Dutch Harbour and the Bering Sea

Approaching an island paradise: Unalaska!

Dutch Harbour is another former military base, with a lot of World War 2 bunkers, as well as the oldest Russian-built church in the US. In recent years, the town has come to be synonymous with the crab-fishing industry, as it is portrayed in the popular documentary series The Deadliest Catch. We arrived there in the early morning, emerging from a misty sea into bright sunshine, which is apparently extremely rare. Forming part of the "city" of Unalaska, Dutch Harbour itself is on the small island of Amaknak, which is connected to the island of Unalaska by the "Bridge-to-the-other-side".

Looking across from Unalaska to Dutch Harbour

 We were there at the same time as Sunstone, Bannister, and a French boat we had met briefly just before leaving Japan and again just off one of the outer islands. We were moored a few miles out of town, so as a group we were rented a van, which afforded us the opportunity to do some hillwalking on some of the hills around the town.

It is impossible to spend a few days in Dutch Harbour without becoming aware of the vast number of bald eagles around. These are so plentiful that they are almost treated as a pest - although being a protected species, they cannot be dealt with in the same way as other pests. At first it was quite exciting to see them, flying over us low, and perched on fishing boats devouring the remains of some fish or other.  The novelty wore off, though, as we realized that there was an eagle perched on almost every tree, telegraph pole and boat mast: after a few days we had all got rather tired of having to clean eagle droppings and bits of dead fish that the creatures had dropped all over our nice clean decks.

Photo courtesy of Theo

 On July the 4th, a group of us spent the early morning walking up a hill called Pyramid Peak. We didn't quite make the summit, as the ridge grew exceedingly narrow, rather like the Crib Goch ridge leading up Snowdon in Wales. 

 We got far enough to see down over the town to where the boats were moored, then returned to the van. There were enough patches of snow up there that on the way down to the van, I could ski down part of the way on my walking boots.

Around midday we went to Unalaska's main street for the city's July 4th festivities. Smaller in scale than the first July 4th I ever experienced (in Boston, 2007), but no less full-on in its sheer patriotism.

At one point I was handed a Stars&Stripes to hold, and decided to stick it in my headband - I wore it like this for the rest of the day, and couldn't help feeling that my head was now rather like the moon.

(Photo courtesy Eva-Lisa)

 As it had become a sunny day to rival our arrival day, I went for another walk in the afternoon, up bunker hill - which is aptly named, as it is essentially a fortress. I made an extensive exploration of the fortifications: barracks, gun mounts and lookout towers, and wondered how similar they were to the places my father's father would have been fighting in Italy around the same time that these were in use. 

View from a gunning station on Bunker Hill

The hill affords stunning views over the town and the bays all around, and it was with reluctance that I went back down the switchback road to supper aboard Jennifer. 

View over to Unalaska Island with airport in foreground, and Bridge-to-the-other-side in the centre 

Theo and Niels had made friends with some locals they met climbing another hill, so in the evening, the three of us drove over to Unalaska to sit on the beach with fires made from pallets, and watch fireworks reflected in the bay.

Photo courtesy of Theo

We had a slight crew change in Dutch Harbour: the Dutchman left! Niels decided to jump ship and spend a few days waiting for the fortnightly ferry. Dutch Harbour is the furthest West stop on the Alaska Marine Highway - the system of ferries that serves many of the small settlements of Maritime Alaska. Niels was replaced by Evalise, a Swedish lady who flew in to Dutch Harbour's single-runway airport during the July 4th festivities. On that day - and perhaps every day - the municipal fire crew greeted every arriving and departing plane by sounding their sirens and wildly spraying water.

After a few days of beautifully calm and clear weather on the island, it felt like time to leave, and we did so on July 5th. Just out from Dutch Harbour, heading into a choppy sea, I was struck by my first (and only) bout of seasickness. I think that having spent four days adjusting back to being on land, I just wasn't prepared for the sudden motion of the boat.

  I quickly got over the nausea by sitting up on deck and watching the horizon, and looking out for whales. We may have had our first whale sighting that day, but it remains unconfirmed, as the waves were so choppy as to quickly camouflage any mammalian activity. There were lots of seabirds around, though.


The weather got stronger and stronger throughout the night, and the Southerly wind became compressed as it howled over the islands to our South. Steering was tricky in such strong conditions, and it was a relief when P-O and I finished our 9-12pm watch and handed over to the next team. Despite going to bed, however, I didn't get a whole lot of sleep. The constant banging of the boat smashing through the waves was punctuated by the flapping of the sail and frequent sounds of discussion and various human activity. Every now and then, there was an especially big lurch to one side or another, and more than once I was convinced that we had gybed. I awoke to Lars telling me it was 6am, and time for my next watch: he also told me the news that there had been at least one gybe in the night, and the mainsail was now torn into 2 pieces. So the first job for P-O and I was to wrap it up securely. The weather was getting calmer, and giving way to a light drizzly mist. After our watch, I indulged in a welcome 3-hour sleep.


