I was stirred by the dark mystery of mortality. I couldn’t resist stealing up to the edge of doom and peering over the brink. The hint of what was concealed in those shadows terrified me, but I caught sight of something in the glimpse, some forbidden and elemental riddle…

Jon Krakauer, “Into the Wild”

7 December 2023

• 9:00-9:20 Himeji station (north exit, bus stop number 1) to Himeji port bus, 9:45-11:25 Himeji port to Shodoshima (Fukuda port) ferry, 11:45-12:10 Fukuda port to Yasuda bus number 20, grocery shopping, 13:07-13:25 Shodoshima middle school to Sen Guesthouse bus, checking in, 14:30-15:00 Sen Guesthouse to Olive Park bus
• Olive Park (1h 40m)
• 17:00-17:30 San Olive (bus stop outside the souvenir shop) to Sen Guesthouse bus

Shodoshima

Another night of more pain than slumber. Half of my foot was turning blue, while a new, bulbous swelling had bloated.

After yesterday’s champon-yaki and doro-yaki dinner, I recreated another meal from Himeji – almond toast, a local specialty, for breakfast. This time, the Japanese guy and French girl from the hostel joined me in relishing the most divine toast in existence.

I took the bus to the port and left Himeji without even checking out the castle. As I’d thought in April: “If I returned here, it would be for the food.”

Then I boarded the Slowpoke and Smoliv ferry to Shodoshima, AKA Olive and Soy Sauce Island.

Sailing to the island that had changed my life was a glorious moment. It was a blue day: waves crashing, foam splashing. Nishijima island’s cliffs on the way were already half covered in snow.

Shodoshima, on the other hand, was half green, half orange, fully windy. Late fall, early winter.

With an hour to kill between my two buses from the port to the guesthouse, and the only two supermarkets around being a two-minute walk from the bus stop, I stocked up for the next 5-6 days using the budget of a mere 2. I would take it easy and make my own meals, like the couch-surfing couple from Kyoto.

I arrived at the guesthouse. Shodoshima was the only place in Japan where I could get on and off a bus at random. Moreover, bus stops stood only on one side of the road. There was no need for two.

The homely kitchen and balcony with a view of Kusakabe port. The large kotatsu in a tatami living room, cosy dormitory capsules, and calming wood. The owners remembered me, an American man and a Japanese woman, raising their child on this island.

Sen Guesthouse was one of those accommodations that warmed my heart. Like the digital detox ryokan in Aomori, or my birthday ryokan in Hokkaido – I would always enjoy coming back.

A half Japanese, half Australian, sweetly freckled girl was the only other guest. Here for a week, mostly just reading and resting, she hadn’t explored the island yet.

Back in March, I’d arrived here for one impromptu night, without knowing anything about Shodoshima. I’d explored Goishi-zan and Doun-zan, crashed my bike, and taken the ropeway to Kankakei gorge. This time, my aspiration was to hike the week-long 88 pilgrimage, yet three nights were all I could muster.

Olive Park

To make use of the remaining daylight, I set off soon after checking in toward Olive Park. The site of the first olive tree in Japan, its flower and aroma garden had also inspired Kiki’s Delivery Service, hence the tourists jumping on broomsticks.

A Greek mill and shops with Greek lettering. A memorial hall with a sculpture of Athena and stained-glass art of Ancient Greek life (with censured genitalia, ironically enough). An observatory overlooking the Seto Island Sea. My last island was Rebun and Rishiri in late September. I adored islands and ferries.

Having grown up with an olive tree in my backyard, this park wasn’t as special to me. But the delicious olive ice cream was. The shop sold amazing olive and soy sauce merch (olive and lemon somen!) as well.

With the setting sun painting the sky a blue-gold-pink gradient, and the faint silhouette of the misty Seto islands from afar, I felt like I was home. Shodoshima was a small, obscure island that married Japanese and Greek: my two favourite cultures.

The gradient turned pastel purple as I took the last bus back to the guesthouse. While riding it, I met two half-Australian, half-Japanese girls attending Shodoshima’s middle school as foreign exchange students.

