Posted on Monday, 10/02/23.

journal entry, 2022-10-16.

the smell of something dry and husked, burning in the fields. the flat opening of the kanto plain near odawara, where the train bends only close enough to the ocean for one to begin to have a feeling that something very large and inhospitable waits, out there. steam rising from anonymous mountains. new wood sheathed around reinforced concrete and steel, to mimic something no one around here has ever seen in person. an older man in earth-tone synthetics jumping up to offer a seat to a pregnant woman, who sits and closes her eyes for the whole next hour. a child calling to his father to hurry before the train door closes, having already jumped aboard. an onsen built into the side of a hill, floating above us. baskets and baskets of black eggs. when night falls the canyons containing onsen and ryokan of immense price and concealed activity become little gloaming hermitages choked by trees. copses. the sad song of the end of the day at five ‘o’ clock. a woman who asks if i know the word for ‘accent’ while saying i don’t have one. an old woman manning the paddle swan stand, surrounded by large dirtied plush disney characters onto which she’s placed sunglasses. a long looping line for the torii gate, out in the water. the top of mount fuji between two other peaks, half covered in cloud. a shop for amazake. a shop selling bread filled with curry and a whole egg sliced in two. strong 水出しコーヒー with tiny ice cubes like a mint julep. cigarette smoke through bugscreens. a group of three women who I stand up to let sit together, and who frantically gesture for me to sit in another open seat across from them. cataracts on rivers shored with concrete and erosion-preventing stones. the smell of sulphur from a building whose guarding walls drip wetly. an onsen down on the basement floor open until 2am, unvisited. a lounge with a table made of the stump of a tree, playing soft chill beats amid sleeping visitors, planning germans, and a long haired thin digital nomad who said nothing the entire time, and whose laptop displays, on the back of the screen, the current time in small, arranged leds. taking the ‘K’ bus out and the ‘H’ bus back. buses squeezing past each other, each driver waving to each other driver, either in camaraderie or by requirement. a woman who explains she is from ‘l.a.’ the fit young body of a man among close friends, reclining in steaming water. the day bleeds out light. children running around, jumping out of cold pools. a man instructing me to press a button to order food, with his perfect wife and two children. mikan juice. two rooms with tatami floors on which patrons lay prone, stretching tendons and muscles. a train laboring on switchbacks somewhere beyond the break. lake ashi’s calm slow waves.