Well, 2,000 pictures, a month and a half, and five blog posts later, I’ve finally gotten through my trip to Japan. I either need to work out a more streamlined system for publishing my pictures and stories, or I’ve got to travel less. Without further ado, here is how the last few days in Japan went down:

(Extra photos are here on Flickr, as usual)

In the comments on the last post, Leila asked me if those shiny Tachiuo fish were tasty. I am glad to report that they are. This was my breakfast the next day:

A brief explanation. One of the things that we discussed a lot while I was living with the Nakamuras was the Japanese concept of “western” food. There are some classic “western” dishes that are common all over Japan, but the thing is that they aren’t found anywhere in the west. One of them is “omurice” - a rice omelet. The only way to explain it is a thin sheet of egg wrapped around rice that has been mixed with ketchup and pieces of hot dog, with ketchup on top. I said I had never had a rice omelet, and Fumiko said she would make them for Mori and I for breakfast. As you can see, mine says Ben, and (you’re going to have to trust me on this one) Mori’s says Moriyuki - which is his full name. How was the omurice? Truth be told, it was pretty tasty. Also served for breakfast are a whole Aji - the little fish we caught, and sections of Tachiuo - see how even after it is chopped up and cooked it still shines? Nice job, fish.

It was Thursday the 18th, my ticket home was for the 20th, and as you can see, it was a beautiful day. Mori had some stuff to do that day, so we got up early to collect some Anago (sea eel) traps. Unfortunately, as we were out, the boat broke. The little 5 horsepower engine on the boat was shot - possibly the clutch, maybe the screw, but at low RPMs the engine would just quit, and if you gave it some gas, it would rev until the entire engine was rattling and shaking and making terrible noises, and the boat wouldn’t move much faster than a normal person would walk. I was in charge of driving us around as Mori worked the traps, and as you can see, I was not confident that we would get home.

That is the boat, going flat out as fast as it can go. You may notice we aren’t creating any wake at all. A rowboat goes faster than we were.

While I was trying to figure out how to put the boat into gear without stalling the engine, Mori was hauling in traps, most of which were empty, some of which had Anago in them, and one that had a little octopus in it. If I learned one thing in all my time out on the inland sea with Mori, it’s that octopuses (octopi?) are smart. They will let themselves into a trap, eat everything you’ve caught, and then go right back out the door, leaving a pile of bones and shells. This one must have been eating, because as Mori pulled it up, it was pulling itself out of the trap - but Mori grabbed it.

After the fishing in the morning, I can’t remember exactly what we did. I think Mori had to work, and I may have gone out on my own again. I only took a few pictures, and they are of hanging around in Mori’s house, so maybe I did nothing? I’m not sure.

That night though, I went to photograph Graham at his nightly Judo practice. I took a boatload of pictures, but Graham already did a post about Judo, and since he actually knows what Judo is all about, I’ll just send you over there. My pictures are the ones in the second half of the post. While we were at the gym, though (at the maritime college on the island) the Kendo team was practicing right next to us. Kendo is the Japanese sword-based martial art, and in case you didn’t know, they wear the coolest protective gear around.

I think everyone should have an outfit like this - so versatile! Especially good for walking in bad neighborhoods at night.

All the Judo team’s awards, up on the wall - there’s just something about official Japanese paperwork - they know how to do it right.

That night we had yet another delicious dinner at Mori’s house, we stayed up late watching TV and reading (or, in my case, looking at the pictures in) manga, Mori and I went out for a drive, and then I went to bed. Friday rolled around, and somehow my last full day in Japan was upon us and I had just gotten comfortable. Mori and Fumiko had no plans for the day, and Hiroko got the day off, so we looked at a map and tried to find a fun place to go and spend our last day. Over breakfast of fish, miso soup, and rice, we decided to go to Onomichi.

Onomichi is a city in eastern Hiroshima, well known for its windy paths and streets leading up a mountainside that is dotted with old houses and temples. Recently, Onomichi has fallen on hard times due to depopulation - one day while we were all watching TV, we saw a report about how Onomichi was becoming like a ghost town, with long shots of empty streets and decaying houses. This led Mori to tell me that Onomichi had become very scary, which led me to ask him if we could go. In the end we did go, piling back into my rental Demio and catching the ferry.