In the evening, I made rice by myself for the first time using a rice cooker (rather than microwaving instant rice). After days of baking and devouring cakes, I ate a rounded dinner: a soft-boiled egg and lettuce salad, rice with natto and tofu, plus a Danish pastry for dessert.

Finally, the American owner helped me plan my next two days on the island. With two or three buses required to get around, an infrequent timetable, and at least an hour of waiting in-between transfers, I found myself removing more and more attractions from my list. And here I thought my return to Shodoshima would be comprehensive.

Just as well. The less I was resting in bed, the more my right foot was swelling. I ought to follow the half-Australian guest’s (henceforth: Sky) suit and lounge for a week on a getaway island. Still, I simply couldn’t pass on a select few attractions. There would be a third time for me in Shodoshima, with a rental car – but it wouldn’t happen for years to come.

Sky and I considered doing so now. It turned out to be more expensive than in a city.

A Japanese girl checked into our dorm late at night and went straight to bed. We figured she had a car, but didn’t even manage to say hi.

Before sleep, I put an ice pack on my right foot and raised it on a bunch of pillows. My sister, the med student, had been nagging me for daily reports. My ankle was definitely fractured.

Today’s highlights: almond toast for breakfast; sailing back to Shodoshima; the Greek atmosphere; olive ice cream; sunset over Olive Park; making a delicious dinner for once.

8 December 2023

• 9:45-10:15 Sen Guesthouse to Kusakabe port bus
• Olive Shrine (10m)
• Kankakei gorge (15m)
• Sekimon-do temple (15m)
• Honjo Tenman-gu Shrine (10m)
• Yamaroku soy sauce factory (30m)
• Angel Road (10m)

Kusakabe Port

I woke at 8:30, cooked rice, stuck an ice pack to my foot over a pile of pillows, and made it to the rare bus just in time.

Sky was hiking to Shodoshima’s first three temples today, and Kankakei tomorrow: the opposite of my itinerary. I recounted to her my experience with the former as we rode the bus together, until I continued to Kusakabe port.

With an eighty-minute interval between the two buses to Kankakei (a 2-hour journey – by car it took thirty minutes), and one of the only two pharmacies on the island being a minute’s walk from the bus stop, I bought an ankle wrap.

Then I tried to hitchhike to Kankakei. For 45 minutes, I stood on the only road leading to it, carrying a sign. Drivers were wearing masks despite being alone in their car. I realized such locals would never pick me up.

No sooner had I returned to the bus stop than a guy approached me. He’d come to Shodoshima for one night without knowing much about it, parked at the pharmacy, and wondered what to do until his 16:00 ferry. So he became the driver, while I became the guide.

Tiger was a 25-year-old from a small town in Ishikawa prefecture, one hour south of Kanazawa. Thick bangs covered his eyes. He’d attended a vocational school for driving, and used to own four cars, in addition to a couple of motorcycles. A vintage red mini cooper was his choice of vehicle for Shodoshima, having driven all the way here from Ishikawa.

At 11:30, the road up the mountain was nigh empty. The low season made it impossible to hitchhike. Well, almost, because I’d gotten remarkably lucky. Not only did Tiger take me to all the places on my list (impossible without a car), I made a friend, and barely had to walk.

Olive Shrine

First, the abandoned Olive Shrine, en route to Kankakei. The only Shinto shrine built like a Greek temple, I found it blasphemous, dualistic, and, more than anything, cool. A sign read that if a guy and a girl crossed it in opposite directions, they would become lovers.

Kankaei Gorge

Then, Kankakei. Why did I always come here with one of my legs injured? Today was quite foggy, but nothing compared to March. A post-peak kouyou was still flaunting tangerine. I remembered the heart-shaped tree gracing Lovers’ Bench.

Sekimon-do Temple

On the way down, we checked out a cave temple recommended to me by the owner. No one was there.

There wasn’t even a fire to light our omikuji. No one answered the phone for visitors, either.

Quiet, cavernous, and abandoned. How I liked my temples.

Next, we drove north to Fukuda port, where a scene from Cicada on the Eighth Day, a famous movie, was shot. At 14:00, we found a small and empty old-school restaurant, where I ate nyumen (hot somen).

