• Tuesday, 23 Feb 2016 8:00 pm

  Gas Station

  Author's note, 10/10/24: This didn't actually happen to me. Or anyone, probably. I cobbled it together as part of an abortive write-what-you-know Nanowrimo from different bits I'd picked up around Hokkaido.
  
  Previously: Abandoned home

  The first intersection that I come to is a deserted thing. There are a couple of cars off down the road, further along, but none here. At one corner is an Eneos gas station, a sort of roofless affair: a single gas pump and a small office. The grounds of the gas station are roped off to prevent cars from entering; the ropes are moored to poles welded to big old wheel rims, which is a pretty clever solution to the problem of where to moor a rope.

  The tarmac is bordered by a very deep trough, ostensibly for runoff, and nearly the width of the tires on some smaller cars, which I wonder what would happen to a car that got stuck in the trough, like if it was driving parallel to it? The pump has a big vinyl cover fitted over it and is tied down with ropes that honestly look a bit too heavy-duty for the job they're doing. The office has big plate glass windows and the windows are laced with that wire that I think is supposed to prevent shattering. I think briefly about the sort of damage that huge shards of plate glass could do. My mom used to have a table with a plate glass top, and I remember it weighing something like 200 kg. I suppose glass is pretty heavy.

  Inside the office I can see a metal desk, a gas heater, and a computer on what looks like a short podium. The lights are off and everything is totally still. For some reason this sort of resonates with me and I wind up just staring at this still gas station office. There's the sort of far-away automotive noise that you get in towns, and another, more distant noise that I assume is the sound of wind, overhead, air jostling up against itself. Which now that I come to think about it, is that a thing? Air against itself, the noise of its friction? The rough hollow noise of a big blue dome above you? The sun isn't high enough to crest the buildings opposite and I, the gas station, and the intersection, are all in bluish-gray shadow.

  Across the street, on the opposite corner, is another gas station, almost identical to the first but obviously long closed. The old logo is painted on the side of the office is worn almost totally away, a red arrow in a red circle, with like some wing motif, painted on a white wall. The white paint is also wearing away and you can see the this brown stuff underneath, probably plaster. Where I can only assume the wire-glass windows of the office used to be, there are now a number of big pieces of plywood, mismatched and evidently taken from some surplus nearby. A couple have retained their beige-ish wood color, a color that always seems sort of fake on plywood, as if plywood isn't real wood and wouldn't be wood color without some sort of treatment. Other pieces have faded out to gray, their grain a slightly darker gray, and these pieces are indubitably wood, dead in the way that only dead wood is, somehow more beautiful, at least from some angles.

  I wonder, why hasn't anyone graffiti-ed this building? Back home, there's no such thing as real abandonment—only repurposing. Old gas stations become palettes for graffiti artists or shelters for vagrants. But here, be it the old houses or the farm equipment or the gas stations, abandoned things really are abandoned: they drop off the face of everyone's consciousness. They like, recede into the background, they're left to rot. It's sort of weird, then, seeing and being interested in these abandoned places, for whatever that's worth—it feels like being able to see something that everyone else can't.

  Before I can wander too far further down that trail of thought, a little car comes around the corner, this silver kei van, and pulls up beside the Eneos station. The driver takes a look at me, a long, gawking look, the sort of look to which I've become well-accustomed by this point. I can read suspicion in his look, and curiosity. I can tell as well that this guy has been taught, or like has absorbed the knowledge from the sort of social consciousness, that this sort of bold-faced gawking is against norm; and so I can see the battle playing out on his face between wanting to know who I am and wanting not to be seen as a rubbernecker, not to stir the pot, not to make trouble.

  In the end, his curiosity wins.