Team Road Trip Japan, getting started with our usual pre-trip routines: Green tea, silly stretches, and back massages. I know I said I wouldn’t go one about this any more, but look in the background - we’re just commuting, and across the calm water is some little town perched on the side of a mountainous island. I need more of that in my life. More stunning commutes on boats.

The ferry parking lanes. I kept meaning to take this picture while I was living in Japan, but I never did. Good thing I went back.

We got into Onomichi around lunch time, and the first thing I noticed was the castle. Onomichi-jo is a pretty classic feudal Japanese castle, placed up on top of a little mountain to be inaccessible to invaders and also to provide wonderful views and the like - but in Onomichi, they didn’t just let the mountain do the work, they also gave the castle the silliest foundation imaginable. Look:

Can we just talk about how that castle looks like some sort of giant mushroom? The above-ground foundation is practically as tall as the castle itself! I also kind of love how there is a hotel right next door to it. You know, it probably looked a lot less silly when there was no city crammed all around it - maybe it was up high to see over the trees. Now though - silly.

Onomichi is known for a special kind of chinese-stlye ramen, and has a few ramen shops that are famous for this ramen. On this random rainy Friday we ended up having to walk away from two different shops because the line was too long. We finally spotted another one with just a couple people in front, so we got on line. About five seconds after we did that, probably 15 business men came around the corner and got on line behind us. That’s always a good feeling.

The ramen shop was so small that if I had taken out my camera to take a picture, I probably would have been sticking it into someone else’s soup, so I refrained. It was a tiny hole-in-the-wall, a single counter with about ten seats, and an older couple behind the counter making soup after delicious soup. I just read an article last week that talked about a chef who had spent time in Japan and described Japanese food culture as the most interesting and wonderful food culture anywhere in the world. I think I agree. We eat a lot of good food in the States, no doubt, but in Japan it’s different. Food is tied to places, to seasons, to events, and the variety is almost endless. Onomichi is a two hour drive from Hiroshima city, and yet they have their own distinct type of ramen, and they have a handful of restaurants that specialize in just that, and they do it well.

After lunch: The cable car up to the top of the mountain.

Mori demonstrates what he’s going to do when he sees something amazing.

What actually happened when Mori saw something amazing.

On our way up.

I just realized that in all the pictures I picked, both for Flickr and this post, I left out all of the pictures looking back down from the top of the mountain - you’re going to have to trust me - it was a giant urban vista of a valley covered in little houses with a river running through the middle of it. It was kind of foggy out, and the pictures I have are really not terribly interesting. When we got to the top we had a choice of a number of different paths down the mountain. We ended up taking the Path of Literature.

My favorite thing about this sign is how they want to make sure that you realize that the route is not directly to the right - you’re going to have to go around something first. When you actually looked at the path though, the object you were detouring around was a stone about three feet around. Then you just go off to the right.

Mori, doing an update of the last picture in this post.

At one of the temples on the way down, Hiroko and I got fortunes. Hiroko translated mine - it told me that I would soon have some new prospects on the romance front, and that I should be honest with my parents about it, or it might blow up in my face. I decided that was all right advice, and I am following it. Still waiting for the new prospects, though. We tied our fortunes on the tree and went on down the mountain. Another thing I had always wanted to do but had never done when I was living in Japan. See how productive I was?

On the Path of Literature. These are the old narrow winding stair/streets that Onomichi is famous for.

We spent probably four or five hours in Onomichi, and then we drove home along the water. It was weird, knowing it was my last night in Japan - again. I had been through the super-traumatic leaving once already, and even though it was more than a year ago, I still remember how it felt. Getting emotionally ready to leave again was the exact same as getting ready to leave the first time, but on a smaller scale. I felt the same turmoil of emotions, the same sudden need to do and see all the things I hadn’t done yet, the same sudden thoughts of buying a house and moving to Japan. As we drove home during this beautiful sunset, I had this familiar feeling where suddenly I realize that everything was the last. The last time I took the ferry to the island. The last time I was going to have dinner with the Nakamuras, the last chance to drive recklessly around the little island roads, the last sunset seen from the dock where Mori skates. When I have that feeling, I start trying to remember everything. The way the that island looks from this road, the way the air smells, the sound of the ferry bumping up against the dock. The smell of Mori’s Mild Seven cigarettes. Everything takes on this added nostalgic value, just because I know that in a few hours it will all be far away and soon forgotten. It’s never an easy feeling, but in some ways I think it is a good thing. When I go through all that, I know that I’ve got a real connection to the island and to my friends. I know that it’s more than just a vacation, and that is a comfort. I know that I’ll be back.

