Where is Beautiful?
by Josie Dew
If the giant catfish beneath Japan was to lift its tail gently and pivot the country ninety degrees clockwise, the Boso-hanto Peninsula would resemble a foot, with Narita situated in the middle of the ankle. My slaphappy plan was to head for the arch of the foot before rolling on along the ball and round the toes.
I had no idea what to expect. In two weeks, the only scenes I'd seen outside of the city were through the windows of a train as it trundled past semi-rural Japan; paddy fields bordered and crisscrossed by an interminable network of roads. Mostly, though, the scene outside the train was all city.
Despite having been dazzled by an overdose of neon since my arrival in Japan, I had managed to drum a few basic Japanese phrases into my frazzled head. Finding myself in a spin after only ten minutes in the outskirts of Narita, I turned to one of these phrases, the never-leave-home-without-it 'wa doka desu-ka?' ('which way is?'). Only trouble was, I wasn't too sure where to ask for as I wasn't too sure where I was going. So, if in doubt, pick a place at random and hope for the best. But of course, before you throw your random 'wa doka desu-ka?' at some poor soul you need some soul at which to throw your question. Now that I had disentangled myself from the city centre only to entangle myself in the boisterous ring-roads, most people on whom I could unleash my experimental enquiry were spinning on by in cars, sealed from the outside world by glass and metal. Heads would turn momentarily to eye this forlorn figure standing astride a pink mount in the swirling Japanese equivalent of a couple of Birmingham's Spaghetti Junctions combined. Yes, there were a lot of roads. A lot of cars. And a lot of time for me to think: maybe I should have just kept to cycling round the Isle of Wight.
What I wanted was a person, or people -- surely not too much to ask for when 125 million of them were milling somewhere around me in fairly close proximity? But I could not see any. Bit of a classic case of not being able to see the pod for the peas, or the cat for the fleas, or... well, the people for the cars. I couldn't see the wood, either, as there weren't any trees. Even the telegraph poles were concrete.
In every bleak situation there usually arises some good and my bit of goodness came by way of a knight in shining armour, or, to be more precise, a sinewy old man on an ancient brown and rusted bike. From where he came I do not know. He just appeared at my side in a knightly puff of smoke (or lung-blackening haze of roadside pollution). His fatless, brown rustic face was crevassed in smiles. His eyes, narrow but not overly so, looked full of ebullient life. These features gave him a sprightly appearance of youth that belied his age. I guessed he could be anything from forty-six to a hundred and ten.
I bade him a confidently chiseled 'ohayo gozaimasu!' good morning, followed by a not so confident 'Wa doka desu-ka?' As I still hadn't ascertained a destination I simply asked him: 'Which way is utsukushii?' A ridiculous query, but as utsukushii (which simply means 'beautiful') was the first word that sprang to mind, it was not such a bad one at that, feeling as I did in need of some beauty.
I don't know whether the old man understood me but I for sure didn't understand him. However, my blank expression appeared no deterrent to him whatsoever. Quite the contrary; he embarked upon an animated one-sided conversation to which I could only offer a perfunctory 'Ah so, desu-ka?' -- a phatic response that seemed to fuel him the more. For want of something constructive to do, I showed the old man my somewhat senseless map, and was rather encouraged when he too looked at it upside-down. Despite that, he seemed to know where he was and, pointing at the map, kept repeating the word Yachimata which my disorientated mind told me must obviously be the name of a place.
Latching on to Yachimata I nodded enthusiastically. Not only was it in the vague direction I wanted to go, but also the three kanji characters for it looked fairly easy to decipher on signposts. The first resembled a 'road narrows' warning sign; the middle, a sort of railway track with kinks; the third, a crucifix wearing a skirt.
