Big On Japan, Part 4/3

Sometimes its possible to feel a black cloud gathering over oneself. You may feel the forces beginning to conspire, but reading the omens gets washed away by the priority and immediacy of simply just living. Two foreboding signs that I should have read during my time in Japan were the fact that, even though I acquired a Korean debit card with a Mastercard logo for the sole purpose of travelling and even got assurances from my bank that it would work in Japan, I wasn't able to access my bank account for the entirety of my trip. The second alarm bell, had I considered it, was that when trying to travel from Fukuoka to Tokyo in the first place, the JR (Japan Rail) representatives had not heard of the specific train and route I was trying to take. I took this as something lost in translation and the railway reps trying to help me take the easiest way to Tokyo (see: the most expensive way), an express train with no transfers. Having over-paid (considering what I had budgeted) for my trip to Tokyo, I was determined to find a way back using the same website that I had employed in planning my vacation to research cheaper ways around Japan. So, to purchase my cheaper return ticket, which would involve a couple of transfers before arriving in Fukuoka, I asked a hostel employee that I had become friendly with to help me out. He even called the JR office at Shinagawa Station to confirm the details. I was certain that he knew that I needed to return to Fukuoka to catch a boat back to Korea. Everything was flowing smoothly...or so I thought.

So, I arrive at Shinagawa Station ready to hop on a train, kick my feet up, and once in Fukuoka, find a nice bar to settle into while waiting to catch my ferry the next morning. Now, keep in mind that I only have just enough money in my pocket for a snack, some beers, and to pay the tax of 1,300 yen that one has to pay to exit Japan. I like travel to go as smoothly as possible (who doesn't?), so I was heading to my platform when my tickets weren't accepted by the machine. Having shown them to an attendant, he tells me that I actually need to be departing from Tokyo Station and not Shinagawa Station. !!!!!!!!!!! Tokyo Station is about eight stops away from Shinagawa Station and I had thirty minutes to make it there. Somehow, after some very tense inner conversation and gritting of teeth, I made it to my train. My confusion stems from the fact that I thought the name of my departing destination (Tokyo) was the city itself and not the specific station in the city. But, I made it anyway and now, having averted disaster and watching happy weekend travelers exit my train with skis and snow gear, I was ready to settle in and chill out on my way back to Fukuoka.

Wait..."ski gear?", you may be saying. Isn't Fukuoka fairly far south of Tokyo? Anyway, between Tokyo and Fukuoka is a large swathe of land with mountains, so I paid no mind. Blinking red lights and alarm sirens should have gone off in my head when I started to see banks of snow about an hour into the train ride. But hey, I was taking a different route back than when I came, one that I booked with a couple of transfers to save some money. Finally, the alarm did go off when I was on my last train, about thirty minutes from my final destination (which I thought was Fukuoka), when, looking at a map of the city I had copped upon entering Japan, I didn't see the rail line that I was on running into the Fukuoka Station. With a horrible feeling in my stomach, I feverishly tried to communicate with some people to see if I was indeed in the wrong place. One man overheard my conversation and said to me in English, "I think you've made a huge mistake!". As you can imagine, I was starting to really lose it at this point. So, he told me I should get off the train with him and then try to turn back around, but I explained that I had no money and an undoubtedly limited understanding of Japanese geography. As it turned out, there are TWO Fukuokas in Japan and the actual Fukuoka I needed to go to isn't called Fukuoka but is known as Hakata when booking a train ticket. OOPS! So there I was...completely broke, in a place where I can't speak the language, looking at being stuck there for who knows how long and more immediately, a very cold, miserable night on snow-covered streets. BUT, after realizing just how totally screwed I was, this guy invited me back to his house. Needless to say, his wife wasn't very happy about it. This saint's name was Shinji, and he lived with his wife and two daughters in a nice little house on a quiet little street in a quiet little town about twenty minutes from the area's major hub of Toyama, which really is quite minor in the grand scheme of things. So exactly where was I? Instead of going southwest from Tokyo, I went northwest, not too far away from Nagano, where the winter Olympics were held in the somewhat recent past. 

Shinji, initially totally divorced from my situation other than putting me up for the night, kept warming to me more and more, as did his wife, when they realized exactly the depth of the trouble that I was in. They fed me when they found out I hadn't eaten since lunch that day, let me use their phone to call my parents, they even offered me a beer to help me relax. At this point, I was grinding my mental gears perhaps more than I had ever done in my life, trying to find a way out of this situation. Many options presented themselves, all to be quashed by one circumstance or another. Ultimately, Shinji offered to pay for my train ticket back to where I needed to go. All I had to do was promise to pay him back. I mean, I'm still not over what a stunning act of human kindness this was (made more so by how expensive the train ticket was...$220). They even gave me enough money to have a place to stay in Fukuoka as I was trying to figure out what to do about my missed ferry back to Korea that morning. 

So, still somewhat in a state of shock, and with another big task ahead of me, namely trying to negotiate with the ferry company to let me on a boat back to Korea, I set off south. 

The scenery was really stunning, deep snow drifts, quaint villages billowing smoke from their chimneys, people digging out houses from under the snow. At some point, it hit me exactly where I was and where I would be heading. Just to double check, I cracked Haruki Murakami's Norwegian Wood, one of my favorite books, and realized I would soon be passing through the mountains north of Kyoto, a very significant setting in the book. Aside from all the strife that I'd just been through, I was able to glimpse a place far off the beaten path, a locale that my eyes would have never otherwise seen, fields and mountains and tiny villages buried in the sort of snow that is irresistible in its gravity, and, most importantly, scenery that I had read about over and over again that still affects me deeply. All I could do was cry, really, for all the fortune and misfortune and the sheer unbelievable nature of how events had unfolded. 

(MY WELL-WORN COPY OF NORWEGIAN WOOD)

(MASSIVE BUDDHA SOMEWHERE BETWEEN TOYAMA AND KYOTO)

(DEEP SNOW, JUST NORTH OF KYOTO)

My time in Tokyo was one thing, an experience many people can have, but in the course of four days, I had gotten to pass through Hiroshima, Kobe, Osaka, Kyoto, Nagoya and more on my way to Tokyo. More importantly though, I had gotten to see the real Japan, experience some heartrending kindness, stay with a Japanese family for a night, and see a decidedly more rural part of the country. Stunning scenes, really, passing through those mountains. In virtually every way, I had gotten to see the Japan of my dreams. No longer an abstraction, I had the concrete, undeniably real experience that I had always hoped for.

Needless to say, I was the beneficiary of some more good fortune as the next morning, despite having been told flatly "no" over the phone, I went to the ferry terminal and they decided to honor my ticket for the ferry that I had missed the previous morning while marooned in the north. I returned to Korea with just enough time to catch the KTX from Busan, eat a quick lunch, and glide into work right on time just like it was any other Monday.