Hiroko and I riding the ferry. I have such love for the ferry, god knows why. It’s a slow boat that adds a half hour to your trip every time, but there’s just something about taking the ferry that I love.

We had another great dinner of shabu shabu (anothing thing that I had never tried while I lived in Japan - check.) and everyone was kind of quiet after dinner. I didn’t know what was going on, if I had done something wrong, or worse, forgotten to do something right, but Mori and I went out for a long drive after dinner and he said everyone was just a little sad that I was going home, thinking about my time staying with them, about the wedding and all the stuff we had done. I guess that my leaving was sort of the final part of the wedding celebration being over. Once I went home it was back to business as usual. It was really great to go out for that drive with Mori on that last night. We talked about everything - something that is not always easy to do when a close friend gets married - I love hanging out with Mori and Fumiko, but it’s certainly different than hanging out and talking with just Mori. It was a little sad and mostly nice, a reminder of how good a friend he really is. When I first met him in August of 2005 he was single, and I remember him coming over to my house in October and telling me that he had met a really cute girl in Hiroshima, and that he would like her to be his girlfriend. It’s a good feeling to see something like that work out in the end, and when we got back to his house and stretched out on the floor in his new house with Fumiko relaxing and watching TV, I couldn’t be happier for them. We said good night, and I got into my extremely comfy futon for the last night.

The next morning, getting ready to go, my mother’s wedding present hanging on the wall.

And then before I knew it, I was on my way to the ferry port, the same old emotions fighting for attention. The fifteen minute wait for the ferry felt like all of about twenty seconds, and then I was rolling onto the boat and watching Mori and Fumiko recede into the distance for the second time.

(They are on the left, standing in front of that white building)

Leaving on the ferry this time was different this time. Last time all I could think as the boat pulled away was that I would never be able to really go back. I was leaving a life where I had my own house, a car and a scooter, a job, friends - and the only thing I could think was that if I ever went back, I could visit, but I could never have the life back. What I realized this time was that while I might not be able to move back into the apartment where I used to live, the Nakamuras will always be welcoming and kind, and that if I ever do want to go back and do the things I love and see the people I miss, for as long as I want, I can. That totally changed how I felt as the island slipped away. The last time I was inconsolable, this time I was just a little sad, and looking forward to going back. Of course, now, as I think about leaving, I am getting sad. Way to go, Ben.

A last drive out through Takehara.

The Shinkansen (cool as ever) from Hiroshima to Tokyo.

And then before I know it, winging it out over the evening skies of Japan.

. . . and 15 hours later, coming in over good old Manhattan.

Well, I hope you enjoyed my little regression into photographing and blogging about Japan. I know I did. Now I’ve got to catch up on some silly things I’ve been doing in Brooklyn, but really how do you follow a five-post epic full of beautiful photos and intense emotion? I guess you follow it with whatever came next.

I’m going to try to keep this on the briefer side of things, only because it’s late and I have a lot of pictures to post. It’s funny, posting about a trip that is quickly fading into the past. When I wrote the first entry, I still remembered every little detail about the couple weeks I had in Japan, but already in a month it has become a bit more jumbled and I need to look at the pictures to remember where I was, what was happening, and how I felt. Someone once asked me how I could remember where I had been and what I had done if I never wrote anything down. At the time I thought about it and decided I would start writing, but then I realized that for me, my pictures are my notes. I don’t take a thousand pictures a week because I want to show everyone a thousand pictures - I take the pictures like someone with a notebook would take notes. Then I take all my notes and edit them for content, length, and interest, and publish them. It’s a process that is pretty similar to writing, actually. The nice thing is that when I want to, I can go back to every picture I’ve taken and go through them one by one. I’ve got about 15 pictures that I took while I was fishing in this post, but I’ve got about three hundred more that I’m not showing anyone - they are definitely not all good pictures, but if I go through them, in a matter of minutes I am transported back to the day, the place, and the feelings I had. The fact that I rely on the pictures so much to remember things worries me sometimes - I don’t know what I would do if I lost my photos.