Yamaroku Soy Sauce Factory

The day progressed so well, and Shodoshima offered so many nuggets, that Tiger decided to postpone his ferry. Per my suggestion, he booked a bed in my dormitory.

We continued south to a tiny shrine and somen factory in Yasuda, another shooting location. Nearby stood a soy sauce factory with a free tour. A French man who’d visited this factory years ago had become the guide.

Signatures of celebrity attendees. 150-year-old barrels with soy sauce so dark, we mistook it for wood. Shodoshima had gone from producing 100% of Japan’s soy sauce to 1%. The traditional method took years.

We tasted five different kinds, the saltiest I’d encountered, plus a delicious ponzu made of yuzu. The most rounded soy sauce variant ought to be refrigerated, so I couldn’t buy it. Instead, I treated us to a vanilla ice cream with dark soybeans and soy sauce as toppings: a caramel-like revelation.

Tonosho

Another somen factory in the vicinity, where, according to the owner, one could eat a rare, raw variant, turned out to be closed. The time being only 15:30, we drove west for half an hour to Tonosho, where the sun was setting over Angel Road. A famously romantic spot, where a narrow road revealed itself during low tide. What was it today with lovers’ attractions?

We tossed stones on the water while ducks were crossing the Road. A beautiful moment.

As a way to ward off enemies, Tonosho had allegedly been built like a maze. We wandered around what seemed like plain old streets. The narrowest strait in the world was here as well.

Passing schoolchildren, with their yellow caps and leather backpacks, piqued my interest instead.

“I don’t want kids,” I said, “but Japanese children…”

So adorable.

We drove back east, bought a bunch of groceries at yesterday’s supermarket, and arrived at the guesthouse. Outside, it was already pitch-black.

Tonight’s other guests – Sky, a woman from Hokkaido, and a Japanese-French couple – joined us for dinner around the kotatsu. The couple, from Kobe, were house-hunting in Shodoshima.

Katsuo sashimi, rice nattou, fish cake, yuzu highball, ice-cold Japanese sweet red wine… and more. Dinner was a lively treat. It went on and on, until Tiger, Sky, and I remained. Talking endlessly, discussing swear words (disappointingly, next to none in Japanese) and life in this country. She’d visited her grandparents in Onomichi after living in Bali for two years and falling in love with Indonesia; he worshipped cars and baseball, wore a vintage YSL jacket, but never been abroad.

“Making foreigners laugh is funny,” he blurted, chugging red wine and knocking down his glass. Meanwhile, alcohol was reddening Sky’s face.

In-between all that, I learned that she had spent the whole day at the three temples – no less than two hours at each. After my build-up this morning, they’d moved her to tears.

“It was one of the most incredible and spiritual experiences of my life,” she said. “There wasn’t anyone there but a monk inside the main hall of Goishi-zan, in a cave. When he started chanting my name, things I’ve been struggling with resurfaced. I broke down.”

Bedtime was too late tonight. Yet today couldn’t have worked out better.

Today’s highlights: Olive Shrine; Kankakei gorge; Sekimon-do temple; vanilla and soy sauce ice cream; Angel Road at sunset; dinner at the guesthouse.

9 December 2023

• 24 Eyes movie studio (1h)
• Soy sauce village (10m)
• Goishi-zan temple, Doun-zan temple, and Kannon-ji Okuno-in Hayabusa-san temple (1h 45m)
• 14:50-15:00 Sakate port to Sen Guesthouse bus

Every now and then, I would wake in the middle of the night, and my first thought would be, “Someday, I will be dead.”

Last night was like that.

It was the kind of intrusive observation that came only when my consciousness was too drowsy to steer my train of thought. In that delirious moment before alertness, repressed notions would resurface. Fear, longing, people whose faces I’d never get to see. All of the things in life I wanted to do and be.

Falling back to sleep after this was never easy. Ultimately, I did.

Twenty-Four Eyes Movie Studio

Tiger and I set off at 10:00. We drove west for five minutes to a recreation of a Showa-era village, the shooting location for commercials and famous movies, like Twenty-Four Eyes, or Cicada on the Eighth Day.

