Matsuyama – Borderless

By Meredith Stephens

“Please show me your international driver’s licence.”

“Certainly!”

Alex produced the licence.

“This is out of date! I’m sorry but we can’t hand over the car.”

“No! It’s current! It’s valid for five years.”

We scrutinized the licence. The start date was prominently displayed, but not the expiration date. As we squinted to decipher the fine print on page three, we discovered that it had expired three years ago. Alex had thought it would be valid for five years, but it was only valid for one. We attributed it to his light-heartedly referred to “OCD Deficit Disorder”. And that is how a one-week road trip suddenly became a public transport and taxi trip.

This was my first visit back to Japan after having left at the beginning of the pandemic. Alex and I had been deliberating where to spend our honeymoon, and we agreed that the island of Shikoku in western Japan where I had spent over twenty years would be our first choice.

Onigiri. Photo courtesy:
**Mariko Hisamatsu**

There were so many things to look forward to. The first thing I did, before even leaving Kansai Airport, was rush into the convenience store and buy an onigiri flavoured with an umeboshi pickled plum. An onigiri is a triangle of rice, with a choice of flavours in the centre such as fish, seaweed, or the aforementioned umeboshi. It is wrapped in a crisp sheet of seaweed. Before eating it you gently pull away a thin layer of wrapping which protects the outer seaweed from absorbing the moisture of the rice. As you bite into it you can enjoy the three distinct textures and flavours – the piquant centre, the contrasting bland rice, and the crisp outer layer of seaweed. Next, I purchased a mugwort daifuku. This is a Japanese sweet, consisting of a layer of pounded mugwort-flavoured rice around a centre of sweet azuki bean paste. All of this was washed down with a bottle of green tea.

From the above account, it might sound like I was returning to Japan to indulge in simple culinary delights from a convenience store, and maybe this is a possibility I am unwilling to admit to myself. Of course, the main purpose was to reconnect with old friends, the second to reconnect with old pleasures, such as the aforementioned onigiri and daifuku, and the third, to stay in a traditional Japanese house.

After having been refused permission to drive our hire car, we headed back towards the terminal and searched for the railway station. We caught trains out to the UNESCO heritage listed site of Koyasan to enjoy the autumn leaves, and then seven trains and two buses later, to Wakayama station. Finally, we caught a taxi to our accommodation, which turned out to be a house that was over two hundred years ago, dating from the end of the Edo Period.

Jiomaru-an Edo period house. Photo Courrtesy: Alan Noble

The door slid open to reveal an earthen floor. We walked down the hall to the kitchen, left our shoes in the sunken area, and donned the provided slippers. The kitchen opened onto two traditional tatami rooms, with fusuma sliding cupboards, and latticed paper shoji screens leading onto the garden. Beyond the shoji was a narrow hall known as an engawa, with a small wooden table and chair where you could enjoy sipping a drink while looking out over the garden. This was the kind of room I had been longing for during my five years away from Japan.

But we hadn’t had dinner yet and I was longing to ride to a local supermarket to purchase a ready meal.

‘“Do you have any bicycles?” I asked the host.

“Certainly. We have mountain bikes too!”

“You don’t want to go cycling in the dark?” queried Alex. “Not after a long-distance flight, seven trains, two buses, and a taxi ride? Surely not!”

I insisted, and Alex gave up persuading me otherwise. Rather than a mountain bike I chose the mamachari, a vintage bike replete with a shopping basket attached to the front handlebars.

We cycled to the supermarket, as I had done almost daily during my twenty years of living in Shikoku. There we bought sushi and sashimi ready meals, and cycled home, scanning to avoid roadside ditches with sheer drops and no guard rails. Once safely home, we indulged in the much longed for sushi and sashimi, enjoyed the traditional deep Japanese bath, spread out the futons on the tatami, and luxuriated in a deep sleep.

The next morning, we woke to a gentle light streaming through the latticed paper shoji screens. We cycled to Wakayama castle, Alex on the mountain bike and me on the mamachari. We strolled around the traditional garden before entering the castle and then completed it with a visit to the adjacent tearoom, where we enjoyed green tea and a sweet bean paste confectionery.

The following day, we bid farewell to our Edo Period home, and our kind host drove us to the ferry terminal. As soon as I saw the sign in Japanese for Tokushima, I could feel the colour rising to my cheeks. This had been my home in Japan for fifteen of my twenty years in Shikoku, until the day I departed for a routine visit to Australia, just before the international borders were closed due to COVID. Little did I know that the pandemic would prevent me from returning to Japan. I boarded the ferry as I had so many other times after returning from various work trips, but this time I was visiting on my honeymoon. The two-hour crossing readied me for the arrival in my old stomping ground and was heralded by the sentimental music played to signal a homecoming. Alex and I exited the ferry to be met by my old friend and writing mentor, Suzanne. Overcome with emotion, I covered my face with my hands to spare her the sight of my crumpled features and then gave her a hug. Then I went back to covering my swollen eyes and gave her another hug.

