Friday, August 14
On my way to Koshien to see the best high school baseball in Japan, I witnessed Shikoku
give in to Honshu's concrete request, and I thanked the shogunate for my placement in the inaka.
And then the Seto Ohashi appeared in the distance, and the tokkyu train hovered water
instead of land. I would soon
leave my rural island. The sky looked ominous, as it sometimes does here, but I knew it was harmless.
A little seaside village and a cultural park was the last I saw of Shikoku.
The Ohashi is an engineer's dream;
connecting Shikoku to the rest of Japan in a mass of steel. We crossed it at sunset, but the sun was hidden by clouds or
smog, I couldn't tell. An inland sea island whose name I did not know passed
beneath us.
Everything looked so peaceful and complete, and seemed surreal to me that all the artifical construct below was man's,
and not G-d's creation. I spotted a smoking refinery in the distance and
I realized that the bluegrass CD I was listening to was no longer
relevant. A vast cemetary greeted my window to the next minor island.
The Japanese bury their dead in the foothills or highlands, for reverence.
A minute passed and two pachinko parlours and a ferris wheel informed me
that this minor island was major, at least in terms of tourist attractions. Japan can be deceiving in that way. A study of a mostly helpful map will show nothing between points of attraction, but nevertheless
a large town or even city will surprise the avid traveler. The Japanese live everywhere, it seems, and there are few areas of this archipelago that they don't subdue.
Bridges gave way to tunnels, and seemed apparent that we were now in Honshu. It was time for me to change trains to the shinkansen: the Japanese bullet train.
