The Himedomachi Cycling Club

I pulled back the curtain in my container and gazed onto the wall of a warehouse supermarket called Cosmos. I could just see that the sun was shining in the little crack of sky high over my head. I’d planned a route that I hoped would take me away from the cars, luxuriating in bed as long as I could before getting breakfast at the 7-11 and setting off.

The temperature was already in the low twenties and my cycling clothes were fresh from the laundry. I crossed a bridge and followed the road along the sea then down a cycling path that went through a wood. The contrast to yesterday couldn’t have been greater.

The park took me past the Kintaiko Bridge, that had originally been built in the 1600’s, destroyed in 1950 by a typhoon,  and had kept ice cream vendors and nick-nack sellers in clover since it was rebuilt early in this millennium. There were already four tourist buses parked beside it when I passed it and I had to weave through herds of sightseers who had wandered into the road in search of camera angles.

The road skirted a bamboo forest, dark under the thick foliage. I was enjoying the ride too much to stop. An actual bike path, and a castle nestled in a wood at the top of a hill to admire.

I took a bullet train from Shin-Iwakami to Shin-Yamaguchi, putting Ribena into her travelling bag beside the squashed body of a poisonous millipede. The Shinkansen did in 25 minutes a route that would have taken me 7-8 hours. I rebuilt the bike beside the bus terminal, listening to the canned recording of a woman’s voice telling people to take care on the escalator and to stand on the left.

These canned voices are everywhere, in shops, trains, stations, crossings, shopping centres. When Japanese cities fail, and many of them are expected to in my children’s lifetimes, and the grass grows over them again, there will still be these voices asking the deer and the wild boar if they have a store loyalty card.

Miraculously I found another bike path, and set off for Yamaguchi city along a river, through summer farms and then behind family houses. A road biker whizzed past me on a bike as thin as a blade of grass.

I walked into a restaurant called Sakura, cherry blossom. I waited so long to be seated that a customer stood up and asked me if I wanted to eat. I said yes, so she walked to the kitchen and shouted, “Sumimasen!” No one came so she advised me to take a table and wait.

Eventually a woman in a kimono appeared and apologised for keeping me waiting. She grabbed an iPad to help me with my order, surprised that I could read the Japanese menu and order what I wanted.

I thanked the helpful customer when she left, and when I wanted something I went to the kitchen and shouted, “Sumimasen!” in the local tradition.

The ladies at the front desk of the hotel let me check in early and I had a brief but lovely interaction with them. I stripped all the bags off Ribena and we went for a joyful spin around the city. The queue for Starbucks was so long men stood at the car park entrance with signs reading, “Full.” Next door was the Yamaguchi Arts and Culture building.

A couple of years I wrote a novel called Shared With Us The Sorrow. I was inspired by a book about Yokohama Mary, a woman who lived in Yokohama and wore only white clothes and painted her face and dyed her hair white. I looked in the Yamaguchi library for it, as I have done in other libraries on my trip. They didn’t have it so I just walked around for a while, breathing in the smell of the books.

I pedalled over to an onsen. I showered and followed a father and his 6 year old son into the outside bath. It looked onto a bamboo forest, dotted with some pagodas. The son was showing her could count. The bath was hot and when the boy eventually got to one hundred I got out.

In another bath a young man practiced his English on me. He asked me where I am from and when I said England he heard India, a mistake we only realised later.

“What job do you do?” I asked him.

“Sales,” he said, and didn’t elaborate.

There was a pancake place up a track next door to the onsen. I liked the owner immediately upon seeing him and we chatted as his wife folded the crepe into a cone and filled it with cream cheese and fruit.

He had worked in Osaka for years, selling pancakes from a van. He’d moved back to Yamaguchi a year before and opened the shop was beside his mother’s place. It was 17.30 and he asked me if I was going to eat supper afterwards. I told him I was cycling to Sata and could eat whatever I wanted. He patted his belly and looked rueful.

There are hummingbirds in his valley and they fly around in the morning between 8 and 9. I said I’d come back tomorrow to see them and he told me he’d be there, setting things up. I said I’d knock at the door and ask for a coffee and I might just hold him to it.

I’ve realised that coffee shops for me are the equivalent of beer shops for Alan Booth. The owners know how to hold a conversation and, as independent business owners, we have something in common. I’m so impressed that these people have found creative uses for abandoned buildings. This man, Toki last night, Madoka, and others I’ve likely forgotten.

I went to my hotel and caught up on this blog. With no news several people have kindly asked me if I was ok. I walked to a sushi place but it had a queue out the door, so I went to a place that grilled handmade hamburgers on charcoal.

I went in the wrong entrance, missed the payment machine and later would try to leave via the entrance. The waiter explained where to find the chopsticks and face towel, in the drawer in front of me, and pointed out the raw eggs. Customers sat in a semi-circle around the grill. My first patty arrived and the chef plopped it into the mini charcoal grill in front of me. I copied the other diners and put it on my rice, broke it apart and ate it. Everyone gets three and the chef keeps count by turning over a square stick every time you get one. It was a pretty weird meal – three patties, rice, miso and a raw egg eaten in front of a curious audience. All part of the adventure.

It’s midnight and time to sleep. Well past but bed time. Ribena told me a ribald joke today but I’ve promised not to share it. Every bike has a personality and I’m starting to understand hers.