Hamada to Shimonoseki: Adventures in Navigating

There was little doubt by this point that we had taken a wrong turn.


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Google Maps, our longtime navigator, had steered us up more than a few mountains in the past few weeks, but of late, its advice had gotten even more suspect (this could have something to do with the fact that Google has no data for bicycle travel in Japan, and the only way we can get directions from it is to pretend to be a car).  Supposedly it was avoiding any tolls or highways, but more than once it had directed us onto a "bypass," an elevated road that loomed over every town.  My feeble gaijin brain has some difficulty appreciating the subtle difference between these towering thoroughfares and "highways."  Whenever we'd encountered one of these monsters before, we had taken the designated detour, which usually pushed us up a tiny mountain road that added many miles and hours to our route.

Now, we thought, having just left Hagi, we thought we'd outfox the Google.  The middle road that we were directed to take seemed pretty straight, cutting through a handful of tunnels, but it was labeled "San-in Road," which in the past had meant anything from "quiet mountain road with wide shoulder" to "giant truck mating ground."  The Kitaura Highway to the south snaked back and forth across the map, a sure sign that it would be full of switchbacks and steep inclines.  So, we thought, we'd take the tiny, pale-yellow road along the coast.  Surely a coastal road would be pretty flat, right?

...Right?

After an hour of climbing up tiny, overgrown, 10%-grade mountain roads, we had gone too far to turn around and too tired to go on (without complaining).  Still, no matter how hard the road, we certainly got a welcome break from the endless parade of trucks and conbinis.  The forest on these little mountains was a thick, primeval jungle, with vines wound around thick, dark bamboo.  Wild raspberry bushes bursting with ripe berries and wicked thorns crowded us into the middle of the street; this wasn't a problem, as we saw only a single car in our hours of pushing.

Just off the coast, tiny spits of land dotted the calm, mirrorlike Sea of Japan.

Harry and Google seen arguing like an old married couple.

The scenery revived our spirits enough to continue onward.  Eventually, we did make it back to the designated route, just in time for more trucks and more conbinis.

Also, we met a frog at the conbini.  This frog is notable in that it was the third dirtiest creature in Shimane (after the two of us, of course).

We had literally been looking for these guys since first coming to Japan.

"I got crabs!"

And just like that, we were finished with Japan yet again, and this time we had no plans to return.  Strange to say, I was never really a Japanophile before coming to Japan.  Unlike some of my classmates, I was never into anime, never really dug Japanese movies or art, even in my three years of Japanese classes.  While living in Osaka, I was constantly told by impressed locals that I must really love Japan to stay so long.  I've always had good and bad things to say about Japan and about Japanese people.  But I think I can say, after leaving this time, after having seen rural Japan and met some amazing people, that I do love Japan.  I still don't want to settle there, and I'm not even sure I'd want to live there again, but I do know that Japan will always have a special place in my heart.

After three months to the day, our tourist visas were up.  We were shipping out the following day, off to another three weeks of cycling, but now in a country about which we knew almost nothing. My stomach sank at the prospect of biking through a place where we couldn't speak the language.  So many of the experiences we'd had seeing Japan's back roads -- the abandoned campsites, the kind passersby, the racist old guys -- we would be unable to appreciate in Korea.

So we enjoyed our last few hours in Japan, hoping to hang onto as much of this place as we could.

Karaoke prominently figured into these hopes.

Leaving Pasar

See you for next year's music festival, Natsu and Aki!

Pasar 3: Showtime

The appointed hour had come.  The accordion was found collecting dust at Pasar had been repaired, the cafe had been set up for business, we'd sent off our documents to apply for our work visa, and most importantly, the flag was finished.

Design by Jenn Thomas of Jenn Thomas from Jenn Thomas/Jenn Thomas, featuring Jenn Thomas

Modelled by Jenn Thomas

Under the full moon, Jenn and I set up our instruments on one of the three empty stages.  We'd spent the day rehearsing and dragging wooden furniture back and forth across the yard, finally determining the arrangement best suited to polite appreciation and/or dancing on tables.  By 7:00, nobody had turned up.  We started on the beers that we'd brought to share with our hosts.  By 7:30, the starting time for our concert, we were still alone and on our second beer.

Eventually, our audience arrived: a dozen or so married women from the neighborhood, bearing snacks and bottles of wine.  Fortunately, that didn't stop them from taking advantage of the Pasar Moon kitchen, which turned out curries and one delicious pizza after another.  Jenn and I took the stage for our first duo concert.  Under the circumstances, our old band's name, Raku 3, seemed inappropriate, so we went by Jenn's stage name, Jenny Dreadful.  It felt good to be performing again; after all, we'd carted our instruments around the previous 1,000 miles, so we might as well get some use out of them.

