In Washima

What takes 3 hours going and 40 minutes coming? The answer: getting to the remote town (village?) of Washima from Nagaoka, where I'm staying. Going? By train. Coming? By car.

Washima is really not so far, it's just that there are two things: mountains are "in the way," and unlike bullet trains, the regional ones run infrequently and not on time: the outbound train to Kashiyazaki left the station about 20 minutes late, though there could have been some technical trouble (I couldn't understand what was being said over the loud speaker). Once I got to Kashiyazaki I found that my connecting train for Washima would leave an hour later than I was told by an attendent when I purchased my ticket (perhaps she made a mistake?). In any event, slow trains plus a long layover equals 3 hours.

One difficulty getting around remote parts of Japan is figuring out where you're at and where you're going and whether you've arrived or not. When you get a map you get all they've got: town names, and everything else, are in Kanji, traditional Chinese characters. But this isn't necessarily bad: signage at train stations and other places (when it exists) is typically Kanji, and with practice my Kanji-to-Kanji symbol matching has gotten pretty good: I just "say" in my head roughly what they look like as a mnemonic. For instance, there's "pi in a box", "double backward k", and "cloud with rain" ... symbols that form parts of names of towns that I match from map to sign.

Of course, not knowing how the Kanji characters are pronounced means that finding someone to write down the corresponding Romaji, or Roman letters, is a help since you can't always find a sign and, if you're talking to someone, well, you need that. The twist is that sometimes you have a map with Kanji and then you come across a sign in Hiragana, a Japanese phoenetic script. Add Katakana and, well, you can't let yourself get too overconfident.

My train stop in Washima was Myoho-ji, the name of a nearby temple. When I got off the train, I waived to the conductor, watched the train pull out of sight, and ... gulp ... there were zero people in the station; it was unattended. And there was nothing around but a few scattered houses. What about getting back? A Ryokan poem came to mind:

The wind gives me
Enough fallen leaves
To make a fire.

So I started walking in the general direction of the temple, which I believed was on my way to a Ryokan museum. As I approached it, a young man and his wife were just leaving, and so I pointed and asked "Myoho-ji?" They spoke very little English but managed to communicate that he is a civil engineer, by showing me his work: he had designed a retaining wall behind the temple to stabilize a steep slope. Apparently the temple had been damaged after heavy rains, mud slides, and flooding. We looked like mimes communicating by mimicking falling rain, gushing water, and pointing to the retaining wall. He was obviously curious about my reason for being in Washima, so I showed him a brochure of the museum, and he insisted on driving me there. I happily accepted his kind offer.

Once there I walked around a complex of buildings and memorials, including the reconstruction of a small house where Ryokan met and fell in love with a young nun, Teishin. I was happy to be at a place where Ryokan had been. I also looked around in the museum, and saw lots of calligraphy, but I really wasn't sure what I was looking at.

An attendant tried to help and she called for her friend who was serving tea in traditional Japanese dress in a formal tea room: her friend couldn't speak English either, but her son could, whom she called on her cell phone ... he translated. The women were very curious about why I was there, he said, so I explained to him and he then explained to them. As he did they began looking at me in sort of a motherly, adoring, kind of way ... I was someone who shared their love and appreciation for Ryokan.

After looking around, I went to the little tea room and was served matcha, powdered green tea, by the woman's friend. And she introduced me to a Japanese businessman who was staying not-so-far from my hotel ... he kindly offered to drive me back. Enough leaves. Domo arigato.