  He gets out of the car and I notice he's wearing an Eneos jacket, an orange piece with some dark red stripes. He leans up the pole-in-wheel to roll it away, spindling up the rope as he goes. Which is even more clever than I thought. When he passes me by—still sort of looking at him but also looking around me, as if there's more to see, which, honestly, there isn't—but when he passes by me he says in a sort of clipped way, “Good morning,” in Japanese, and I echo him in Japanese, and he has a bit of a startled look on his face at hearing me speak Japanese, which makes sense. It's more likely than not that this gas station attendant has never met a westerner, and certainly not one who speaks Japanese.

  When he's done spindling the rope and the poles are arranged off to the side and out of the way, he goes to remove the vinyl cover from the pump assembly; but the ropes are thick and very well-knotted and he looks like he's having a hard time. Plus he's still sort of looking at me, although to his credit the looks are getting more furtive. I'm still sort of just standing there, looking around, which I suppose could be interpreted as suspicious behavior.

  He finally gets the rope and drops it off to the side, and the vinyl cover comes off with a loud crinkling noise, and he starts folding it and finally says, in Japanese, “Are you waiting for something?”

  And I say, “No, there isn't anything in particular.”

  And he says, “Why are you here?” which in Japanese sounds a lot less accusatory than in English, but somehow I still feel a little accused-against.

  I say, “I'm walking around Hokkaido.”

  “Around?” And he makes a noise of disbelief.

  “Yeah, like around the island, once.”

  He says, “Sugoi ne,” which means more or less that's really amazing, literally speaking, but he has that typically Japanese way of saying it, almost totally unenthusiastically but with this rising inflection at the end, which is endlessly interpretable vis-a-vis actual sincerity. I think in this case he's being sincere.

  I can also tell that he's sort of let his guard down, which is good to see. I hadn't noticed it before but I notice it now, in contrast—his shoulders are relaxed, his chest is a bit more open. I think that my presence had made him pretty uncomfortable.

  The gas station attendant says, “Your Japanese is very good.”

  I make the small, hand-waving, head-down-in-half-bow gestures that accompany deflection of praise. I say things like “Thank you,” and “I'm still learning,” very quickly and quietly. This is the sort of thing that would never work in English but is, I'm pretty sure, SOP in Japanese.

  Then he says, “Do you want a coffee?”

  One of the general rules of being in a foreign country is to always say yes, no matter how much you want to say no, so I follow him into the cramped office. He turns on the heater against the wall and drops his keys on the desk. Then he makes a big deal out of pulling a folding chair out of the little space between the wall and the desk, and opens it, gesturing for me to sit. There's one of those machines on the desk that heats water and keeps it heated, the ones with the little spout and you press a button on top and it dispenses water—one of those discrete little ways that Japan has streamlined a repetitive process, de-necessitating picking up a kettle and physically pouring the water. The same philosophy of daily life that brought Japan the rice cooker and motion-activated fan.

  He takes two mugs out of one of the drawers of the desk and opens up these little packets that look like teabags but with a cardboard structure on top of them. He folds and tears in a tired, expert way and the bag comes alive, opens up in to this spiderish thing that he balances on the rim of the mug. It holds the coffee in a pouch over the mug, and when he pours the hot water over it, the coffee filters and drips and there you have it—disposable, instant, filtered coffee! I've never seen something like this before and it blows my mind a little bit.

  Through all of this he's totally silent, and so am I. I've dropped my pack to the floor of the office and the way it's sitting there, leaning against my leg, looks almost expectant. The sound of the man moving around the office fills the room, and for me it's like the auditory equivalent of the smell of bacon in the morning. The sound of this guy's hurried industry around the room is in some weird way calming to me, after long hours of listening to far-off cars and the sound of wind.

  While he's pouring the water—he has to keep stopping to wait for the water to filter through the grounds—a car pulls up to the gas station, and he rushes outside in a flurry of obsequious-type gestures and guides the car in, waving his arms in the air like an airport tarmac worker and shouting something, clearly audible through the glass, that sounds like, “Oh rye, oh rye.”

