Tokyo Road Journals – Part One

11am
I examine the contents of my red ROGERS pack, one more prize in a slew of winnings incurred at the end of my tenure with the video store. As far as bags to cart along my road possessions, it would be all I was bringing along on what I believe will be my last touring extravaganza of this country I have now called home for over half a year. Inside the bag were two pairs of shorts, my dying beige cords, two pairs of socks, both long and short underwear, two shirts in addition to the famed Megan Shirt and a long sleeve sweater. Along with the clothing was packed my travel guide, a translation book, some reading material, two decks of playing cards and, of course, the camera. Online I get the weather reports and once again look over the specs of the mountain I’d be hiking up in two more days. Already my legs were crying and I hadn’t made a single step towards Tokyo or Fuji.

6pm
Another train heading into Osaka. This is becoming a familiar scene. In front of me a middle aged man with salt and pepper hair is using the train rings above to perform some strange gymnastic routine. Has Japan created a new Olympic event involving trains and rings or is this man simply finding a peculiar way to stretch after a long day at the office? His grunts and amazing ring poise go seemingly unnoticed by the other’s on the train. Is this a such a normal occurrence that what I find odd is blocked out by the Japanese or is this man really the ghost of a dead gymnast, killed after a night of too much sake by an oncoming train barreling down the tracks he opted to pass out onto? I choose to ignore him as well sticking my nose into The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, my second go ‘round of this famous Canadian work of fiction. For the most part my final day of lessons before a week off went swimmingly. This is my second heaviest load on my schedule but looking onward to the vacation was a good motivator. The only noteworthy incident would occur in the last lesson and would involve one of the Weird Sisters. The Weird Sisters have been awarded this title due to their constant mood swings. The first time I met them they were in tears, wailing and screaming and doing whatever they could to not get shoved into my classroom by their weary mother. These tears soon turned into rage and the Weird Sisters were tossing their shoes, blocks and anything else that wasn’t nailed down at me. I tell you, sometimes I need one of those war trenches and a couple dozen sandbags when I’m with these kids. Then they are all smiles and laughter and then suddenly, with no warning, they become that kid from The Grudge…complete with the cat noises! They also refer to themselves in the third person as though there were some pint sized Japanese Bob Doles. The Weird Sisters would come to warm to me when I brought a puppet into class. This would last only a few moments before they were trying to decapitate the fluffy prop. I never know what mood I am going to get when it comes to them. Today, as it usually the case, they were late. At the door they looked jovial, carrying with them some origami that would never leave them all class. I notice the smaller of the two had two perfectly square bandages on the exact same spots on both legs. That must have been a hell of a dive, I thought, and began the lesson with our usually song and dance routine. The mood of the Weird Sisters shifted at the half hour mark when they decided that the classroom was no longer a classroom but as now a race track. The girls raced around the room in opposite circles narrowly avoiding an Earnhardt-like collision. The Weird Sisters are also deaf. They act that way, at least. All words slip through one ear, rattle about for a few seconds and are out the other to enjoy a Lumberjack Slam at the closest Denny’s. Damn fine breakfast because the words never return, the girls never hear them and thus continue their destructive rampage. The bandaged leg sister figured that those pesky bandages were hindering her velocity and so she tore off both bandages. I don’t claim to understand the inner workings of a child and so I cannot offer any viable explanation on why this girl decided that an impromptu Show and Tell with her bandages and wounds as a centerpiece would be a good addition to my trying to teach the ABCs. The bandages had been covering not what I thought would be some scraps due to a lost battle with a sidewalk but two square cuts, each nearly exactly the same size. Was this child being subject to science experiments by her down on their luck parents? Odd, just odd. The wounds were oozing pus and other sticky juice. The other students were fascinated by these disgusting soars while I had to struggle to keep myself from releasing my lunch noodles and tea onto the carpet. Perhaps sensing my less then enthusiastic interest in her square leg cuts the girl shoved the bandages, damp and stained, at my face. My reflexes are less then cat like but I have my moments and this moment avoided getting my face smeared with leg wound juice. To the disliking of the other students I grabbed the first aid kit and using all we had, medium sized Band-Aids (or adhesive strips if you want to get all brand savvy on me) I redressed her