The show, sadly, was lackluster.  This was our first time performing in nearly a year, and though we'd spent the past few months jamming by the roadside, we weren't quite as polished as we would usually like.  The audience was pretty different from our usual crowd of friends appreciative old drunken bachelors, too, having turned up more to hang out with one another than to see us.  Still, we gave it our best go, and the contributions to our nagezen basket (literally, "thrown money") were generous, except for the person who gave us a wedge of cheese.  Despite the protests of Aki, who was oddly absent from this event except while we were playing, we deposited all of our takings right into Pasar's donation box.  He told us about how Pasar is meant to be a space to support artists and musicians, and that the usual policy was to comp all non-WWOOFing artists their room and board.  The money was ours, he insisted, not the venue's.  When he left to get a cigarette, we dropped the cash into the box; after all, we had just found a job, and places like Pasar need support themselves.

When all of the pizza had been eaten and our donations had been counted, Natsu stood before her friends and patrons to explain the bill situation.  From this year, she said, Pasar would not set any prices for its food or drinks, but would instead rely wholly on Love Donations.  Whatever the customer was moved to pay for what they received, that would be what they should pay.  If ever there is a customer who can't afford a dime, then their meal should be eaten with clear conscience.  "Japanese people are very bad at this because they're so shy," she had told us earlier, "but this is important to our idea of Pasar Moon."  They listened patiently, receptively (despite Aki's doubts) as she spoke, and when she finished, they all contributed heartily to the box.  More beer was opened in celebration, and we retired to our room to pack up our instruments.

As I flipped the lightswitch, I caught a glimpse of something dark and thin scuttle out from behind Jenn's pillow.  My heart sank, as I knew instinctively what it was.  I calmly put down the ukulele, told Jenn to step back, and screamed my little heart out: "Mukade!"

Attention, current or future mortal enemies: if you could just skip ahead to the picture of a ducky, that would be great.  See you there!

Centipedes are my greatest fear in the world, and are my persistent theological proof that we are not living in the best of all possible worlds (additional proofs involve the non-existence of a Spider-man or -men).  On the rare occasions in which I've encountered them, I've turned into a squealing, useless bag of slop (more than usual, even).  Fortunately, in this case, Natsu-san heard my cry and ran to the rescue with a cup of hot water and a set of tongs.  She plucked the foot-long, writhing black nightmare up and dropped it into the water, where it danced about in fury before falling into a very convincing faux-death.  As far as I know, it still lives at Pasar, feigning death and waiting for me to return.  She told me then that there had been several mukade spotted that day, one of them having stung Aki on the leg mere hours before.  Perhaps it had something to do with the full moon, she suggested.  Maybe they just didn't like the show.

We took what was left of our beers into the living room, leaving the party to collect our thoughts.  Jenn rubbed my back and reassured me that that was probably the last centipede anywhere in the whole world, and that there was no chance of another one living under my pillow and waiting until we fell asleep to lay eggs in my eyeballs.  Natsu came to find us before too long, and saw me in a daze.

"Are you in shock?" she asked.  I nodded limply, and explained that I would probably be unable to sleep that night or any other night.  She nodded back solemnly. "OK, let's get drunk.  Do you drink tequila?"  

We spent the next hour or so trading recipes for tequila shots and discussing our lives.  What we spoke of I won't reveal here, suffice to say how stricken I was for the first time at the appropriateness of their names ("Natsu" meaning "summer," "Aki" meaning "autumn"; Natsu is in her thirties, Aki in his fifties).  If there were any other mukade that night, I didn't notice; Natsu's home remedy was extremely effective.

Pasar Moon: A Love Story

It wasn't immediately apparent that we had arrived at our destination.  The yellowing afternoon light was cast over a strange collection of buildings and materials, rusty iron bars, long bamboo poles, all overgrown with ivy and flowering vines.  The brightly-painted murals led us to believe that Google Maps hadn't misled us, that this was the (farm? cafe? concert venue?) whatever-it-was we were looking for, but it seemed that no one was home.  Sunburnt, dripping with sweat, almost certainly filthy from days on the road, we dismounted and wheeled our bikes around this odd place aimlessly.  "すみません！" we shouted occasionally, hoping to attract someone's attention.

We leaned our bikes against a wooden platform and entered one of the buildings.  Our eyes dazzled from the afternoon sun, we could barely see into the house.  As we walked in, we heard a soft "Hello." Removing our sunglasses, we saw a thin, dark-skinned man with shaggy gray hair sitting on a beat-up couch.

"Hello," we replied.  He looked back down at his computer and coughed quietly.  Shrugging, we took off our helmets and sat around the table, following his lead.  After a few beats we introduced ourselves.  He confirmed that this was, in fact, Pasar Moon, our WWOOF host for the next week and a half, and introduced himself as Aki.