  The heater in the office groans and belches out hot air. It smells faintly of kerosene. I move my pack away from the heater because I feel like I read, somewhere, that direct heat like that is bad for, uh, backpack fabric. I've got a long way to go on this old blue Osprey.

  Hills and Letters Japan JET Programme

• ---

  Friday, 12 Feb 2016 5:18 pm

  Naei-zan (那英山)

  

  This past weekend I went out to Naei-zan (那英山, 819 m), a short mountain on the west side of the Furano Basin near Kamifurano, with Sam and a couple of Japanese friends. We’d seen the mountain on the blog of a group of Japanese hikers (Naei-zan in particular here) and had gotten a little excited about the purported views from the mountainside–looking across the basin and farmland towards the characteristically sweeping faces of the Tokachi Mountains. It also didn’t seem to be a particularly long trip to the summit, which appealed to me after we didn’t make it to the summit of Fujigata-yama (富士形山, 638 m) last weekend, due to a super-long approach. Pff.

  Unfortunately the morning of the climb was a snowy one; visibility couldn’t have been more than 150 meters or so. Dang. At any rate, we made our way from Asahikawa down to Kamifurano through the snow. The mountain isn’t particularly popular, so there’s no parking (or even a trailhead, really), but there’s a bit of a pulloff at the intersection of Prefectural Routes 581 and 759 where we shoveled out a space for two cars. In a pinch you could probably park three cars on this pulloff, but that’d be pushing it a bit.

  We got our gear ready, crossed the street, clambered up besides some windbreaks, and headed off across a typically Furano-esque rolling field. On the far side of the field was a second-growth forest beyond which the mountain rose up into the snow. We headed for a little break in the forest along what would have been a dirt path in the summertime, maybe navigable by tractor. We skirted the margin between a stand of younger trees and a tall, orderly forest of second-growth softwoods, wandering for a little while into the young trees when I lost the dirt path. The path opened up at the back of the stand of younger trees and climbed up into the forest.

  The first climb wound through more of that second-growth softwood forest. Many of the trees here were tagged with numbered pink tape, and there was a pretty clear switchbacky route upwards; when the slope slackened out we just climbed straight up. Eventually we reached a bit of a plateau and passed into first-growth forest, lots of white birch, which is called shirakaba in Japanese. From here on out we followed pink tags tied to the trees; every now and again we saw a red tin plaque nailed to a tree noting that we were on the boundary between the towns of Nakafurano and Biei. The way forward was pretty evident–it was clear to us that we were following some kind of trail.

  

  We eventually came to another climb, switching back a little bit when we came to what looked suspiciously like a road. At the top of the climb was another flattish section before we climbed a short rise up to a wide ridgeline. The southern face of the ridgeline was pretty bare; a few young trees stuck up through the snow. We traveled along the north side of this open area before coming to the bottom of the last climb up to the summit, where we dug a hole in the snow and performed a compression test to check the snow for avalanches. The slope above was similarly bare and reasonably steep and I didn’t want to get into any trouble.

  Snowpack was a little more than 2 meters deep, with maybe 15 cm of powder on top and a pretty well-consolidated 1.5 m layer of firm snow underneath. The bottom 30 cm or so was made up of bigger ice crystals, probably snow that melted early in the season and refroze at night. I was a little worried about it but it took some serious pounding on my shovel to get a column of snow to fail at the boundary between the 1.5-meter layer and the ice crystals beneath. When I got above the snow and jumped on it with my skis I couldn’t get it to break, so I figured we were safe.

  We trudged on up the steep slope, making big switchbacks, until we reached the end of the open slope and headed into the forest again. We cut back along the south face of the ridge above us, losing the trail of the pink tape and ducking through a pretty tight forest. Soon the trees thinned, though, and we came back out onto the top of the ridgeline heading towards the summit. From here it was a pretty easy walk up the top of the ridge. The season’s prevailing winds must have been coming from the west because there was a huge cornice on our side, maybe 2.5 or 3 meters tall. Below the cornice the slope was pretty even so we left our gear to the side and took turns jumping off the cornice into the powder below, which was a ton of fun.
  

