Wendy Welch | Wendy Welch: Books, Yarn, Cats, Opioids

When Amelia asked me did I want to go to Japan with her, I knew I was getting a guided tour from someone who understood the country and spoke the language. And had been there multiple times. So after day two, when we finally played polite chipmunks with each other (“No no, after you, what do YOU want to do” etc.) I asked her point blank what did she want to see that she hadn’t yet.

The giant buddha of Kamakura, she said without hesitation.

OK, then, off to Kamakura we went. It was an hour train ride. We descended into a seedy little town amidst an international plethora of people who dissipated quickly, much to our chagrin. We had hoped to follow some of them. One would think it would be hard to hide a 45-foot tall Buddha, but Japan has mastered the art of passive-aggressive signage.

The Buddha, it turned out, sat an alarming two miles from the train station, according to our GPS. The guidebook had said twenty minutes, max. But we walked a winding side street full of tiny traditional houses that screamed Air BnB. The streets were so narrow, cars had to wait not-all-that-patiently for us to pass on the single track, 90-degree slant road.

We began to worry our GPS was annoyed at having to work a Sunday, when, at the top of the half-mile steep climb we had just made, we found a sign that said we had two miles to go to find the Buddha. Our GPS then told us to turn right up a staircase that had a chain across it. Amelia read the Japanese sign and said, “Condemned.”

We hiked through forest. We walked through neighborhoods. We found a couple of girls from the USA in the woods. When Amelia learned they were from Chicago, she asked if ICE were making trouble there. One of the girls said, “Yes. I’m an immigration attorney.”

We changed the subject. And direction, after a quarter mile along a path so narrow I almost fell off the mountain when they decided we had missed a sign and needed to turn around. I stepped aside to let the Chicago girls go by, and my foot descended into empty air.

At one point, a slight fork in the wooded trail sported a small wooden sign someone had clearly put there out of sympathy. It said “Buddha” in English and Japanese, but it was only a foot off the ground, black paint against dark wood.

When we realized this was our third walk in the wrong direction that added distance to the trek, Amelia said, “Let’s just go back.”

“When Hell freezes,” I answered. “We are going to find this damn international symbol of peace and enlightenment if it’s the last thing we ever see in our lives.”

“It will be,” she muttered. A minute later we found yet another sign, telling us the Buddha was back the way we had come. And that the train station we had now walked two miles away from was a half mile away.

Eventually we descended down a path so steep, it offered a rappelling rope as one option. We hand crawled along tree root systems. I sat on a root and slid down a steep bit, then turned to warn the German couple who had caught up with us that the dirt was packed and slick.

“Danke” said the twentysomething girl hiking in a short flowered skirt, and jumped down from the root like a bunny in boots.

“Bitch,” Amelia muttered behind her.

I really like Amelia.

We descended into civilization: souvenir shops, ice cream stands, lunch places. Our GPS announced we were 400 meters from the Buddha and 600 meters from a train station.

The words Amelia said at that moment were very enlightening, I tell you.

He makes you feel like you are the only one there. People prayed in English, in Arabic, in Hindi, and in Japanese, their body language indicating which deity they might be praying to in front of the giant, serene statue.

700 years. He just sits there. After World War Two, Japanese school children wove a giant pair of sandals for him, because they said he needed to walk through the land and restore peace.

He sits. People come. People go. Ideas rise and fall. Countries dominate and disappear. He sits.

We found him. And it was worth the three-hour hike in all the wrong directions, just to feel that serenity emanating from him, that sense of him greeting each person as if they were the only one there.

We took the nearest train back to the main station and wended our way home. It was a fraught trip out, and the train back was standing room only. But it was worth it, to feel the serenity emanating from the giant Buddha of Kamakura.

So we got in this enclosed tube on a Wednesday in Maryland and emerged on a Thursday in Tokyo. Some kinda weird magic involving long hours in cramped positions and a never-ending stream of YELLOWSTONE episodes. (Lord, don’t people even try to talk out their problems anymore?!)

When we disembarked from the tube, it looked like a big frat party the morning after with lots of thin blue blankets. Why do people think flight attendant is a sexy job?

And we were in JAPAN!! We navigated the subway (which does not use colors to tell you which way to go, but the uses colored lines on maps, so that was a bad few minutes of confusion) and made our way down a street full of lanterns to the hostel – but to a bar first. Because, long flight. A gin and tonic and appetizer involving rolled up fish later, we set out confidently in the wrong direction (did I mention it’s my friend Amelia who is leading this exposition) and after a few fun discoveries arrived at and face planted in our hostel….

….and woke the next day raring to go! Amelia took me to a Donquix (named after Don Quixote). This is a shop intended to sell tourists thousands of Japanese souvenirs made in China. They are basically Buc-ees, twice as stuffed and ten times cuter. Think Buc-ees spray painted pink and gold, full of cute cat stickers and statuary.

But they sold a special Sakura Blossom edition of my favorite Japanese gin, so God Bless them.

Amelia had lamented we would miss the cherry (Sakura) blossoms because of traveling in February, but there were multiple trees blooming near the ancient shrine and down by the river. The good thing about February is it keeps down tourists, says this tourist happily.

Japan is nice to tourists but you can tell the patience is fraying at the corners. Signs everywhere explain very patiently what good behavior looks like. Don’t look in here. Don’t chew in here. Walk on this side and ride your bike on that side. Dogs should not do what dogs do here (a personal favorite of mine). I thought Scotland did passive aggressive signs well, but Japan has raised it to an art form.

Speaking of art, Japan has elevated the humble KitKat to an art form as well. They have about 42 different flavors including Mt. Fuji (white chocolate with red jelly inside) Matcha (they look like Soylent Green wafers) and Strawberry shortcake. The mind boggles.

On a more sublime note, a lot of signs and grocery products have English below the Kangee characters, but the characters that make up traditional Japanese are a lot of fun if you have the basics of cracking their code. Once you know that “fire” looks like a guy raising his arms waving for help, and “person” looks like a box with a nose, you can find the heater in your room easily because it’s a person next to a fire.

Simple, really…..

Bike riders in Tokyo are experts at dodging people. I have felt their wind many times when I didn’t hear them approach, and never once even been brushed by the actual machine. If you move aside as they come toward you, the rider will quite literally bow their head as they pass. Bikers weave like swallows through busy streams of locals dutifully walking where the tiles on the pavement and signs on the lampposts say people should walk, and the tourists blithely standing in the middle of the bike lane taking selfies. At least one guy saw the bike coming because he and his girlfriend were taking a selfie and it photobombed. Only time I’ve heard someone yell on the street.

There’s no trash (or trash cans) on the street. There’s no eating on the street. We walked under one bridge where homeless people had set up cardboard cribs for themselves, up against the sides of the wall. We have seen exactly four homeless people sleeping in a city larger than New York.

The first day in any foreign land, you walk around with your jaw hanging open, trying foods you point to and dodging whatever you don’t know to look out for. Tomorrow (er, today – we are 14 hours ahead of y’all back there in America and 7 hours ahead of the United Kingdom) we will explore further afield.