Last time I posted I wrote about how I was nervous to actually live with a Japanese family. As I mentioned it was no big deal in the end, but living is a hard thing to capture in pictures. I kind of love the Nakamura house though, because it is so Japanese without being typically Japanese at all. There is none of the spare elegant minimalism that most people think of when they think of Japanese aesthetics. The floor is covered in carpets and there are pictures and newspaper clippings stuck on every flat surface. There is a kitchen table and chairs (none of which are ever used), and there is the beautiful low wood table in the TV room where everything happens. If someone is home in the Nakamura house, there is a very good chance that they are sitting around this table, watching TV, reading, sleeping, or planning what to do next. When I live on Osakikamijima I spent a lot of time around this table, and it was truly wonderful to do that once again. See? When I started writing this, I wasn’t having any of those feelings. But while I’ve been writing, I flipped back to my pictures and looked at a bunch of pictures of us sitting around, eating meals, and just relaxing late at night - and boom, in my mind I am back there, petting the dogs and squinting because I’m trying so hard to understand the Japanese talk show on TV.

One of the first things I did in the days after we went to Naoshima was take the car for a day and go to Takehara. Every single time I drove through Takehara, I would pass this ancient abandoned shrine, and when I went back to New York, as I drove past it on the way to the airport, I felt stupid and guilty for never having taken the 40 minutes it would have taken me to get there. As soon as I was back and had some time to kill, I went straight to the temple.

Truth be told, it was the wrong time of day to photograph it, and the pictures didn’t come out very well. It was this temple built out of wood in the 1500s, and then destroyed by floods and torrential rains in the 1920s, and it had been left to decay naturally. Because the building was built in the traditional Japanese way, there are no nails or screws holding it together, and the years and the weather are slowly causing the building to shake itself apart. One building has collapsed completely, the other ones are starting to be worn down. My favorite bit was the ceiling in the top picture - the panels have been slowly falling out, making this great texture.

The stone basin for water has gotten completely covered in moss, but it is still is full of dark clear water.

Hmm. I was just looking over the photos I just uploaded to Flickr as a supplement to this post, and I realize I like a few of the temple more than I like the ones I chose for the blog. In an unprecedented move, I am bringing this one over from Flickr, because in retrospect it is my favorite picture from the shrine.

Here are a few more photos you can check out.

Being in Takehara, after I had thoroughly explored the shrine, I went to see the neighborhood of old buildings that haven’t been destroyed by floods. I had been in Takehara countless times, but I had only seen that area once or twice, another thing I regretted when I left last time. In a lot of ways I felt like I was making right the few wrongs about my time in Japan when I lived there.

Just some old house. I wouldn’t mind having this place as a little pied à terre in Japan.

This was a cool little thing - it was in a bamboo garden, and there was a little sign that pointed into a door and said “viewing area.” Inside was a smooth wood platform - you would take off your shoes and sit cross-legged on it - and enjoy this perfectly balanced little vista. The old wall with the perfectly aged wood, the stone arrangement, the sun coming in from the top, the roof tiles - it’s a little living picture that you can just sit and enjoy. It would be different in the spring or the winter, in the morning, at night, in the pouring rain or in the snow. Frankly, I love the idea of having a little view like this that is built expressly for aesthetic pleasure.

Now that I am looking at the pictures and remembering the day, I remember that this day was a scheduling disaster, with two full ferries, a closed restaurant, a missed connection with a friend, and cultural confusion at a gas station that changed from full service to self service while I was away. (Self service in Japan requires what seems to be an extensive questionnaire about your driving history, what type of gas you prefer, how much you’d like to spend, and probably some stuff about your blood type and annual income to be entered in on a touch screen before the gas starts pumping. After trying three times to press the buttons that make the gas come out, I fetched a gentleman and said “excuse me, but I can’t read.”)

The day after the (mis)adventures in Takehara, Mori, Koichi, and I went fishing. We had already been out on Mori’s boat, but because I was visiting all the way from New York, we had something special in store. We were going out on a big time charter boat, jigging for tuna in deep water. In the year I had been gone, Mori had become good friends with the boat’s captain, who we all referred to as I-san (pronounced “ee-san”) or Captain I. Apparently I-san was the first guy to ever try jigging in the inland sea, and for years he did it while getting very little attention and not much business, slowly mapping out what spots were good and what spots weren’t. Now slowly he has built up a name for himself over the last 12 years, and his boat is covered in sponsor’s decals. He does a bustling business with charters and knows every single rock and ledge along the bottom of certain areas of the inland sea. Normally he doesn’t go out with less than ten customers on board, but he took just the three of us out as an extremely friendly gesture.