  

  I took off my skins and skied back down, getting some decent speed at points. The big field above the avalanche test was pristine and the powder was deep and I got a taste of what they try to make you feel in ski films shot at Niseko, but the slope wasn’t particularly long and the fun was over pretty fast. Past here there were a good number of flats, and I wound up pushing myself along, which wasn’t fun. In a few places the trail climbed short rises and I had to take my skis off and trudge up the snowshoe path in ski boots, which was miserable. The second-growth forest had some fun tree skiing but the snow was crusty and thin and lumpy from where it had fallen off the trees. at the bottom of the second-growth slope, I decided to put the skins back on–they were a little wet and the glue wasn’t cooperating, but they got me where I was going–and skinned out.
  

  

  If I were to do it again I’d probably take off the skins for the ski down to the bottom of the steep slope below the summit (that is, that big open ridge), then put the skins back on and skin out from there. The few places where the slope was steep enough for good skiing past there didn’t have great snow, and having to plod along on skis was tiresome and tough.

  Back at the car I pulled off all my sweat-soaked stuff, changed into dry clothes, and headed back into Asahikawa for a well-earned soup curry dinner. It was awesome.

  intersection of 581 & 759: 8:10 -> first climb: 8:40 -> avalanche test area: 10:42-11:07 -> summit: 11:44-12:02 -> avalanche test area: 12:09 -> bottom of the climb (put skins back on): 13:03 -> intersection of 581 & 759: 13:23

  climbing time: 3 hours, 34 minutes / descending time: 1 hour, 21 minutes

  See the activity on Strava
  

  Hills and Letters JET Programme Japan Snowshoeing

• ---

  Thursday, 28 Jan 2016 5:42 pm

  Okirika-yama (冲里河山)

  

  A couple of weeks ago I had to drop Sam off at an English camp in Fukagawa, so I decided to take the afternoon to climb a nearby mountain called Okirika-yama (沖里河山, 802 m). It’s one I’ve driven past any number of times on the way to Sapporo, but I’ve never bothered to check it out. I had just gotten my skis and skins a couple weeks earlier so I was eager to try them out.

  Okirika-yama is one peak of a three-peaked massif south of National Route 12 in Fukagawa–the other two peaks are Otoe-yama (音江山, 795 m) and Irumukeppu-yama (イルムケップ山, 864 m). Like Kitoushi-yama, I’m pretty sure that Okirika-yama’s slopes were, or are, the site of a ski hill called Fukagawa Ski Field (深川スキー場)–although with nearby Kamui Ski Links I wouldn’t be surprised if they’d gone out of business. I didn’t see any evidence of chairlifts or lift towers, but it was evident from signs along the snowy slope and newly-planted trees that in the summertime this area gets some traffic. I think there’s a road that climbs the ski hill called Irumukeppu Skyline (イルムケップスカイライン).

  Anyway, in the winter there’s nowhere to leave your car, but Prefectural Route 79 (the road closest to the ski hill and the one that the summertime Irumukeppu Skyline branches off of) is a fairly deserted road in the wintertime, so I pulled my car as close up to the snowbanks as possible and left it there. If I went back, I would probably excavate a little ways down the Irumukeppu Skyline road and leave the car there. Leaving my car on the road was a mistake.

  There was a pretty length approach to the hill itself; what was more surprising was that there were big snowcat tracks along the road. Hmm. The tracks were a little crusty, so I imagined that they had probably been made a day or two earlier.

  The snowcat tracks actually continued all the way up the ski hill-road (what I imagine is the Irumukeppu Skyline), crisscrossing in switchbacks as they climbed. When I got the opportunity I left the Skyline and started climbing through the powdery fields. I ran into some old snowshoe tracks, probably from a week previous or so, as well as that snowshoer’s ski tracks back down; a little higher up I also came across a ton of snowmobile tracks, a lot fresher. Now and again I could actually hear the snowmobiles, but they were on one of the neighboring peaks and I never actually saw the snowmobilers themselves.