Platter of Sushi at Sally’s home. Photo courtesy: Alan Noble

Suzanne drove us to the home of the son of another old friend, Sally, who had kindly offered us a couple of nights’ accommodation. That evening a subset of old friends dropped in to see us and eat sushi. I braced myself for the entry of each friend into the house, trying to compose my features, after an unanticipated five-year interval. My eyes, however, betrayed me. I caught the expressions of those who returned by gaze, and they could sense my relief and excitement of meeting them again. Over five years people’s appearances were a little different. Those who had long hair now wore it shorter. Those with shorter hair had grown it. Those who were curvaceous were now svelte, and those who were svelte were now curvaceous. A child had now become a lanky teenager. I’m sure I must have looked different to them too. What had not changed was people’s smiles, conversation and sense of humour. People who I would normally see a few times over a month were now all present in the same room in the space of a few hours.

A few days later, we took the bus across Shikoku to Matsuyama, where another happy reunion took place of eight friends from six different countries. I was freshly aware of the joys of the expat life, where you can make friends from a greater range of countries, and a greater range of ages, than you would at home.

Ranma Carvings in a traditional room. Photo Courtesy: Alan Noble

I had been craving another stay in a traditional house, and we savoured a room with ranma carvings suspended from the ceiling, letting in light and air flow from the adjacent room. We sat at the kotatsu low heated table on the tatami, and slept on futon, in a room featuring shoji paper screens facing outside and fusuma cupboards where futons were stored. Features which had once seemed so ordinary were now infused with nostalgia.

Family obligations called us back to Australia after only one week of our Japanese honeymoon. A taxi was followed by a bus which took us on the long trek back across Shikoku, driving through impossibly long tunnels, crossing elegant bridges, with views of the sea and mountains. Once we crossed the final bridge onto the largest main island of Honshu, the landscape was transformed into high rise apartments, and dense traffic. We alighted from the bus at Kobe’s Sannomiya Station.

There we asked directions to the airport limousine bus and made a final purchase of onigiri. My favourite umeboshi pickled plum one was not on sale, so I had to make do with a tuna mayonnaise one and a pickled seaweed one. We ran to the bus stop, purchased tickets, and skipped into the bus holding our luggage. There was no time to store the luggage in the hold. Once the bus pulled into the traffic, we knew we could relax after our long and complicated journey. I gently pulled away the wrapping separating the layers of the tuna mayonnaise onigiri and savoured the contrasting flavours and textures. Our fleeting trip to Japan was punctuated by savouring onigiri on both arrival and departure. We bade farewell to this land of delectable tastes, exquisite arts, historic houses, hair-raising bicycle rides, and precious friends.

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her recent work has appeared in Syncopation Literary Journal, Continue the Voice, Micking Owl Roost blog, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, and Mind, Brain & Education Think Tank. In 2024, her story Safari was chosen as the Editor’s Choice for the June edition of All Your Stories.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Onsen and Hot Springs

Meredith Stephens explores Japanese and Californian hot springs with her camera and narrative.

One of the pleasures of living in Japan is taking a dip in the hot springs, otherwise known as onsen. Although I lived in Japan for more than twenty years, it was ten years before I could bring myself to regularly visit an onsen. This is because I could not bring myself to accept the notion of communal (albeit segregated) nude bathing, which would be taboo in the West. My long-term expat English friend in Japan continued to entreat me to visit the onsen, and so I eventually capitulated. Would everyone in the onsen be slim, and would they look down on a curvy westerner? Would I attract glances because of my physical difference? I visited one of the many onsen in Matsuyama with my two daughters. Nobody appeared to look at me. The onsen was not full of young slim women. There were many elderly and infirm in the onsen. Maybe the young were already healthy, and they did not need to visit an onsen.

There was a wide range of pools at the onsen. One had a walking pool, in which you walked anti-clockwise. Another had pools with jets that could be turned on to massage your back, a carbonated pool, and stone beds to lie on while watching a television screen placed on the wall which faced you. Another had an outdoor area, with separate bathtubs, a communal pool, a communal cold pool, and a pool inside a cave. There was also a sauna. Inside was a bucket of salt. You could scoop some salt out of the bucket and throw it over your shoulders. There was a clock in the sauna. I could not bear to stay in as long as the other patrons and would sometimes let myself in the door and then walk straight back out again.

I made up for the ten years of not visiting the onsen by becoming a regular patron, usually visiting at least once a week. I returned to Australia at the beginning of the pandemic, and one of the many things I missed about Japan was visits to the onsen. The next time I was able to visit an onsen was over three years later, on a visit to California.

My companion Alex and I drove from Shaver Lake to Mono Hot Springs Resort, both in the Sierra Nevada. We wound up the mountains through the site of the Big Creek Fire. On each side of the road were charred tree trunks.

