Yamaguchi #7: Under the Weather

April 2009

Wednesday began with a spectacular flash of lightning and a growl of thunder. It woke me up at some God-awful hour. The rain was pouring while I got dressed and flipped through my guidebook, but it receded to a drizzle by the time I actually stepped outside.



I saw the remains of Hagi castle that morning. The castle had been dismantled in the Meiji era and made into a park; now only the walls remained. I liked it better that way. There’s something more imaginative about just seeing the old stone walls of a castle. Something more mysterious. I climbed a hill of moss covered steps, through branches of falling sakura blossoms, to stare over into the rich blue moat.



In addition to the walls and the cherry blossoms, there was also a nice shrine in the park. It had a quaint, arch-shaped stone bridge and an old house next to it that still retained its screen paintings. But the best part was when I followed an obscure trail to the back of the park and found the last of the castle walls, opening, like a gate, to the rocky beach and the ocean. I think I’ve said it before, but there’s nothing like walking around in a park first thing in the morning.



Amendment: there’s nothing like it when the weather is nice. The weather was not nice. The rain had let up, but it was still overcast. Moreover, it was cold. People in Kanoya warned me it would be and told me to pack accordingly. But did I? Not really. It was the problem of baggage I mentioned before. So, here I was, wandering in the dank park for an hour or so and later spending another hour walking back to the station. After a while, the cold started to bother me.

And it wasn’t just the cold, either. Since Shimonoseki, my shoulders had been knotted up and painful. I was a little tired and stressed. I had been to three cities in three days, was immersed in Japanese, and was dealing with a change of climate that was colder than I was used to. I began to feel a little “stress sick.” Not really sick, but a kind of feeling like you’re on the edge of a cold and if you don’t take it easy, you might actually end up sick. To put it succinctly, I was feeling under the weather.

And it was going to get worse.

I took a bus to Tsuwano at around noon, and, I swear, on the way there I saw a brief flurry of snowflakes. I hadn’t even brought gloves. When I actually got to Tsuwano, it was merely raining. And windy. And cold. It was so cold, I really wanted my gloves and my scarf and maybe a nice hat, too.

When it came time to check into my ryokan, I didn’t want to leave. I had two good hours of sightseeing left and little within my room to keep me amused, but you could not have dragged me out of there. The room had a heater and, more importantly, a kotatsu.

A kotatsu is basically a table with quilts trailing from the edges like a tablecloth and a heater underneath. You stick your legs underneath and it warms your lower body right up. Well, this kotatsu was hot. It was like submerging yourself into a piping hot bath. I didn’t so much sit underneath as stretch out on my stomach like a cat, so only my head, shoulder, and feet were sticking out. The weather got worse and worse, but I just lay in my room, reading out of my two-ring binder, until dinner. Which was in the ryokan, just downstairs.

Wednesday began with a storm and it ended with one. I remember this because this was the night I had to do my laundry. I looked out the window and shuddered at the thought of going out into that rain and wind in a strange city, finding a Laundromat, and somehow having to haul my clean clothes back. But fortunately, it all worked out. When I asked the lady who ran the ryokan where a coin laundry was, she simply took my clothes and did my laundry for me. This is why I love Japan!