Nouma Jinjo elementary school, situated right on the bench, overlooked the Seto Inland Sea. I tried on the traditional yellow cap and leather backpack.

Outside, a couple of cauldron baths offered one of the best views a bathing person could ask for. Tiger had never taken one, while I had in Shikoku’s Ochiai village. It struck me how special my weekend in Iya Valley was. In a few days, I would go back. 

Next, we visited the cafeteria. Tiger positively squealed at the Showa-style school lunch, no longer in circulation, comprised of a curry soup, a fried, donut-like bread coated in sugar, milk, and a jelly-like apple yogurt.

Goishi-zan Temple

At 12:00, with two hours until his ferry, we drove east for fifteen minutes to the soy sauce village. Soy sauce ice cream and factories. Having already ticked those off yesterday at the prime establishment on the island, I suggested continuing to the three temples.

Even by car, going up Goishi-zan mountain gave us a bit of a fright. The road was steep and narrow, hostile to wheels and bipedal animals. I was slightly worried about Tiger’s vintage car.

Then we reached Goishi-zan temple. Even on a weekend, no one was around. 

I was above the fog. Alone on the mountain, drenched in sweat. Panting and smiling at the landscape below me.

A symphony of songbirds. A ferry departing from Sakate port, entering the fog. A sea of green. It was an even better than on a clear day. Today’s itinerary worked out in the end.

I screamed “生きています” three times into the valley. My voice reverberated through the trees. I burst into laughter. To think I was so blue yesterday, that I went to bed on the verge of tears! I recalled it and burst into sobs. I’d never felt more confined and free.

This sort of emotional turmoil had been happening too much lately. 

I checked out the temple. There was a bowl of black sugar candy inside. Was it for the Buddha, I wondered, or a reward for visitors?

I ate one and took a couple more. I deserved it.

Then I went up the stairs and came fifty centimeters close to a snake. I ran for my life.

A sign that I should leave. It was starting to get late anyway.

“If That Didn’t Sum Up What Life was, I Didn’t Know What Did” (23 March 2023)

Tiger and I began exploring Goishi-zan with the world’s scariest toilet. Dark and underground, with a peeing nook instead of urinals. A stench so strong, that it smelled ancient.

Everything was just as I’d remembered. A giant kannon; a frightening sculpture of a demon guarding the valley; and a cavernous main hall. Sakate port, like Kankakei, was still murky. The only difference was the sea of orange underneath the demon, matching the flames around it.

No one was here. Neither snake, nor monk. Just us and birds.

Eerie, alluring, mysterious. Instead of hiking to Kankakei, Sky had hiked here again this morning. One whole day at the three temples hadn’t sufficed for her.

“I need to go back, and I need to do it by myself,” she’d told me over breakfast. I felt the same.

Yet Tiger and I couldn’t find her.

Doun-zan Temple

We continued to Doun-zan. Abandoned ladders led to high caves, presumably to build a hall in the interior. We entered the main hall (which I’d missed last time) through the creepiest staircase, dark and dusty, inside a cave.

Soon enough, however, Tiger left for his ferry. I walked him to his car and turned down his offer of a ride, wanting to explore the temples at my own pace.

That was when I began to feel afraid.

Back inside Doun-zan’s cave, the lack of sound and light became sinister. Everything was forsaken here; not a soul roamed these mountains. Was this the catalyst for my new habit of chasing abandoned places in nature? I had gone from fleeing caves as a child and crying hysterically while traversing them, to pursuing them.

It struck me how much I’d learned about myself and about people on this trip.

Today marked ten months of travel. Before this trip, I was desperate to find a way out of Israel. I still haven’t secured a way to never live there again.

I may have not achieved much progress with my future, nor with my interpersonal relationships, but my relationship with myself – at the risk of sounding vain, I’d testify that I’d come a long way.

I couldn’t have been prouder of myself in that moment, reaching out to old stones and beholding rusty Buddhas, panicking at the sight of demons fixed to cave walls. Every bird caw made me flinch. Every breath on these grounds made me feel both weak and strong.