It happened that on our next watch, we were to steer through a buoy channel in the Isanotski Strait between the end of the Alaska Peninsula and Unimak island. P-O manned the computer to monitor our position on the chart, and I took the wheel. I felt like I was playing a surreal slow-motion computer game. As we approached each pair of bouys we had to pass between, I could generally see the next pair or two ahead, but getting to the next pair consistently felt like slow progress, although it was rather fun, and very satisfying knowing that passing between the buoys was protecting us from hidden sandbanks. After two and a quarter hours of intense concentration, I handed over to Anki and Theo to steer us into False Pass harbour.

Arriving in False Pass

The Outer Aleutian Islands

Theo and I taking in the view from the bows

The state of Alaska covers the majority of a large wide peninsula jutting out of the north west corner of North America, to the west of the northern parts of Canada. It is one of the many US states that has a "panhandle", that is, a narrow strip projecting from the main territory: Alaska's panhandle is the strip of coast that creeps down to the South East, sandwiched between the Pacific coast and Northern British Columbia. Something that seems rarely acknowledged is the fact that Alaska in effect has two panhandles. Mirroring the coastal sandwich panhandle and stretching out to the southwest, the Alaska peninsula and the Aleutian islands form another panhandle, the majority of which is often cut off official maps of Alaska, despite (or because of) stretching out over more than twice the distance covered by the South Eastern panhandle. There are numerous similarities between these panhandles: they are both made up largely of islands and dotted with small communities, most of which can only be reached by boat or plane.

I had the rare and fortunate privelege of approaching Alaska via one panhandle and leaving via the other, and visiting many of the small communities along the way.

Navigating the narrow channel between Adak and Kagalaska islands

The furthest west inhabited island in the Aleutian chain is Adak. On the approach, we passed through a narrow channel between islands, which felt rather like flying through mountaintops - the landscapes we passed were very reminiscent of Snowdonia.


At the end of the channel, we rounded a few headlands and approached the harbour not knowing quite what to expect. In the distance we could see a substantial settlement - a town of windswept buildings sweeping up to the surrounding hills.

After a night sheltering in a fjord and gaining radio contact with the coast guard and harbourmaster (who happens to be the same person), we got permission to go into the small boat harbour to shelter for a few days from a developing storm. Despite having the appearance of a small town, Adak turned out to be an abandoned naval base which is home to barely more than a hundred people. The base had housed over 6000 troops, but now the majority of the buildings we saw were empty. When it closed in the early 2000s, the naval base was handed over to the Aleut Corporation, the governing body of the indigenous people of the Aleutian islands.

 Life in Adak seems to consist mostly of waiting, which includes hunting caribou, gathering seagulls eggs, maintaining the buildings, and operating the airport which has two of the largest runways west of Anchorage.
In the absence of cinemas, a typical evening's entertainment in Adak consists of going down to the rubbish tip and shooting rats, although we didn't have the chance to participate in such activities.

 Adak is known in the Aleut language as "Birthplace of the Winds," so it was no surprise that the storm we sheltered from was a huge one. There were reports of winds blowing 90 knots out in the waters we would otherwise have been sailing in, and even in the shelter of the harbour, we had to tie the boat up with extra ropes to protect against 30-40 knots. Niels and I hiked up a hill and found winds we could lean on!

Storms seem to bring companionship: sheltering with us were two other sailing boats which had made the same crossing from Japan a little way ahead of us: A Dutch couple in their yacht Bannister, of a similar size to Jennifer, and Sunstone, a smaller wooden British boat, owned, crewed and lived in by Tom and Vicky, a couple who have lived in the boat for many years, and have been sailing and racing around the world since retiring a few years ago. It was good to meet other people, and get to know a bit about sailing and cruising from different points of view.

Left to right: Jennifer, Bannister, Sunstone (photo by Niels)

Four days after arriving in Adak, the weather cleared enough for us to leave, and we sailed out amongst the islands, beginning the four day sail to Dutch Harbour. Bannister and Sunstone went out first, and quickly disappeared over the horizon, leaving the six of us in Jennifer to navigate our way through the tricky currents that flow amongst the Aleutian Islands.

Aboard Yacht Jennifer: Crossing the Pacific

How can I possibly put this into words?

42 days of living in a wobbly wardrobe with a Viking giant could not have been more enjoyable or unique an experience. I first met my 2 metre-tall room mate P-O when he ducked down the companionway as he arrived at the boat in Kushiro, our last port in Japan. Suddenly, Jennifer, the 50-foot yacht, felt rather small.

I had already been aboard for a few days, along with Lars the skipper, and two other crew members: Theo - an American who had got fed up with living in Bali and decided that crossing the North Pacific would help him find his place in the world, and Niels - a young Dutchman who decided that a life installing air conditioning was not for him and set out two years ago to travel around the world. A couple of days exploring Hakodate and obtaining provisions for the trip were followed by a day-and-two-nights motoring around the coast of Hokkaido to Kushiro.


There was a little bit of wind as we set out around Mt. Hakodate, but this soon dropped to almost nothing. En route, we experienced a lot of fog, a bit of seasickness, and some crazy birds who danced around the mast in the misty night air, sounding rather like airborne dolphins, and bewildering us to their species or provenance. The seasickness (experienced fully by Niels, and partially by Theo and I) was due to a sudden realization that a boat, when on the open sea and no longer moored in a harbour, will keep moving, and moving, and moving, in a very wobbly way.