  As I climbed the ski hill I found myself mounting a big ridge; the climb was long but it was never really difficult. Near the top of the ridge it shallowed out pretty substantially and I had to start pushing myself. It was evidently the top of the ski hill, so I followed the snowmobile tracks into the forest closer to the summit.

  The ridge narrows considerably near the summit and I found myself back on the road, and back in the tracks of the snowcat. Which was pretty remarkable, because the ridge’s flat top could barely have been wider than the snowcat itself. Soon I came to the end of the road, where there were a few signs covered in blue tarp. Snowmobile tracks and footprints headed into the woods at the end of the road, so I followed those. It wasn’t 50 meters before I came to the steep cone of the summit. One of the snowmobilers ahead of me had climbed up, postholing up to his groin, so I elected to leave the skis on and switchback my way up. The cone itself was maybe 10 meters tall so it was pretty short work.

  

  In the summer, the top of the mountain is capped by a little outlook platform, but in the winter it’s just a big cornice with the summit marker, a couple signs, and mounted binoculars sticking out of it. It was mostly clear and I got an amazing view over the huge Sorachi Plains below and back out towards Kamui Ski Links and Kamuikotan. On a clear day you’d probably be able to see down to the suburbs of Sapporo, looking south. I stopped for a little while and ate a Snickers, but it was pretty windy so I didn’t spend much time. I descended a bit, packed up my skins, and headed out.
  

  

  The upper slopes of the mountain were pretty flat so I wound up pushing myself along for quite a bit, but when I got back to the open terrain of the ski hill it was great going. The snow wasn’t particularly deep but a lack of tracks–especially lower down, where the snowmobilers hadn’t been–made up for it. It wasn’t fast skiing by any means but it was good fun. I found myself back at the bottom of the ski hill before I knew it.
  
  It was a bit of a pain skiing out along the snowcat’s tracks, especially since they climbed a couple of short hills and I didn’t have skins on anymore. It wasn’t so troublesome that I would have put the skins back on, but I was getting a pretty blister (new boots) and I just wanted to be back at the car.
  
  I had been a little worried that my car had been towed or ticketed or something–I had, after all, left it on the side of the road–but after the little climb from the trailhead back up to the road, I found it still there, safe and sound.
  

  

  trailhead: 12:49 -> bottom of ski field: 13:07 -> summit: 14:23 -> bottom of ski field: 14:35 -> trailhead: 14:42

  climbing time: 1 hour, 33 minutes / descending time: 18 minutes

  See activity on Strava
  

  Hills and Letters JET Programme Japan Skiing

• ---

  Wednesday, 20 Jan 2016 5:11 pm

  Kitoushi-yama (鬼斗牛山)

  

  Sitting around on a Saturday afternoon with little to do, Sam and I decided to head out to Kitoushi-yama (鬼斗牛山, 379 m), a little mountain just north of Asahikawa that we had climbed earlier in the winter. I wanted to see if it was climbable in deeper snow, and I had my new skis and skins with me, so we decided to head over and check it out.

  I had thought that Kitoushi-yama was a popular mountain for summer hiking and had considered that it might be locally popular in the winter, but what I didn’t know was that it was/is actually the site of a small ski hill called Higashi-Takasu Ski Field (東鷹栖スキー場). The ski hill sits in a big clear-cut triangular space on the western flanks of the mountain, but there doesn’t appear to be any lifts or lodge or, uh, the trappings of a regular ski hill. I think there might have been something there at some point, but now it’s just a big empty field.

  Anyway, we got about halfway to the mountain before we realized that Sam had left her snowshoes behind, but she insisted that I go ahead. The road up to where we left the car last time hadn’t been plowed, so we drove up as close as we could–a little farm-looking place, with a curious pup leashed outside–and Sam dropped me off.

