Rosary Cemetery, Norwich
Oh, Morioka
You under-rated city, capital of Iwate prefecture. I don’t really want to tell people about you, because then the touristic hordes will descend upon you. But to let you languish in obscurity doesn’t feel right either.
You are probably my favourite city (among other contenders like Aomori, Fukushima and Sendai) on this trip. Because – like the Goldilocks of Cities – you are not too big or too small, and have everything I can possibly need. There are not too many and not too few people, meaning it is not busy or crowded at all downtown on a Wednesday afternoon. And you have great thrift shops, run by extremely nice little old ladies who tell me in perfect English that Singapore is the number one place they want to travel to because they heard it is so clean.
You are staffed by earnest post office staff who consult booklets and finally tell me their branch cannot handle Sea Mail, but that air mail is actually quite reasonably priced. Taking my thrift store finds off my hands, saving me the hassle of lugging them around.
And you have soba restaurant waitresses who ask if I want the wanko soba (all you can eat! For 3,700 yen! No, thanks!), and then recognises and says the tamagotchi I am wearing on my wrist is kawaii. ❤️
All of which is to say that I want to come back and stay longer, and find out more about this town that somehow feels a little stuck in the 1980s, and stuck between east and west, with its plethora of Meiji-era Western architecture. It says a lot to my heart that the two most famous sons of Morioka are writers: Kenji Miyazawa and Takuboku Ishikawa. This is a literary town and not afraid to show it.
I walk from the shotengai (shopping street) to the walls of the old Morioka castle. The castle is no longer standing, but there is a huge rock in one corner of the grounds that is supposed to be the keep’s guardian. People used to worship it, and a shrine has sprung up around and below it. I somehow end up on the back side of the shrine, where there is a huge cypress tree.
“I sing you a song, okay?” I tell the tree.
So I sing Tanya Chua’s 无底洞 (Bottomless Pit) because I feel like it. Loudly, like the pesky gaijin I am. The lone salarymen sitting up the hill does not object. And as I do, the wind picks up, and there is a line in the song that says “很快就风吹云涌“ and it actually feels like that. It’s magic.
I finish my song, and start off in the direction of the courthouse. In front of it stands the famous Rock-splitting Cherry Tree. I take a picture with it. It really is the most important thing I have come here to see. A reminder that no matter how hard things are, I am harder.
The Private Bath
I am currently travelling around Tohoku, in an attempt to do my version of Basho’s Narrow Road to the Deep South. And this will be the nicest bath (to date) I will ever have. Private onsen facing Matsushima Bay, at 5am. 2,000 yen for 45 minutes. Yeah, why not?
The son is here
The younger son is here in Tokyo to visit me, while taking a break from studying for his O-levels. So we have been going all over town, walking up and down Ginza and lunching like chi-chi tai-tai.
Dragged him to Meiji-jingu and Yoyogi Park, where Tokyo Pride 2025 was going on (after a while, he just needed to sit down because he wasn’t used to walking so much in Sg). Basically just shooting the breeze and hanging out. Most of the time, he takes micro-naps on long train rides.
A small investigation he has been undertaking: why are there no Pokka Green Tea in any of the vending machines here?
Harajuku Nights
Yes, I admit: I am a bit of a Harajuku girl at heart. There’s nothing I like better than to have a dig in the Chicago vintage store by Meiji-jingu Station, then go lie down on the grass in Yoyogi Park to watch the sunset.
Yesterday, I went to the area again to visit the Ota Memorial Museum for their excellent new exhibition on who they are dubbing as the last true Ukiyo-e artist and Meiji-era book illustrator, Hirezaki Eiho. The show was small but inspiring – as much about the evolution of printing techniques (from woodblock to lithography to three-colour and offset printing) as it is about the use of frontispieces of bijin-ga (beauty paintings) to augment the stories in novels and literary magazines.
Having seen the show, I wandered over to the Yoshinoya right by the busy intersection with all the tourists posing for selfies. I was famished. And as usual, I did my usual point as menu and nod thing. I must have looked tired and confused, because the waitress started explaining things in a maternal way in English to me. The curry omu rice I wanted was sold out. But here’s a spicy alternative they could do with an egg, if I wanted. The spoons are here. Have some water.
She came by several times during my meal at the counter to check on me.
“Where are you from?” She asked, as I paid.
“Singapore,” I said, chasing a 500 yen coin I dropped on the floor. “You?”
“Philippines.”
It felt like the two of us were holding some secret ASEAN conference among the Japanese salarymen wolfing down their beef bowls. I wondered why she had to whisper a little. Perhaps to not let her colleagues hear that we were conversing in English? Or that she was talking more than she should to a customer and not working?
“You have a good time here,” she said.
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said. “Here.”
“Same. See you again.”
And I was back out on the streets, where crazy tourists dashed right in front of your face to cross at a red light.
Later, I sat in a Starbucks, after using their WiFi for a Zoom call. I was in the middle of writing a story about demons. Next to me, a young Japanese man kept repeating the same line to himself under his breath. It was a rather confrontational line of dialogue, even though I couldn’t understand it completely. The pronoun he was using was not a polite form of addressing someone. But he said it so softly and earnestly, while marking up a pile of papers with pencil and highlighter.