After rounding Cape Erimo in a thick fog, the sea became much calmer, and we disturbed many large flocks of birds from their slumbers as we motored up Hokkaido's South East coast. The second evening, towards Kushiro, Niels had to steer carefully round some oil barrels and other post-tsunami flotsam, while I put together my first meal-for-4-in-a-wobbly-kitchen.
We approached Kushiro in a thick morning fog, making good use of the radar, and had a couple of days to gather final essentials, meet the new Swedes and take a final bath before the voyage.

The other Swede who joined us in Kushiro was Anki, a lady who has done some intrepid abseil-accessed kayaking in Norway and Sweden. It soon became clear, on leaving Kushiro, that apart from Lars, who has spent most of the last 25 years sailing around various parts of the world, we 5 crew had very little ocean sailing experience between us. The most experienced was P-O, who has sailed from Sweden to Scotland, the Shetlands and the Faeroes. The rest of us amounted not more than a few hours of coastal dinghy sailing, so steep learning curves were had by all.


Once out on the ocean, someone has to be awake at every moment, as you just have to keep going. A watch shift rota was established (watches in pairs: 3 hours on; six hours off) which we all got used to, but we learned very quickly to take sleep whenever we could get it.


The weather was fairly rough for the first few days out of Kushiro (Anki, poor thing, was seasick for 5 days), but as the low pressure system moved on ahead of us, the seas became calm, and we had a few days right in the middle of the Pacific with not a breath of wind, the sea grey and gently undulating. A diary snippet from the middle of the Pacific:

Monotony. I think it's Sunday (?19th?) but we could have passed the International Date Line, in which case it is actually Saturday again. It gets light by 2:30 am. The ocean today looks similar to the ocean yesterday, and the ocean a week ago. Are we even moving? How do we know that?



As soon as the wind picked up again, though, so did the waves. I noted in my diary that I now know what it is like being a beetle in a matchbox being shaken by a child, or transported in a pocket. Like an extended, non-stop fairground ride. The final night before our first landfall had us aiming for the southern end of Amchitka island, but the wind gradually picked up 20, then 25 knots before it sort of stabilized around 30, probably gusting 35 now and then.


Steering through the 6-12 foot waves was difficult enough, but we had to be as close into the wind as possible to try to be on course, but we were helplessly driven North as the wind struck us from the South-East.

It was most exciting to see land again, albeit a pile of rocks. This was Aleut Point, the Northernmost point of Amchitka Island in the Western Aleutians. As we passed it in the rough seas, Lars said "it's like rounding Cape Horn!" At the time, I thought "there speaks a seaman who knows what he's talking about" but I later realized that he has never actually rounded Cape Horn, having always transited via Panama.... Perhaps rounding Cape Horn is a generic state-of-mind that can be achieved by rounding any peninsula in the right sort of seas.



Given the crew's collective lack of experience, Lars was generally patient with us; the only time I heard him swear was when Niels let go of the Main Halyard (the rope which attaches to the top of the mainsail) which flew up into the air and wound itself round the mainstay. This was while we were still in the strong swells north of Aleut Point, and Theo volunteered to climb the mast. With some successful teamwork, we were able to free the halyard, Niels could breathe again, and Lars stopped swearing.
It was my turn to swear a couple of days later, when in considerably less rough seas, I climbed the mast, primarily as an academic excercise and an attempt to see over the thick fog. The water was calm but undulating, and I got up to the second spreader bars - about 2/3 of the way up the 20 metre mast, before losing confidence in my life jacket/harness and slowly working my way back down. This was the scariest thing I have ever done (the second scariest thing being steering the boat through the high winds two nights previously).

After 12 days at sea, we were now amongst the Aleutian islands, but had plenty more sea to cover before getting to Alaska proper.

Cooking on board Jennifer

This short film documents the creation of a tasty meal of fried eggs on knäckebröd (Swedish Ryvita) and a hot drink, prepared and consumed approximately half way across the North Pacific, aboard S/V Jennifer in June, 2011. When at sea, the direction of up and down keep changing. Watch the washing-up liquid, the coats on hooks in the background, and the gimbled cooker. And please enjoy the chattering of the plates.

Leaving 北海道

Well Well Well,

I am back in Hakodate! It just so happens that I am about to leave from the same port I arrived into...

My lack of blogging reflects my busy-ness in various activities, so I will provide you for the moment with some snippets. (Sorry, no photos for the moment - I have far too many to choose from!)

Hokkaido is quite an extraordinary place, and far too big to explore thoroughly in a mere 8 months.