No sooner had I stepped outside than I heard a sound. An animal moving.

My heart somersaulted. I recalled running into a monkey by the third temple in March after my bike crash. The feet approaching me sounded like a mammal’s.

I stopped on my tracks and looked around. Nothing in front of me or behind me. But the noise of feet and rustling leaves only grew louder.

Sky was descending toward me from another cave.

I breathed a sigh of relief.

“Tiger’s just left!” I said. He’d wanted to see her again.

She smiled at me in perfect serenity. As if she hadn’t hiked the tortuous road here for two days in a row and traversed a retreat that made me shudder.

On the contrary, she recounted how she’d been letting go of sticky struggles ever since the monk’s chanting.

“I’ve always worried too much about my future,” I said in reply to that. “I don’t have any prospects – I don’t have any money – what am I gonna do? But this was the place that made me shift focus to my present. This was where I started living in the moment.”

We went on and on about the mysticism of these temples.

“Aren’t you a little scared, though?” I asked.

“No,” she mused, “not really. Maybe if it was dusk, like your last time here. But right now, I’m really enjoying this.”

The Observation Platform: One of the Biggest Feats of My Life

We parted ways after this, exploring the temples in the opposite order, anxious to make it to the infrequent bus in time. I climbed to vertical caves in Doun-zan’s complex using ropes. Further ahead, I found the observation platform.

I rode the bike to the next temple, featuring an enormous bell and another foggy viewpoint.

“生きています！” I yelled.

There was a statue of a Buddha or something in front of me. Sticking out among trees, deep into the cliff.

I was in awe. I had no idea how it had been placed there. But what a feat of art and belief, in such a high, remote, and beautiful slice of nature.

Humans could be amazing when they wanted to. There was no limit to what we could do.

At this moment, my faith in humanity was restored. It was probably the most memorable artistic and spiritual moment of my life.

I decided to head back down before it got dark. I was laughing as I rode the bike down a slope.

“Who needs people?” I scoffed. Pure fun.

Then the slope got so steep that I lost control over my bike, and crashed on the road.

My cry of pain resounded all the way down as loudly as my cry of joy. My palms were pulsing. I was bleeding from my elbow and knee.

I’d been carrying a first aid kit with me since day one of this trip. After prevailing Kumano Kodo without the need of it, I’d taken it out of my bag, thinking it would no longer come in handy.

Blood was streaming down my leg. I wiped it with a wet tissue.

I was lucky. I could’ve broken something. And I was all alone, on top of a mountain, on a small island, a few minutes away from sunset.

This was right in front of the third temple. A quick glance at it, and I cycled the hell out of there.

The road down was as steep as the road up, which made it all the more dangerous. I saw the back of a white-furred, four-legged wild animal entering a bush. Most likely a monkey.

I didn’t think there were bears on this island. Nor did I feel like finding out.

I passed an abandoned house that was being overtaken by vines and moss. Fog was progressing toward me, until I was nearly engulfed.

“I need people,” I answered myself. By this point, I was terrified.

I didn’t mind the pain and the bleeding. I just wanted to return to civilization.

“If That Didn’t Sum Up What Life was, I Didn’t Know What Did” (23 March 2023)

I noticed a hidden path to the side of the observation platform that went down through a forest. The steep terrain was covered in so many leaves, that without holding on to metallic chains, I would’ve slipped.

The chains were reddening my hands. My foot hurt with each descent. I was sweating under my coat, debating whether to head back.

There wasn’t too much time until the rare bus. Every tread towards the sculpture increased my risk of missing it, and suffering another accident at the exact same place. I knew I was being reckless. And stupid. But it was now or never.

After a few minutes of pain and peril, I reached the Boddhisatva. At long last. 

Hitherto an impossible feat, at least in my memory, I now understood how it had been placed.

A short statue stood next to it. Its head was decapitated.