Still beaming, and blessed with the gift of the gab, the man seemed to be indicating for me to follow him. Dutifully and gratefully I did so. For an hour we rode along together, occasionally clashing wheels, along overpass and underpass, and eventually bypassed the worst of the traffic. All the time he chatted away incessantly to me as if I was a nearest and dearest. I was amazed how he could have so much to talk about with someone who could offer so little. But, like a good protégé, I smiled and nodded and half-head-bowed and, with a liberal dose of well-executed 'Ah so, desu-kas?', made out I knew exactly from where he was coming. Or going, for that matter. But reality was all swings and see-saws. We came to a busy junction adorned with a wild array of signs, some of which had the more helpful romaji script written beneath the kanji. Hanging proud among this profusion was the much sought-after Yachimata. Hoorah! Now that I had been shepherded on to the right road from the wrong direction, I presumed this was where I would bid my companion farewell.
Not so. Apparently the old man was hell-bent on coming along for the ride. Strange. I couldn't work this old codger out for toffee. I was also feeling a trifle guilty for having swayed him off beam and out of his way. But then, was it out of his way? Maybe, by chance, he too was bound for Yachimata and, thanks to my half-hopeless map, we had assisted each other in finding it. Unlikely. In fact, head-high-in-the-clouds unlikely. But, there again, maybe. You can't just cast possibilities aside like you can superfluous words. Anyway, to me, he looked like a man with a mission. We rode on together. And on and on together. He in his flip-flops and me in my Nikes. At one stage he extracted a small white towel from his wire-caged bicycle basket and, removing his hands from his handlebars (obviously a man with a trick as well as a mission), tied it in fetching fashion around his head.
Good idea. It was hot. Head-mop hot.
By now we had been riding together in roundabout stop-start style in the heat, in the fumes, in the hills, in the traffic, for most of the morning. And yet this emaciated old man with calves of elastic remained as fresh as a daisywheel. Meanwhile, back in the sinews of my muscles, things were beginning to flag. And complain. Bitterly. It was time for a pit stop; a drink.
In Japan, a drink is never far from hand or mouth, whether you be stuck out on a limb on the top of a peak or marooned on a highway and miles from a town. This is thanks to those omnipresent eyesores that are scattered with profusion around the land: vending machines. Japan's equivalent of New Zealand's non-eyesore sheep. They are everywhere, sell everything. Want a roadside hamburger? A pot of steaming noodles? A whiskey? Beer? An ice cream? A book? A lonely-hearts column? A condom? A bunch of flowers? A two-kilo bag of rice? A porn mag? A disposable camera? Or, well, just a plain old can of pop? It's all yours, twenty-four hours a day, at the mere drop of a coin. Disposable income? Disposable goods, most of which land up on the verge. Big clean hearts the Japanese may have, but small clean land they don't.
These huge, gleaming digital monster-machines look as if they've just landed fresh from the production line. No bashed-in buttons or flaps, no booted-in windows or sides. No graffiti. No vandalism. That's Japan. Shiny happy people; shiny happy machines. Everywhere. Coca-Cola, the country's major purveyor of soft drinks, has 800,000 machines alone. Silly number. Hard to envisage. Unless you're in Japan. Like I say, everywhere: any table, any chair, top of piano, window-ledge; in the middle, on the edge. Everyone drops a coin. Everyone drinks a drink.
Often, vending machines don't just deliver what they display through their windows or advertise on their sides but give the coin-popper a little added extra, for free: they give you sounds. A shrill, chirping woman's voice, thanking you for your custom. A repetitive stick-in-the-head singsong tune so exasperating you'd gladly pay to have it removed. Take it away but don't take it home.
