A recent visit from one of my oldest and dearest friends from back home highlighted just how great an extent the downright bizarre has since become my utterly mundane.
Calamities struck from the moment of touch down at Hiroshima Airport.
Global beliefs, that Japan’s impeccable transport infrastructure places it as world leader in all things kinetic, were questioned when we entered the toll road. With rocketing prices following the atrocities in the north of the country, toll roads have a real impact on the bank balance. With nowhere to turn around when you finally realise that you are heading in the opposite direction from home and, to make matters worse, straight towards a bridge costing the equivalent of £30 to cross, it is a major disadvantage to be plagued with the navigational prowess of a visually impaired mole when travelling in Japan.
And to make matters even worse, we were running on empty.
Ironically petrol stations are scarce on toll roads, the main gateway between prefectures.
Down to the last bar, we creep steadily along at 30kmh in an 80kmh zone, eking out every last millilitre. Eventually we find an exit, and using terrible Japanese attempt to ask where the nearest petrol station is located.
Convinced the gatekeeper has told us to follow the road for 20 metres, we disappear into the darkness down an unlit, seemingly uninhabited long and winding country road to nowhere.
Twenty minutes later, the final bar now flashing violently and a distinct smell of burning coming from the engine, there is still no civilisation on the horizon. Visions of sleeping on the side of the road with rapists lurking in the forest plague our thoughts. As it’s been a long time since there’s been any male interest coming my way I gladly volunteer to take one for the team.
Then, in the distance, is it a mirage, no it’s a real city? Down a long, spiral road.
Freewheeling the entire way, we draw up next to a wooden shack café with a shaven headed, heavily tattooed man stood outside. Rushing from the car to ask him where the nearest station is, a pitbull terrier appears from nowhere and attempts to rip off my face. In sheer terror, I run for the safety of the car as the man shouts “chotto matte” - (wait a little) and disappears.
Suspicions that these strangers are Yakuza sparks fears that the end is nigh. Fuelled further as skinhead returns with an equally dubious-looking friend, armed with a scooter, which he mounts and starts up, beckoning us to follow to our almost certain deaths.
Less than a minute later, we take a right turn, inducing an Hallelujah moment on a par with those Western Toilet instances.
A petrol station.
We rummage around for some Haribo to offer this Good Samaritan. But when we look up our knight in black leather has disappeared into the darkness with so much as an arigato.
We are saved and my involuntary stint of celibacy continues.
It seems the gateman actually informed us that the station was 20 kilometres away, and not 20 metres.
Hungry and craving wine to block out the terrors of the night thus far, we stop at a local shop for supplies.
Entering is like walking onto a hybrid set of Disney Pixar’s A Bugs Life and a David Attenborough documentary.
Insects with faces and eyes the size of frisbees, in an array a colours, shapes and sizes greet us with wide, menacing smiles turning the shop into an obstacle course we are forced to duck, dive and somersault our way around.
Upon finally returning to the apartment, three hours later than scheduled, I throw the door open, welcoming Catherine to my humble abode only to be greeted by the scream of an imprisoned cockroach as it leaps over our heads and to freedom over the balcony, plummeting into the infinite depths of the thicket below.
Looking out of my apartment window, a spider the size a newborn child’s head has taken up residency on the property opposite, less than two metres and once single pane of glass separating it from the futon I had laid out for my guest.
A trip to the riverside the following day was when I truly realised just how far removed my norm is, in fact, from normal.
Hula-hooping next to a riverside foot-onsen, overlooking an indoor hot-spring where elderly residents, male and female alike, go to chill-out in their birthday suits, sparked the interest of two drunk, toothless old men.
After peering through the windows of the building, they dressed and staggered, in a way suggestive that it was a struggle to walk even before they started on the extra strong Chu-hi (the Japanese equivalent of Special Brew).
As they accosted us, pulling the hoops out of my hands, and doing their best to impress, in our peripheral vision we could see another man setting fires along the riverbank before walking off, leaving us in the midst of a blazing inferno.
The three things that Japanese bumpkins like doing best are
Drinking
Taking their clothes off
And burning things
Often simultaneously.
This scenario washed over me until I realised the confused yet amused look on Catherine’s face, which was made even more comical when a huge van with a microphone big enough for ET to finally make that long-overdue call home, began blurting out all kinds of over-zealous gibberish, breaking the serenity of the valleys of Yubara further still.
On the walk home from our ‘quiet’, mainly wine-based picnic, we encountered a snake which, sadly, had come to an untimely end, strewn across the road up to my apartment. I could tell that, for Catherine, it really was like home from home.
One thing I had promised we would do during her stay was to visit the monkeys at Kamba Waterfall just minutes from my house. Ranking in the top 100 most beautiful places to visit in Japan, with monkeys of all ages waiting to greet you, I had built the excursion up just a little too much.
When we arrived, the monkeys had gone.
Talking to Lucy later that day, it transpired that there is an unusual and considerable high monkey presence, sunbathing on the road-side in her town, Muroto, some eight hours away by car.
Evidently the furry little fuckers have been taking full advantage of the cheap “ju hatchi kippu” summer holiday train ticket to take a trip to the seaside.
Next to Kyoto, land of Geishas.
Armed with a camera to capture them in their natural habitat, Catherine makes a bolt across the road to snap proof of her first sighting.
Which turns out to be a man, in drag. Who has, despite the layers of white stuff, the most obvious 5 o’clock shadow ever viewed by the human eye.
Coming from the North of England, Catherine’s reactions throughout her stay scream volumes of just how far the oddities of Japan stretch in relation to other, seemingly similar places around the world.
She ensures me she had the holiday of a lifetime and there are many amazing things we did do, which I haven’t blogged about as they are, quite frankly, too normal.
All that remains to say is that, scratch the surface and Japan is high up there in the realms of the quirkiest places to live on this rock which we are all lucky enough to inhabit.
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