I had not expected my room to be so noisy, but it was. Up on the 13th floor it seemed all sound generated below hit the outer wall of my room like a cacophony of Babylonic horrors. Drunks screaming into the night, their ladies pulling them back into their arms, sirens and car horns, the ever-present miasma of modernity. Even my capsule back in Tokyo was more insulated from the noises generated by the largest city on earth. I did my best to sleep, but it was not to be. So much for a nice hotel room experience.
Anyways, I went down to the lobby for breakfast, found the restaurant and was promptly refused as I had not paid for a meal ticket. They told me I could pay extra, something like $20 us and I smiled one of those smiles one puts on to let the other person know violence is boiling beneath it, and checked out of the hotel with the grace of a bull leaving a China shop maze, heading straight for the nearest vending machine which was hording caffeine in all its legal forms.
Once coffee was in my system, I stopped feeling so bad and found my way to the dock where I purchased a one-way ticket to Yakushima, which was 6,000 yen, or about $40. Getting on the ferry instantly took me back to playing Pokémon as a child, since you have to board a ship and battle its many guests in order to be able to move forward. So many things in Japan remind me of that game, which is appropriate as the game was created by Japanese people, for Japanese people. Something which only becomes more obvious the more time I spend here. Not just the visuals either, but the interactions you have with all the characters.
That being said the ship actually smelled like diesel fumes which also took me back to a less than savory time in life working on my dad’s salmon troller in the Monterey bay, which, when combined with rough seas created the perfect storm of discomfort, the results of which are well known and documented in any movie about going to sea. Not only did the fumes and the ship take me back and forth in time, so too did the movie playing for our journey, which of course, had to be Back to the Future II, what a trip. I also used the time to restart Baldur’s gate, this time playing as a Mage instead of a warrior, what a difference that was, especially since I knew how to play. Such is true with all experience in life, the more you have, the less mistakes you’ll be prone to make doing the same things.
Once landing on the island though I did a 180 and fell back on old programming, refusing the ample help of people offering it to me freely and charging into the unknown with all the gusto of a fool, thereby missing the first and second bus which would have taken me right to where I wanted to go, and waiting around in the now oppressive tropical sun for a bus which would not come again for several hours, as they are timed to the coming and going of the ferry. Not only that, but the help I dismissed would have gotten me a bus pass for the duration of my stay which would have saved me a good deal of money.
So, I got some food from a tourist shop and waited at the bus stop where a Chinese man asked me where I was from.
“California.” I told him.
“America.” He said with clear disdain.
“You’re from China.” I said without asking.
“Yes. It is a wonderful place, not like your media lies about.”
“All media lies.” I told him.
He didn’t know what to say to that and got on the bus without another word. I would have joined him too, but I wasn’t sure yet, because of my earlier foolishness in refusing help, which bus to take, so I waited until a local explained it. Even then I failed in getting off the bus at the right stop and had to walk a mile or two before finding my yurt hidden behind a wall of greenery in an easily miss-able driveway alongside the road. The place reminded me of the Renoco Lodge in Peru, a place teetering on the edge of ruin, only a months of neglect away from being swallowed up by the jungle.
There I found the old man with a smartphone around his neck which when he spoke, translated into English using an eerie mechanical woman’s voice. The translation was off as well, which was made more difficult as he cleared his throat constantly and laughed at jokes which were hidden beneath the translation, and as he laughed, he coughed even harder like someone dying of emphysema or bronchitis, which, given the vaccination status of Japan as a whole, could very well be the case. His rules were strict, but manageable once I parsed through the bad translations with the laminated instructions he had nailed to the wall of the yurt. When all the niceties and such were finished, I chose the bunk I wanted, there were six of them, I had the whole yurt to myself.
The owner offered to take me to the store, as the nearest one was too far to get to by foot, and I took him up on it. While in the store he kept pointing out the best meat products to me, each of which I refused until he asked me if I was sick or something.
“I don’t eat meat.”
“Vegan?” he asked with the grace of an executioner offering his victim last words or perhaps a sip of water in the Samurai tradition. I nodded. He cleared his throat again and nodded. “Very difficult.” He said, and walked off to do his own shopping while I found what I could. As this was my first time having access to a kitchen it would be an actual exercise in pre-thought and planning which thus far had escaped me. Once at the counter he added my food to his and took my money, paying for both of us. He looked at me and said, “Local Discount.” And that was the end of it.
Next, he took me to the place I wanted to go, a bike rental shop which had both regular, electric and motorcycles available. The owner suggested the Yamaha 450 which would have been a blast, but as I had no international license that was out of the question, so I went with the mid-drive Yamaha electric bike with a range of over 110 miles on eco mode, something the bikes I rent back home aren’t nearly capable of achieving, yet... I rented the bike for 24 hours at the entirely reasonable price of $53 with a charger, something we charge $75 for back in Monterey, and rode it back to the house while the owner followed behind.
Once back at the yurt I continued my game of Zelda : A link to the past, the very first Nintendo game I ever owned on the used Gameboy my dad got me from the Swap meet in San Diego when I was like 6. I’ve gotten so much further in the game now then I ever did back then, and what strikes me so hard is just how many life lessons and insights into Japanese culture I never imagined were in the game as a child. I feel like I’m not simply reliving the past, but coming full circle with it and my future at the same time. The Matrix is truly collapsing in on itself.
Tomorrow, I wake up early and test my biking skills to the limit...
