Japan in small doses, and somewhat at random

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It’s three times the distance from there to Tokyo as it is from there to Seoul. The flight from Incheon Airport to Fukuoka takes one hour and five minutes. We spent four nights and five days, around the beginning of December.

I took some pictures.   

I like Japan but the number of times I’ve been there can be counted on one hand, and short visits only – microscopic, if you count a transfer at Narita that was exactly long enough to drink one beer but not two, and on another occasion I walked around with my feet on the ground in Osaka for nearly 5 hours while papers got themselves shuffled, copied, filed and stamped and returned to me in time to make the evening flight back to Korea.

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I take Japan in small doses, much like the way some people do with homeopathy. It’s not a cure for anything and it sure isn’t scientific, and it’s probably not going to help anything very much, but as long the amount ingested is small enough, there’s only minimal chance of a toxic reaction. But that’s just me, and it probably sounds rather negative and even just the slightest bit bigoted – perhaps I’ve even become a bit infected with the anti-nippon attitudes prevalent in Korea.

Yes, whatever I say inevitably says more about me than it does about Japan, but then, travelers who speak about a place they’ve been to are generally speaking mostly about themselves because the true topic is not so much the place but rather one’s reactions to it. I’m not a scholar but I’m not sure the place can ever be completely grokked. I won’t pretend to completely understand Korea, but I know in my bones that it is comprehensible, that it can be done

Japan is a different planet, though, – which is not at all a bad thing, by the way -and I’ve heard this said by people who’ve lived there along time.

Hence, the fascination, undoubtedly.

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We got out of the city and into the mountains near Yefuin, a couple of hours by bus. We stayed a night in an onsshen ryokan, a small inn with public baths heated by volcanic energy from the center of the earth. We only stayed one night because, for one thing, it’s very expensive, though meals and transportation from the station are all gratis, so you don’t need to open your wallet once you get there unless you want to buy beer from the vending machines.

The other reason is that I just don’t think you need more than a day. Basically, you get in the water, sit for a while, then get out. There is soap involved before, and then after. And that’s about all there is to it, really.

As we know, Japanese people used to bathe naked in public baths with mixed genders, and for centuries they never stopped to wonder if there was something wrong about it. Then, Christians showed up and taught them shame, and wasn’t that nice of them?

I didn’t take any photos of the spa area because, well, you can’t. If I had tried I’m pretty sure it would have annoyed some people. Also, I didn’t want to get my camera wet.

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This is something I’ll remember, and I’ll tell you about it: sitting in very hot water, naked beneath the sky, cold December rain falling on my face and shoulders, steam rising around me in the brisk air of late afternoon.

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Back in the city we walked around a bit in the evening. I took this picture of a Pachinko Parlor – I walked in, and snapped the shot. Then I walked out.That’s my story, and I’m sticking to it.

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Forgot to mention sushi. I ate some. It was better than sushi I’ve had in other places. In California, I could never see why friends who liked it a lot liked it so much, as it didn’t seem to me to be any big deal – in Japan, it really isn’t a big deal, though, or at least it wasn’t at the little corner shop next to our hotel. The neguri pieces were cute and well-constructed but there was nothing at all pretentious or extravagant about the décor or the appearance of the food.It’s just what people eat here, that’s all.

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Fukuoka is not a huge city, and you can walk across it in a single afternoon. It is surprisingly cosmopolitan,and somewhat international in flavor, which largely has to do with it being a port center. Ships travel from there to Busan and back daily.

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There’s more to say about Japan and the handful of days we spent there. I saw sumo dudes on the street and one sat next to me in a bar. Godzilla was nowhere to be seen, not this time of year at least, and we were about as far from the scenes of mayhem from last March as was possible while still being in the same country. I had wanted to visit the site of the atom bomb atrocity at Nagasaki, which is nearby, but circumstances did not allow. It was a relaxing few days.

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I don’t know what the story is with these guys, but they sort of look like they have one. In truth, they might just be some young salarymen on the way to appointments – they might not even know each other – but there feels like something Tarantino-ish going on here. I’m calling this one “Reservoir Puppies.”

I took more pictures than this. Quite a lot, really. Perhaps I’ll show them here some other time. Or you can take a look at the album I’ve been putting together at my sharing site, Ipernity.