I'll sweep the garden
Before I leave- in the temple
The willow-leaves fall.

The next day I got up and made pancakes. Justin got up too, and we were ready to start the long drive home. We drove down the Axe handle or Aomori prefecture and decided to stop at a recommended restaurant from our Touring map book. It was a Japanese food restaurant that served all kinds of delicious seafood, especially seafood on rice. The huge crowds of Japanese visitors to this little place in the middle of nowhere convinced us quickly that it was a winner. We walked past the first room with bar seating, where gnarled Japanese men, looking just back from a fishing trip, sat at the bar and slurped noodles and ate sashimi. We were led to a back room, with tatami mat and low tables. We took off our shoes and were taken to a table by the window.

Justin had a bread crumb battered fish on rice with accompanying pickles. I ordered Ika (squid ) which turned out to be sashimi, raw, instead of grilled as I had hoped. But luckily I also ordered a delicious meal with a scallop shell filled with fresh seafood simmered in a miso broth, with sides of rice and miso. It was all so fresh and delicious! The raw squid was perfectly fresh and tasty, for what it was- but I don't especially like the slippery, chewy texture of raw squid, so we didn't eat all of it. The meals though, were extraordinarily delicious. I was amazed with my seafood dish- it had all my favorite things, including fresh scallops and simmered squid. We left feeling very full and happily well fed, and as though we'd stumbled onto a very special, very authentically Japanese gourmet experience.

The only thing was- to be perfectly honest, we felt downright filthy. We hadn't had access to a shower at our campground, and the last time we had any kind of bath was at the sulfuric open air hot springs. We kept sniffing and worrying that we didn't smell too pretty- my jacket was saturated with the smell of woodsmoke, and we were feeling desperate. So, we decided to steel ourselves for a real cultural experience, and try going to a public bath/ onsen. We saw one on our touring map, and since we'd had such a great experience at the recommended restaurant, we thought we'd try a highly recommended public bath. We pulled in, and I almost decided to stay in the car. It looked like an ugly, rather rundown 1970s style school building. I wasn't too sure about the whole public bath thing anyway, and I had been hoping for something that looked new, modern, and very very clean. Instead, there was this place. The parking lot was packed with cars though, and we really were very grubby.

We grabbed our towels and bath soaps and went in. No one was at the counter, but we saw an automatic ticket vending machine. It only cost 120 yen per adult for a ticket! A grizzly old man bought his ticket and went in to the men's curtain. We looked at each other, and bought our tickets. We waved goodbye, and separated, going into our gendered changing rooms. I walked in and there were about twelve old Japanese ladies sitting on benches, chatting and gossiping with each other- most of them naked. I felt like everyone was staring at me, possibly hostilely, but I squared my jaw, and went over to the shelves where clothing was put. I started to put my things on a shelf. It was surrounded by baskets, but I was too nervous to find one myself. An old grandmother leaned down to me and said, very kindly, in Japanese, 'Here, take one of these baskets,'giving me one before she left. I thanked her and changed out of my clothes, and wrapped a towel around myself.

I walked into the bathing room, and went against the wall to one of the shower heads, propped halfway up the wall. I sat down on one of the wooden stools and proceeded to take an awkward shower, periodically filling a wooden bucket with water from the water faucet beneath the shower head, and dumping it over my head. Other women were lined up against the walls, bathing before they got into the large, hot bathing pools. There was a small square bath in the floor to my right, that made me think of a roman bath, like there should have been a Grecian statue above it. The place felt worn, and well used, but the water was silky and smooth, strangely so. Behind me there were baths- varying shallow rectangular pools. There was an old lady in one of the rectangular pools, turning over and over in the water like a salmon swimming upstream. It felt so good to get clean. After my thorough shower, I went and wrapped my towel around me and sat with my legs in the small square pool. It was so hot, and revitalizing.

Finally, I was ready to get out of there- it had been a lot of pressure, being the surrounded by old timers, all wondering what I was doing there. I went back into the ladies dressing room, a room full of half dressed and undressed old ladies, still gossiping and chatting with each other. I scurried to get dressed and left the room, feeling relief at making my escape. I sat on one of the long, low benches and stared at the tv with a farm lady in apron and bonnet who was also waiting. Finally, I got bored and wandered to the door when I saw a white, long haired cat out there. I followed the cat and was trying to say hi to it in Japanese when I noticed it was missing a big chunk of hair on its neck. Uncomfortable at seeing another neglected pet, I went back inside to wait for Justin. He came out at last and we were back on the road. Apparently the old men on his side were the jovial, welcoming type, and had welcomed him cheerfully.

Then we got on the highway, drove and drove etc. for 500 miles until we couldn't drive any further. We finally stopped at Iwaki, where we tried to chase down a love hotel to stay at. Unfortunately we'd waited a little too long and the overnight stay hours had begun- so a lot of places were full, including one hotel where they're always celebrating Christmas, with twinkle lights, Christmas trees and santa's elves… At last we found space at a reasonably bright and shiny place called Hotel Dolphin. Our room was decorated like a perfect little fantasy house, with homey clocks, rugs, flowered curtains, and anything else to give the illusion of a home sweet home. It was cute, and clean, but we were a little grumpy when we realized they had an additional charge because it was the obon holiday week- of course, we couldn't tell until we got in the room and the door basically locked behind us.

