Passing through Usa-hachiman, we left Route 10 and came to Kunisaki Peninsula. The scenery abruptly shifted. What hills there were could not be called mountains. It was as though we were surrounded by rough mounds of soft clay that had been slapped together and stuck at oblique angles to each other. Was it the hills that were at a tilt or was it the flat terrain? My nerves were set on edge by the feeling that sky and earth had turned to contorted mush.
“Aren’t ye afraid?”
Nagoyan, slack-jawed, replied with a nod. He reminded me of a dog whose tail has steadily drooped and is on the verge of dropping between its hind legs.
“This would be a scary place if there were somehow, you know, a haunting presence…”
“Oh, but there is.”
Nagoyan let out a shriek.
“They’re here, they’re here! Lots of ’em. I can see one gettin’ on yer shoulder now. An’ another!”
“Eeeek!” Nagoyan screeched again, convulsing like a wild beast, as he sought to shake off the unseen spirits.
“No, no, ye don’ get it!”
“What?”
“I ’ave delusions awright, but I don’ see ghosts.”
“You’re certainly a laid-back one! A person of my sensitivity can’t take this.”
As “laid-back” as I might be, the eeriness of our surroundings was clear to me as well.
“Don’tcha worry. Let’s go somewhere ordinary and normal.”
We had quite lost our bearings, but by following the tourist signs we made our way to Fukidera. I was in the mood to show off this temple, which is the finest that I know. Though famous, it stands there amidst the stillness of the hills as it has for ages, with nothing the least bit worldly about it, blending in perfectly with the wildflowers. The main hall’s distinguishing feature was an elegant roof with upturned flaring corners, which seen from above must have appeared square. The smell of incense in the dark interior was likewise refined, lending a sense of tranquility.
“A gentle-looking Buddha, isn’t he now?” I remarked.
“I think it’s the Tendai sect… The Tendai sect is, um…”
Nagoyan started to make a comment, then, having seemed to have lost his train of thought, said that one should look at the statue in a sitting rather than a standing position, so that one’s upward gaze perfectly meets the half-closed eyes of the Buddha.
The disturbed state of mind in which I had found myself just a short time ago was quite gone. We entered the tearoom across the way from the temple.
“What’ll we eat?”
“Dumplings with miso. That’s th’ normal fare ’ere.”
“What is it like?”
“Vegetables and dumplings in miso broth.”
I had a great fondness and longing for the rustic flavor of the dish. Trying it for the first time, Nagoyan picked up a flat dumpling with his chopsticks and said with an air of displeasure, “These aren’t dumplings, they’re noodles. Botched noodles.”
“They’re called dumplings.”
“I’d call it a primitive sort of miso-simmered udon.”
“Is that really so tasty?”
“It’s a hundred times more refined than this. First of all, the miso is different. Besides, I can’t resist the chewy texture of udon.”
I’ve never eaten Nagoya-style udon noodles, but refined? However, in a locality where ingredients were hardly fresh, culinary disguise had, I suppose, been honed to an art. Whenever the geezers in our ward discussed food, they would invariably raise that kind of argument. It occurred to me that Nagoyan must really like the food of his birthplace, but I had little idea about it myself and sensed that if I asked, I would be given a peevish lecture, so I simply sucked up the last of the savory dumplings.
“How ’bowt seein’ the magaibutsu?
“The magaibutsu?”
“Ye know, Buddhas carved into the stone cliff. Enormous they are, as I remember.”
From Fukidera we again followed the signs, and before long, there it was. We left the car in the parking lot and took the path up the slope to the entrance, where we found a lot of bamboo canes left in a stand. These were quite helpful, I realized, as we began our climb up the steep rock stairs. Soon we were panting. The tourists on their way back down invariably greeted us. Remembering that such is the custom among mountain hikers, I responded in kind.
A man in a straw hat called out as he passed, “Look out fer th’ igamushi!”
“Y…yes, we will,” I answered without any feeling of concern, not knowing what he was talking about. We went on climbing.
Nagoyan abruptly paused and wheezed, “I’ve had it! I really don’t get what’s with you hikers! I love Mt. Fuji, but I’m not about to climb it! People go trudging on for hours and hours. And it’s pure agony to begin with!”
“We’re almos’ there,” I said and set off again. Nagoyan grumpily followed.
We came to the end of the stone steps and saw an open space immediately before us. A huge magaibutsu carved into the façade of the gray cliff was glaring down on us. The facial features were so precise that at first glance one might have thought that it had been formed in a cement mold and then somehow attached to the rock wall. Next to it was another carved figure, a somewhat smaller, delicate Buddha. The first one was a bit intimidating; with his large nostrils, he had a free and easy air about him.