On the same island I have met (in no particular order):
⊙ an American convinced that Biodynamic farming will hold off the effects of the coming nuclear apocalypse (he told me this months before the Tohoku Earthquake and subsequent catastrophes);

⊙ an Aussie determined to rise to the top of the local and national ski accommodation travel market by creating a lavish website which will rise above the others;

⊙ an organic potato farmer who is determined to revert the soil of Hokkaido to its preindustrial purity;

⊙ his father who is fascinated by the numerous varieties of potato and had a dream of going to South America to find and obtain some examples of the prototype potato developed by the Inca;

⊙ A couple who moved North to live the good life and have been so busy farming and obsessing about horses that they havern't had time to go paragliding;

⊙ A family of Japanese catholics who run a "rider house" and a ramen shop and hold the pope so dear that they went all the way to Vatican City just to see him from a distance;

⊙ A man who lives in Noboribetsu and drives to Tomakomai every morning to buy bread from a cheap outlet store;

⊙ A man who sleeps under the table in a cheap hostel he runs in an old house in a suburb of Hakodate during the summer and spends the winter drinking sake way down south in the islands of Okinawa;

⊙ A peach farmer from Fukushima who is terrified of the potential effects of radiation on his children, and first evacuated South to Nagasaki but then missed the North and came to Hokkaido to scout out fields to purchase to replace his Fukushima farm (where his parents are still living);

⊙ A young man who used to play pachinko a lot but has been studying hard since he decided instead to pursue a dream of going to a university in Tokyo and getting a job with the UN;

⊙ A man who has cycled around most of Japan in different stages over the last few years and frequently goes to Uganda to work for a non-profit organization;

⊙ A guy from Yamaguchi who does hotel work in the busy winter and mountain hiking in the summer, and one morning found me playing his piano and pushed a Bach CD and sheet music into my hands insisting that I listen and practice and accompany his flute by harpsichord (which i made a brief attempt at, but Bach's manuscripts just move too fast...);

⊙ A man who runs the tiny bath house in Makubetsu, who has probably been sitting there for 50 or more years, who was visibly astounded when a foreigner came to have a bath in his tiny establishment;


In Hokkaido I have been:
a traveller
a hitchhiker
a potato harvesting assistant
a trainee
a concierge
a snowboarder
a tourist
a web page designer

... and so busy with all of these things that taking photos and writing blogs have gone out of reach.

I have fulfilled a long-held personal dream of living in Hokkaido. I may be back one day, but right now, it is time to become a traveller again and set sail for the next continent.

A 50-foot sailing yacht named Jennifer has arrived in Hakodate, and I am due to find her tomorrow and meet the captain, a Swede who makes a living from sailing around the world. We are due to set sail on Sunday, heading for Alaska.

For a while, I thought I might have to fly across the Pacific in order to continue my trip around the Northern Hemisphere, but this opportunity has come along with perfect timing!

I won't have internet access for a while, but watch this space, just in case something slips out into cyberspace.

Arrival In 北海道函館市 (Hakodate, Hokkaido)

Goodbye to 本州

At 2010/09/08 07:06 this morning, I had just boarded my fourth ferry of the voyage, and was accompanying this seagull across the water:



and

Hello to 北海道

Upon stepping onto the soil of this vast northern island, the first thing I saw was this sign:

... which reads "Thank you for your custom. Please take care to your destination."

This made me laugh, because I have, as of the present moment, no destination: I am already here! My aim (amongst many) was to come to Hokkaido, and, well... here I am! So now what do I do? I need to invent for myself a new destination.

Feeling the need for orientation, I took the first bus available to the railway station, where I felt somewhat stuck, due to the exorbitant-seeming fares. Only when I had bought a map did I realize that that these are due to the vast distances involved.

Hokkaido really does seem like a foreign country when arriving here from Japan. It's as if it' Japan's colony - and historically, this is not far from the truth. So here are a few first impressions

The people here seem slightly less highly strung than a lot of those across the water, and perhaps a bit more outside-the-box thinking. Physically, they are somewhat larger and stockier in general. Good gracious - I'm starting to sound like Isabella Bird... these are merely highly generalized first impressions, and may yet be proven wrong (actually 4th impressions, but this time they're in context of a gradual non-airborne voyage).

Geographically and historically, there is bound to be some Russian and Ainu blood in the veins of many of the people around these parts. And compared with the 田舎 I have come from, 函館 seems infinitely more built-up and cosmopolitan.

Weather-wise, I immediately feel more at home: although there is still bright sunshine, there is a definite cool breeze blowing across the sea from Siberia.

To celebrate the ever-so-slightly Russian flavour to the people, the signs and the weather, I have uploaded a "missing link" blog post, giving more detail on life aboard the Trans-Siberian Railway, which you can get to by clicking here. This now seems like centuries ago (118 days, to be precise!), but is fun to remember, and remains one of many highlights of the journey so far.


This evening, I went down to a beach, and skimmed stones across the water towards where I spent last night. Were I able to walk across water, or sail / canoe like my brother, I could have done it in a day. There are talks of building a bridge across this strait, but I think it's pretty pretty without.



For years, I have been promising myself that one day I would live in Hokkaido.
And here I am!

The Japanese Art(s) Scene - in Hachinohe

At the start of September, I hitchiked north, and arrived in 八戸 (Hachinohe), where I had been put in touch with an artist whose residency here was just coming to an end.
こういちろう　山本 (Koichiro Yamamoto) has spent the last month or so based in an empty shop filling Hachinohe with yellow speech bubbles printed with a variety of phrases which seem to constitute gossip, rumours, and hearsay, or うわさ (Uwasa) in Japanese.



