Part 9 - Japan

ok .... so about 2 weeks of updating to be done... i might crash out half way through as its already midnight but let see how much i can remember and how much i can put to words...because japan has truley been quite an experience.

I think before i start with the stories i have to put things into context a bit... japan... the country which is half theme park half sacred mountain landscape. the train stations each have their own rubber stamp with a little cartoon character you can stamp in a book or something to mark you have been there...the country is a real paradox, a juxtaposition of the truely ancient and sacred and the new and contemporary void of droid school kids...and the toilets ... wow the toilets!! They have an automatic fake water running or fake flushing sound which starts when you sit down so people can not hear the embarrassing noises a respectable lady makes while using the facilities.. and if you think thats good enough theres a whole arm of buttons to your side to provide you with an array of different bum wash power jet sprays...my curiosity got the better of me once and i almost flooded the damn cubicle before i found the stop button. the landscape is a mix of completely flat land built on with long riverlike roads cutting through the valleys and patchwork stretches of rice fields and tea plantations, and in between each flat area is a sudden mountain just popping up suddenly, a deep rich green lush tropical looking mound (which i still find difficult to refer to as anything other than a big hill as when i think of mountains i cant help but think of the european alps and Pyrenees...snow capped monsters...).

As we traversed through this countryside on our fist day in japan i just remember feeling like my eyes were rolling out my head, these mountains were just such a contrast from the stark orange and yellow Taiga we have left behind only a few days earlier in Siberia. I felt as if i was in some sub tropical paradise or something, the humidity and richness of texture in amongst the trees wow... i can see now where the Japanese get their love of precision and detail from, its all already there in the land... theres no way i could ever draw this landscape, the intricacy of nature is just bounds above anything i could do... it reminded me so much of the miazaki films (princess mononoke) so strongly that i felt like i had entered a dream. in direct contrast to this amazing land scape was the people sitting around me, the beautiful a varied eastern faces all fixed into the main frame... staring, fixated at their phones... each one in a uniform, each one with a pink phone in their hand or a manga book...each one staring down, hunched shoulders and plugged in. ....slowly each one drooped their eyes and fell asleep. Out the window we passes little traditional and more modern japenese buildings with the slightly bowed roof tops and feature creatures on each corner...at one point we turned to find a party of japanese people "playing croquet on the lawn" wow what a chuckle i had at the site..apparently its quite popular out here..so its now on my list of to-do's in my life, play croquet with the japanese.

we arrived in the town of our couch surfer, American Nate, and waited at the station for him to finish work. We encountered an old man who insisted on trying to work out which bus we needed, even though we tried to explain to him that we didnt need a bus and that we had a friend who was coming to meet us...i even drew him a step by step comic explanation..and just when i thought he understood he got up, walked to the timetable and pointed at one of the buses saying that it would be arriving in 5 minutes... he spoke no english... and we only had 3 or 4 words of japanese so in the end we gave up and smiled and waved as he got on his bus and disappeared. (for the amusement of some i must note that when the bus arrived it was no ordinary bus, it was decorated in cartoon rainbows and flowers and mushrooms like some my little pony dream world scape... proper rainbow bus to fairytale land)

Later Nate took us back to his little tatami mat apartment and we went out for our first japanese restaurant meal..which all went smoothly except when nate tried to explain to his drop out ex english student that i was vegetarian and would like something without fish or meat in and she pointed at a dish and affirmed there was no fish or meat in it at all..and when it arrived it was pretty much all just fish and meat.. i'd like to think she didnt understand but i think there may have been a little bit of ex student taking the Mickey out of her english teachers Japanese skills going on.

We spent four nights with nate, during which time he would disappear during the night and turn into a bear and prowl the mountainsides (apparently) and one evening he took us to a barbecue with a few of his teacher friends which was a nice way to break into the world of JET teachers and students which it turns out we would become quite accustomed to. jet is a program which brings english speaking people to japan to teach english, on the JET program the teachers are known as ATL's and they all speak in acronyms ... it felt like i was back in the job centre all over again.