Nagoyan read the signs, exclaiming, “My goodness, these are Acala and Mahavairocana Tathagata. Carved, it says, nine hundred years ago. Awesome!”
In front of the figures was a small vacant lot, the size of a residential park. We sat down on a bench and mopped away the sweat.
“No one’s here.”
“Rain?”
As I looked up at the cloudy sky, we were hit by a squall of huge drops. The next instant, I couldn’t believe my eyes. The drops in which we were being drenched were not of water. Transparent and cold, they seemed to resemble soft jelly beans, though curved like ancient ornamental beads. They stuck to my arms, my calves, and to my T-shirt, and even when they fell to the ground, they did not spread and flow. It appeared that a swarm of slugs had fallen from the sky.
“Heeey!” Nagoyan screamed. “Hana-chan! Blood!”
He was standing motionless. The slugs that thickly covered his cheeks and arms were beginning to take on a dark and murky color. I was frantically trying to tear them off, one at a time, from my face and the nape of my neck. It was hard to do, as they were slimy and rubbery.
When at last I had managed to rid myself of one, blood started dripping down onto my fingers. When after quite a struggle I had flung it down, I saw it curl up on the ground, swollen and reddish-black.
“They’re not slugs! They’re leeches. Blood-suckin’ leeches!”
“Eeeeeek!” screamed Nagoyan and took off down the stone steps like a bat out of hell. I followed frantically after him. The path was wet, and I kept slipping. Blood mixed with sweat was oozing from the places on my face and knees where I’d been bitten.
From far below I heard Nagoyan screech, “Mountain leeches! Schistosoma japonicum!”
“Or they might be trombiculid mites,” he went on, still shouting.
For someone who had been panting all the way up, he certainly sounded full of energy now. I was fearfully watching my step and unable to keep up.
“They’ve just changed the name of the scrub typhus pathogen from Rickettsia to Orientia.”
“Nagoyan, wait!”
I was slow in making my way to the parking lot. And just as I got there, a speeding white Luce flashed by me, screeching its tires, and tore away down the slope.
“No way!” I wailed. But the gravel-strewn parking lot was empty. I was standing there abandoned in the middle of nowhere.
I looked at my arms and saw no more leeches. Had they been igamushi? I rubbed my face with a towel, but there wasn’t any more blood. And it wasn’t just from my arms that the leeches were gone; I couldn’t find a single one anywhere. They’d disappeared as if they’d been a mirage to begin with. But whatever they had been, the fact remained that I was now alone. The sky was overcast, and from out of the thicket came the song of a warbler.
As the shock gradually wore off, I realized that I had no idea what to do in this deserted place. The small shop was closed, perhaps merely for its weekly closing day, though for all I knew it had long since gone out of business.
Nagoyan had run off, ditched me. And here I was in the middle of hilly, uninhabited nowhere. It was really too much. I wondered how many hours it would take me to walk back down to civilization. How would I get off Kunisaki? I hadn’t much money. What was I to do?
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
Whenever I was alone, that voice would intrude. It only aggravated my anxiety.
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
With a low rumble, the Luce returned. Nagoyan leaned over the passenger seat and opened the window.
“Forgive me! I just panicked,” he said.
At that, I instantly boiled over. “Ye panicked, did ye? Well, ye make me bloody sick! Is that any way fer a man t’ act? Screamin’ like a halfwit and then runnin’ off. Whit did ye expect me to do in this godforsaken place?”
Nagoyan quietly opened the door, got out, and came over to stand in front of me.
“I’m really sorry.”
Seeing him tower over me made me all the more incensed. My entire body was seething.
“I didn’t know what I was doing. Being attacked b…by a bunch of horrible annelids…”
Nagoyan was genuinely frightened. His features were frozen, and his voice was as brittle as cigarette ash. But I was still as angry as ever.
“And that excuses ye? Ye do whitever ye like ’n then think everythin’ will be fine if ye jus’ say yer sorry. Yer disgustin’, y’are!”
“What else can I do but apologize.”
“I don’ care fer ye. Don’ care none fer ye. Ye might as well die!”
I had been shouting and raging until my mouth was dry.
“I lost my head. I’m sorry. I won’t do it again.”
“I don’ believe ye, and I still don’ care fer ye!”
Turning around, I saw a Coca-Cola vending machine. It was filled with the carcasses of small, dead insects. Quite ignoring Nagoyan, I bought a can. He and his car were right behind me, but I was nonetheless overwhelmed by loneliness and self-pity. I wept, raising my head as I sniffled, my tears blending with the carbonated liquid.