His main boat, the Aki III - if you want to go Jigging in Japan, look this guy up - here is his website.

Mori and I-san, plus sponsor’s logos.

The first spot we tried was an extremely deep area where we were looking for tuna - they are not easy to catch, and after about an hour with no bites, we scaled down our expectations. (I was kind of disappointed, Mori had sent me the link to I-san’s homepage, and I had been looking at pictures like these.) We went closer to land and fished for Aji - a small but delicious fish that I had caught before - and immediately, they started biting. They are a pretty weak fish, and they don’t put up much fight. In fact, you have to reel them up gently, because their mouths are so soft that a firm yank will just rip the mouth off and you lose your fish. We were having a contest to see who could catch more, and then suddenly my rod bent double and the line started zipping out of the reel - not sure what was going on, I suddenly found myself in a real fight with a fish. It was light tackle and my drag was loose, but I was certainly not bringing in an Aji. As it came up over about five minutes, everyone came over to see what it was. It turned out I had hooked a Saba - a kind of mackerel. They are shaped like miniature tuna and are fast and strong. It was still the morning, and things were looking up.

Ok, fine, it doesn’t look very big - but it fought hard! That’s I-san on the right.

Lunch on the Aki III - Onigiri, fried chicken, and Aquarius. It doesn’t get much better than that. Mori is making a note of (with I-san’s permission) the spot where we caught all the fish - so he can come back with his customers.

After lunch we moved to a new spot for a new type of fish - tachiuo which literally means “sword fish” but translates to English as Cutlass Fish. We were not the only people looking to catch a few tachiuo, and so we found a spot among the other boats. We ended up next to this guy who did not seem to appreciate us with our giant boat, fancy jigging gear, and dozen or so fishing rods.

Tachiuo is traditionally caught handlining with bait. Because I-san is a big proponent of jigging, that is what we were doing - and for what it’s worth, we were pulling up a lot more fish than the guys who were handlining.

I talked about how much I like being on the water in my last post - for me, this pictures captures a little part of what it is that I like so much about being out on a boat in Japan.

We got down to the business of jigging, and soon we were hooking fish! Tachiuo don’t fight very hard, but they do put up some decent resistance and a few strong runs. They are long and flat, so it’s easy to get them pointed upwards and just slip them through the water. Here Mori is getting a bite.

I’ve got a good one!

Isn’t this just one of those pictures that makes you feel good? Actually, it probably only makes me, Mori, and I-san feel good. But that’s enough for me. Things to note: Tachiuo are almost chrome-like in their shininess - look at how mori’s fish is reflecting the sky and the pink lure. Secondly - they don’t have any tails! Just a little point. Weird. Finally - look at the way Mori’s fish is wriggling its fin. They all did that when you pulled them out of the water, and it looked really cool. I guess that’s probably their main source of propulsion.

Koichi catches one - Tachiuo have pretty mean looking faces. I think I can see myself reflected in that fish. That’s a first.

We kept reeling in the fish for who knows how long - three or four hours until the sun started setting. With the sun at our backs we headed to Takehara to gas up the boat. The ride from Osakikamijima to Takehara takes 30 minutes on the ferry, and ten minutes on the fast ferry. On the Aki III it took about four minutes.

Zooming to Takehara.

Aki III, waiting for the gas truck after an excellent day of fishing. We probably caught about fifty or sixty fish all told.

Heading back to the island for dinner and bed.

A few nights earlier, Mori and I went out for a little bit of night fishing. It was my first time back out fishing in Japan, and as we motored out of the dock and under the bridge, weaving between the little rocky islands that we used to dive around, Mori looked at me and said “So, Ben, how is it? How is being back out on the inland sea in Japan again?”

I thought about it, and waited for the wave on nostalgia and emotion to sweep over me, but it didn’t come. At first I was worried that something was wrong, that somehow my memories had fooled me, but since then I’ve thought about that moment when I waited for the rush of emotions and they never came, and I think I’ve figured it out. When I got back on that boat and untied the front and pushed off, it was like I hadn’t been gone a whole year. The memories of fishing and boating with Mori in the inland sea have become such an major part of my life that a year did very little to diminish them. When we got back on the boat and headed out of the harbor, it felt like we hadn’t gone fishing in a few weeks, and so of course we were out fishing together. There was nothing to come flooding back because it had never gone away.

That is even better than a wave of nostalgia and emotion.

(Extra photos here)

(Don’t forget the extra photos on Flickr!)