These mostly take the form of pin badges given out to anyone who wants one, and the shop walls are filled with photos of people wearing these badges, which proclaim such statements as "I've heard there's something amazing going on", "They say Hachinohe has many beautiful people". The effect is somewhat similar to that of Gillian Wearing's 1992-3 work Signs that say what you want them to say and not Signs that say what someone else wants you to say. In Yamamoto's work, however, the phrases are mostly not the wearer's own thoughts, but the phrase the wearer selected from a pool of about 400 different Uwasa on display in the shop.

Yamamoto has done a very good job of going out and engaging with the locals, and the presence of the shop with the yellow speech bubbles has generated quite a stir throughout the city. The display of photos gives a picture of a fun community art project that has brought people together and integrated with local culture such as the summer matsuri. However, in translation, this whole project loses a quirky edge that gives it a sense of fun in the context. The majority of the speech bubble comments end in the word 「らっしい」 -rashii, which is difficult to translate accurately. -rashii is most often rendered in English as "it seems...", or "maybe". The dictionary gives an explanation that ~らっしい "expresses judgment based on evidence, reason or trustworthy hearsay" but that's a bit of a mouthful, and still doesn't quite capture the subtle nuances that these speech bubbles contain.

The residency is part of the Hacchi project (a play on the city's name, the number 8 and the English word "Hatch"), an initiative organized by the City Council to foster the arts in the city, and at the same time make use of some of the empty properties left in the wake of hard times. This is going on in many parts of the world (Art360 and MECA are my homeland's local versions) but Hachinohe City Office seems to be setting a particularly good example of being proactive in instigating and facilitating such a program.
The Hacchi project is in the process of preparing a whole building as a permanent base, or "Portal Museum" and it seems that it is due to open in February 2011, when Yamamoto will be back in town, this time decorating buildings with large-scale versions of the pin-badge Uwasa.

On Friday evening, a couple of hours after arriving in Hachinohe, I went with Ko Yamamoto to another Hacchi organized event, part of an arts festival sponsored by Asahi Beer.

I was initially somewhat put off by the title of the evening, 酔っ払いた愛を (Yopparaita Ai wo): a suggestion of a combination of drunkenness and love, or a love of drunkenness. The location was the maze of snack bars and tiny 居酒屋 izakaya (drinking establishments) that are so plentiful everywhere in Japan, and especially here up north. Many of these establishments have also closed down, so there was a good variety of venues for the organizers to choose from.The evening consisted of three separate performances, each in a different izakaya, each lasting about 15 minutes. Performances were repeated 4 or 5 times throughout the evening, and the audience, armed with a 3-part ticket and a map, was free to move around the 3 venues in any order. In each case, the intimate size of the venue brought the audience of about 7-10 people right into the action, and feeling somewhat intrusive into the small world being depicted. We started with a play depicting a couple of businessmen getting slowly drunk and finding it gradually more and more difficult to make decisions on what to sing, whether to order food, and ultimately when to leave. A clever play on the nuances of Japanese social behaviour was offset by an undercurrent of the effects of stress and alcohol poisoning: one of the characters periodically clutched his abdoimen in pain and took a swig or two of sake to dull the pain.

The second show we saw was announced as 落語Rakugo, a Japanese tradition of comic storytelling, but the orator admitted to us from the start that 15 minutes was not quite enough time to engage in a proper rakugo session. He resorted to a few short funny stories and a card trick.

The highlight of the evening was a couple of dancers from Tokyo who skilfully portrayed the whole of Japanese nightlife in 15 minutes of interpretive dance. The audience entered to witness two apparently drunken girls dancing freely to a groovy big band dance music riff. The dancers' movements gradually became more controlled and synchronized into a well-choreographed interpretation of the physicalities of drunkenness. As the music went on, the dancers moved around the room, causing the audience, who had lined up along the bar, to move over to where the dancers had started. The dancers eventually moved behind the bar, and took on the role of the typical Japanese bar girl, whose role is not just to serve drinks, but to listen to the problems of the salaryman and make him feel good about life. The dancer's actions were mostly simple mimes of activities such as pouring drinks, listening with feigned interest, and trying desperately not to yawn; repeated and contrived to fit the music, these actions became a strange dance that somehow really captured the atmosphere of the past nature of the venue.

Later in the evening, Ko and I went to the after-party for the residency and for the performance event, where we spent a while meeting the dancers from the show, the mayor of Hachinohe, and various artists and curators from around Japan.

I am now about to head north to 恐山 (Osorezan, or Mount Fear) and then find a ferry to 北海道 (Hokkaido) to search for autumn and winter employment.

Unravelling Japan's Mysteries: A Very Good Way to spend the Summer!

By various turns of fate, I have had the good fortune come to a most wonderful place:



For two and a half weeks, I have been living on a family-run fruit farm in a rural part of Fukushima city in the south part of northern Japan. The farm is called Ankaju which is short for Anzai Kajuen, or Anzai Fruit Tree Garden (I have notified Shinya the farmer of this overly literal translation, but I have to admit that Orchard, while being a good word in its own right, doesn't sound quite as poetic as Fruit Tree Garden).

