So let me pick up where I left off before time gets too far away from me. We were halfway through October when I signed off last time and had just enjoyed a lovely night out with my coworkers.
The next week we had a get together planned for Michael and Greg’s birthdays (turning 23 and 30 respectively). It was me and four of the guys out for a night on the town (as much as one can in Obama) and it was such fun! Since Obama is so small, you can literally walk everywhere and they have this service called daiko which is half taxi service and half a Designated Driver. You call the company and tell them where you are, and two drivers show up in a cab. You and your friends all load into the taxi or into your car and the two company drivers drive you, your car, and your friends all back home. It’s a fantastic service that allows people to have a great night out without the night ending badly for anyone. Anyway, after a fabulous night out with the boys I was completely ready for the girl’s getaway planned for the following weekend.
Hayley, Celeste, Ariannah, and I headed up north and had a road trip planned for Shirakawago. This small, fairytale village is nestled in a valley that looks like something out of a Thomas Kinkaid painting complete with thatched roofs and little bridges over babbling brooks. We were planning to take the quick route up the interstate but noticed a shortcut on the map that we thought would cut our time in half. In fact, it turned out to be a beautiful, scenic highway through Mount Hakusan National Park (think along the lines of driving through Yellowstone). We drove through the twisty, turning, and sometimes slightly treacherous, roads through the mountains, admiring the colors of the changing Fall foliage splashed across the peaks. After multiple stops to take pictures (though, honestly, none of them can do any justice to the real thing) we finally wound our way down to the snuggly valley town of Shirakawago. We meandered around the village, wandering in and out of shops, and soaked in all the picturesque sights that seemed to saturate the entire place.
As the sun went down, it started to become incredibly chilly, so we decided it was time to head out. We thought that we could just head back the way we came but we didn’t realize that the mountain pass was closed after dark (which is actually a good idea despite it throwing a wrench in our plans). This forced us to find the interstate that we originally planned to take but we ended up heading the wrong way which took us into the mountains. Once you’re in the mountains, there is literally no place to turn around so we ended up having to add hours to our return trip. But when you have good company to enjoy, it doesn’t bother you a bit and it adds a couple more hours of fun conversation and awesome memories.
Now, Shirakawago was probably one of the prettiest places I have seen so far but I didn’t realize that a couple of days later I would experience the spookiest. At this point we were quickly approaching Halloween and, exactly two days before the holiday, I had one of the coolest experiences since arriving in Japan. A good friend of mine invited me one night to join her and some friends from her volleyball team on a haikyo exploration. What is haikyo, you may ask? Haikyo is the Japanese word for “abandoned ruins”; these are becoming a dime a dozen in Japan ever since the population numbers took a nosedive. Numerous villages, schools, hospitals, amusement parks, etc. are slowly being abandoned as people are moving out of the countryside and closer to the bigger cities. The strange thing, however, is that almost all of these places are never demolished. So they remain there, decaying over time with nature slowly reclaiming the area. Some of these places are marked on maps while others are forgotten over time. So you can be driving through the mountains using a detour road and all of a sudden you’ll be passing a decrepit building that has been untouched for decades. Anyway, back to the story. So my friend and the other guys had gone on a few explorations in the previous weeks in order to scare up the Halloween spirit and maybe a few ghosts. I finally had the evening off and my friend extended an invitation to join her and her friends on their last exploration before Halloween. Of course I said yes! How could you turn down an experience like that, right? So we were off, joining the others and heading off into the mountains to find an abandoned village some of the guys had heard about and had a good idea of where it might be located.
There were about nine of us in total in two cars as we headed up the old mountain road at around 11 o’clock at night. We passed through a construction site that looked like they were doing some type of demolition work until we finally stumbled upon the main part of the path towards the village. Honestly, it looked like no cars had passed by that way in years, if not decades. As we made our way up the twisting, treacherous roads, the cars continuously stumbled and struggled over the rocks and forest debris strewn across the path. All of this with a sharp drop to a deep ravine on one side made for an interesting trek. After quite a few heart-stopping lurches of the car (and a few whispered prayers under my breath), we finally made it to the village. We slowly crept along this dark lane with old, falling apart houses peeping in and out of sight in the headlights. The cars eventually came to a stop and we were thrown into complete darkness. It was amazing. You could see the stars above, the chilly wind was picking up, and everyone was armed with a flashlight and their courage to head off into the darkness.
We made our way to the first dilapidated house and uttered an “ojama shimasu” before entering. (“Ojama shimasu” roughly translates to “I will disturb you” and is a polite phrase used when entering someone’s home. We didn’t want to take any chance of upsetting any spirits that could still be lurking about.) It was so unnerving to walk into these abandoned homes. Personal items were left behind and strewn about giving the sense that the previous inhabitants left in some sort of crisis. Though eerie, the items allowed us to do some investigative work and we were able to deduce that the village had been abandoned at some point in the 1960s. The most fascinating thing for me was that the house still had a traditional Japanese hearth which is a stone pit in the floor in which you would build a fire for warmth, cooking, etc. There was even an old pulley system overhead which was used to raise and lower giant tea kettles over the pit. We explored all the little nooks and crannies we could before excusing ourselves and heading down the road to the next house. The other homes were in the same state with decades old personal items scattered about and a sense of urgency about the place. Various trees had fallen through the roofs and you had to watch your step lest you fall through rotted tatami and wooden floorboards.
While there was always an underlying feeling of unease during our explorations, nothing truly bothered me until we discovered a forgotten shrine at the top of a hill. The shrine had probably suffered the most damage from the elements but we could still find little paths through the wreckage. Things were fine until we discovered the main room. Everyone was shining their flashlights around the room; almost everything was completely fallen apart and looked like it could disintegrate at any moment. Everything except for one red curtain. One bright, blood-red curtain against the back wall that looked like it had been untouched by time. That’s when I was done. For some reason, a sense of complete unease came over me and all I wanted to do was to leave the shrine.
We eventually left the building and made our way back down the hill to the cars. On our way we found an old sign on some sort of outbuilding that gave us one more clue to the timeframe to the village. It had a sign written in kanji but my friend told me that the kanji used was of a much older style and it was written from right to left instead of left to right which was last done following World War II before Occupation reforms took place. The sign was put up to protest the creation of a nuclear power plant in the area; apparently the protest failed since that same power plant had been built about 50 years ago. At this point the wind was picking up and everyone was beginning to freeze and, frankly, I was starting to get the heebie-jeebies. So we all loaded back into the cars and started to make our way back out of the mountains. The roads felt even more treacherous as we were leaving as if, to my fanciful imagination, some force didn’t want us to leave. But made it we did. We found our way back to Obama and I to my futon. I must say that I couldn’t have asked for a better way to celebrate my first Halloween in Japan and I can’t wait to do it again next year. Who knows? We might find an abandoned school or hotel next. But I won’t do an abandoned hospital. No way, no how. I’ve seen enough movies to know better than that.
Well, that’s that for October. Below are some pictures from my Halloween board at school which was a pain to create but I think the kids loved it!
roamingpeach 