Mori’s wedding took place on a Saturday, and after our marathon night and three hours of sleep in a hotel in Hiroshima I got back into the car with Mori’s parents and Hiroko. We dropped Saori and Naoki off at the station and bus center, because both of them had to be back at school on Monday. The rest of that day is pretty much a blur. We drove back, picked up the dogs, stopped for food at a department store in Kure, and then got back to the island. I went back to Graham’s house and spent a little time there gathering up my stuff and then I moved over to the Nakamura’s house. This is actually a big deal, because no matter how many times I went fishing with Mori or had dinner with his family, I had never spent the night there. As a matter of fact, I never lived with a Japanese family. For all the time I spent in Japan, I only ever stayed with other foreigners, or in hotels. The one time I slept over at Mori’s friend’s apartment in Hiroshima could hardly be described as typically Japanese (we watched the Narnia DVD, drank beers, and then fell asleep) - so this was a new thing, and I was kind of nervous. Of course there was no reason to be, and everything was great. It was interesting though, you learn all kinds of things you didn’t know about Japan. For example, towels: In Japan, you use a bath towel once, and then you wash it. Mori’s mother and I had a pretty funny conversation about this in an odd mix of Japanese and English.

Mori’s Mother: Here is a towel for your shower.
Me: Oh, no thank you, I can use the one you gave me yesterday.
Mother: No no! A new towel every day. That is the Japanese style.
Me: Really? In America, we usually use a towel for a week or so before washing it.
Mother: (shocked) Do you also wear the same underwear for a week too before changing it?
Me: No, underwear we change every day. Towels and underwear are different for us.
Mother: (great relief) Oh, ok. Here is a new towel. Throw it in the laundry basket after you dry off.

Fascinating!

Anyway, Mori and Fumiko got back to the island later that day and we had a sleepy dinner together around the table, and everyone was in bed by ten. Hiroko had a third day off from her job on Monday, so we decided that the four of us (Mori, Fumiko, Hiroko, and I) would take a trip somewhere. We tried to decide where to go, and after much deliberation we decided to go to Naoshima, a little island in Okayama, the next prefecture east of Hiroshima. We decided to take my little rental Mazda Demio, and so on Monday morning, we set off across Japan.

I was totally worried that I would have big problems getting used to driving on the right side of the car again, but it took me all of about 10 minutes to get used to it. I used to drive every day when I lived there, so I guess there’s a part of my mind that can just switch back and forth into the two different modes. This is Mori’s picture, taken on his new Nikon SLR - so thank you, Mori.

It was really nice being out on the road, just the four of us. It felt like a pretty classic road trip (despite being only about four hours each way) - sometimes we talked, sometimes we just rode and looked out the window, someone would say something funny and the entire car would be in hysterics for a few minutes. We stopped at a rest area and ate all manner of junk food. We came over a mountain and into a beautiful golden field that went on for miles in every direction. I made a last minute turn into a little gravel lot so that we could get out and enjoy the view.

Mori was sleeping in the car - what a shocker.

Is it just me, or is Japan a surprisingly beautiful place? When I was back in New York, I always remembered Japan as being a gorgeous place, and somewhere in the back of my head there was a voice saying “you are only remembering the good things. Japan has beautiful parts and crappy parts, just like anywhere else in the world” - and then I got to Japan, and try as I might (except for Sunshine City) I couldn’t find the crappy parts. There’s something about that place. It’s just gorgeous.

Being a tiny island, Naoshima doesn’t have any bridges going to it, so we had to take a ferry from a small city by the name of Uno. We had an hour to kill before the next ferry when we got to the harbor, so we decided to take a walk to see what we could find. Uno was a ghost town, a perfect example of why rural Japan is in crisis as the population collapses. On a Monday afternoon nearly every shop was closed down the covered shopping street. We saw an old rusty sign for a fishing shop, and so Mori and I went to check it out - it looked like the door hadn’t been opened in years, the rods and lures still in the store were all covered in dust.

That said, we did find a store called “Mori” and so obviously we took this picture:

That says “Mori.” I swear.

Discovering that Uno was dead and somewhat depressing, we ended up just walking around on the enormous ferry dock for about 45 minutes. Giant concrete ferry docks are nice to photograph on.

These were serious ferries - three stories, announcements in Japanese AND English, and they were fast!

Mori, giant “seto” ferry, new shoes.