  There are three main trails up the mountain, the most popular of which seems to be the “Steep Climb” trail (急登コース)–the same that Sam and I had climbed earlier in the winter. There’s another trail up the southern ridge of the mountain, and a third that climbs up the old ski hill and traverses up the northern ridge. There’s a fourth trail that starts at the same place as the first two and meets the ski hill trail at an overlook called Miharashi-dai (見晴台).

  I returned to this trail and found it well worn-in. It looked like people had been climbing here earlier today–and without snowshoes! I couldn’t see any other ski marks, though. Which makes sense, now that I know that one of the trails climbs the ski hill. Whoops.

  But so I started to make my way up the steep trail, skinning up alongside the worn-in footprints. The forest was quiet and the shadows were long and trees kept dumping their snow on me any time I brushed up against one. It was pretty tight between the trees but entirely manageable. As I got higher, the slope started to steepen, and it got harder and harder to get good grip with the skis, so I decided to make a bit of a traverse to the trail that climbs the southern ridge–a shallower, longer trail that makes a big loop to the south.

  Turns out I was higher up than I thought–halfway across the traverse I looked up and I could see the summit marker maybe 15-20 meters above me. On snowshoes it would have been a pretty straightforward trek straight up with tons of toe crampon action but I decided to keep traversing and climbing. When I made it to the ridge it was just a short climb up a bit of a windblown hump to the summit.

  Looks like I had been the first person up the southern ridge trail for a little while, but there was a wealth of footprints coming from the steep trail, the one I’d left. I spent a little time at the summit, took some pictures, and decided to head down.

  

  Heading back down via the steep trail was probably not a super-advisable idea (on skis, anyway), because, true to form, it was pretty steep near the summit and real tight, lots of smaller growth sticking through the snow and getting in the way. After maybe 50 meters or so, it shallowed out and there was a bit of skiing to be done, although I kept having to stop and plan lines so I didn’t wind up wrapped around a tree. Lower down I was finally able to get up some speed as I rejoined the road, and then I was out and phoning Sam to come pick me up.

  Trailhead: 15:06 -> summit: 15:41 -> back at trailhead: 15:52

  climbing time: 35 minutes / descending time: 11 minutes

  See activity on Strava
  

  Hills and Letters JET Programme Japan

• ---

  Tuesday, 19 Jan 2016 1:28 am

  Abandoned bus in a field

  

  

  Hokkaido is full of mysteries. This fact itself isn’t a mystery–I don’t think there’s a soul alive who could catalogue the shuttered businesses, collapsed farmhouses, concrete shells, railless train stations, or empty fields littering the island. And maybe we don’t want anyone to–this, after all, is part of the allure of where we live. That feeling of being the last person awake at the end of the night, present where so many before you have left. Sure, that’s maybe over-poeticizing the thing. Whatever. When was the last time something was over-poeticized in your life?

  But let me make a quick argument for you here: more mysterious than any shutter that never rolls up or roof that has fallen down is Hokkaido’s elusive (but ever-present) Abandoned Bus in a Field.Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed them. Watching you, silent forms in fields, some half-sunk in soft dirt, some aged beyond identification, missing windows, paint. Some with the destinations still displayed in the space above the windscreen, some with the bus company’s name or logo painted on the side. Some so old that the name is hand-painted. Some missing doors, some whose doors are rusted shut.

  If you haven’t noticed them, then after reading this article, you will start noticing them. They’re everywhere. Unless you live in Sapporo. Then you’re shit outta luck, as they say.

  I collect Abandoned Buses in Fields. I’ve found 37 so far, but I haven’t really been looking that hard. Just hard enough.

