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The scene replays in my head on a regular basis, however particularly once I’m about to uproot myself once more. I’m sitting in a bath, scalding water dashing over my arms; I’m completely content material, at the very least in that second.
However I’m additionally at an deadlock: Consolation, I remind myself, locked inside my smiling stasis, is the enemy of progress. The incident in query occurred 15 Januarys in the past, however it may’ve been any day in my life.
Which isn’t to say I used to be uncomfortable as I waited for the bus to Hirosaki exterior Aomori Airport at round 8 PM on the final day of this January. It was heat for the center of winter, to the extent that I feared town’s well-known snow is perhaps diminished and even melted all collectively.
Nor it’s solely correct to characterize my presence there as progress. In spite of everything, this airport ba-su noriba is exactly the place I’d begun my first post-pandemic journey to Japan, in September 2022. Can I actually say I’ve moved ahead if I’m actually in the identical spot I used to be in 16 months in the past?
To be able to maintain myself awake onboard—I’d been in transit for precisely 24 hours, and didn’t wish to miss my cease—I learn Kobo Abe’s seminal The Girl within the Dunes, a guide that’s been on my checklist since I first visited the Tottori Sand Dunes (the landform it’s credited with having made well-known) practically a decade in the past.
Hirosaki is way from Tottori in each aesthetic and distance, however it appeared my snowy sojourn would engender in me empathy for the tome’s hapless protagonist.
With out the specter of punishment, The narrator explains, just some pages in, there isn’t a pleasure in flight.
I felt enchanted from the second emerged my spartan enterprise lodge onto the streets of Hirosaki. The snow was falling at such an intense tempo, I needed to cease at a close-by Lawson and purchase an umbrella.
The elephant-sized pile of it within the konbini‘s parking zone instructed this was a great resolution: Left exterior lengthy sufficient, the quantity of snow that falls right here may bury even males thrice my aspect.
It made me consider The Man (as he’s solely ever referred to as) in The Girl: From the second the titular feminine trapped him in her abode amid the dunes, he knew nary a second the place the move of sand didn’t pose a menace to his well-being. It was in his meals, within the place the place he slept, within the corners of his eyes when he wakened within the morning.
To make sure, whereas the umbrella protected my face (and, importantly, my hair) as I approached Hirosaki Citadel, my trendy (however impractical) fake wool peacoat appeared a magnet for the flakes; most likely a centimeter of snow had gathered on its floor by the point I reached the Sannomaru Otemon gate, which was closed: The tenshu of the Tohoku area’s final authentic fortress didn’t open till 9 AM.
Unbothered, I walked throughout the road to the Former Hirosaki Metropolis Library (which was additionally closed, although I solely endeavored to see it from the skin) and to Saisho-in.
Its inside sanctum, too, was closed, however as had been the case with the library’s century-old facade, the temple’s magnificent five-story pagoda was in full view from the general public portion of the courtyard, the place vermillion railing (and an identical torii) framed it completely inside the wintry scene, snow nonetheless falling.
I want to inform you that I headed again to my lodge at this level just because I knew nothing can be open for an additional hour, and since it occurred to be close by. However the actuality was that I, like The Man, was overwhelmed; Not like him, I had the choice to do one thing about it.
I believe I’ll have overestimated my capacity, I murmured to myself, as I entered the foyer and instant started to thaw, no…my need to endure even a couple of extra days of winter.
I didn’t find yourself spending lengthy inside; I merely sprayed my hair (which the wind and snow had tousled right into a frizzy mess) and re-organized the contents of my backpack. I ended up arriving to Hirosaki-jo proper at 9 AM in reality.
Disappointingly, all the development tools that had diminished the great thing about my final journey right here, throughout 2021’s sakura season, was nonetheless there. It was worse truly, for the reason that deadness of the timber left it absolutely uncovered. This was to say nothing of the truth that the principle tower was nonetheless moved from its authentic location; it was actually inconceivable to {photograph} it in its correct context, amid moats and bridges.
Undeterred I crossed the road as soon as once more, this time to the Taisho Tea Room. Though I’d deliberate solely a short images cease right here—I wished to proceed instantly to the Fujita Memorial Backyard subsequent door—the continued relentlessness of the climate made the meat curry with Aomori apples fairly actually irresistible.