Even thought we were an hour early, we still managed to dick around enough that we got back to the ferry with just a couple minutes to go, and that was actually pretty bad because my little car was parked at the front of the line of cars waiting to get on the boat. We apologized and zoomed onto the boat.

What a cool enormous crane! I’ll take two.

It was kind of funny to be out with Mori and Fumiko that day, seeing as they had just gotten married - it kind of felt like Hiroko and I were along for their honeymoon. They seemed happy to have us along though, and I was glad to be there.

Sometimes, during my commute here, when I am squeezing onto a crowded dirty train, or navigating through traffic on my bike, I wonder why I ever left the inland sea. Around this part of Japan, you spend a lot of time on boats of all sizes, and there’s something wonderful about that. Some people don’t get it - they hate the boats because they are slow or not state-of-the-art, but that’s kind of the point of boats. You can’t make a boat go faster, if your ferry ride is an hour, you can be frustrated, or you can enjoy the boat ride for what it is. I never got tired of the ferry ride to and from Osakikamijima, and I always liked going to new places that were only accessible by ferry. There’s always something new to see on the water, even if it’s just a strong tide or new wind. The water is never the same twice, and sometimes, when my subway is stuck somewhere four stories underground, I wonder what the water would be like if I were out on it.

Naoshima is about a third of the size of Osakikamijima, but it has made a name for itself in the arts. It has two contemporary art museums housing some pretty serious work (one of the museums has five of Monet’s Water Lillies), and a bunch of projects in architecture and the arts that are ongoing in the towns. One of the museums is built underground in a mountaintop, but, geniuses that we were, we went on a Monday, and it turns out that even in Japan museums are closed on Monday, so no underground museum for us. Luckily the other one, the Benesse Art House was open, and turned out to be… well, it was a museum.

The building was spectacular, in a very spare minimalist style. The architect was Tadao Ando, and from what I’ve seen after Naoshima, that is basically his calling card. The art within this great building was the most boring and conservative collection of contemporary art I have seen in a long time - and the guards told us it was forbidden to take pictures in the building. This was clearly ridiculous, because why shouldn’t you take pictures of a beautiful building that you are looking at? We made it a game, we would hide from the guards and take pictures, sometimes posting lookouts to see if they were coming. In retrospect, we were all having such a good time just being together and being out in the world that there isn’t much that could have happened to ruin our day. We went to the cafe, where a tiny coke was 500 yen (about $5), and a coffee was 800, and we ordered our drinks and then tried to calculate the cost of each sip. A really fantastic day.

A Bruce Naumann sculpture in the central atrium of the Benesse museum.

Mori and Fumiko in the same room - if you clapped in this room, the echo would go on for ten seconds. And then a guard would be in to hush you.

We wandered the museum for an hour or so, (more pictures from there on Flickr) and then the evening was coming on and we needed to start heading back so we didn’t miss the last ferry back to Osaki. It had gotten kind of cloudy in the evening, and we started walking back to the car. On the way we passed a couple of those mirrors they have to help you see around blind corners.

I got three views in one!

It’s funny actually - I think this is the only Japanese sunset I photographed while I was in Japan. For those of you who read the old blog, you will know that is crazy. I saw a bunch of them, but I only took this picture:

(More talking about beauty, about the water, sunset, etc. You fill in the blank.)

Naoshima must have some industry along with the art museums, because as we left, we were the only passenger car - every other vehicle on the ferry was a work truck. We got onto the ferry and sat in the warm car and nobody said much of anything. We just sat in quiet contentedness.

Or contented sleepiness, depending on who you’re talking about.

It’s kind of hard to write about this - not because of any strong emotion, but because how do you write about a really excellent day that isn’t excellent because amazing things happened, it’s just excellent because of who you spent it with? Driving four hours to a museum on an island doesn’t sound like the best day ever, but it really really was. Sitting in my apartment in Brooklyn, writing this, when I try to come up with concrete things to write about that day, I don’t come up with much, other than a list of what we did. But when I remember how I felt that day - it was sublime. So if the pictures and words don’t quite capture it, it’s not for lack of trying. To say we drove home and went to bed doesn’t convey much, but driving on the dark highway, eating up the kilometers back to Takehara, I was really happy. Happier than I have been in a while.

It’s dangerous, actually, being that happy. Because then you leave the people and places that make you feel that way, and you come back down to reality, and you resent reality for not being as good as you know it could be.