I am engaged on what is essentially a working homestay - I am essentially a WOOFer without having gone through the official WWOOF channel. In exchange for food and board, I help with the plethora of tasks that need to be done to keep the farm and household running. The farmer and the other workers start at around 4:30 in the morning. I have convinced them - as I have convinced myself - that I would not be able to function without a decent amount of sleep, so I am allowed the luxury of getting up as late as 6:30 in time to help prepare breakfast for 7.

The family of 6 spans 60 years: the 61-year-old patriarch - whose wife runs a pottery shop in the front room - has passed the farm management onto their 32-year-old son, Shinya, who is married to Akiko from Kamakura. Their 4-year-old son Sou-kun is interested in everything but only for brief periods, and their 1-year-old daughter is just on the verge of talking - she can now say "Yes", "Hello" and "Thank You" (suggestions for new words to teach her would be most welcome!) A couple of names must be mentioned: the almost-talkative daughter is called Momo-chan (Little Miss Peach), and the dog is called Ringo-chan (Little Miss Apple). Another family of young cousins lives in a house next door. There are three of us extra labourers - Oonishi from Kamakura who I am sharing a room with, and Ryuusuke from Fukushima, who drives here every day.

Being here is almost like being in Japan for the first time again, only with answers to the questions. Many of the mysteries that have puzzled me about Japan over the years are starting to unravel.

On the first morning, I learnt why Japanese apples are so big and expensive: after blossoming, as the apples start to develop, the majority of the apples are removed from the tree, leaving the biggest and best to grow even bigger and better. It might seem better economic sense to leave more apples to grow, and sell more smaller apples slightly cheaper, but the problem here is that there is simply no market for small apples. Also, apple wood is very brittle, and the apples get too heavy for the branches - we have had at least two broken branches in the last few days.





The majority of the work I have been doing has so far focussed around the cutting away of these smaller apples, as well as the removal of many many hungry leaf-eating hairy caterpillars from the leaves of the trees in the one "experimental" organic field. At my suggestion, we have started feeding the caterpillars to the chickens, which seems to fit in with the household's "waste not want not" attitude. (Organic farming and vegetarianism makes for many a moral dilemma). As well as caterpillars, the trees are populated by a plethora of small creatures, the quantity and variety of which is astounding. Frogs are plentiful - yesterday a huge frog sat contentedly on an apple for an hour or so, occasionally glancing around, but otherwise still, while we cut the smaller apples from around it. Mosquitoes also abound - I am half way between being able to tolerate or ignore the itchiness of their bites and having to resort to magical menthol-based substances to soothe the itches.

The most evident creatures at the moment are the セミ (semi, or cicadas), which cling to trees and rub their wings together, producing a screeching sound. The combined effect of hundreds of these insects is a deafening background white noise (something like a hyper-active string orchestra with tuning difficulties) which is actually louder than the traffic on the main road, albeit much higher pitched. When they are not attached to trees, the semi fly in between trees, making a sort of croaking noise, and since they are about the size of small bats or tiny birds, this can be potentially hazardous to the unsuspecting farm worker. Every now and then a semi will land on one of us, clinging on with its sharp claws, and then suddenly realise one is not a tree, and fly off with a shriek.

An aspect of the Japanese countryside that puzzled me right from the first time I visited 13 years ago is the presence in any given town of sirens or tunes echoing out three times a day from a few strategically placed loudspeakers. I have now learnt from experience that when one is working in the fields, it is most useful to know when it is 12 noon, or 5 pm, so as to be able to return to the house knowing with confidence that it is time to help prepare lunch or supper.

The food here is amazing: three solid meals a day, proper real farm food mostly prepared from scratch using freshly picked or bartered vegetables. The other day, someone came around with two huge boxes of なす nasu - aubergines (my favourite vegetable) and since then, every meal has included 3-5 dishes of nasu prepared in different ways - deep fried nasu, shallow fried nasu, salt nasu, sky blue pickled nasu, miso pickled nasu, spicy pickled nasu, nasu fried with miso, nasu tempura, sliced nasu, diced nasu, with new combinations appearing every day. I have just eaten the first meal for days in which nasu was not the main part of the main course (there was a side dish of spicy pickled nasu, left over from last night), and it seemed very strange.



On the occasions when I have helped to pick peaches, I have found it impossible not to think of Roald Dahl's fantastic story James and the Giant Peach... especially when discovering peaches that have either been infested by beetles or have mysterious holes bitten into them...

Another job I have been helping with from time to time is tending the fruit stall, which at the moment is selling the first of this year's peaches, and the last of last year's apple juice. Fruit-hunting tourists drive along the road (part of a rural bypass route called the "Fruit Line") and many of them - especially those who stop - are astounded to find a foreigner tending the stall (let alone one who can *actually* speak Japanese, ask them if they want to taste a peach, etc...). "Are You tending this stall?" "You actually work here?" etc,,, and wondering how i came to be here - Shinya and I are also not entirely sure how I came to be here - or if we are, it's a long story...



