Back to The City

I’m on a train from Ashikaga headed toward central Tokyo. It’s always a stark, contrasting transition. Leaving the buttermilk whipped clouds, set against pastel skies, overlooking verdant green rice fields, dotted with red tractors and well tanned farmers, beneath their straw hats. Away from those who use bicycles for transportation and back towards those who use bicycles for fashion.

One ninety minute train ride can do a lot to perspective.

I spent the weekend eating fresh picked fruit. Japanese pears and grapes mostly. I had ramen and gyoza. I had white rice and miso soup for breakfast.

I went to a local onsen, across the parking lot from a movie theater and a mall.

The onsen had traditional Japanese flute music playing through modern speakers hidden within the well trimmed bushes of the Japanese garden. The sky was clear and the moon was 97 percent full. The stars twinkled in a way you can’t see beyond the metropolitan haze of the Tokyo night sky.

A gang of high school baseball players came up to me in the onsen. They joked around like baseball players. One of them told me that he was Yu Darvish. We traded conversation and baseball secrets in a half English, half Japanese way, that was pure baseball.

I told the pitcher in the group that my best pitch was a ‘slurveball.’ He told me that his best pitch was a drop ball. At the end of our chat they had agreed that we were ‘yakyu tomodachi.’ Baseball friends. I said I would look for them next year in the Koshien high school baseball championships. They told me they would do their best.

And then the Japanese flute intensified in the background. The moon stayed 97 percent full. And I felt like I was living in-between the lines of coding in a Final Fantasy quest.

The weekend was filled with dragonflies of every color. And ice cream of varying flavors and textures.

But now Tokyo is calling.

Outside of my window the rice fields are morphing into the suburbs that will soon grow into high rises and office buildings. Nature is getting squeezed. Placed strategically on window sills and celebrated in awkwardly placed planters.

The moon is getting fuller.

Train passengers scurry off at each stop, all desperately trying to get some place. All desperately trying to make their unique stories fit into someone else’s schedule.

A baby cries. A mosquito screams. I take a sip of spring water.

The train builds up to full speed, the magnetic power of Tokyo reeling it in. It tries to pull the moon to it. It uses Tokyo tower and the Sky Tree, but the moon does not budge, for the moon is no one’s servant.

The train takes me to tomorrow. Away from the endless weekend, or at least from the land that moves as a weekend. With different timetables. With different reasons for riding a bike. And with a thousand varieties of dragonflies.

The Tokyo Islands: Shikine-jima

We boarded the jet boat in Odaiba at 8:30 AM.

Created by Boeing, the jumbo jet boat sounded more like an airplane than a watercraft. It also featured airplane inspired seating, with three wide rows, seven seats across, capable of transporting 350 souls at a time to the mysterious, so-called Tokyo Islands.

We received warnings of whale collisions as we neared our top speed of 85 km/hr. The boat appeared to hoover effortlessly above the choppy sea, on account of its deeply submerged, twin turbines, powering us beneath the crashing waves.

The three hour ride featured live TV, broadcasting the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers game directly to the middle of the ocean, as I drifted in and out of sleep, massaged and nestled in the comfort of my 30 degree reclining seat.

As we neared the islands, the open sea became peppered with rock formations. Tiny dots of islands, only big enough to serve as rest stops for the seagulls, but that slowly built the anticipation of rapidly approaching masses of more livable islands.

We passed a larger, domesticated island, complete with a paved highway visible from the sea, awkwardly positioned cell towers, traditional looking hotels and some highly scientific looking structures that must have been time travel research labs.

After the large island, we reached our final destination: the tiny island called Shikinejima. We ferried into the micro-sized dock, with deep waters enough for the long turbines of our boat. A team of tan, leather faced dock workers ambled over to catch the ropes of our boat and pull us in. The ridges of their weathered faces made it look like sun screen was not a priority import item on this particular island.

We carried our packs and tent off the boat, and made out way up the well paved roadway and into the jungle terrain of the island’s center. We passed several speeding micro-buses filled with island dwellers. They whooped and hollered, with heads hanging out the windows like dogs. Not exactly a scene you get used to seeing within the confines of Tokyo. We had arrived in a place of free spirits and were soaking in the island life.

We came to the campgrounds, on the edge of a rock and sand dune, nestled perfectly above a postcard worthy, blue watered bay. There were 50 tents, woven around a sandy trail carved out in between the coastal foliage and pine trees.

We were approached by an old man, who familiar with the island and campgrounds directed us to a free space to set up our tent, and offered the additional commentary that he didn’t like Americans. We just took the helpful bit of his advice and set up camp for the night.

After establishing camp and having a quick afternoon tea over the portable gas stove, we stocked up our fanny packs and made for the wilderness.

We took a road, the main street actually, and the only street on the island. We used the one stretch of civilized pavement to cut across the bulk of the tiny island and reach the storied natural hot springs nestled on the Northern coast of Shikinejima.

There were few travelers on the roads, and mainly traveling via micro vans. The precious few restaurants on the main street were all closed, one boarded up. We saw two lizards, and two brown snakes clinging to the brush and rock surfaces along the roadside.

We made our way down the steps of the craggy rock formations that led to the first hot spring. The pools were filled with steaming orange, sulfur smelling waters. These weren’t the posh, expertly cleaned and maintained ‘onsen’ hot springs Japan is famously dotted by. In appearance, these were crude puddles, tide pools, maintained by no one except nature. We stuck our toes in, but did not treat the pools as relaxing spa hot tubs. The waters were probably 45 degrees C, in sharp contrast to the frigid salt water. 

Each private bay we visited had a handful of snorklers, and in some cases, spear fishers. The spear fishers actually seemed quite common on Shikinejima. We later learned that some of them were spearing urchin. The static, rock clinging creatures, that hardly seem worthy of such sophisticated looking spears.

The trails took us along the island’s coast line, and through an Oregon Coast looking terrain and greenery. We stopped at several look-out points, which were each elaborately constructed wooden towers. As with all nature experiences in Japan, the trails were meticulously manicured. Branches were hacked in perfect, trail friendly arches, (too low for me to walk through, as usual) leaving a perfect tunnel through even the most dense patches of island jungle. The trails were well bark dusted, and in wet patches, featured perfectly sized stepping stones.

As dusk fell, we returned to our campsite to cook yakisoba over the power of our portable gas stove. The clouds blew over the island, and the island’s rains commenced. By which time we were safely and dryly secured in our tent, listening to the growing drops like gathering war drums, on the thin fabric of canopy overhead.