One day we visited a place called Izumo taisha, which is japans oldest and second most important shrine. The tORI (SHRINE GATE) sits in the town and as you pass through it you have to walk up a long path way lines with trees (this is quite common with all the shrines i have visited so far) and then eventually reach the shrine buildings. the Shrines in japan are Shinto and are often mixed with buddhism a bit..and the buddhist temples often contain Shinto Shrines, theres a nice mix of the two. Theres pictures in my land and sEA journey album which shows the shrine better than my late night brain can describe it right now but it was a truely beautiful building. built of wood and covered in carvings and details with a huge rope made of straw hung across the front. this particular shrine is focused on the uniting of two people in romance so there were many weddings happening, beautiful Japanese girls all dressed in traditional outfits on their big day, it was really sweet.I also cought a little snipped of the temple drumming and flute songs which were beautiful.

Another Day Jack and i borrowed Nates bikes and went for a ride up to a local temple. we never found the temple but spent a nice afternoon walking up the paths along the mountainside. Now in russia the biggest thing to strike me was the people and characters...in japan... its the insects and nature. on this one afternoons hike we encountered so so sooo many creatures. The first and most prominent being the huge fluorescent spiders which were building their amazing intricate webs all across the path... it seemed their webs really liked jacks face and the poor guy spent half his time caught like a fly. We did duck our way under as many as we saw (occasionally that involved actually going down to ground level to get under them) but these creatures really are amazing..they look poisonous as hell but unless your under 2 inches big and have wings i think your safe. (fairies out there watch out!) other amazing creatures we saw on this walk was a HUGE wasp...perhaps a hornet, sitting on a roof level with our heads and threatening us as we got close...we walked past him swiftly and let him get on with his waspy life. Then we encountered some amazing small purple beetles, a strong violet colour shimmering across their black shells all half buried in the dirt of the path. As the night began to fall we worked our way back down to the bikes and cycled back to Nates ready for his ASL BBQ.

(now im slicing my way through our time in japan cos theres too much time that has passed and too much to write about in detail)

Our next place that we had to stay was in a town called Masude just down the coast from nates so we got ourselves come card board, wrote ourselves a sign (in kanji!) and hiked out in the blistering humid heat to the road. It took us four rides to do about 200 km but man were they friendly people. Everyone smiles and laughs and giggles as they drive past us stinky gaijin (foreigners) with our body hair and jacks facial hair and our scraggley clothes and instruments... but my fears that we would be too scary to pick up were completely wrong. hitching in japan has been really really great. our last ride was a truck driver who dropped us off in Masude town and we walked over to caroline's house. now Caroline is a lovely american lady working on the jet program as an ALT (sound familiar?) and she greeted us with a lovely warm smile and took us out to the super market to buy some grub to cook dinner with. Japenese supermarkets are an experience in themselves....similar to my toilet experience... quite surreal and unnessesary in many ways.. For example on supermarket we went to as we entered the vegetable section was playing a song...the only word we could recognise (which was repeated over and over again in a cheesey mickey mouse style theme song) was Yasaii ..which mean ...yep you guessed it VEGETABLES! a vegetable theme song to go along with the vegetable area of the shop... mmm .... tasteful, and it played on loop the whole time we picked out veggies.... got to love japan.

We got some wonderfull insights into Carolines world while we stayed with her, she even took us to meet her japense teacher at her house where we spent a lovely evening explaining to the fascinated lady about our jounrey and answered all the usual questions japnese people seemed to pose to us, usually along the lines of "what do you do in england? what is your job?" to which i usually reply, "im a jewller" and they go "oooOOOOOoooo Sagoi!!! Jewewy Designer oooOOOOOOoooooo" or i say "im an artist and clothes maker" and they reply "oooooOOOOOOOooooo Sagoi!! Artist" infact any answer i give is met with "ooooOOOOOoooo Sagoi!!" jack even replied once "im a post man" and the two girls said "ooooOOOOOOooooo SAGOI!! ooooOOOOOoooo" to my utter amusement.

