January
19, 2005 - Next Stop, Hattoji (Day 8)
Waiting... waiting... waiting...
Old school pulverizer near the station - still running
Stamps at the station
Rice terraces outside our door
Interior of the old farmhouse we stayed at
Natto, aka "stinky beans"
Laura's portrait of Tim
Tim's portrait of Laura
We got an early start. Our experience in Himeji several days earlier had left us leery of bus schedules and we wanted to increase our chances of catching one by setting out for the first one of the day. Our plan netted us the first bus and we took it to the nearest train station an hour away...
It was a rural station, with a train every hour or so, a far cry from the train every five minutes I’ve grown accustom to in Kobe. We waited out a cold 45 minutes before getting on the first train that came by. After about a half an hour of travel we came to a stop and the conductors began to move around in an unfamiliar way…. It soon became apparent that they were severing the central link in our train just as a child might separate a worm. We stumbled out onto the platform unsure of which half we should cast our lot with. I asked a conductor which half went to “Yoshinaga” our intended stop. He said neither, and that we needed the other platform. This was very confusing as there were only two platforms and getting on the other platform would mean, in all likelihood, that we would be heading back in the direction we had come from. I took him at his word, mainly because asking him which train we needed had used up my language abilities and further discussion would have been fruitless. We crossed to the next platform and watched hopelessly as the two ends of our severed train left us. It took another hour for the next train to arrive. We spent our time composing haiku, laughing nervously, and wondering if the train we were waiting for was really the one we wanted.
Laura:
It is easy to romanticize travel; new everything, no bills, no phone, your own rhythm, and no responsibility. What could be better? However, in the reality of travel, especially when communication is a bit of a barrier, there is a great deal of waiting and confused wandering. A collaborative haiku, Tim and I concocted in a moment of waiting and wondering:
Train separated
Two gaijin left wondering
It is cold
On the platform
Then again, how hard is wandering and waiting even if it does involve hours of borderline hypothermia?
Tim:
Once at Yoshinaga we had a mercifully short wait for the bus. An old lady on the bus took a liking to Laura and they spent about fifteen minutes communicating to one another that it was raining outside. A half hour later the bus let us off at the driveway Hattoji Villa, which was located in a terraced farming village.
There were many artists scattered about the terraces, a watercolor class on a day trip from nearby Okayama City. We stopped and chatted with a couple of them, they shared their paintings with us and I showed them the somewhat embarrassing portraits Laura and I had done of one another the night before.
Hattoji International Villa was a classic Japanese farm house restored for guests to enjoy. It had paper for walls and was ccccoooolllldddd… After dinner we cranked up the heater in the kitchen and took turns squeezing into a tiny cauldron like soaking tub.
The night was frigid so we scavenged a couple of heaters from other rooms and put them in our sleeping room. I kept Laura up late by reading into the wee hours – she finally shut me down around 1 am by making grunting noises that expressed her displeasure at the light and sound of turning pages.