I climbed on a boulder toward the sculptures and stood on the edge of the cliff. A fiery valley and a misty port below me. No inscription made it impossible for me to unravel the Boddhisatva’s identity – Japanese Googling later yielded the name Kitamukai Kannon, i.e. North-Facing Bodhisattva – yet making it all this way, with a sprained ankle, after everything that had happened to me since March, immediately became one of my biggest achievements.

I may have lost the game of society. I may have lost lovers and friends. I may have lost the big race. But I won this moment.

Kannon-ji Temple

Back on the observation platform, the steepness of the descending path explained why I had crashed. In a state of spiritual euphoria, I had failed to heed. Now, I reached the site of my injury, at the entrance to the third temple, in one piece.  

Everything here was abandoned. A carpet of yellow leaves was the sole marker of time. This wasn’t a cave temple, though. As Sky had remarked, it paled in comparison.

As I hurried to the road down the mountain, I recalled something I’d been meaning to do.

「生きています！」I screamed into the valley. Then I burst into sobs.

I couldn’t stop it. I was whimpering like a wounded dog. Everything gushed out in that moment. Death and misery and loneliness. Life.

I screamed twice more. Back in March, my announcement was ecstatic.

Not anymore.

At 14:00, I left the temple.

I descended the mountain through the same path where I’d cycled through fog. The spot where I’d encountered a monkey; the ivy-covered, deserted mansion. I thought about old flames and the special people from this trip whose company I’d lost.

It was time to move on.

Doun-zan was the site where I’d lost blood and inhibitions. Now it would be where I’d leave my languor.

An Empty Yet Content Spirit

For half an hour, I walked down to Sakate port with increasing pain in my foot. My path was clear. No fog was engulfing me.

I met Sky on the bus back to the guesthouse. We both felt as if a weight had been taken off our shoulders.

I was empty. But also cleansed.

Perhaps this was the essence of meditation. Emptying left you void.

Especially because all of this was accidental. I was never supposed to set foot on this island. An extra day had popped on my way from Osaka to Naoshima, and I’d cycled up to Goishi-zan on the spur of the moment. I’d never even heard of it. Shodoshima had shaped me into a more spontaneous spirit, who ventured into dangerous places without any homework. My first three months in Japan, I’d planned for four months.

Near 17:00, I descended to the guesthouse’s private beach and ran west along the coast. Water was streaming softly. Gold was gleaming on the sea while an airplane was lining the clear sky with a trail of vapor.

I was alive. I was alone.

I spent the evening around the kotatsu. The American owner gave me amazing recommendations for my upcoming week in Shikoku. Then Sky and I had dinner.

Hiking to the cave temples for two full days in a row – I didn’t know anyone else who could, or would, do so.

We were both introverts who had felt little connection to our home countries, travelled to Asia, and learned how to live as a more open person. Despite coming from completely different backgrounds.

The hour was late. Wake-up time was 6:00 am. But I couldn’t put a stop to our conversation. Again I felt that I was meeting fascinating people on a dazzling rate. Plus, this was our last night together.

“That’s the thing when you’re traveling,” she said. “It’s not just where you go, it’s who you meet.”

My eyes widened in recognition. Just before dinner, I’d published my a post where I’d written: “That was the thing about travel. The friends you made and food you ate mattered no less than the places you visited.”

“We’ll meet again,” she smiled. I concurred.

We embraced, when she added:

“I like your writing, by the way.”

I froze.

She exemplified certain aspects of my posts that spoke to her. I’d never received compliments for my writing, neither when producing fiction for my creative writing MA in the UK, nor when pouring out my soul on a blog.

Lately, I’d been worried that the latter had been painting me as a brat. Cruel feedback had been making me feel like a fool. So for her to argue against that…

A cathartic end to my Shodoshima adventure.

I went to bed feeling tired and complete. Inadequate sleep; a sprained ankle. A mortal physique. Yet, even if just for a moment in time, a content spirit.

Today’s highlights: becoming a Japanese schoolboy at the movie village; re-exploring Goishi-zan and Doun-zan; making it to the cliffside Boddhisatva; sunset at the guesthouse’s beach; dinner with Sky.