wounds. Each cut required four bandages and each made a squishing sound when they were applied. I would have lost it if there had been any squirting. Yup, I am not suited for the medical profession. A few more songs, some dancing and two games later and the last lesson ended. I quickly cleaned the classroom, locked up and headed across the street for some road fuel. Coffee, wonderful cold bottled Blendy coffee. I may miss this stuff just as much as I currently miss a nice hot cup of Bridgehead. At the counter the young clerk gave me a beaming smile. Wait? Was there more to that smile then simply a customer/clerk greeting? I’m no expert on reading the flirtatious facial expressions of women (I’m more suited on reading the flirtatious facial expressions of llamas), usually I just believe the gal has gas induced by an overindulgence of Mexican, but that looked all but screamed “Take me away from this counter. Take me out to diner. Take me dancing. Take me anywhere but just take me!” I’d spoken, and by spoken I mean the few Japanese words that I know, to this girl before and will usually head towards her register not only because she is a stunning piece of work but also because she is the only clerk in this grocery store who aspires for some banter. The other cashiers are elderly and hardly offer me a glance but this girl always has a smile, words that I wish I understood and a twinkle in her eye that rivaled Sirius. My mind flashes over various lust filled scenarios between Japanese Grocery Clerk Girl and Myself. Together we would travel this great land. She’d tell me of her culture, she’d teach me how to properly hold my chopsticks, she’d tell me what the talking vending machines are saying, translate the singing garbage cans and at night her bright kimono would slip to the floor and…and…and all scenarios lead to me and a plan back to Canada and two hearts breaking even given no real chance with an ocean dividing them. Having already lived such an experience twice I decided the best course of action here would be to return the pleasant smile, pay for my coffee and leave. Besides, I was probably misreading that look. I bet the gal had gas induced by an overindulgence of Mexican. The train reaches Osaka station. I look up and the train ring gymnast is gone. Discovering the success of failure of young Mr. Kravitz will have to wait. The doors open and into the crowd I’ll vanish.

9pm
Osaka Station is as busy as it always is, even more this Saturday night with the weekend club going crowds heading for the dance floors of Namba to fill their guts with liquor and to fill their heads with bass pounding techno grooves. I have lamented about the design of this station before but now having been here a few times I can quickly navigate myself to the bus terminal. The station is a maze though compounded by it being currently under construction. Small cartoon men looking very much like Weebles (they wobble but they don’t fall down) are on posters tacked up to boarded up areas of the station and underneath this image of the Weeble construction reads the curt demand “STAY OUT OF HERE!” The line wasn’t very lengthy when I stepped into to pick up my bus ticket but over the course of the last ten minutes since I’ve been sitting on the cold terminal floor (seriously, a station of this magnitude needs more seating areas) the line has grown to about a dozen and a half. My ticket is tucked into this journal, a reservation booked a month ago by Luke, one of the people in my training group that has lived in the country for enough time to acquire a good grasp on the language. If I ever see him again I owe him a few sakes and a bowl of ramen. From the left comes this terrible melody. It sounds like some hideous ring tone only amplified loud enough to echo in this crowded station. It is coming closer. Surly nobody has installed a Dolby stereo system onto their cellphone but then again I wouldn’t put it passed the Japanese to take the cellphone craze eighty steps over the line. Why would anybody want this broken musical box tone for their phone when they could have the extra snazzy Knight Ryder theme! Louder it becomes and soon I see that it is not a cell phone with a 5.1 surround system taped to it. No, this is stranger but I suppose I should be used to such peculiarities by now. It was a musical dumpster being bused by one of the station custodians. The man, dressed in ragged grey reminding me somewhat of Beauregard, one of the lesser known muppets in the Jim Henson library of muppets, had the loath filled expression inherited by all janitors after they’ve cleaned enough toilets. The man pushes the bin down the hall and stoops to pick up any station trash. There is surprisingly very little. The Japanese are very neat, in my opinion, and their train stations, though I wouldn’t say are spotless in appearance, certainly shame ours back home. The musical malady passes and I am allowed a brief moment of reprieve before another arrives. And then Mog cast a shadow over me, asks me a question I have no chance to reply to before he is off to join the line to get his own ticket. Was that the Japanese Tom Waits that just passed by? Guy looked just like Tom. I wonder if, on his album, he sings a tune called Big in America?