My pitstop came in the form of a lay-by lined with an illustrious parade of strapping great vending machines, all shouldering each other like a bunch of impenetrable sumo-kings. It was hard work, trying to persuade my aged companion to allow me to buy him a drink. He appeared a little ruffled and became intent on not only treating me to a sushi burger and beer but apparently a whole vending machine of my choice. It was even harder work, however, trying to choose what to drink. The selection was astronomical. There were over thirty different coffees and at least forty different teas: green tea, brown tea, black tea, sweet tea, bitter tea, weed tea, oolong tee, hot tea, iced tea, Far East tea, far-fetched tea, this tea, that tea, any tea. Don't fancy tea? Don't fancy coffee? Well, how about fifty different pops and sodas and vegetable juices and fruit juices and fruity vegetable juices and chemically vitaminized pick-you-ups (or put-you-downs) and dubious fluorescent-glowing concoctions of energy-boosters. Or maybe just a jar of sake, or bottle of wine or litre of beer. Ah yes, beer. How about that huge silver can the size of a four-ball tennis container imprinted with the words: 'Hokkaido Beer -- let your spirit run free and enjoy nature's rich bounty. Savour the taste of Hokkaido'? It's a nice idea but I think I'll keep my spirit underwraps for now. Got a few more miles to get under my wheels before the day is out. I'll just let those Dydo juices woo me with the words:
Every satisfying sip a flavour experience
delicious refreshment is a DYDO tradition.
Relax and enjoy thirst-quenching beverages at their best.
DYDO is your ticket to drink paradise.
Meanwhile, my towel-turbaned guide selected a can of Coca-Cola-branded iced Georgia Coffee. Judging from the number of slim, brown cans that littered the sides of the road more prevalently than any other dented, wheel-flattened ones, I deduced Georgia Coffee to be top of the most popular vending-machine drinks. Strange for a country renowned for its delicious green tea but, in Japan, coffee is associated with being quintessentially Western, the strong, black stuff of European street cafés and America's voguish Deep South. Follow the trend. Head West. Taste West. For Georgia Coffee, though, the essential appeal seems to lie in the design of it label, which depicts Scarlett O'Hara types in crinoline frocks and imposing gentlemen in august top hats on the sumptuous lawns of Tara, the celebrated great southern mansion in Gone with the Wind. A classic case of capitalizing on a fad. Most Japanese seem to have either read the book or seen the film. Now they can imbibe it too. So infatuated does Japan become with Western (mainly American) stars, Western myths, Western movies, Western nostalgia, that it seems immaterial whether the exploitative advertising used for a certain product actually correlates with the object (not to mention geographical location) that its pushing to sell. A few years ago a Japanese importer marketed a California wine with a Gone with the Wind scene embellished on the label.
Drinks drunk and brows mopped, we set off on the road again. While we had been drinking our way through the vending machines I'd attempted to ascertain just how far he was going. But, instead of extricating any facts or figures, my somewhat farcical and gesticulating form of Japanese had only encouraged the old boy to tie my head up like his in a spare towel. Larking around with a VOAP and entwined in a knot of oil-soaked towel, I thought: oh hear, if my mother saw me now she'd think there was no hope. But I saw myself, in the reflection of a hotdog-dispensing machine, and, finding that I looked rather fetching with a halo of stained rag would round my head, I paraded, like a buffoon, up and down, catwalk fashion, swinging my sweaty hips, much to the delight of Towel-Top One. So jovially pleased was he with this outlandish find that he showed me off to a car full of elderly husbands and wives who'd pulled up for a drink. Here we go, I thought, he's going to get me arrested. But, oh no. These old dears were so taken by this bizarre foreign spectacle, trussed up in a towel, that they eagerly draped themselves around and over me for a hearty and giggly session of camera-snapping fun.
Back in the saddle, the
Towel-Top Team was spinning with gay abandon towards Yachimata. Owing to its
elusiveness, we seemed to be approaching it in a very long-winded and roundabout
manner. I still hadn't managed to establish how far I was to be chaperoned but,
at this rate, judging from my companion's seemingly limitless energy, we ran
the risk of shooting clean off the boot of Chiba and landing in the sinking
sun. A nice idea, but not a correct one. Instead, without warning, my mad escort
jammed on his brakes and dived into his bicycle basket for two chemically cultured
rosy red apples the size of footballs. With a beaming bow he said dozo (please),
gave me his fruity offering and disappeared with a wobble down a side road.
© Josie Dew
from 'A Ride in the Neon Sun', Warner Books