Posted on Sunday, 09/25/22.

I spent Friday night in 奥多摩, near 鳩ノ巣駅; I booked the trip mostly without thinking, at the recommendation of a stranger. I knew also that it was in the most remote sub-region of Tokyo-prefecture (a region which also carries the name of the town), and that it contains the terminus of a prominent train line. The weather was set to be on-and-off rain. This was basically accurate.

Someone I mentioned my travel plans to responded that 奥多摩 was very 渋い, which I have heard now a few times, though the rules for its use are unclear to me. I took five different trains from my home stop to 鳩ノ巣駅, each arriving exactly on time, some offset only by minutes from each other, which was amusing. The final train line was colloquially called the Tokyo Adventure Line. The terrain grew progressively steeper and lush, though it was not until 青梅駅 that things began to get pretty 渋い. Fog-wrapped violent green slopes carpeted in 檜 and 杉. Minimal stations perched on slim crescents of terraced earth. The final train was four cars long and rocked gently. Many of the other passengers, who embarked at even smaller interstitial stations than mine, humped huge hiking backpacks, wore particularly sturdy shoes and slick modern synthetics in muted shades of plum and olive. They sipped seriously from ultralight water bottles and looked down at the train floor. Some of the stations had very peaceful names like 古里 and 白丸.

I made the mistake at arriving at 9am, before anything opened near 鳩ノ巣駅. I wandered for a long time, down mossy staircases and steep but textured roads, avoiding what I was to soon learn were the first of a truly hideous number of spiderwebs, each with a perfectly placed 3-4cm hazard-yellow spider with a violently shaped abdomen and shiny black legs. The air was, because of the light rain and arms of fog, consistently wet, but the lack of sun, the elevation, and the occasional wind meant that soon I was at a sort of damp equilibrium. So long as my sweat was clean and I didn’t have to be inside, this sort of continual fluid exchange was pleasant.

Before the first (and most famous) cafe opened at 10, I broke and bought a can of coke from a vending machine because I could feel a caffeine withdrawal headache starting, and I have found that consuming caffeine after these have have set in does not resolve the problem, through some cruel hysteresis of the brain. I drank the coke in a small gazebo-like seating area in front of the spotless public bathrooms by the station. Trains pulled in about once every fifteen minutes, from which would trickle maybe two or three people who, like me, were too early to do anything but look at the mountains. This was, in truth, a very beautiful part of the day.

The cafe 山鳩カフェ was serene, though maybe more of a lunch spot. I bought toast and coffee, which came after ten minutes or so and were very well made and quietly good. The cup was covered in a mute blue glaze with a darker gray face design, in a rustic shape more like a mug than a cup. I would, the next day, go to a much more remote but fancier cafe ドラポーブルー（珈琲屋） at the top of a large slope off of 奥多摩駅 proper, where an older man in small silver wireframes made me a small good coffee in a very fine white cup with an underpainted blue floral design while that very famous Bach cello suite played in the background. It is amusing that each station seemed to have, somewhere near it, a small picturesque coffee shop run by a dedicated owner. It seemed like something that people visiting these places must have willed into existence, or that the people owning these shops imagined people would like to have. Not people like the serious hikers in their slick synthetics, but people like me, whose interaction with hiking extended only to a few nearby shrines, to the rocky shores of the rain-swollen river through the valley around which the train stops were arranged, and the un-perilous traversal of a few wooden bridges laced in mostly avoidable spider nests. I walked a quarter up a large mountain before realizing that I was severely underprepared, that I was not ready to cope with perhaps falling or running out of water or being bitten or stung.

I learn, on the second day, that bird nests and spider webs have the same kanji: 巣.

The night I spent at the Airbnb was mostly peaceful, though I wondered if the fitness/fasting/health-education/co-living center that I had a room in was secretly some sort of cult. In their google maps listing they had pictures of many incredibly muscular young people standing underneath what I assumed were local waterfalls. The room let out to me was perhaps to cover a recent absence of new members or events. I hardly spoke to the two people there (who seemed to live and work there) though they were pleasant and young and seemed extremely fit and gave good recommendations for the area. A full skeleton with labelled bones and messages of encouragement hung in a central downstairs room along with yoga mats and informational posters about stretching and inspirational quotes. In some ways I was tempted to join whatever it was they were doing. The night was silent, and the house slightly old and forgiving in its floors and wood beams, though clean and functional above all else. I slept very well.

Recounting this feels very diaristic and bland; something about the proportion of events and my desire to recount them now, in series, in sum. There is importance in jotting down informal references to each thing I experienced, as a sort of mnemonic for later recalling their more essential or affecting elements, but the result is the worst sort of travel writing. I ate a small delicious fish in a restaurant overlooking an overgrown cliff. I sipped coffee and ate a small slice of cheesecake while staring onto furiously green vertiginousness while it rained gently, while the sweat wicked from my clothes, while the lactic acid seeped back into my calves. I showered in a shower that wasn’t my own, and worried about spiders dropping from high places. I bought two separate tote bags with cute designs, and saw a cafe with a giant wooden facade in the shape of a cat in the city of 青梅, whose name is very simple and beautiful, and whose elementary school looms behind the station and is surrounded by such lush forest and vertiginous mountains that I cannot expect its matriculants to be anything else than absolutely unique and terminally nostalgic young adults.

The elementary school facade said, in massive characters: 強く正しくみんな仲良く・青梅市立第一小学校.

Saturday night, once back, I went to a small bar near my house and met two rather intoxicated strangers in their forties who were friends of the ancient couple running the bar, and we watched a Japanese game show where volleyball players tried to play Othello by hitting the relevant squares (drawn onto the court) by spiking balls. One of the strangers was from 青森, and was very hard to understand. We went to sing karaoke in a bar across the street afterwards, and I was sad that I had to say no whenever they asked me if I knew a particular song; some of these were what I imagined were probably the most popular songs in the entire country in the 80s or 90s. One of the songs moved the woman from 青森 so much that she began to cry, being comforted by the bartender.

On Sunday, I went to 神保町 to look for used books and movie paraphernalia, of which I found some, though mostly I wanted to walk somewhere shaded and filled with idle shops, which was easy there. I think I may go back to one of the movie poster and pamphlet shops soon and ask if they carry any 黒沢清 posters, which I think would be nice to have, and may be otherwise hard to get. One of the things I bought was a very slick silver printed pamphlet for Eraserhead, complete with interviews and photos and strange little inserts. After this I went to 下北 again and watched a series of short animated films in a little theater Tollywood; the name of the collection of films was 三人の男. there that I had been meaning to reserve tickets for previously. The animations were well done for an individual, and I wanted to laugh at some of them, the jokes were funny, though the theater was quiet, and no one clapped at the end, or discussed anything. I believe the director might have been sitting in the audience, though I judged this only from one man’s posture, and level of upkeep, and that he had been hanging around the theater too early beforehand, like I had, pacing.

This is being written on Monday, the 26th, again in a Starbucks, at about 10pm. Maybe afterwards I will buy something at the local grocery store. I feel guilty about that it has been a list, and that I am not able to create effusive beauty from minutia while continuously experiencing said minutia as a present and non-maladjusted person.