Later
After picking up a Dr. Pepper, a Western world commodity, from the import shop upstairs and a bag of chocolate filled bread pockets, a poor supplement for the Chocolate Pillows, we were off to wait for the bus. Mogs and my personalities would clash almost instantly here. Mog is much more laid back then I. I have the genetically embedded worry gene incorporated into my makeup. Despite having an hour to get back to the bus terminal I fretted at every turn that our time was running out as Mog nonchalantly strolled from grocery aisle to book store assuring me that we’d be fine. He was right but this didn’t stop me from worrying. With twenty minutes to spare we made it to the drunken chimp designed bus terminal. I should elaborate a little on the poorly organized place this is the Osaka city bus terminal. I have been in many bus terminals, my friends, from the very large to the tiny closet stations in small East Coast Canadian towns and never have I come across a bus terminal in need of a design overhaul as is the case here in Osaka. For starters, the ticket booth is inside. This is not strange and this is how bus terminals usually work. Your booth is inside and your buses pull up outside. Simple enough. However, the Osaka bus stops are located across the street from the terminal so you have to cut across the people, buses and taxi cabs to find yourself on a little cement island in-between the street and the bus parking lot. On the edge of this island, on the side where the buses don’t pull up, are those nasty toilets I’ve already written of. I hurried by them. You are now part of a cluster, a mass grouping of people jockeying for position on this cement island they call the “waiting area”. There are about twelve hard plastic benches to accommodate the asses of the at least three dozen waiting now. Hundreds, if not thousands pass this way each day. Surely a larger seating area is in order. As I have stated before, once you enter the land of Japanese bus travel you leave behind the comfort of Romanized English translation that you get on the train. Large points may be translated and your bus may even have a sweet English speaking woman advising you on the next stop but here in Osaka station all of the stop indicators are in Japanese. There are no digital display boards but instead train times and destinations are printed on paper that is tacked up to the chin level wall dividers. If these dividers weren’t parallel and acted as some sort of velvet rope found in banks they would be great crowd controllers. Instead everyone pushes into a tight ball around the departure gates. The signs are blocked by the people and I couldn’t read them anyway so I did what I also do in times such I these. I asked somebody in uniform and hoped that either he spoke enough English to answer my question or that my mating bee dance would be enough for him to comprehend what it was that I was asking. He pointed towards where Mog was waiting for his bus. Well, this couldn’t be right. Mog had attempted to get a spot on the same bus I had booked a month ago and had been told all spots were taken and he’d have to take a different bus. That bus would be leaving at the same time, from the same location and would be going to the same place but would not be the same bus. And this is the other confusing thing about this bus station. Not only do you have various buses pulling in and out at the same time but you also have buses with the same destination text printed on the digital read out on the grill. Now my ticket had a bus number but this meant nothing, I would learn. It corresponding to nothing. It was useless. I decided to get a second opinion and ask the other station agent. This guy told me to wait in the other Mog’less line. Deciding to go with common sense I stood in the line for the bus Mog wouldn’t be boarding. Again, made sense, right, with him not having booked the same bus? At 10:20 the buses began to pull in. The bus heading to Tokyo station, where I wanted to be heading, drove right by and stopped in front of Mog’s line. The bus that stopped in front of me was going to whoknowswhere. With time ticking down before one of these buses was set to depart with or without confused little me I asked another station agent who quickly pointed me to the fast moving Mog line. Well, that was two against one. I joined the tide and when the ticket taker paused to peruse my ticket I was sure he wasn’t going to let me on. One stamp and arm motion later and I was on board, second level and only an aisle and a seat away from Mog. Japanese bus travel gives me several aneurysms once again. I had a window seat, as Luke had said. I did not have a beautiful, young girl sitting next to me, as Luke had also said. For that, Luke gets only one sake and a cold bowl of rice. In the aisle seat sat a man we will call Creepy Guy. Creepy Guy wore a hood at all times. He never took it off. Maybe he was traveling to the Unabomber Training Grounds. “In just three short weeks we can train you in the art of Kaczynski. Must supply your own hooded sweatshirt.” Now, is it not customary when traveling with strangers, hell anybody, that should they be on the aisle and you in the window seat that they stand up and allow you passage to said window seat? Well, Creepy Guy didn’t get the memo. He just sat there not letting me pass glancing down at his dirty shoes with a glazed expression on his face. Maybe I should start calling him Creepy Crack Addicted Guy. I said excuse me in Japanese. He didn’t budge. Mog even tried. Creepy Guy was a big creepy rock in a Tokyo bound buses aisle seat. But wait…he