Lost to the Interior
By: Darcyn Gross
As the tires of the airplane hit the runway of Narita airport, I closed my eyes and gripped the armchair. The whole flight, I was preparing myself for this, the jolting moment the plane meets the ground, an abrupt signal that you have finally made it to where you are going. I am no stranger to solo traveling, on admittedly more minor scales, leaving home for college twice. But I was always traveling to get away from one thing or another, a memory or feeling. And I guess in a similar way, I found myself traveling overseas for the first time just to look for one thing or the other, alone, and only after landing does the fact that I may not know the language as much as I told myself start to sink in.
This idea of being overconfident in my understanding of the language became more apparent as I spent hours going back and forth between station directors while racing through the metro, almost missing my check-in time and dinner entirely. I stumbled through my phone's translator, and I think the hotel clerk said I had 20 minutes to eat as he handed me my keycard. Instead, I decided to take a shower and stare at the warning posted on the wall with a very angry-looking smoke alarm, but I was never able to figure out what it was yelling about. I requested a smoking room to avoid having to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with about a dozen other smokers in one little room. I choked down all the cigarettes I could have smoked had I not been on that 18-hour flight. Over the head of the bed was a sign asking you not to smoke on the mattress, but it took up quite literally half of the whole room, so I may have smoked over it a little bit. I pushed my umpteenth cigarette into the ashtray and sent a text to my mother, telling her I was in for the night, before heading out in search of some authentic local food.
The streets of Taito-ku were mostly empty; I saw more obvious tourists looking for food than anything. The streets were becoming darker as the sun faded over the buildings, and the brightest lights around me came from the cars that passed by and the shops that lined the sidewalks. I came across several restaurant fronts whose windows were closed by metal shutters. It was becoming more and more apparent that I had completely missed dinner. While Tokyo itself is quite dense, and I had believed the night scene to be more active, I later found out that I chose a more isolated area when picking where to sleep.
Not long after a block or two more of walking, I noticed a glow over the sidewalk. It was so dark at this point that the lights from the shop stretched out as far into the streets as possible before cutting out abruptly. In front of the restaurant was a shelf with a glass display. On each shelf were lines of ceramic facades of different dishes, food which I had never even seen before, but all catching the tone of my stomach. As the shelves took my eyes down, I noticed the second-to-last row was large pitchers of golden beer, catching the light coming from within the shop. They resembled that of a pitcher of Heineken or Coors but with a more seductive allure, a sexier color. I noticed a name written below each pitcher, but I cannot for the life of me decipher the characters. Google Translate tells me these drinks are called “highballs,” and I was never more excited to try something in all my years of drinking.
The inside of the restaurant was much less appealing to me than the box of fake food outside. It was full of people, and no one looked like a tourist. The dishes they were spooning at looked just as much like a punch to the mouth as the teasers, but I could not force myself to press the open button on the sliding doors. The question of how the hell I am going to order, and more importantly, how the hell am I going to be perceived trying to order, filled my head with doubts. As I stood outside in the glow of the restaurant, I was thinking of the reward of spooning that ramen myself and drinking a sweating glass of highball, but frozen by the possibility of embarrassment.
The sound of the sliding door scraping itself open broke my crisis, and my eyes were immediately met with those of a young man. He wore a white button shirt and had on a red tie. He smiled at me before bowing himself low and saying much that was lost to me; the only thing I caught was his hello, “kon'nichiwa.”
I immediately ran hot and instinctively returned the young man’s gesture. His smile grew, and he raised his hand toward the open door and asked a question. I do know enough to tell that a question has been raised when there is a “deska" at the end of a sentence; it's sort of like an audible question mark. But I can still only guess at what he asked.
“No, no, gomen, gomen," I muttered as I contorted my body in the other direction. As I looked at the ground and headed back the way I came, I heard the door to the restaurant hiss shut, and I let all of the air in my chest out with it. As I cursed myself and kicked my feet for not allowing myself to try just one of those drinks, a rock got stuck in my gut. It's the same feeling I get when I am too embarrassed to order food in a restaurant in America, in my hometown, where I speak the language; what the hell am I doing here? Looking across the street, there was another striking, red and yellow neon glow. I sighed and decided to resign myself; I suppose McDonald's was well enough.
And while McDonald's doesn't sell alcohol, every 7/11 does 24/7. So, in the end, I did get my highballs, just in a can.
When I arrived in Tsuruoka, Yamagata, I took a 25-minute taxi ride from the station to my hotel. It was a ways out of town and was nestled right at the base of Mount Haguro. As the taxi driver took my suitcase out of the trunk, an elderly woman shuffled to the door and pointed a finger at my name on a piece of paper. I nodded and smiled, "Yes, yes. I mean hai, gomen, gomen."