One of the days in masude i took a little walk through the town, full of the stress and annoyance that often comes with traveling wit hthe same person for a long time and just needing my space i walked down to the river and was met with the most beautiful gift. There as i sat by the bank i was met by a huge shoal of kOI carp...but i mean HUGE!! one of them was about half a meter long i would say with a mouth bigger than mine (and quite soft squidgey kissable lips i must add... i mean... if he offered with lips like that..i might not say no :p) and i learnt the healing powers of the koi... slowly as the sun started to go down and the heron watched the waters and the koi slowly drifted to and fro my mind settled, my heart stilled and that feeling of strength which i have been so far from for so long began to return to me.... I have a realization of my weaknesses... i love those moments..when you are shown how weak you are... by looking back at your actions over you recent last few years...and you see in hindsight your stubbornness, your moments of selfishness and your moments of weakness..I walked to the shrine...clapped twice to waken the spirits and prayed to the Shinto gods of the lands... Strength. Infact these last few weeks have been quite odd for me, ive been struggling with my need and desires for attention, affection, my fears of being alone... and i know now why i had to leave...why it was so difficult to go ... i started to research into the 88 temples of Shikoku pilgramage...the 2 month hike around Shikoku island was so so sooo templting...yet i was so afraid..where would i sleep? how would i carry all my stuff for 1000 km? I could take the more modern way of using the buses...but then i wouldnt be doing what i needed to do...i would just be taking buses...

Days i thought about it ..and days i battled with strength and wekness....then i visited the koi...and the shrine... and i had a relaisation... I went back to Carolines and i signed up to do a vipassana course in kyoto in november... its not a 2 month hike around the island ... but it is 10 days of silent meditation and a lesson in controling my mind and body... im petrified of it... have been petrified of doing it for 5 years now... but something in that moment told me its about time i did it... i mean to days of shutting up wont kill me....will it?

i guess i shall see.

A few days later jack and i hiked up the mountain to another shrine... on the way up we met a praying mantis on the steps... at the top i witnessed a grass hopper chew his way through a whole leaf ...and on the way back to carolines we met a terrapin in the river and sat and shared half an hour with him while he munched his way through algae...and i imagined what it would be like to live in a world where you just open your mouth and chew on anything around you and find its edible... air borne spaghetti all around your head.....

Another event of Masude was taking the train out to Hagi and seeing the famous hagi pottery. Beautiful stuff and i fully recommend japanese pottery, i wanted to buy a beautiful bowl or two i saw for mike and send them to him but posting pottery isn't the wisest idea so i guess he'll have to come out and get his own one day :) In one shop as we entered the lady poured us an orange juice and set out a tray of orange juice and sweets for us to enjoy while we parrused the pottery, i did end up buying a little gift for someone, though it wasnt for mike and i havnt posted it to them yet so i cant say what it was or who it was for... but i must just say when you do receive it thank the lady with the orange juice filling me with orangy love and persuading me to buy something from her :P

now next stop on the way down the coast was Fukuoka, we had applied to a few different people but only had a reply from one person...and what a character. amy i wish you had met this guy..wow... His name is Blues, he's an american (funnily enough) but not a ASL and his profile said enough for us to know he would be an interesting character to stay with, so in the name ouf science and anthropology we contacted him back and told him when we would be arriving. We drew ourselves up another hitching sign and off we trotted... and it was a damn good days hitching! The first ride was with a couple in a swishy car with lace seat covers. The Man of the couple owned a construstion buisness that was working on the road we were driving along and him and his wife were so sweet. They pulled over at a road side orchard shop and bought us a glass of super duper tastey apples juice each and we scoffed ourselfs on free tasters of apple pie...pie PIE!! you have no idea how much i have missed pastry since leaving french lands... so this was like a little lick of heaven for me...apples and pie...together! Then they topped the whole thing off by not only going out of their way to put us somewhere good but leaving us with a box of home made vegetarian sushi, norri rapped around rice and an apricot pickle!! YUUUUMY!

The next ride came along quickly and it was two girls who were so surprised when they saw us we saw their faces physically light up and they got all excited and pulled in :) they were great fun. We got dropped of by our next ride (two young lads who wanted to put us in a better spot for hitching) at the rest area at the southern tip on honshu. here we stopped for toilet breaks and a group of guys in a truck saw me sucking the core of my quince to death and tried to give me 1000 yen to buy myself some food, i refused and in the end they gave us a bag of sweets (called chealsea!!) as they obviously felt they needed to give us something so we accepted with an arrigato gozaimas and a smile. We wondered over to the main building and stood with the sign for Fukuoka. Now earlier that day i had told jack how we were going to cath a ride with a group of japenese rainbow type hippies in their van that day... but now it was allready dark and we had considered camping there the night but on blues's recomendation on the phone we decided to give hitching a go. Swiftly (within minutes) a beautiful gypsy/fortuneteller looking japenese girl spotted us and ran to get her crew of tye dye trousered chums... they excitedly jumped up and down and clapped their hands when they realised our destination was on their route so we sat in their big people carrier and played xaphoon and drum while they sped us through the night right to Blues's door. What a great ride.