Aug 18th That morning, I got up, and took a bath in the jaccuzi. We drove past the train station and saw a cute coffee shop, and decided to stop for our last stop of the trip. It felt like stopping at somebody's grandparents house, in some little rural town in middle America, with wooden tables and placemats, and a little old couple running the place. It was a little dusty, but felt homey, and we took a seat by the window, in little trellised chairs. We were the only visitors in the place, and when we ordered they went straight to their kitchen and prepared it like we were guests in their house. They made us delicious cappuccino with what tasted like whole milk, served in little china tea cups on a saucer. Justin ordered a morning set of impossibly thick (5 inch tall) Japanese toast. I had some truly fresh squeezed orange juice. As we checked out, the grandmother hostess complimented me on my 'suteki' skirt- Beaming, as she said goodbye to us. Sometimes, it's so nice to feel welcomed. Such a small thing, kindness to strangers, but it can mean so much and leave such a lasting impression.

We got back in the car and I read the last of our Basho book to Justin. Before too long, we were home at last, among our familiar things. I ran to check on Scampers, my little white and gray dwarf hamster, and found her sleeping solidly in her cage, looking fatter and quite a lot whiter. Apparently during the trip she had shed her dark grey fur and 'silvered' into her adult female coloring. Except for her small transformation, everything was the same, and it was good to be home.

The only thing that had changed, was our view of Japan. Before this trip, Japan was a few limited points on a map- a series of connecting train stations that led to big city Tokyo, the Cultural bastion that is Kyoto, the traditions of Nara- but now, we had driven from our home in Chiba all the way to the very top of the island. All the places in between were now real to us. We saw the countryside, the coast, the fishing villages where no one usually goes on purpose. It was beautiful. All through our trip we felt like we were seeing not only Japan, but places that reminded us of places at home in America. We thought, some things just happen, when modern people live in a place- they have restaurants, and strip malls, and car lots- it's not always interesting, but it's just how people live, in the urban landscape. And then, in some places, it wasn't like anywhere we'd ever been or imagined, before.

When we told our Japanese co-workers we planned to go to the Tohoku prefecture during summer vacation, they looked at us blankly, blinked a little, and said, 'Oh, Aomori city?' Aomori city is the main city in Tohoku- the last main stop on the train line. We didn't care if we went to Aomori- it was just another city to us, but because it was the only place most of them would consider going as a tourist destination (on the train, of course), we would nod, and say, 'oh, sure, Aomori… and other places. To see the countryside.'

When we came back and I showed him pictures of our trip, a teacher asked me, "So, who decided to go to Osore-zan (fear mountain) in Tohoku?' I took him literally and answered, 'Oh, well, I thought it would be interesting, but Justin planned most of the trip.' Another teacher broke in laughing, saying, 'He means, WHY did you decide to go there?' I said, 'Oh… well…' And the first teacher said, 'Yes, foreigners don't usually go to such places. They usually go to Kyoto, or Nara.' [Implying, of course, that they don't go to remote mountains in the countryside.] I looked at him, and didn't know what to say.

How can I say, I've been to Kyoto. I've been to Nara, several times. I thought they were beautiful, but I also thought they were the traditional public face of Japan- designed and cultivated as THE cultural experience of Japan for both foreign and native tourists. We plan on living here for two years- to live here for this long, I want to get more from our experience than just what I'm expected to see, what I'm presented with as a foreigner, as a tourist. I want to see rural life, watch Japanese grandmothers walking by in their aprons and sun bonnets from one backbreaking farming task to the next. I want to see festivals that aren't designed to impress and gather huge crowds of strangers from all over Japan. I want to see mountains, and valleys, and rivers- that may not have the monumental force of Fuji-san, but are beautiful for their very privacy. I want to see the rice fields of Tono against the beautiful blue of the farmhouses, and watch Japanese tourists in sportscars fighting to pass a stubborn grandpa on a tractor on the street. On this trip, I wanted to see these things for myself, on an adventure that showed me all these things and more. Our trip to Tohoku was about finding Japan for ourselves, and maybe getting back a little of ourselves and our independence in the process.

But, I couldn't say all these things to my friend, to this teacher who wanted to know why a foreigner, a tourist to him, would want to see a remote mountain famous in Japanese folk history. Instead I smiled, not wanting to hurt his feelings, and said, "Well, we'll be here for two years… We wanted to see the countryside too." And he smiled, and looked at me quizzically, and looked at the photographs again. "Such beautiful photographs," he said, and for a moment, I thought maybe he understand me a little bit after all.

In the end, maybe what we got out of it was best said by Basho, hundreds of years ago, about his own trip to the deep south.
"Time passes and the world changes. The remains of the past are shrouded in uncertainty. And yet, here before my eyes was a monument which none would deny had lasted a thousand years. I felt as though I were looking into the minds of the men of old. "This," I thought, "is one of the pleasures of travel and of living to be old." I forgot the weariness of my journey and was moved to tears by my joy." Basho, p. 75