Desperate to escape this horrid peninsula, I got into the car and was suddenly seized by a violent headache. It was as if small pebbles were banging against each other within my skull. It was impossible to think. I sat there in the passenger seat, muttering “My head’s gonna burst,” as I did my best to endure the pain.
“Yikes!” Nagoyan kept saying, jerking the steering wheel back and forth. “This is weird. Aren’t we back where we were before?”
With every U-turn, he became more confused. I was holding my head with both hands. The road was meandering through the strangely shaped hills. Feeling utterly miserable, I could hear that voice, now revved up to a terrible tempo.
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
Twenty yards of linen are worth one coat.
It took us over an hour to get to Route 10 – or at least that was how it felt. Once we found ourselves in the stream of traffic, my headache eased.
In Kyushu, Route 10 is indeed of a very different order from Route 3. The artery that arcs around the island to join Kita-Kyushu and Kagoshima is forever fiercely, feverishly throbbing.
“It says that Beppu is this way. Do you want to go there?” Nagoyan asked diffidently.
“Aye. Th’ way I’m feelin’, I could use a dip in the hot springs.”
“They call it hell.”
“More like heaven.”
It didn’t take us long to get there. We stopped at a UNIQLO outlet, where I bought a brassiere, sweat shorts, a small tote bag, and, for a thousand yen, three pairs of underwear. Not having much money, that was all I could afford.
We then went to Takegawara Hot Springs, housed in a dilapidated wooden building reminiscent of a temple or an old primary school. I ducked under the curtain hanging in front of the women’s section and immediately found myself in the dressing room. A set of stairs led down to the dark brown-gray stone baths. The spring was bubbling up into the ancient, U-shaped tub.
I had a towel and one of the fresh T-shirts I had borrowed from Nagoyan, but without either soap or shampoo, I simply poured hot water over myself, feeling somewhat perplexed, until a slender, dark-complexioned woman next to me offered to lend me what she had. When I thanked her, she asked in broken Japanese whether I had come with my boyfriend. It didn’t seem to me that there was any need to tell her the truth, so I mumbled “Uh-huh.” She smiled back at me.
In the bath I stretched out my arms and legs to the full and felt myself being gently purged of the horrid memory of being eaten alive by the leeches. I wanted to believe that it had all been unreal. The ceiling was high, with latticed windows running all the way to the top, and though we were in a semi-basement, there was just the right hint of sunshine.
I had been too hard on Nagoyan. Whatever had happened, I had somewhat overreacted. No one, including me, has the right to tell another to drop dead. I resolved that once out of the bath I would apologize to him. But as I was thinking about it all, I began to feel dizzy and then things went from bad to worse. All I can remember is crawling back to the dressing room, with everything growing black about me, and, still half wet, putting on the new pair of underwear and the T-shirt that smelled of Nagoyan.
When I came to, I was lying on the tatami mats in the reception hall. When I tried to get up, I heard Nagoyan’s voice, “No, no, take it easy.” And then after a while the foreign woman brought a cold compress for me. Nagoyan thanked her and then placed it on my forehead.
“I’ll be watching the telly. Rest a bit more.”
As I lay there with my eyes closed, I could hear the sound of a sumo broadcast.
When eventually I had regained my strength, we made our way back to Route 10. Though we said something about stopping for the night, I had no wish to go to another hot springs, and the alternative – some forlorn business hotel – was likewise unappealing. The road as we left Oita City and headed for Takeda was pitch black; to our left and right, all we could see in the car headlights was thicket. I had the palpable sensation of being in the midst of nature.
Imagining our surroundings, I remarked, “We’ll be able to see Mt. Aso tomorrow.”
“Oh? Have we come that far already?”
Nagoyan, who seemed to ignore the map as a matter of principle, was simply following the signs, as though he hadn’t a clue as to where we were at any given moment.
“Aso is the greatest volcano in the world.”
“But Mt. Fuji is Number One in Japan.”
“All Fuji’s got is height. Aso’s bigger than ye can imagine.”
“What? Fuji’s beautiful, more beautiful than all else in Japan.”
Nagoyan was spouting nonsense, as he was sure to learn for himself in the morning.
“Can ye see Mt. Fuji from Nagoya?”
“No, but in the neighborhood of my boarding house in Tokyo, I could see it quite clearly.”
“Is that so?”
Nagoyan was an incurable Tokyo nerd. He was so intent on becoming a Tokyoite that he had even embraced local mountain worship. But then, there are those English-literature department types who blabber away in the language, read anything written in it too, and regard themselves as virtual Americans. They’re all nuggets too.