As we drew closer to the resort, we turned onto a narrow road with large granite boulders on each side. Dump trucks charged towards us, and we took shelter in the many turn-outs.

After this hair-raising drive we arrived at our destination at 4 pm. We collected the key to our hut from the office and made our way there. I remembered an experience from an onsen resort in Japan, where patrons boasted how many times they had bathed in the various pools, and decided I would do the same at this Californian hot spring. We consulted the map and decided to visit the bath house. We had purchased swimsuits for this purpose. In Japan being clothed in an onsen is taboo, but in America it is quite the contrary. The first thing I noticed outside the bath house was the sign saying, ‘No Dogs Allowed’.

Why would you bring a dog into a bath house? In Japan, I had seen a sign saying, ‘No-one with tatoos can enter’, but never — ‘No dogs’.

I entered the bath house expecting to see large communal pools as in Japan, but instead discovered individual showers and baths in separate rooms with doors that could be locked. Apparently, the water was piped into the bath house from the source across the valley. Next, we decided to cross the valley to take a dip in one of the outdoor springs. In order to cross, you had to wade through a river gripping on to a rope, and tread across river rocks.

Alex went ahead of me, and I slipped into the icy cold water onto the river rocks. I tried to grasp the rope, but it eluded me. After several attempts, I managed to grasp it.

“Alex! Help!” I shouted.

I was aware of the glance of onlookers on the rocks witnessing my panic. Alex climbed onto the rock on the other side, extended a hand, and pulled me to the other side. The onlookers offered words of encouragement. We walked across the granite rocks and up the grassy hill, to find El Padro baths. Other bathers kindly and unnecessarily stepped out of the bath to offer us a place. Unlike Japanese baths it was muddy underfoot. We bathed there for twenty minutes, then continued up the grassy hill to the Iodine Bath.

This was similar to El Padro. We bathed here for another twenty minutes and chatted to a fellow bather. Then we headed back to our hut, this time walking a considerable distance out of our way in order to cross the bridge rather than wade through the river again.

The next morning, we decided to return to the baths before breakfast, in the hope of having them to ourselves. We went back across the bridge and headed up the grassy hill to the mud bath. The mud bath was shallow, just deep enough to sit in. The base of the pool at one end felt like grains of granite, and at the other end soft slimy mud. We could feel the heat pulsing from the edge of the pool. We spread mud over our neck, shoulders and legs, soiling our new swimsuits. We lay in the pool for twenty minutes enjoying the sensation of the warm mud on our bodies. Then we stepped out and washed the mud off in a metal bath.

We returned to our hut to wash off the rest of the mud, and rest, before visiting another pool called Li’l Eden. We trudged up the road in the sunshine for about thirty minutes, before spotting a downhill path leading to the pool. The path turned into a steep granite decline. A rope had been placed there to assist in ab-sailing. I had never ab-sailed before, but I followed Alex’ example, placing the rope in between my legs, clutching it, while carefully placing my feet in suitable footholds. I descended safely, albeit with muddy sleeves and sodden shoes. We spotted Li’l Eden and entered. It was a large muddy pool. If I sat on the mud at the bottom of the pool, I could feel the heat pulsating through the mud. After luxuriating in the mud, we hopped out and decided to return to the hut via the path and cross the river, rather than the bridge. We trod through the long muddy grass back down the hill. This time, instead of wading through the river across the river rocks to get to the other side, we decided to walk along a log which had been placed there for this purpose. What if I fell into the cold waters below? At least the log was a shorter distance than wading through the river holding the rope, so I decided to try. I quickly placed one foot in front of the other and a few seconds later I was safely on the other side.

We had two lengthy conversations with fellow visitors, and what struck me was that both of them said that this was their favourite place in the world. One said he had come here over one hundred times and preferred it to more famous destinations such as Yosemite and Kings Canyon. The other said she loved it so much that she spent her entire summers here. (In winter the road is closed because of the snow.)

I’m glad I had the chance to visit Californian hot springs after having spent so many years visiting Japanese ones. The latter are much more manicured. Each bath has a unique quality, and clothed attendants come in regularly to test the water quality. The Californian hot springs were more rustic. Other than the bath house, they required physical effort to get to each one, and the floor of each springwas unsealed. Many bathers had tattoos, but this was unremarkable. Both the Japanese onsen and the Californian hot springs are charming in their own ways. Yet, it was only because I had succumbed to the encouragement of my friends in Japan to indulge in frequenting onsen that I had braved the almost inaccessible roads to reach Mono Hot Springs in California.

Meredith Stephens is an applied linguist from South Australia. Her work has appeared in Transnational Literature, The Muse, The Font – A Literary Journal for Language Teachers, The Journal of Literature in Language Teaching, The Writers’ and Readers’ Magazine, Reading in a Foreign Language, and in chapters in anthologies published by Demeter Press, Canada.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon International