Onomichi

The beat of the festival drum echoes out from the valley below, as the spring sunshine gives way to the cool evening air. Yet the sun seems to linger. From the hillside, it remains just a moment longer.
Memories do not give way so easily in Onomichi. A generation of poets made their home here. In her Wandering Diary Hayashi Fumiko writes of her return to the town. I have seen the sea. I am seeing the sea. Her first sight is of the past, its residue expanding the present. Umi ga mieta. Umi ga mieru. In Japanese it is more profound. The words linger on, the verb revealing itself only at the last.
Leaning back in my chair, the jar of sake is still two thirds full It will be a while before I take another sip.

Manchester-Amsterdam-Osaka-Hiroshima

A fleeting glimpse of perfection：Exchanging the speed of flight for the speed of the bullet train. Tomoko and I together. Listening to Lightfoot`s Canadian Railroad Trilogy as Shinkansen races down the West Coast of Japan.

Japan notes

Its a long walk. The journey begins with the first step through the sliding glass doors, luggage at hand. Once inside an airport you are never at home. Already a traveler - even in your own city. I am weary. Three hours too early. Arrival and fulfilled expectation are too far distant.

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The departure gate is not just a security clearance, nor is it simply a passport control. The departure gate separates the traveler from those that remain. Passing through grants access to a global network of flight lines. Cities become points of passage. Each stop isolates the traveler. Experience is framed through the airport. Cities become a series of boarding lounges, souvenir shops and duty free stores.

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“There is nothing in Amsterdam that I can`t find in Manchester”. So my dad told me after returning from a theology conference. He was talking of the canals. In the Schiphol airport it takes on new meaning. Cities, even ones of such reputation, are reduced to a repetition of the same. The difference being the souvenir shop which sells wooden tulips. Proof that I`ve been to Holland – even if only in an airport lounge. Yet there is an underlying happiness to this travel. My purpose is Japan, Hiroshima – my wife. Speed is the essence. Cities may be reduced to “non-places” along the way, but this is an accepted and expected price for quick arrival. Marc Auge sees the anonymity granted to the traveler as part of this exchange. In an airport lounge, you are one among others, passengers on a journey with nothing to give or take, only here to continue on. But this anonymity, in my experience, offers up a possible freshness of conversation free from background and prejudice. No one knows anything of each other, at least nothing more than the fact that we are on this flight together.

After The Cloud