Sidesteps Through Centuries

JAPAN: where people are so polite, department stores "advise care" on the escalator if pushing a stroller or in a wheel chair, and a jaunty version of “I’ve Been Workin’ on the Railroad” plays as trains approach the station. Where humans line up in single-file lines and chefs leave the kitchen to see you off from their restaurant after you eat.

Speaking of which. I eat more whacked out food during my first week in Japan than any other place I ventured the last three years… save maybe Vietnam. (because, you know, fresh beer-fried squid, snails smothered in hot sauce, dog stew, honey bee rice wine and horse carpaccio). We eat little pearly striped fried fishies whole. Since fall is the season of gingko nuts and mushrooms, we chow on dainty tempura (apparently less batter means better food, because it doesn’t fill you up as fast). Somehow, fermented beans that look (and act) like they’re held together with slug slime make it onto my plate. Also: tempura baby sardine balls. Also: beans and yams and mushrooms and rice balls for days and days. Mall food happens to consist of seared tuna so tender it almost falls apart like butter as it makes the journey from plate to mouth.

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The Shinkansen whips forth beneath the mountains north of Hiroshima so fast I barely glimpse the countryside between tunnels as we head toward Hagi, nestled beneath a peninsular hill from which a castle once watched over the passage from the Korean Peninsula. Neat streets lined with old, traditional houses fill the town. Quiet, vibrant gardens wrap light and airy mansions constructed of rice paper and bamboo. Family-run pottery shops line the town’s main streets, brimming with wares coated in thick, clinging white glaze created for centuries by adding the ash of rice husks.

Somewhere along the way we find our way into a soba noodle restaurant run by a reserved, cheerful old woman in a traditional country house. Old wooden walls display antique framed newspaper clippings about the artists whose work she utilizes to serve our meals. The unassuming woman becomes effusive and animated as she lays food in front of us and explains the history of each soup and noodle and sauce dish on our trays: this was made by the twelfth generation; that man was designated a national treasure but died before he could accept the award.

We leave behind orderly mayhem strewn across the table. Seriously, doing dishes in Japan is a nightmare and a half that I never, ever want to experience.

We leave behind Hagi’s quiet for Okayama’s metropolis: centered amongst a myriad of smaller outlying towns, the city serves as home base for the next few days. Okayama itself, filled with orange trains and trams from which cheery cats wave to the crowds, cradles a sprawling garden where herons preen amongst miniature pavilions and koi fish cruise broad ponds beneath arcing wood bridges, begging for pellets from young children in pink fleeces and black leggings plastered in bright red hearts. Small, dense bamboo forests shade lily-covered ponds and narrow wooden planks cross creeks in geometric, zigzagging footbridges. Five minutes’ walk from the garden’s sheltered serenity, a black castle blazes in the sun, protected by heavy iron gates and smooth stone walls rising above the river’s curve.

An hour’s train ride from Okayama, deep green mountains cradle the small town of Imbe, marked by winding roads and a single, old-style telephone booth. The town carries forth the area’s own ancient form of pottery, for which families mine clay from beneath rice paddies and store it for future generations. Pots are formed without glaze: color blossoms over a once-yearly, 13-day firing period as flames and heat interact with ash and rice straw in the expanse of a mud and brick kiln.

On our way home that evening we make a side trip to Osafune, where smiths carry forward the ancient art of swordsmithing with old-style forges and tools, creating weapons over several months’ span. A soft spoken gentleman shows us around a room filled with old swords, pointing out how styles and workmanship changed through centuries. He points out a 14^th-century sword paid with 2,000 kg of silver, then leads us through a myriad of rooms filled with the means to craft blade and hilt and guard and sheath. While most craftsmen are home for the holiday, a lone artisan in blue robes crouches in a window workshop, sharpening a blade in the afternoon sun’s rays.

Himeji castle, an hour’s ride in the other direction, soars in seven stories of blazing white serenity above the “castle town’s” chaotic hustle, framed perfectly amongst high rises from the local train station’s exit. Twisting paths lead from a broad lawn past tiered, tapering stone walls, through heavy gates and heavier dark metal doors. We climb steep wooden staircases with oversized rails polished by hundreds of years of use. We wind upward through seven sturdy, airy stories supported centrally by twin cedar pillars, carried down from the mountains and erected centuries past. From our top-floor lookout, we peer down over the city and surrounding mountains.

We pass our last day in the Okayama region in the town of Kurashiki, where ornate black-tiled roofs top delicate wood shophouses and handicraft shops and old ryokans and whitewashed storage buildings. Inside the preserved historical district, narrow, winding streets twist along the base of a small verdant hill topped with a shrine. Swans cruise a narrow canal under gold and orange fall foliage, glinting under crisp morning sun along the main street. Confectionaries sell fresh sesame doughnuts and crepe-wrapped chestnut jelly. Persimmons hang from strings to dry in the sun. Ivy blankets old brick buildings situated next to archaic telephone booths and post boxes. And there just happens to be a town-wide fetish of denim. Absolutely. Everywhere.

The quiet fishing island of Naoshima has in recent years become an oasis for modern art, reinstilling vitality into a once-failing economy. The window of my room in a small, traditional guesthouse near the sea looks over a jigsaw puzzle of roof upon roof sheltered by dark, swooping tile. We wander the village for an afternoon, stepping into select houses transformed into art installations. We find LED lights blinking from the bottom of a shallow indoor reflecting pond and delicate roses carved and painted from wood. We walk into a house to be surrounded by waterfalls cascading from ceiling to floor, meeting their reflection in the polished dark wood beneath our feet. We venture into narrow tunnels beneath a delicate shrine constructed of glass and light wood, surrounded by smooth, pale stones. And we feel our way into a room void of light and wait as dancing lights appear like flame over a white screen as it materializes from the abyss in the distance. Eventually we stand and walk forward, reaching out to touch the screen only to have our hands pass through soft white mist.

We catch a ferry to the neighboring island of Teshima the next day, stopping into a quiet coffee shop lined with books and homemade scones and cozy arm chairs before exploring the town (because for a Westerner in “rural” Japan, coffee is a commodity to be sought and cherished). We find our way to an old house and silo filled with illusions and color manipulation, where deep red glass hides a courtyard where koi cruise a small creek surrounded by vibrant stones. Inside the silo we find infinity mirrors overhead and below our feet, reflecting walls pasted with thousands of vintage post cards.

That afternoon, we catch a bus upwards to a hill overlooking the sea above golden rice paddies, arriving at quite possibly the only abstract art installation I’ve ever truly connected with. We walk into a broad, low, whitewashed oblong disc half-buried in the ground above a natural spring. Water creeps and seeps up through miniscule fractures in the concrete beneath me to bead on the floor, eventually gaining enough mass to snake its way forward over the hydrophobic surface and drain with the cheerful echoing ring of a softly flowing brook. I hear people whisper in my ear as acoustics amplify soft conversation across the “hall.” Broad, circular cut outs from the roof reveal forested ridgelines below gray skies. Closer in, I catch glimpses of trees where rustling branches betray wildlife. Delicate white ribbons anchored to the ceiling in upturned crescents sway in the gentle breeze.

Eventually we find our way back to Naoshima’s onsen, soaking under the watchful gaze of a full-size elephant and stained-glass windows and mosaic sea creatures. The next morning we catch a ferry back to the mainland, find a blessing of a coffee shop near the train station, and turn our journey northward.