I wanted to imagine that he was an actor. That he was trying, like so many people, to make it in this relentless city. We sat elbow to elbow for a couple of hours, working quietly. Then he got up and left. It was too late and dark for me, by then, to go to the park like I normally would. So I walked around some more, in the less crowded back lanes, then headed to the subway – reluctant to leave the Lolita speciality boutiques and hip cafes. And most of all, to leave the random kindness, hope and energy of the place.
Basho’s Road to the Narrow North
I had this idea that I would replicate Basho’s road to the narrow north, when he did a months-long tour of Tohoku. After all, I am staying in Senju, a stone’s throw from the spot where the poet set off on his trip after selling his house and saying goodbye to all his friends (#lifegoals).
So I go, but by train from Kitasenju station, to the first stop he made: Soka, in Chiba prefecture, a little north of Tokyo. It used to be a postal town in Basho’s time. Today, the city’s claim to fame is a picturesque avenue of pine trees by the Edo river – a preserved stretch of the Old Road to Nikko.
All is well and dandy, as I set off. (After touring the city’s municipal folklore and history museum and Tofukuji temple). Except it had been drizzling all of the previous night and early morning, and by about 11am, it was really coming down in sheets. So here I am, trudging along in the rain, like a crazy person because all the sane ones are indoors. The only people coming the opposite way are those in huge raincoats flying by like bats on bikes. And one nice obasan, in sensible rain boots. We exchange konichiwas as I squelch past in soaked sneakers in the mud.
After 1km of this, I am like, screw it. Basho’s road sucks. So I hightail it back to the nearest train station and head off to the next stop: Koshigaya.
I get it in my head that Basho stopped here, since it was also a postal town, but now I think I might be mistaken. In any case, there is nothing to see there except one giant shopping/outlet mall so big that you need to take travellator from one wing to another like it’s an airport. Exhausting.
I hoof it in the rain to a lake outside (the area is called very imaginatively Laketown). Then keep going because I want to go to the preserved former Nakamura residence – a samurai family’s house open to the public.
It is positively pissing down now.
I make it there, cursing myself. Two ladies who do not speak English look up from whatever they are discussing inside the house and welcome me in. My feet are a sopping mess. My wet socks are making them itch. So I creep into the wooden house, take off my shoes and socks and sit on the tatami under the eaves, trying to dry out all the stuff that had gotten drenched through my bag (note to self: get a waterproof backpack cover). Eventually, I get myself relatively dry and ready to leave. The house is three rooms and takes five minutes to see. The nice ladies give me a towel to dry myself with and I tell them in my Duolingo broken Japanese that they are very kind and apologise for wetting their lacquered wood floors. They wave my apology away and I wave goodbye.
So I get back to the mall, buy some Jujutsu Kaisen merch, then head off to Kasukabe, Saitama, where Basho definitely spent the night. Contemporary Kasukabe is best known for being manga character Crayon Shin-chan’s hometown, and you can get commemorative Shin-chan stamps at the visitor centre. But because I spent too much time faffing around the previous town, I arrive after 5pm and the visitor’s centre is closed. So no commemorative stamp for me.
It’s still raining, and by now my compact umbrella has given up the ghost and broken in two, making it necessary for me to jiggle it back into commission whenever I opened it. Oh well.
I have dinner at a random seafood BBQ restaurant. The scallops you grill on your own at the table are too expensive. So I just have normal seafood donburi. It was decent for about 1,000 yen. By now, it’s about 17 degrees C and my windbreaker is not really cutting it. So after dinner, I try to walk a little to the other side of the tracks just to see what buildings I can harbour at.
Except I can’t figure out how to cross the tracks without getting into the station and paying.
So I give up and get in, find my platform and ride the Tobu Skytree line back to Kitasenju. The ride is so long, and I am so wiped that I fall asleep. When I wake up, the dude next to me picking his nails and throwing the flakes ostentatiously on the train floor has been replaced by an elegant salary man with immaculate shirt cuffs. And I have drooled into my mask. So I unglamly wipe my chin next to elegant salary man. Hey, at least compared to nail flakes guy I am not the grossest person on that train.
It is. Still. Raining.
I ride back to Horikiri, my trusty stop, hoping I don’t get sick. The rain lashes the train windows. Back in my apartment, I peel off my sodden socks and crawl into bed. And that’s that.
Here’s a commemorative haiku:
Basho’s trip in spring
Was lovely, so why bonehead
Wait to do it now?
Ramen Bowls at 21-21 Design Sight
Today’s writing spot
Entry into flower garden: 150 yen
Sencha set with snack: 500 yen (take it anywhere you like in the garden to enjoy, said the proprietress of Sahara Teahouse, but I was happy to stay put at the one table in her wooden hut)
Roppongi
I spent an hour tonight walking up and down Roppongi Crossing. The weather was a perfect 21 degrees C. I left the house without a jacket. At Roppongi, I just randomly followed groups of men up and down the street, watching which expensive hostess clubs they wandered into. Mostly, they just hung around drunk on the pavement, propping each other up. I can’t say it was a productive use of my time. Nor can I say what they – or I – was searching for. But the night view of the Tokyo tower made up for it.
Blue sky
It rained incessantly for three days. I have never been gladder to see the sun. Everything feels hopeful Sunday morning, and the local train that comes by every five minutes – a miracle.
Why must go so far to write? 