10 December 2023

• 7:05-8:10 Sen Guesthouse to Tonosho port bus, 8:40-9:10 ferry to Teshima Island (Karato port)
• Les Archives du Cœur (30m)
• Teshima Art Museum (45m)
• 12:27-12:41 Teshima Art Museum to Ieura port bus, 15:10-16:00 ferry to Takamatsu, 16:15-16:20 Takamatsu Chikko station to Kawaramachi station (Kotohira line)

Farewell to Shodoshima

I woke at 6:00 after five hours of sleep. Dawn was breaking as I was packing, until the sky blushed a shy pink.

When did the owner of an accommodation hug me farewell? I wondered as I left Shodoshima again prematurely. Only in Kakunodate. And now here.

I boarded the ferry from Tonosho port. This island was, without a doubt, the most important place for me in Japan. Hokkaido was still my favourite region – the happiest, most enjoyable – but Shodoshima was like a remedy to me.

Soft breeze, clear sky. Faded, orange mountains. An old flame in a sea of islands. I cried on the promenade as Shodoshima grew smaller.

A feeling of déjà vu overtook me. I’d lived through the same scenario, thinking the same thoughts.  

As the ferry left Rishiri, the staff of my ryokan waved flags and yelled goodbye, just like the Rebun hostel.

「行ってらっしゃい！」they shouted again and again.

「行ってきます！」I shouted as well.

The ship sailed and their waving grew smaller, until the staff was just ants carrying flags. Rishiri mountain grew smaller as well. I thought about the wonders of nature – how one could feel so connected to a place, and also, to a certain person. Once you found that person…

Some people made it work, despite the struggles. Even when their time together was limited, and soon the distance between them would be greater.

It was yet another perfect day. The sea was breezy, without escalating into a storm. The weather was just right. It felt like a waste, to leave this island like this. It felt like a waste, to find someone special, and become strangers.

I didn’t know if I’d ever get over the heartbreaks I’d experienced on this trip. The friends I’d lost in the decade since high school – that was childish shenanigans, compared to the disappointments I’d accumulated in the past seven months. As the Australian girl had told me in late July, “Traveling is a microcosmos for life. Everything happens so fast, it’s all the more intense.”

My present moment exemplified this all the more. There was something about glittering waves splashing foam against a ship as I grew farther and farther apart from an island awash with green. Ferries made life feel grand. Even when they made me vomit.

“Somewhere on the Northernmost Island in Japan” (23 September 2023)

I hoped to find myself in different shoes someday. One that wasn’t bursting due to ankle straps, for starters. One whose flame still flared.

Les Archives du Cœur

The ferry dropped me off on Teshima Island, Naoshima’s less known sibling. Neither a tourist information center nor coin lockers at Karato port. I ditched my luggage in a corner and walked for ten minutes through a town so small, it was basically a street.

Teshima was impossible to get lost in. I crossed the calm coast. Birds were producing the only soundwaves. Even on a Sunday, I was alone.

Les Archives du Cœur was a tiny cabin, remotely situated by a beach and a forest, as far away from everything. (Not that there was much to get away from.) Having arrived half an hour before its 10:00 opening, I sat on a tree log in front of the sea, closed my eyes, and listened to waves undulate. It was quiet and peaceful.

Inside the archive, the first room featured three computers with headphones, where I listened to a database of heartbeats.

“A heart beat is like music,” a girl wrote on the visitor book.

Every person’s heartbeat had a different tempo. One sounded like samba. Another, like hip-hop. One was regular, another irregular. Faster, slower. A noisemaker-like beat would’ve enthralled any cardiologist.

It was a scary reminder of how our existence depended on an organ whose rhythm could fluctuate. A fragile, inconsistent form of music. The beautiful yet quiet setting only exacerbated this. Especially after yesterday.

Some people had added messages to their heartbeats. I found the recording from March 25 of the Los Angeles actors I’d met the day before in Naoshima.

“My heart will always beat for you,” someone had written, “I love you.”

“Life is happy.”

“I’m alive now.”

“Heartbeats by the sea, life is a blessing.”

“Breathless with excitement.”

「あなたが覚えていてくれたから私は存在し続けるよ」 (“I will continue to exist because you remember me.”)

