such as an old WWII radio they remember listening to to hear if their father was being released from duty.  The only modern addition is the bath and the toilets, nevertheless made of wood, and the only jarring notes come from the large styrofoam block on the fishpond and the stickers above the toilet remote control that say “push” and translate the characters for “big” and “small” with “feces” and “urine.” 

And all this for 7500 yen.