Under the awning of the entrance was a Genkan, a little porch that extends itself out before the doorway where you remove your outside shoes before entering. She gestured to my shoes, telling me to take them off. They were to be kept outside at all times, and I was provided with house slippers. She then showed me on a piece of paper in English when dinner would be served before leaving me in my room.
When I arrived at dinner, a table of vegetables and rice had been arranged for me in the open area. A family of eight was already eating across from me, and they spoke a language that I was unfamiliar with, but I knew wasn't Japanese. The three mountains of Dewa attract a lot of tourists, I'm told, but usually in groups.
Never in my life have I sat down just to eat vegetables, but I shoved the green beans down my throat, past my tongue. I covered the squash in soy sauce only to gag at the amount of soy sauce. I filled up on rice and finished my beer, but could not finish my table of vegetables. At the desk, I clinked a bell several times, and a lady came out of a room in the back, smiling at me as I fumbled my phone out of my pocket.
“gomen, onaka ippai”, I say, my attempt at apologizing for not finishing my meal.
She laughs and raises her hands into an “x” shape and replies, “doumo. doumo.”
I continued with my Google translation, "sake wa arimasuka?”
She claps her hands together, ushering me further into the living space. She raised one finger, which I assumed meant to wait. After several seconds, she came out with a bottle of sake. This bottle was the size of maybe my whole forearm and almost two forearms wide at the base, at least. However, the little old lady's face had a smile even wider, which was a good enough reason for me to buy it.
From the open window of my bedroom, you could hear the rain climbing down from Mount Gassan. Tomorrow, regardless of the weather, I am set to climb 2,000 steps alone. I pulled a cigarette from my pouch as I pulled over my yukata, a cotton kimono for guests, and slid open the door to my room. My bed was not 20 feet from the patio, but the lights were low, and when everyone here was asleep, the old wooden floor cracked the loudest. Tiptoeing to the screen door was the longest time that had passed in a while.
I slipped off my house shoes and into the communal outside slippers for the smoking area. Passing the chairs and ashtray, I stumbled to the edge of the patio and sat on the grass, looking up at the mountain I'm about to climb. Matsuo Basho traveled the interior on a much more rigorous path than I am, but at least he had his disciple, Sora, to join him. My whole reason for visiting this mountain was the monument, Basho-dsuka. It was erected around 1730 by the Tsuruoka poet association, naming the mound Mikadsuki-dsuka, or “Crescent moon mount.”
As I finish my cigarette, I think of Matsuo’s Haiku, written in 1687:
“The moon glows the same:
It is the drifting cloud forms
Make it seem to change.”
The moon in this poem always reminded me of someone trying to run from something, using some vice or the other to alter the moon's image, but when the clouds drift, the reality stays the same. Though there are many ways to interpret this poem more positively as well. That is what draws me to Matsuo’s work so much: it's not only his ability to capture beautiful moments, but to invite the reader to ponder what we can learn from nature about us.
As I think of this poem, my eyes dart around the sky. Either it has crept behind the mountain itself, or the clouds have become too thick to pinpoint the moon from its glow. Every night since I arrived here, I have never gotten used to the time change. When I was asleep, everyone I knew was awake. Whenever I was up and needed someone to talk to, everyone was asleep. I am reminded of this every time I see the moon, and if not for that, I wouldn't have thought of the sun. And if not for that, I wouldn't have thought of being home, and I found myself now crying in another country, drinking sake, wondering why studying with Duolingo failed me so much.
The door behind me slides open, and I hear someone shout something my way. It was faint, and rain was falling from the mountain, so most drowned out. I couldn't even tell if it was the elderly lady or a tourist, but there was a tone that transcended language. There is something that exists below language that people carry within their words. Kind of like exploring in the woods as a kid and hearing your mother call from your trailer so far away, and without actually hearing the words, you knew it was time to stop playing.
I turned around, giving a thumbs up through tears, and smiled, “I am okay.”
Sometime after visiting Tsuruoka, I arrived at a hotel in the Mogami district in Yamagata prefecture after a 6-hour walk in the rain. There was a queue of wet shoes lined up in the Genkan waiting to be dried. A small man bows as I enter, and I lean over in turn as I place my boots in the back of the line. Halfway through my hike, my phone chimed in my short pouch, interrupting the whistling I was doing, meant to keep any bears at bay, as the many signs advised me to do so. I knew the chance of running into a bear was low, but if they bothered to put the warning in English for any ignorant tourists, I might as well do it. I wondered if they could even hear my tune in the middle of this storm. The repeated chimes of my phone could barely be heard through the background of incessant rain pattering on my umbrella. The downpour was relentless as my shoes carried small puddles in them, and I struggled to see too far down the trail. I can feel the water ring itself out of my socks and into my boots after every step.