All direct quotes.

The last heartbeat I listened to read “memento mori.”

I decided to stop here and move on to the heart room. A narrow corridor, pitch-black apart from a naked lightbulb hanging low from the ceiling. Speakers were playing a recording of someone’s heart, while the bulb flashed bright gold to the beat.

It was one of the most effective installations I’d encountered, disturbingly simple in its presentation and concept. Not unlike Minami-dera in Naoshima. As I’d written on that island:

The way I saw it, contemporary art should stimulate your senses, change your perception, and transport you to a different world.

“A Different World” (24 March 2023)

Now, I was transported into another person’s heart corridor.

The third and final room inside the archive was for recording. Too pricey, though.

Reeling from this unexpected stroke of brilliance, I returned to grab my luggage. I noticed that the archive hadn’t made heart beat any faster. I still felt numb after yesterday.

Teshima Art Museum

It took me 35 minutes instead of 15 to drag 30 kilograms of baggage up the only road to Teshima Art Museum. With considerable sweat and palm pain, I made it to a beautiful hill overlooking rice paddies and the Seto Inland Sea. A tranquil promenade around Mt Myojin led to a concrete, shell-like structure featuring two large ceiling openings instead of lamps and supporting columns.

The meagre visitors took of their shoes and maintained silence. Droplets of water were continuously springing forth from invisible, miniscule holes in the white floor. The spread-out layout of such fountains created the appearance of dew.

I sat down and observed one example of this. The floor was freezing to touch, despite the warm weather. Drops rose and flowed toward one another, even though they didn’t seem to trickle down a slope.

How did they know to coalesce? How could they flow? Perhaps the slope was so minute, that it was imperceptible. Less than a one-degree angle.

Everything in this structure was precise to the bone. Calculated and tranquil, it struck me at first as a simulacrum of dew. Every sound echoed. Being surrounded by trees, a symphony of birds provided music.

I stared at water droplets silently emerging from a hole and flowing down to another like a liquid worm.

The artist, also responsible for the thought-provoking Kinza house in Naoshima, had defamiliarized the most mundane substance to known to humanity. In the most modest and least attention-grabbing way possible. Water, sunlight, and concrete were the sole materials of this recipe. 

It was hypnotizing to watch this migration. Calm and repetitive, like water trickling inside a temple. I’d entered a world where water droplets became worms.

Some of these beings left beads behind them. Like dew that stuck to the floor instead of leaves. Others twisted their tails like snakes. Most were journeying to a large puddle.

I sat surrounded by such watery worms when it hit me. We were 70% water, moving from one place to another on Earth. Some were streaming toward one another, coming together, merging into unity. Whether social norms that turned people robotically similar, or intimacy that outlasted relocations.

Some people adhered like glue. They swam with the current and reached the center of society. Others met a worm, combined momentarily, and sunk into a hole. They left behind a bead, a relic, a piece of them.

I realized I hadn’t been transported into another world. I was looking at my own.

A string formed half a circle under each ceiling opening, above the two puddles. The breeze was swaying, as if a person rocking a hammock.

I finished with just enough time to circle the nearby rice paddies for a nice view.

After the bus to Ieura port, the installations around it didn’t speak to me. Maybe if they weren’t so expensive. But the previous two had more than availed. So I rested and ran errands on my computer until the terribly infrequent passenger boat to Takamatsu.

Even when sunny, the Seto Inland Sea was still misty, as if a mysterious paradise full of cave temples and chilling installations.

What a gem of an archipelago. I left it again with unfinished business.

Takamatsu

Takamatsu seemed like a nice if nondescript city. My hostel featured a library-like common area, with books, sofas, and a hammock. Swear words in various language – Hebrew included – were written on a whiteboard.

In the evening, I ate some of my Shodoshima groceries and a free ice cream courtesy of the hostel, hung out with a local man, and went to bed at 22:00.

I noticed some of the blue around my sole had faded. There was still considerable swelling. But my foot was starting to heal.

Today’s highlights: Les Archives du Cœur; Teshima Art Museum; sailing through the Seto Inland Sea.