But frigid air seeped into the vintage eating room fairly fiercely, so I ate slowly, hungry as I used to be: The steam rising off my kaa-re rai-su was a valuable commodity I didn’t dare waste. A stained glass depicting wisteria (whose kanji was the namesake for the adjoining backyard) hung within the window, taunting me.
He wished to consider that his personal lack of motion had stopped all motion on this world, the way in which a hibernating frog abolishes winter.
Someplace between leaving the tea room and arriving in Hirosaki’s underwhelming quasi-Samurai district (the place most properties are each not particularly outdated, and likewise not open to the general public), I assumed again on my look forward to the bus the earlier night, and the 16 months that had led as much as it.
On one hand, my journey in Japan throughout this era had been nothing in need of spectacular. I’d made eight separate journeys, totaling 15 weeks, which is much more than I’d managed when dwelling simply down the proverbial highway in Bangkok and Taipei between 2017-2019.
Then again, I’d spent most of that point taking rescheduled journeys, which had both been canceled by Japan’s relentless covid border closures (the epic autumn sojourn I’d initially deliberate for 2020; the Could journey to Hokuriku I’d been unable to absorb 2022), or had tried in 2021 once I was dwelling within the nation, however not accomplished to any stage of satisfaction.
It is just now that I’m treading a path unencumbered by the ghosts of the previous. However even now, I’m haunted by the specter of what may’ve been.
Fatigued from all my journey earlier in 2023, I voluntarily canceled a visit within the waning days of the yr that will’ve seen me attend the New Yr’s bell-ringing at Kyoto’s Chion-in temple for the primary time.
Even my presence in Hirosaki proper now was a comfort prize—I had initially deliberate a much more bold itinerary. It might have seen me zoom from Ginzan Onsen in Yamagata over to Kawaguchiko close to Mt. Fuji and again to Haneda Airport, all throughout the identical variety of days I’m booked at my spartan enterprise lodge right here.
I attempted to learn a bit as I laid in my mattress through the early afternoon, promising myself each to complete at the very least 50 extra pages, and likewise not to go to sleep; I failed at each.
It was like attempting to construct a home within the sea by brushing water apart, learn the web page in entrance of me as my eyes fell shut, as if the load of all of the Tottori Sand Dunes was forcing them closed.
Describe the way in which the squalls transfer in over the horizon
Maybe consolation, in some unspecified time in the future, should win out over progress. Or perhaps the 2 simply merge.
I appeared to have occurred upon such fusion as I emerged onto the powder-dusted streets of Hirosaki Friday morning, the one human (to my data) out and about at that hour. The temperature was at the very least a couple of levels beneath freezing, however it felt soothing to my pores and skin, which was sizzling and parched from the air inside my spartan enterprise lodge.
I attempted to inhabit this tranquility later that morning, an hour’s hazardous drive away, as a veritable blizzard blew via the gates of Takayama Inari Shrine as I used to be strolling beneath them.
Peering via the areas between the vermillion gates, which have been each much less sturdy-looking than these at Kyoto’s Fushimi Inari, and far farther other than each other than they have been, I felt exhilarated, and even terrified at turns.
As had been the case again within the metropolis, there have been no different people round, as far as I may inform—would right now be the day my concern of being accosted by a bear in rural, northern Japan lastly got here to go?
The howling of the wind made it troublesome to establish whether or not they was any mammal-born rustling within the scrubby brush throughout the shrine; because of the intermittent zero-visibility successive squalls of powder introduced with them, it was inconceivable to see farther than the deadened bamboo within the foreground.
For a split-second, I questioned whether or not I would stay trapped there indefinitely, like The Man ended up being by The Girl: He by no means finally ends up escaping, regardless of a few valiant makes an attempt.
Like in Tottori, the ocean was so shut I may really feel the bitter chilly blowing off it; the snowbanks across the shrine from all sides may as effectively effectively have been dunes.
Love of House and obligation, the narrator explains about three quarters of the way in which via the guide, seemingly foreshadowing the give up on which it ends, have that means provided that one stands to lose one thing by throwing them away.
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