The man provided me with soft and dry slippers before showing me to my room, informing me in English that the storm had backed up the waterline, so the baths were unusable, and milk chocolate brown water spouted from the tap and into the toilet bowl. The surrounding town was small and very rural; there wasn't anything to do. Even the nearest convenience store would have been about a 40-minute walk, as opposed to Tokyo, where there’s a 7-11 every 5-10 minutes. I spent the day going up and down the stairs to the front desk, where they sold alcohol. Their selection was small, but that didn't matter because they did have highballs, which I would liken it to a better whiskey sour, and anyone who knows me knows I like a whiskey sour. I fumbled with the coins and placed them in the young woman's palm before heading back to my room. There was a large sitting area in the corner, which overlooked the river next to the hotel. I put on Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers and tried to write as I looked out the window.
Halfway through my walk on the same path that Matsuo took on his journey to the interior, an alert sat on the screen of my phone. I was, at this point, sitting under a small picnic hut in the woods. The hut was in between two bridges with water rushing under them, not entirely high enough to cover the surface of the already soggy bridges, but enough for me to smoke a cigarette. Sit around and wait it out. The alert was completely in Japanese, but good things and bad things always look different, and this one was flashing in red; that's what a bad thing looks like. I let some raindrops wet the end of my cigarette while Google translates the warning, just to tell me it's an emergency notice for landslides and to evacuate; I then start to regret not taking that emergency trail several miles back.
I make my way over the last bridge, now deciding it was worth crossing, and walk a mile to the nearest town, Nakayama-Daira, an onsen village deep in the interior of northern Japan. As I walked down the twisting road leading to the train station, my gaze was led to the several dozen hot houses whose chimneys puffed out clouds of steam. I think of the warm baths that Nakayama-Daira is known for, as my shorts stick to my legs and make a wet slapping sound on my thighs every time I walk. A few cars drove by as I made my way to the edge of town, but I didn't see one soul walking the streets as I made my way to the station. I bought a Coca-Cola from a vending machine as I watched the cold, empty train station sign blink from English to Japanese, saying, "No arrivals indefinitely."
I ended up calling a taxi from the post office across the street and got dropped off at the final destination of my tour, Hojin-no-ie, where Matsuo slept and is now a museum. As I stood outside, the rain was still belting into my umbrella, and I spent the money I budgeted for the museum on the impromptu taxi. However, the old man behind the wooden window, without looking at me, waved his arm inward, telling me to come inside. I hesitated to step past the Genkan as my feet were soaked, but even though my socks squeezed out puddles as I stepped forward, the old man beckoned me still. He guided me to a desk and stamped a piece of paper, "Gift for you," he said twice as he shoved it into my hands. Gesturing his finger towards the rest of the museum, he asked me a question in Japanese. I nodded and smiled. He placed his hand on my shoulder blade and told me about each exhibit as though I could understand every word that was lost on me. He spoke to me with a smile, and his hand had the comforting warmth your favorite grandpa would have.
Once we reached one room, the old man looked at me and said to me in English, “Matsuo Basho slept here.” After a moment of taking in the scene where Matsuo wrote my favorite haiku, where he writes about sleeping with fleas, describing how hard and restless travel was for him, I did what any tourist would do and pulled out my phone and asked the man for a picture. I stood awkwardly in front of the sitting area, and the old man said no and gestured for me to sit on one of the mats. As I sat down, I had not expected the man to be on the ground with me, switching from his knees and standing to take several photos at different angles. After finishing the photo shoot, he sat down and pulled out what looked like a walkie-talkie. He spoke into it, and it repeated his words in English, and he asked me all sorts of questions, and I used Google to try to fumble an answer in Japanese and he laughed at me; and although most of what was said is lost to me, and I don't know why he's laughing, it's the most at home I've felt since being here. When my tour accommodation arrived to take me to the hotel, he shook my hand, placed his other overtop, and said something I could only interpret as a kind goodbye.
Now, I have written very little as I stare at the river underneath my hotel room. I am running low on my third trip inventory of highballs. I close my notebook and slide my slippers on, knowing I won't be able to do any more writing tonight. I decided on a couple more drinks before bed instead. The young woman at the counter, who did not speak English, pointed at my three cans of highballs and said something with one of those tones you just get.
I smiled and did what I always did when I couldn't understand what someone said: I shrugged my shoulders while I shook my head, and she asked her question again, “daijōbudesuka?”
***
Darcyn Gross (he/him) is a first-year MFA nonfiction candidate. A Kentucky native, Darcyn spent the last five years obtaining his BFA in Creative Writing and a BA in Psychology at Lakeland University in Wisconsin. When not writing, he enjoys cooking, doomscrolling, hoping the Packers don’t break his heart, and making sure his cats don’t destroy his apartment.