Selling peaches is not simply a matter of handing over the goods and accepting the cash. For a start, the peaches are laid out in baskets and boxes in such a way as to look appealing to the passer-by. Those who approach the stall are welcomed in the typical Japanese shop manner, いらっしゃいませ～！ and invited to taste a sample. But simply cutting a bit out of a peach and proffering it will not do. Different parts of a peach are different sweetnesses. You may already have noticed that the flesh further away from the stone is sweeter, but did you know that the sweetest part of a peach is about two thirds of the way down just next to the side opposite the line linking the top (stalk) and the bottom? To expose this section to the customer, the peach is cut with the stalk facing the customer, and the line facing the floor. A small segment is cut, and slid out towards the customer. If all goes according to plan, the customer takes the part that is nearest to them, and rotates it towards them, biting into the part that is furthest away, which is the sweetest part. Furthermore, the peach (or at least the part offered to the customer) must be peeled, as in these parts, fruit peel is not generally considered to be consumable. I had this wrong for a while, as to my way of thinking, the sweetest flesh is that nearest the skin, which is therefore worth eating, and the fuzziness of the skin creates a pleasant textural contrast. Alas, however, I cannot share these delights with my Japanese customers, as the proper way to eat peach here does not involve consumption of fuzzy textures.

I am sitting in the peach stall area, surrounded by boxes containing the biggest, fattest, juiciest and most expensive peaches I have ever seen. I am astounded that many of the people who come to the stall exclaim "How cheap!" when confronted with a box of 6 or 7 peaches costing the equivalent of 10 British pounds. Many people also complain that the peaches are still far too small. I try to explain to them that the peaches we buy in the UK are around the size of the very smallest ones we are selling here, but they are having none of it. Shinya the farmer has tried to convince me that next week's peaches will be even bigger and sweeter - but I have yet to see or taste them.

Shinya has suggested that it would be a good idea for me to stay around for the majority of the peach harvest - until around mid-August - to help sell peaches and entertain the customers. Now we have finished apple-thinning, I have also been helping put reflective sheets down in the peach field (to help the peaches ripen more quickly and from below), helping to lay a concrete floor in the peach stall, and building wooden garden furniture for peach-tasting customers to perch on while they wait to fill in mail-order forms...



I am learning such a lot here - how to make things, how to say things, how to sell things, how to be good in a community.... This seems to me to be a very good way to spend a summer, so I may be here for a few weeks yet.

Arrival back in Japan and the Need to Clear My Head.

Arriving back in Japan has been strange and interesting. My path has been dictated by visiting old friends and revisiting old haunts. My journey has become one of repeat experiences: doing things or visiting places for the first time since... 2006, or 2002, or even 2000 (although it is difficult to think of many things that I did in 2000 that I did not repeat in 2001-2 or 2004-6).

I had forgotten quite how frustrating Japan can be at times: it often seems that there is a set way of doing things and if you don't do something the way it should be done, you have a really hard time of it. Wireless internet, for example, is almost impossible to find unless you have a subscription to one of Japan's mobile phone networks. And to travel, you pay for what you get: if you want to go faster, you can take the shinkansen, but it will cost you: some of these are the Japanese train equivalent of flying on Concorde (I guess that comparison's a bit out of date now). Veering towards the cheap side of expensive (i.e. wanting to cover lots of ground without spending too much money, and having enough time to do it slowly) I took a wild but logical route from Hakata 博多: by slow train to my former workplace of Yoshitomi 吉富, by slightly faster train to visit Texan Dan in Beppu 別府 (everyone's favourite hotspring resort: twinned with Rotorua and Bath), then by overnight ferry to Osaka 大阪. (This was the same as the last ferry journey I made in Japan just before I left 4 years ago.)

I had also forgotten quite how wonderfully hospitable Japan can be: In Osaka, I had a wonderful 3 days being treated somewhat like a prodigal son by my Sensei and her husband, and revisiting Kurama-san 鞍馬山, a favourite mountain temple near Kyoto. I then took the cheapest rail option to Tokyo 東京 (11 hours instead of 3 and a half, but half the price.)

For the last few days I have been staying with Ken who I worked with 4 years ago, in 三鷹市 where I lived 8 years ago.

Outside Sakura heights - 8 years on! (a new building, I think)

I have now moved on to the residence of Ryan and Nami, who, likewise, I haven't seen for 4-5 years, and who live nearby with their 2-year-old daughter. I am promised a trip with them up Takao-san 高尾山, a favourite mountain temple near Tokyo. Meanwhile, tomorrow I am meeting up (for the 1st time in 6 years) with Durham friends Dan and Helen (and Helen's fiancé), for some monja-yaki (which I haven't eaten for 5 years).

I really ought to be looking for a job, to fulfill my fortunate position as the holder of a Working Holiday Visa. But first, as I may have been insinuating in recent posts, my head needs clearing. I have been attempting to do this by staying in the cities and starting to fill in some of the gaps in my blog but it doesn't seem to be working as completely as I thought it might. (I have done a few entries: to find them, click on the arrow by May, to the left of this post. Also new Toilets on Trains images...)

Good advice from Steve (bro) and Jo (who I left in London but have been chatting with on Gmail) as well as a touch of serendipity / gut feeling (advice from God?) are all pointing towards a trip out into the wild as a means to clear my head, and this is what I am planning. I have left half my luggage in Ken's spacious loft, and will probably walk on from Takao-san into pastures - or forests - unknown. There is a travel book entitled All The Right Places at the start of which the author finds his way to Takao-san, and knows not where he is going next. I am in much the same position.

Unlike the protagonist in the film Into The Wild, I'll be in touch.

Raw Uncertain Displacement and the 日本の私への変化 (Transition to my Japanese self)

In Seoul, I had the rather dubious pleasure of seeing Japanese tourists behaving all foreign and rude... This I have not experienced before. Admittedly, the service in Seoul was not quite what you might get in Japan, but does this necessitate shouting their order loudly in Japanese or clapping hands to get attention?
One of the ladies in the group looked across at me apologetically. Afterwards, I approached them and asked how long they were in Seoul.
I had never before been on quite such a level footing with Japanese people - always having been either a guest in their country or a host in my own - here, though, we were all tourists in this strange and different country, coping with the language barrier and illiteracy, and the raw uncertain displacement of foreignness.

I am now sitting in 푸산 International Ferry Terminal where I have just bought myself a ticket for a Friday night ferry to 博多. Right now in front of me is a group fresh off the boat having a roll-call by a lady with the ubiquitous tour-guiding flag.



It's so refreshing to be able to understand what's being said! To be able to communicate!

It's strange, but I can feel a different sense of self bubbling up inside me - it's my Japanese self! Already I've started nattering in Japanese, and sending Japanese emails to people I'd refrained from contacting just because of the laziness of the trans-planetary language barrier.

In the past, this transition has been lost in the chaos of a 12-hour flight, but here in the gradual overland nearing, I can experience it palpably.

Leaving (my) Seoul Behind

I have now been being bewildered in South Korea for just over 11 days, and have spent most of this time with my sister Clare, who has just finished teaching English here for a year and a half. I am less literate in this country even than in Beijing, so Clare's knowledge of Korean and its 한굴 writing system has been most helpful. We spent a few days exploring the woods and mountains of Jiri-san National Park (including the highest peak on the South Korean mainland) and then spent a couple of days wandering around the area she's been living, engaged in flying paper aeroplanes from high-rise apartment blocks and other such frivolities. Yesterday morning I accompanied her to Incheon airport to catch a plane to Vietnam, and then sat in the airport for a few hours, attempting to catch up with myself. Even the smallest iota of self-catch-up organization takes many hours, and I have had so much input, and so many varied experiences during the last month that I need a good bit of time and space to process it all.

After the airport, I was going to head straight to Busan, but 서울 sucked me in, as these big cities have a tendency to do. Seoul seems to be on a frantic mission to be a demonstrative example of the most modern, perfect city possible. It seems to be doing pretty well, although as with any such city, there is plenty of evidence of homelessness. Skyscrapers abound, with many more on the way, and in the spaces between them, extreme looking rocky peaks form a backdrop that seems almost as planned as the city. Information and advertising are everywhere you look, and the whole effect is a frenetic mix of organization and disorganisation. I can imagine Ulaan Baatar becoming very like this city in about 10 or 20 years time. 北京, by comparison, seemed very chilled out.


Last night, I found myself on the first bed that I have slept on (not including dormitory bunks) since leaving Jo and Tom's Wood Green flat 33 days ago. I had been looking around for a 짐질방 that Clare had told me was opposite Seoul station. Since there were a myriad of things opposite the station (from the 서울Hilton to the 東京 Japanese restaurant), the 짐질방 eluded me, and I eventually found myself wandering a backstreet in the direction of a sign saying "Motel". Long before I reached this, however, an old lady approached me asking if - or insisting that - I wanted a motel room for the night. Without giving me a chance to refuse, she ushered me down the road in the opposite direction, around the corner through crowds of drunken businessmen, and up a dingy staircase into a corridor above a row of restaurants. She told me that checkout time was midday, and she would charge me 30000 won (just over £15). While this is 3 times the cost of a Chinese or Mongolian dorm room, and several times what it would have cost me for a mat on the floor of a 짐질방 (which may also be filled with drunken businessmen in varying states of slumber), it turns out to be fairly reasonable for what I got: a not-overly-dingy private bedsit with TV, aircon and ensuite shower. Pointing out the shower, the lady told me in no uncertain charades that I stank terribly and had better use it ASAP.

Having de-stinked, slept off yesterday morning's early start, and checked out - by leaving the room key in the ashtray and nodding to the lady as I passed her standing in the same spot where she had originally accosted me - I found a place to fill up on supposedly meat free 김밮 (which nevertheless contained some sort of reconstituted pigflesh). Thence to the station, and I am now being whisked backwards on the Southbound KTX.



KTX is Korea's high-speed train, and is almost indistinguishable from France's TGV. I was excited to notice, as I entered the carriage, a sign on the door saying "@ internet Zone". Like on the Brussels-Koln Thalys, however, the internet service is only for those willing to pay extra money. We have just stopped at 대구, which means that by spending the journey typing, I have missed the chance to see from the train the town called 구미 where Clare has been living. Now at last I am en-route to 부산, Korea's second largest city and the main port for ferry crossings to Japan, in search of a place to stop and spend a few days catching up with myself, perhaps filling in a few of the glaring holes in this blog, and then a few more days formulating a plan for Japan.