wow Fukuoka and Blues... what an interesting place and person. Part of me doesnt want to write about it incase he reads it and gets the wrong end of the stick so i have to start this by saying, Blues, dude, if your out there reading this you truely have been a highlight and we think your great so dont take any offense to anything i say because i say it all with love in my heart :)

So yea,what a character!! haha Big booming voices American ex body builder Blues with his entertaiment space shop all kitted out in beautiful natural wood which he did completely himself. but this guy is another on i wish Amy could meet, if any of you reading this dont know amy then trust me she is the queen of fairy tale characters in real life, if anyone can spot a personification of the absurd, insane, beautiful or just down right magically surreal its Amy.. so if i keep mentioning her..this is why. Blues is a guy who fits into all these categories and more, i cant exactly describe to you his personality, but lets just say he runs a tight ship, he has a place for everything in his house and has some nice strong opinions and thoughts about pretty much everything in the world and isnt afraid to tell about them. He also has a fascination and love of hot chillies and during our stay proceeded to ply jack full of hot spicy peppers. now both jack and he are leos and watching the wonderful display of civilized leo male king challenging each other yet staying as sociable and subtle about it as possiblre was amusing and there we some classic moments. Blues with his strong southern state accent shouting things like "No you shit head! get your wimp ass down here!" and "You Fucking wanker", he had a never ending supply of hillarious cus names to call jack and would give me a quick sly wink everytime he threw one jacks way...in responce is Jacks cheeck chappy hackney boy nature that likes to challenge and push the bounderies would cause a tennis match of interactions between them...and quite often i found myself sitting between blues on the sofa and jack in blues's kitchen laughing my ass off at the displays of power tests going on between them ... yet like i say trying to stay within the realms of "sociable and nice and not going to piss you off too much". Anyway we arrived to find him chillaxing with a friend in front of Lord of the Rings (part 3) and we sat down to watch it with them during which time we got only a slight glimpse into the extraordinary guy he is. He left us there that night to crash out in his writing shop and he went home to his family...then next morning he popped in at 8 am, then 9 am and then again around midday to see if we were ready to get up and go out and let him have his space back. Now its rare for jack to be even moving before 11 am and ever rarer to see him talking and communicating with anyone in a civilized and human way for at least an hour after he wakes and has consumed a good strong english caffine tea so poor Blues had to put up with us snoozing most of the day away (well if jacks not going to get up, im certainly not going to drag myself out of dream land...and i was having some lovely dreams all LOTR inspired) but eventually we dragged ourselves out of bed and got up and headed into the City for the day.

Its surreal being in a big city again and jack and i lost each other within 2 minutes of getting out the station (then again we were still battling with our "aaagh traveling with you now for nearly two months and your driving me slightly maaad" so the space was good) and i tromped off to try and access money (as ive failed to be able to draw out money since i got here,bloody machines) and i visited a temple...so surreal being in a budhist temple garden in the middle of a shinny big city.. then i headed back to the trian station... i sat in the park for about 40 minutes doing a drawing and then headed to the station... now while in the park i had noticed this Japanese guy (though to be honest i thought he was a girl till he spoke to me) watching me and i'd given him a friendly smile as i had passed him and as i got up to walk to the station i clocked that he was still in the same place and that he was getting up and walking towards me as i was walking into the station. "now fleassy do be so big headed, people dont follow people because they are attracted to them and then try and ask them out your just full of ego" ..a few seconds later he appears next to me and start trying to chat me up in japenese... now at this point i wish i could say that i played it cool, smiled calmly and explained that i had a boyfriend who i loved dearly and was only passing through town, i was very flattere d that he had the guts to approach me and would be willing to go for a cup of tea if he understood thats all it would be....however ... it been a looooong time since anyone approached me... and what actually happened was i went bright red, every element of japenese that i had learnt slipped right out of my head, i stuttered and stumbled... and managed to find the world for Japenese and No ...he then smiled and said "choto?" meaning "little? and i said "hai...choto" ... he looked a bit awkward yet obviously still persisting...at this point i got so nervous that i gestured to my wrist (where i do not have a watch) saying "sorry im very late i must go" and the poor lad barely had a moment to shove his business card into my hands before i ran off into the crowd.... heart racing and feeling very un cool.... haha so thats my experience of being chatted up in japan and i hope its the last time it happens i dont think my blood pressure can handle the stress of it really.

