(Taiyo Reimers)
The eight-tatami room, dented and creased, is lit by a single bulb encased in a shoji paper box and a wooden grid frame. The wooden floors creak with every step of the slipper, no matter how soft, echoing into a stomp heard throughout the seaside minshuku inn. The common faucet moans in the hallway, next to the shared restrooms. A bag of oranges sits on a tray for sale at the entrance, on a large cooler next to a blanket-covered sofa and pamphlets advertising the town’s cherry blossom festival. The narrow hallway is lined with pairs of slippers. Muffled laughter and hair dryer whizzing, the talk of weary travelers and fishermen filter through the sliding paper doors and fabricated walls. The window, behind thick blue curtains, reveals clothes pins on a rusted metal pole, and a concrete balcony leading out into darkness. One can almost see the mighty pine tree resting right ahead, with its needles and twisted branches reaching over the arcing shoreline.
Along the tokonoma hangs a scrolled water painting of a foggy mountain scape, a smooth and branchless tokobashira pillar reaching to the ceiling. Next to the small television, a carved elephant and taxidermy pheasant, perched on a branch. A couple towels and packaged toothbrushes are placed in the closet. Wet towels hang from the cabinet ledge. The bathroom is small, as at home, and the onsen water is warm. Labels are affixed to doors and cupboards: reminders to close doors, to not bring cooler boxes into rooms, to wash off sand outside. We arrive late at night, move the lacquered, foldable table to the corner, and lay futon mats and microbead pillows. A heater was installed, according to the written label, two years ago. In the morning, the clattering of small dishes will fill the hallway, from the kitchen window in the lobby – egg rolls, rice, tea, broiled fish, in all their little cups and plates. The door of the small laundry room in the concrete shed will open and close, and the proprietor will rush out with laundry, her husband seeing guests off and tidying rooms.
At the edge of sleep, I stare at the wooden ceiling, as my body shifts from lingering sways of the winding mountain roads of the Izu shoreline. I am reminded of towering mountains and empty streets, steep hills, and crowded surface roads. I am reminded of hillside shrubbery, and grasses that from a distance give a dark puce pigment. From above it all, Mt. Fuji in the distance, its snow-capped peak hidden beneath a thick blanket of clouds that when looking up, appear flat. Shafts of light shine down on the city, wind moving them slowly across the sloped landscape, thick slabs of moss in all shades of brown and green over the retaining walls. I am reminded of cherry trees, their delicate, burning pink petals lost at the edge in the prune-deep midnight sky, on the banks of the Kawazu River, reflecting hazy headlights and the misty silhouettes of mountains only visible by the glow of storefronts and streetlights. Bundles of blossoms wave in the wind, rustling like bell sticks in one great, seasonal symphony.
It’s Friday evening, close to midnight, and the sounds of waves fill the room. Somewhere in the hallway, an exit sign shines bright, and from a window in the lobby, the ocean spreads beyond, with no ledge, just sea. And the rooms are quiet, as the gentle, constant crashing of the waves beating along the shoreline puts me to sleep.
(Taiyo Reimers)
Window view from our room, with a Pine tree overlooking the shore. (Taiyo Reimers)
View towards Mt. Fuji from one of many viewpoints along the Izu Skyline toll road. (Taiyo Reimers)
Kawazu cherry trees at night, along the Kawazu River, lit by footlights along the walking path. Travelers flock from across Japan, and beyond, to see the Kawazu cherry trees in full bloom. (Taiyo Reimers)
