On Olive Island

Mark and I were in Shodoshima for a few days just before Stephen went. The hotel we stayed in stands very close to a number of soy-sauce factories. We rented bicycles at the hotel and pedaled off to the harbor. The next day we set off again, visiting three soy-sauce factories, a Dutch pancake café, a sake brewery, and a small factory where thin somen noodles are made by hand. It was a lovely sunny day.

Here and there, you will find tiny, artisanal somen shops in Shodoshima. One such shop, called “Nakabu-an,” allowed us to try our hand at making somen as we toured the facility.

Airing somen

In the spring breeze –

Window-blind shadows

Having made a batch of somen, we bought a few of the house products, including “Olive somen” (pale green noodles flavored with Shodoshima olive paste).

Over toward the port at Sakade, we saw two large hotels, both of them totally abandoned, open to the weather. One was named “Shodoshima Royal Hotel” and obviously had once featured a fine Japanese garden, private beach, and a harbor-side swimming pool. To our amazement, doors and windows alike were wide open. Anyone might step inside.

The hotel was a tumbledown affair, partly looted, but a fancy painting remained on the lobby wall, looking down on sofas and armchairs — everything in place, just as the management had left it, maybe six months ago, maybe a year. (The policeman who pulled up to check us out couldn’t say how long.) At the entrance to the hotel, we found five packages of somen with a curious label: “Arigato.” Someone had left them on the stoop, with no indication why. Who or what was being thanked?

A curtain sways

In a forsaken hotel –

Pink azaleas

A soft breeze blew through the greenery, and we imagined the glory of times past. A favorite haiku of Basho’s came to my mind:

The summer grasses –

Of brave soldiers’ dreams

The aftermath

(夏草や　兵どもが　夢の跡)

A bus from the hotel took us up Kankakei Mountain the morning after we arrived on the island. The mountains there are carpeted in variegated green — ranks of trees, staggered in their distance, slope after slope. We reached the mountaintop quickly enough, and it was not yet crowded. Below lay the sea, at the end of a long swath of new-leafed trees veiled in morning mist.

Surveying the sea

From the mountaintop –

Green gradations

IV

.

a cold spring morningー

the crows

.

花筏 （はないかだ）Helwingia

The tiny ｆlowers of this plant bloom from the central part of the leaf surface. It looks as if the flowers are carried on a green raft, so it is called (花 hana = flower) + (筏 ikada = raft) or helwingia. I had only known it from the pages of an illustrated book; but one day recently, I was strolling in a park near my house and chanced upon this flower. In this season, a lot of colorful flowers bloom in profusion, so who even notices the helwingia ? But one small insect approaches it …

a poor talker, though

blessed with a few good friends -

the secret helwingia

From the Icebox Inbox

walk to the train station –
my cellphone holder bounces
along the road

………….. (Alan Summers)

raking leaves away
from summer’s empty hammock;
their voices now gone.

………….. (Thomas Drescher)

Flown petal

(April 9) I had wanted to join the Yoshino event and had a plan to visit the Kansai area around that time, but my schedule didn’t allow. Living in Shikoku, I often drive through deep mountainsides between Matsuyama and Imabari. On one such day, when I saw cherry blossoms in full bloom here and there in the mountains, I yearned for the Yoshino haike.

Deep in Shikoku

I drive amidst the blossoms

Warping toward Yoshino

(April 13) Once in Kansai, I travelled to Kyoto one evening after work, hoping to glance at the cherry blossoms. It was raining, occasionally downpouring, and didn’t stop till night. But Entokuin, where Hideyoshi Toyotomi’s wife stayed for the final part of her life, is a breathtakingly beautiful space, and it was made all the more so by the rain. This garden features a dry pond. On that day, it had real water in it, though, because of the heavy rain. A guide there said this was most uncommon.

Garden of Nene -

Her imagined pond filled

With spring night rain

The guide continued, “This tree in front of us was totally naked until a few days ago and I had to explain to people that it was a maple. But, see, now it’s all light green with shoots!”

An invisible tree -

Fresh leaves came into bud

In two nights

(April 22) Back in Shikoku, I tried to write for the Icebox, but an urgent job rushed in. I had to translate thirty pages of a yakiniku menu, and my brain became utterly filled with Korean barbecue terms.

Spring messenger bird,

Smell of grilled meat wafts through

The cherry blossom-viewing

(May 5) Finally I got some time to relax during Golden Week, when intentionally I didn’t go anywhere. That was when I found the Yoshino report, Walking on Petals and Cloud.

Just roam on the net:

How easily I can join

The pleasant gathering

Walking on Petals and Cloud

花あれば西行の日とおもふべし ..（Genyoshi Kadokawa）

Grey dawn -
warblers song resonating
as cherry petals scatter .. (Mari Kawaguchi)

A quiet morning after rain. Nine Hailstones rolled out of the local bus at Nakasenbon to find the storms had blown pink.

trailside stone table
forgotten in Yoshino mist
adorned with petals .. (John McAteer)

Even the bush-warbler
Sounds bedraggled -
Silver-beaded trees. .. (Tito)

Beside the site of Katte Shrine, where Yoshitsune’s mistress, Shizuka, had once been forced to dance, we were served spring herb kamameshi. Then the haike began in earnest: uphill to the Kamisenbon woods, still in flower.

From green-lit Yoshino
a myriad coloured trees -
how vast the mountainside .. (Akira Kibi)

Mikumari Jinja, where the water deity resides, was looking at its very best, with the venerable courtyard shidare-zakura in full bloom.

felt with my eyes closed
the mercy of
a weeping cherry-tree .. (Reiko Hayahara)

A steep slog to another shrine, Kimpu Jinja, favoured by the mountain ascetics entering the sacred precinct of the Omine Range. To one side, in a dark grove, the place where Yoshitsune had hid from his pursuers.

Deserted tower -
it brings to mind
that ancient warrior,
his back to the wall .. (Akito Mori)

The party separated in the Gyoja-do; only four of us continuing on uphill through cloud-wrapped forest. The rest returned home. Over a col, and we emerged into the steep secrecy of Okusenbon, the mist now clearing. Utter silence; a tiny mud-walled, bark-roofed hut, where the poet-priest Saigyo had spent three years of his life.

吉野山桜が枝に雪散りて　花おそげなる年にもあるかな .. (Saigyo)

Cupping springwater
Deep in Mt. Yoshino -
Blossom-in-mist .. (Yoshiharu Kondo)

Drinking deep draughts from the Kokeshimizu spring, filling our water-bottles … Now envigorated, we scampered back over the col, and down to the road, but found we’d just missed the last bus! Our early evening hike back down through the gently-scattering cherries of Kamisenbon, lights beginning to twinkle around the great Zao-do temple far below: this was epiphanous for all of us.

Thank you, o daughter of the blossoming cherry. Will you come out? Will you come out?

a bath chimney
trails its woodsmoke …
spring village eve .. (Keiko Yurugi)