Before anyone (Kern) begins complaining loudly that previously-written work is a transgression of the rules of NaBloPoMo, let me reiterate that I never finished writing this, and state that at the time I began working on this tonight, there were only 719 words according to the Cut & Paste Word Count script, and no photos. At the time of completion, I had 2663 words.
Let us drift back in time together, then, to the summer days of yesteryear, or actually, to the autumn days, from which I will subsequently step back again with you - sometimes taking a whole 15 months in one step can be a shock to the system...
October, 2005
So I've kinda detected a pattern whereby the more interesting experiences I have and things I have to say, the less time I have to document and say them. Thus I'm way behind in my blogging. Permit me then, if you will, the liberty to take time a bit out of order...
Let us step back in time, past the autumn rains, past the farewell parties, back to the time of the songs of the cicadas, of the Ultimate games of yore, to the time, I would say, of the sweltering Kansai heat, were that heat not still present even now, interspersed with the October chills, lurking in the shadows, in the transitions... where building superintendents, unable to distinguish the hairline between sweltering and frigid that seems to characterize the Japanese perception of weather, err on the side of the zero-body-fat, uninsulated Japanese physique and fire up the furnaces at the first sight of a long-sleeved shirt. But I digress.
Today let us go back to mid-August. It was the night of the first-quarter moon, if I remember correctly, which I do. That day, four of us, Lily, Linda, Yuki, and I, set out on a quest. The idea had come up over lunch two days earlier. Lily and I were enchanted by the legends we heard of a beautiful sandy beach far to the east, beyond Ise Jingu, the holiest of all Shinto shrines. Drawn by the promise of beautiful white sands and mysterious bioluminescent waters, we carelessly threw together a rickety plan full of uncertainty and risk. Two days and a visit to Conan later (it's like the Home Depot of Japan), our alarms firing off at 6am on a Saturday, we suited up and departed on our journey.
The perils of our quest soon became clear, though, as we nearly lost one of our intrepid crew to the tantalizing temptations of slumber, but a few phone calls from me and she was out of bed, allowing our journey to begin in earnest.
Sleeping engineers are not easily roused at 6am for a pilgrimage to a destination unknown.
Laden with all our equipment, we attracted many a stare as we barreled south through Nara, then east into Mie, as fast as the Kintetsu could fly, steel wheels gnashing on steel rails, the thunderous CRACK every time we hit the shock wave of an oncoming train, the clay-tiled roofs of Japanese farmhouses tearing past in a blur, and the uniformed train staff turning back bowing each time they walked through the door at the end of the car.
Yuki standing guard over the camping equipment
Ise Jingu - The Holiest of all Shrines
Crossing the bridge to her destiny
At Ise Jingu, we purified ourselves at the Shinto fountain and proceeded to enter the holy grounds, splashing our feet in the holy river, visiting countless similar-looking holy temples, all burned down and rebuilt every 20 years.
The location where the shrine will be rebuilt after it is tragically but intentionally consumed in fire.
Our path soon brought us to the great stone staircase to the Inner Shrine. Bathed in the glow of this spiritual center of the Shinto world, and walking up the holy staircase to the main gate, we encountered another group of pilgrims, clearly inspired by the holiness of the mighty shrine before us, because they kept making "Z" shapes with their hands and yelling "Zortan!", encouraging us to join them in their revelry. They even helped us along our path to enlightenment by digitally immortalizing the moment for us.
Not for the faint of heart, mastering the "Zortan" move is a prerequisite for enlightenment.
We reflected on the solemnity of the occasion, then proceeded up the final steps to the holy fourth wall of the inner shrine, from which we could behold (but not approach) the even more holy third wall of the inner shrine, solemnly enclosing in turn the successively increasing holiness and obscurity of the second and first walls, the fortress of barriers at last culminating in the almost overwhelming holiness of the holy imperial mirror, nestled in its concentric holy cloth bags that have never been opened. In awe we gazed upon the unspectacular wall that separated us from anything we might be interested in seeing.
Basking in the obfuscated glory of that experience, we headed back down, swinging by the holy horse stall on the way back the holy path to the holy bridge over the holy river, only to find that the horse was nowhere to be seen. There were holy bitemarks all over the shrine, though, so we were pretty sure it had been there at some point.
Hey, is this place holy, or what?
The holiness we had experienced, however, could merely whet our appetite for the spiritual experience that was to come.
The Journey South
Returning to the station and collecting our camping gear from our lockers, we reembarked upon our original mission. Drenched with sweat from our walk through the harsh summer heat, we rehydrated and reenergized with some mikan juice as we waited for the train. At last it came, and we stumbled through the doors into the refreshingly air-conditioned compartment.
The rails of the Kintetsu split, and we traveled down the coast, away from Nagoya. Southward we went, past Tobu, and eventually had to switch to a local train. Moving and stopping, moving and stopping, every station looking the same, every name equally incomprehensible, it took an eternity to reach the station we suspected was near the beach we hoped was there.
Disembarking in an unknown small town, we knew not how far our journey would take us, so we decided to first procure some food and supplies. Linda guarded our gear at the station as the rest of us set off to find a supermarket. The moment we entered the supermarket, though, some primal beast inside of Lily awoke. Like a lioness in pursuit of her prey, she zeroed in on the coolers at the back of the store. For some, camping is about a peaceful retreat from the noise of everyday life. For others, it's about communing with the beauty of nature. For Lily, well... eventually we left the store, heavily laden with many bags of meat and fish, some of the varieties of which I was thoroughly unable to identify.
Returning to the station, we were met by a heavily laden Linda, who had for some reason decided to carry all of the camping equipment for four people down the stairs in one trip, and we all piled into a taxi, eager to set eyes on the legendary beach that seemed almost within our grasp.
Beach Ho
The Taxi Driver was a humble man with a spiritual serenity to him, the work of his days mostly concerned with chauffeuring the common people back and forth between the village and the pachinko parlors. He explained that a town ordinance had forbidden pachinko parlors from being built within the town limits, so it was a substantial drive to get to one. His customers were all regulars, and they called him by name on his cell phone.
Now, three of us were foreigners in a strange land, with all the language barriers that one would expect. Yuki was the only local in our group, and we hoped she could help us to communicate the goal of our pilgrimmage to the Taxi Driver. Alas, we had neglected to consider the critical fact that not a one of us actually knew where we were going. He looked at us with a curious amusement in his eyes as we attempted to communicate to him the spiritual significance of our quest.
And so began one of the trials of our journey. Only worthy pilgrims may set eyes on the Most Beachy of Beaches. After several discussions with the Driver, and after many miles of road through small towns and fishing villages, we at last pulled up to a low hill, its top adorned by tufts of hard and weathered grass. Beyond this hill, he said, lay the beach we sought.
The four pilgrims stepped out, and we approached the crest. Topping the hill, we were greeted with the sight of ... a large concrete barrier. Approaching and climbing that barrier, we were greeted with ... a not-so-exciting beach. It was a beach, however, and the taxi driver had brought us here. We contemplated setting up camp. Sometimes it is important to settle with what life gives you. Setting your expectations too high leads only to disappointment, so you should just accept your lot in life. Besides, this beach was convenient and right here. There might not even be another beach nearby, and it was starting to get late...
Never.
Seeing the looks in my companions' eyes, I knew that we would not be satisfied with this. We had traveled too far, for too long, sacrificed everything for this trip, and we would not give up until we found the True Beach. We returned to the taxi.
"Taxi Driver, we have passed your little test. This is not the One True Beach as foretold by the Canadians. Take us there. You know where it is."
"Very well," replied the Taxi Driver, "you have proven yourselves worthy. I am the spiritual Guardian of the Beach, and I needed to test your will before showing you to the One True Beach you have sought for so many days. Get in, and I shall take you there. For 8000 yen." The look in his eyes would not have seemed out of place atop a mountain in Tibet, and we knew we were getting a pretty sweet deal.
Setting Up Camp
When we arrived, we knew we had come to the right place. The road we were on ran atop a concrete barrier, and fifty feet below us, the enormous sandy expanse of the Great Beach stretched to the horizon, curving around a peninsula in the distance. Few stragglers remained from a day of beaching, and we made our way to a hidden corner of the sand to the left, behind a small copse of trees. This is where we would pitch our tent.