moved! He moved a mere inch to indicate with his head that I was to step over him. To quote the great Tyler Durden: “Now a question of etiquette...as I pass, do I give you the ass or the crotch?” I gave Creepy Guy the ass, slid into my seat, tucked my book and ticket into the mesh on the seat in front of me and tried to distance myself away from this guy…at least as far as being walled between him and the window would allow. Mog actually did get a mildly attractive woman next to him and a curios kid traveling alone to Tokyo in the seat in front of him. The kid gave Mog candy. Creepy Guy only gave me unease. Another bad bus travel break for the Nighthawk. I read for a bit and would fall asleep with the book on my lap. I dreamed of the road passing by and every few feet the bus would pass a shadowy figure wearing a hooded sweatshirt. He has no face. *Burrrrrr*

1130pm
Japanese rest stops are mammoth highway-side Walmarts that make the Canadian Wendy’s, Tim Hortons and the occasional Baskin Robins combo stops look like tiny corner stores tucked away at the back of a dead-end street. When the bus rolled into the parking lot, a lot that could have held enough cars for a Springsteen concert, I was sure we had just pulled up to a shopping center. The building in front of us was as long as a football field. I mean, hey, maybe it was the bus sleep haze and the place was not as large as I am letting on but stepping off the bus I gazed upon the immensity of the place and wondered what I would find inside. The lot was full of buses and the cars and trucks of other road travelers all congregated inside. You could see the crowds through the window. Patches stood by the vending machine outside. Others made a quick dash to the bathrooms. Most, however, were near midnight merchandise hounds or snack seekers and this overstuffed stop provided both. When Mog and I walked in, actually shoved our way in, his eyes instantly grew wide. He saw touristy souvenirs and where there were touristy souvenirs there were Kitty Chans! Now Mog here is a big guy, raised out in potato country Idaho in one of my favorite of US city names to say: Boise. I admit to knowing very little about this city aside from numerous humorous references made on pre-Letterman viewings of Married With Children. You think Idaho and you think potatoes, the PEI of the US of A. That and the World Center for Birds of Prey, as without this wonderful place the Peregrine falcon might still be an endangered species. Who says Penn and Teller aren’t educational, huh? Looking at Mog, a heavyset man oaken in his girth and looking as though he could rend whole tiger sharks in half, you are given no hint, no possible inclination that under that American bulk that –and he’ll be the first to tell you-- scares the hell out of many small Japanese children (in many ways Mog is like Gamera…only he doesn’t fly, spit laser balls and he isn’t a turtle…okay, in one way), yes under all of this is a grown man who collects Hello Kitty chans. The best way to describe these things to you folks back home are to have you think of graduation cap tassels, only smaller, without any of that frilly stuff, a bell and a Hello Kitty dangling from the bottom of it. Mog has collected these for months, has over a hundred, and has become a sort of obsession. The marketing for this is genius. Hello Kitty chans are unique to the area you are in and thus have become very collectible. Cities may have many different chans to represent various areas or aspects. Even buildings and, yes, Mount Fuji have chans devoted to them. Hell, even the train lines have chans. There must be thousands of them out there! Mog gets this expression on his face when he sees a chan. It’s akin to a kid on Christmas morning gazing at the wrapped gifts underneath a tree. Mog beams. I leave him to his shelf-o-Kitty memorabilia and take a quick walk around the rest stop. This stop had three restaurants, a bakery, two confectionery stores, about ten vending machines, some offering hot meals, six washrooms, two of Western style and two large televisions detailing highway conditions and weather reports. The bread and butter of the Japanese highway rest stop, though, covered the most ground. You want souvenirs of Japan folks? Come on down! Dozens of shelves were filled with mostly tacky trinkets. Keychains, chopsticks, snow globes, shirts, hats, bandanas, dolls, model buses, model trains, fans, postcards, tiny sword replicas, masks, toys, ashtrays, wind chimes, sake sets…you want it, they got it. Tables set up around the souvenir shelves sold Japanese cakes and other sweets. Realizing that I didn’t know how much time we had been given at this stop nor did I remember what bus was ours, I quickly purchased a bag of chips and Mog and I headed back out to the parking lot to stand in front of a dozen buses all looking to be the same. Remembering that we had parked closer to the back of the lot, I followed Mog back to the bus. This time I gave Creepy Guy the crotch. Suppose I’d spice things up a bit for the guy. You just can’t eat potato chips silently no matter how you try. I hurriedly munched, stuck the rest of the bag into my pack and set about the grueling task of trying to find comfort within the claustrophobic. As the big and little hand met up for their usual evening coupling on that midnight 12 I closed my eyes once again and saw nothing but road. This time there was no faceless hooded man haunting my dreams. The bus in my dream was heading towards a mountain, snow capped an towering. You could see it peaking up over the horizon now. Fuji, we are one day closer.