  

  

  There are two main types of Abandoned Buses in Fields. The first is… less mysterious. They sit alongside farmhouses, or out in recently tilled fields, and the windows are stacked with tarps and deadwood and old furniture and car doors and bags of debris and stacks of whiteboards and used tires and rope, kilometers upon kilometers of rope, and glass buoys kilometers upon kilometers from the sea and all manner of garbage for which the cleverest DIYer couldn’t find a use. These are more aptly called “Repurposed Storage Units in a Field”. See, it doesn’t make sense to keep all your stuff in a barn when you own 100 acres and you can only fit so much, uh, farm stuff in the back of your Iseki tractor. So when the local bus company is updating their fleet, you buy their used bus, you drive it out into your field, you dispose of the seats (don’t ask me how), and you store farm equipment in it. It’s pretty smart, if you think about it: buses are watertight, tough, and huge on the inside. They make terrific shelters for stuff you need to want to keep out of the rain and wind. Once you’ve seen a few, you start to develop a bit of a sixth sense for them. You can tell when one is going to be nearby: the quality of farmhouse, the degree of countryside, even the weather plays a part. You slow the car, you start to take your eyes off the road, scan the fields. You know what to look for: the row of black rectangles in a white frame, maybe a red or a gold line marking the side, the windows and roof sticking up above the lip of a rice paddy.

  

  

  

  The second kind of Abandoned Bus in a Field, however, begs questions. This is the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field. It sits in ditches tens of kilometers from any structure. It sits in a tangle of bushes on an abandoned road, a Department of Transportation project that never got finished. It sits on a patch of concrete above National Route 273. It can’t be seen without leaving the road. It sits under the arms of a big tree in full bloom. I heard that there’s one near where I live, perched at the top of a narrow dirt road, over a cliff. The guy who found it has no idea how it got there–the road looked too narrow for the bus to navigate. Maybe the driver got stuck and had to leave the bus there. It’s still there today.

  

  Here is one of the questions that the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field asks: is this a Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field, or is this a Repurposed Storage Unit in a Field? Maybe there’s a tarp nearby, weighted down by a pile of broken cinderblocks. Maybe there’s a mountain of bald tires. Are the two connected? Does this belong to someone? Here is how you can tell. This is a trick I have learned so that I can tell Mysterious Abandoned Buses in Fields from Repurposes Storage Units in Fields: the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field is always empty.

  

  

  You can force the doors on Abandoned Buses in Fields. Unless they’re really badly rusted over, most of them will give with a little elbow grease. There’s usually no point in entering Repurposed Storage Units in Fields–these are someone’s property, even if it appears to be abandoned property. Don’t bother. The Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field’s doors will give with a jolt, then they’ll come gently. They made good rails and hinges in the 1970s and 80s, I guess. The inside will smell like moss and life. The ground will be soft but won’t give that much. Maybe the driver’s seat will be there. The seats in the back will be gone. The windows will be remarkably clear. The chrome will be remarkably shiny. There might be an aluminum luggage rack. You can stand up inside to your full height. The trees, the bushes, the tall grass will all seem closer from the inside than it looked from the outside. But the road will look a lot further away. If there were any noises outside–the trees swaying, a far-off car–you will not hear it. You might walk all the way to the back of the bus and look forward. Mysterious Abandoned Buses in Fields are always longer when you’re standing at the back, shorter when you’re standing at the front. You might feel like the bus in front of you, the big empty space, is actually full of air, which it is. Walking back to the front might feel like swimming. When you exit the bus, you might want answers–where this bus went, who put it here. I guess the thing about the Mysterious Abandoned Bus in a Field is that it doesn’t yield answers. It’s just empty.

  Of course this maps very well onto Hokkaido as a whole–standing on the inside of this once-useful, now-empty thing; feeling that it’s full, but of what, you can’t tell. I don’t know that there’s any hallowed wisdom or poignant insight you can scrape off the insides of these buses, but if there is, I’d be happy to hear what you think. You can find all my Abandoned Buses in Fields if you search for the hashtag #abandonedbusinafield on Instagram.

  Hills and Letters JET Programme Japan

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