Making the same mistake I always make, I elected to head the Tent Pitching Committee rather than the Fire Building Committee, and struggled with the poles and ropes and stakes while the girls went to fetch firewood in the last light of the setting sun. Alas, when I had finished and turned to check on the fire, all I saw was a wad of smouldering paper and damp wood at the bottom of a deep hole in the sand, with a meager pile of rotten branches at the ready.
In the pitch black (we had chosen not to bring flashlights to the One True Beach because flashlights would, of course, preclude our finding the Great Beach, for they deny faith in the bioluminescence (which, it turns out, wasn't there)), I managed to gather some tinder, twist some newspapers, and at last get a fire going for our feast. Mmm... meat, veggies, chocolate that wouldn't melt onto crackers but which we ate anyway on principle.
Eventually, and through much hardship, the fire was started.
Though the water did not sparkle, the stars overhead did. To commune with their sparkling, we lit off a few lonesome hanabi that we had brought, and which were answered by others launched by strangers far down the beach. Then, giving up on sparkling altogether, we went for a midnight swim to absorb the full depth of enlightenment the beach could provide us. The moon was dipping towards the horizon, and we wondered whether our tent would be safe from the tide. I tried giving a quick survival lecture on moon phases and tidal motion, but after a few chu-hais, deductive reasoning starts to lose its edge.
We settled in for sleep, the sounds of summer all around us.
The Morning After
My eyes opened. Early glow of dawn. The roof of the tent above me and the screens on the sides covered with a menagerie of crawling, flying, and (one can assume) biting insects of all sorts, meaty little buggers, antennae waving, beady little compassionless bug eyes sizing us up as targets. Why they were there, I do not know. Why we all got the hell out of that tent immediately, I do.
Dawn of a new beginning
We each experienced the sunrise in a different way, Linda from the beach near the trees, Yuki from further down the beach, Lily perched atop the enormous concrete wall by the road, and I floating on my back in the water. We rekindled the fire and broke our fast as the early beachgoers began to arrive.
Yuki in thought
The illumination of the morning sun cast a new light on the beach. No longer the beautiful, idyllic sandy beach of our dreams, presented to us by our magnanimous Spiritual Guide and Taxi Driver, we had now passed the honeymoon of enlightenment, and we were able to see the enormous amount of detritus washed up by the waves and left by day-tripping merrymakers. More cars began to pass overhead. Yuki and I helped lighten our load for the trip home by making sure no chu-hais were left full.
After a nice morning swim, the four of us expeditioned (expedited? expeded?) over the hillside to see what was on the Other Side. After following several branches of the roads and paths in the sand, we conceded that there was no other beach and, in fact, nothing interesting whatsoever. Sometimes, the grass is not greener on the Other Side. It did provide some fun dune-scaling opportunities, though, and such experiences are not to be trivialized - though no goal is achieved, they provide the meat and potatoes of our everyday existence.
Packing up the tent, we hiked back through a long and winding road through a beachside village behind us, hiking much further than we expected, but knowing there was no turning back, to a ferry dock that the Guardian had showed us the night before. Sweaty, salty, hot, and exhausted, we arrived to see that the ferry had just left. We turned to the only time-killing option within our visual range - an old, faded cafe on the other side of the parking lot.
The cafe had been bleached and faded in the sun for years, and it reminded me of a beachside restaurant we used to frequent near my aunt Elise's house on Shelter Island. The same bleaching by salt and sun, the same time lag for your eyes to adjust to the lack of brilliant sunlight as you enter. It even had an old sit-down video game from the early 80's, replete with faux wood paneling and appropriately nonfunctional.
We polished off some kaki-gouri's and boarded the ferry. The cruise home was quite pleasant, the rhythmic churning of the boat's engines relaxing the body as we watched the ocean and land roll by through the tinted windows that shaded us from the sun's harsh fury.
After some omiyagination, we hauled our burdenous equipment aboard the train and wasted very few of the minutes between there and home with the trifling matter of consciousness.
Although my companions don't remember it, I suspect the Guardian visited each of us in our dreams, reminding us with that mysterious glint in his eye, never to forget the spiritual lessons learned on our epic voyage.
2 comments:
Hahahaha, a whole year (and a bit) after the event comes the blog post. Sweetness, now I don't have to post about it :D
Only one point of contention: that sleeping picture is SO from Benazeer's Goodbye Party.
Hahaha, perceptive you are. It just seemed so appropriate though. :)
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