"Would you prefer to speak in Japanese?" Jenn asked Aki.

His eyes widened.  "Can you speak Japanese?"

We nodded, and he slumped back even further.  "Whew, what a relief, that's much easier!" he sighed.

Over the next hour or so, he and his wife, Natsu, explained a little about Pasar Moon to us.  Practically, Pasar is a cafe, campground, and concert space, holding a music festival every August and opening for business whenever customers happened by from Masuda or Hiroshima.  Conceptually, it's a space for people to experience the natural beauty of the mountains and the seaside, and a place for artists to be able to produce art freely (artists and musicians stay and eat for free, Aki told us, and they take all of the earnings from the concerts).  For most of the year, the two of them live in a little house in Java, but for the summer they return to Shimane to re-open Pasar.  We had arrived just a day after they had, so there would be much work to be done to get the place customer-ready.

"Oh!" I suddenly remembered, "I have our WWOOFer permits right here."

"Nah, I don't need them," Aki told us.

Natsu-san went on to tell us about our duties: sleep until we're not tired, breakfast is whenever, usually around 10:00, and then we'd be asked to help with whatever cleaning or gardening needed to be done.  "Take a rest whenever you feel like it, and if you don't like doing a certain task, just do something else instead," she told us.

Oh yeah, we thought at each other, we're gonna fit in here just fine.  Quite a chance from our last WWOOF experience, to be sure.

The sun began to set over the coast, and the four of us walked the 20 meters to the beach to watch.  We stood in the campground (in which there was a sign, "This is everyone's park"), took pictures of it, and breathed in the early summer air.

Over Natsu-san's spectacular curry, we discussed our instruments.  It was decided after some deliberation that we would have a concert under the stars on the next full moon.  We helped with the dishes, pitched our tent on a bed of weeds, and fell fast asleep, dreaming about the old accordion propped up in a corner in the living room.

Shimane: No Rest For the Gaijin

An uneventful few days passing through Tottori and Jenn and I made it to Shimane, notable for being the second-least-populated prefecture in Japan (and if the two were combined, they'd still be the least populated).  The eastern half of Shimane is made up of a few fingerlike peninsulas that stretch across a couple of just-barely-inland lakes.  We were beginning to get pretty wiped out, but we still had a few days of pedaling until we reached our next WWOOF host, so we girded our loins and got moving (you pedal with your loins, right?).

Unfortunately, Shimane proves to be one of the least awesome places to camp that we've run across.  Our first night in the prefecture, just on the other side of the border, we came to the only park within 10 kilometers of our route.  It was a very well set-up campsite, to be sure, with water and electricity and real toilets and all that good stuff.  Best of all, it was right behind a supermarket, meaning fish and gyoza were on the menu rather than our usual banquet of non-perishables.  The office was closed by the time we arrived, so we warily circled it to find some information, eyeing the groups of rowdy twentysomethings having parties at their campsites.  Eventually we found a notice that seemed to suggest that one of the basic campsites without water or electricity cost ¥6500 a night, expensive enough that we might as well shell out for a hotel.  We considered our options, the sun nearly gone over the horizon, and finally came to the conclusion that the only moral thing to do would be either to pay the fee in the morning or leave and find a hotel room.  Then we decided to just do a sleep-and-dash, punk rock style.

The only known photo of Jenn taken at 5 a.m.

We were awake by 5, the tent was down by 5:30, and we were outta there by 6, well before any employees came to open up.  As far as I know, we're still wanted in Yonago City.

A few days later, after a thorough rest in Matsue and an utterly forgettable trip through Izumo, we were blasting along the coast on the home stretch to Hamada, our home for the next week.  Once again, we were in a bit of a jam that quickly escalated to "pickle," then to "crisis."  The first park we passed in the day, while lovely, provided little in the way of cover.  Also, having just read about Argentinian tent slashers the previous day, we had qualms about setting up anywhere visible from the road.

Dooooooooom.

Somehow we pushed another ten kilometers, until it had grown quite dark indeed.  We discovered that the next park that Google Maps had to offer us closed its gates at 6 p.m., leaving us with nothing but a tiny roadside bathroom and...war memorial?  I don't know, but it had a cannon, anyway.  We set up the tent (barely) on the ten feet of gravel behind the bathroom.  Once again, we were up at 5 a.m., just as the neighbors around the corner began to stir.

Our final night camping in Shimane was made substantially worse by our dictionary.  The park, a big, sprawling place with a forest, a campground, and a beach, was littered with notices posted on every available surface, all of which we were able to get the gist of with the help of our iPod dictionary.  "No barbeques," "no fireworks after 10 p.m.," "this water is not potable," all that good stuff.  "A bear has been sighted in the woods on May 5th."  That one we probably should have skipped.