Another day we went with a friend of Blues's to a temple and met a 1600 year old tree...wow. we also tried the traditional green frothy tea and ate mochi (squiched rice things stuffed with sweet bean stuff...yummmmmy!!)

anyway our time at blues's place passes quick enough and we only managed to annoy him slightly by putting things in the wrong place, over sleeping and generally being slack sailors on a tight ship and on the last DAY bLUES GOT THE FINAL ONE UP ON jack and handed him the hottest chilli in the world all sliced up...now he did say "look dude i only ever ate one slice of that thing and hell no i aint no fool, i knew when to stop" ...at which point jack went ahead and ate three slices of it "boy your ass is going to be on fire tomorrow!" ..."nah i'll be all right" said jack eyes streaming just a little bit.

thank night jack and i finally had a little "hey we need to get over this weirdness" chat and after a little tiff had a rainbow hippy style heart opening chat and then trundled off to bed.... the next morning we woke up 7 am (as instructed my Blues) and poor jack was on fire. Twitching, shaking.... looking timid and sick and nipping off to the toilet every 5 minutes.... our departure was delayed slightly while we waited to see if it would pass but in the end we felt the desire to move on from blues's hospitality (he saw us of with a great plate of home made pancakes) and we hit the road, taking it slowly for the sake of jacks ass.

Another great day hitching, we decided to head to Karatsu as its on the route...though we didnt really know why we chose it or what was there.... One ride took is pretty much the whole way there and she stopped and bought us a meal before dropping us at karatsu Castle...such a lovely lady.

Arriving at the castle we decided priorities were needed and so the first thing we did was buy and ice cream and find somewhere to sit and relax. I had spotted a crowd of homeless cats at the bottom of the castle steps and decided if anyone would help us with ice cream and relaxing it would be them...and there we sat in the sun. Shortly after that a guy and his mother arrived with a bag and i hear in an american accent (shock horror) "ALL RIGHT GUYS, LETS EAT!" and all the cats leapt up and ran to him as he started opening tins of cat food onto the floor... now being a cat i'm probably a bit bias, but anyone who goes out of their way to feed homeless cats much be a good person...and i was right... I began meowing at him and he looked up and recognizing that we were gaijin said "hey guys what you up to?".

Turns out the guys named Tony and his mum (japenese) is called Fume (spelling is probably wrong) and he comes every day to feed the cats and has done for over a year. After heading our plans to crash in the tent in the beautiful pine forrest we had passed on the way into town they decided they couldnt let us sleep out win the Macada (a poisonous centepede) infested woods and he gave us his phone number and offered us to come hang out and crash before he headed off. jack and i went and enjoyed the sea and then tromped back to the pay phone and rang Tony. We spent the evening in a bar chatting to him, turns out hes and American DJ who moved from New york back to his families town and now makes a living flying round the place doing DJ Sets... he decided he wanted to get us on the local radio station the next day and suddenly there we were with a radio interview booked for the next afternoon, a possible gig for myself in the bar when ever i wanted and a jam buddy with one of his japenese mates whos a really lovely folk guitarist...

So thats where i am now, We did the radio show today after hiking up and down another mountain and watching the sea a bit more...met some 100 year old Koi carp and then trundled off to the station with Toni and his mum (who was translating for us). it was quite an odd experience, they asked where my xaphoon was from, i said hawaii and then proceeded to say that when i played a song (one of my guitar songs) that to them it sounded really hawaiian.... clearly they didnt have a clue what they were talking about...they also asked what my favorite flower was...i said gererbera (cant spell it)... they asked if i felt that a gerrerbera represented london for me...i said no...of course.... It was damn hard to stop myself from bursting into histerics the whole time. anyway it was great fun and jack and i had a nice drum and xaphoon jam live on air broodcast out the whole whole of two prefectures on prime drive time radio.... and now... its 2.36 am...jack is out getting sloshed with Tony and i am ready for bed :)

Hope you enjoyed the stories..

Loads of love

xxx