Three Things & A Belief in Nasu

There is a writing prompt I use occasionally when trying to generate a story based on things that have happened to me.  I don’t remember whose book on writing I got it from.  I don’t remember what the author of the book called it.  Since learning it, I’ve referred to it as “Three Things & a Belief.”  

Rather than explain it.  I’ll give you a demonstration.  I use a day from my most recent visit to Japan.  A day I spent in Nasu, a town in Tochigi Prefecture, attending a festival called the Gojinkasai. 

I’ve written about the Gojinkasai in a previous posting.  This is mainly about what happened before, and what happened afterwards.  And how they connected with my reason for being there.

Thing #1: The Lady with the Umbrella

It happened in the late morning.  I was walking down the road from the ryokan I was staying at.  The day was warm, but the road was lined with trees providing plenty of shade to cool the day. 

After a long, slow curve in the road I saw someone that grabbed my attention.  A woman, dressed in a stylish kimono  One that shimmered like silk when the light found a way through the trees to highlight it.  Clusters of pink, like cherry blossoms, with brown and green cutting through the clouds of sakura, marking the branches and leaves of the design.  On her shoulder, covering her head and shoulders, was a traditional Japanese umbrella.  It was bright red, like the rising sun on the Japanese flag.

I wanted to have a picture of her in her kimono, and pulled my phone out to take it.  I stopped myself.  I got the feeling I should ask permission first.  I kept my phone in hand, as I followed her down the hill, slowly catching up.  

As we walked along, I wondered where she came from.  The few houses this high up the road looked empty.  Vacation homes waiting for a holiday, I imagined.  So…  She must have come for the same ryokan I was staying at…?  I hadn’t seen anyone dressed like that during my stay there.

Suddenly, she turned and stepped off the road and into the trees along her side.  She stepped into the shadows under the tree’s foliage, turned her back to the road, and set her umbrella on her shoulder, using it as cover to hide behind.

As I passed her, I wanted one last look.  I turned my head to look over my shoulder.  I saw that she was doing the same thing.  Her umbrella was raised.  Her eyes were turned toward me, looking at me past her shoulder.  I nodded to greet her.  She lowered her umbrella and turned away…

I got a glimpse of her face in profile, which looked…  Odd, to me.

Thing #2: The Gojinkasai

I continued down the road to where it intersected another road that led to the shrine where the Gojinkasai was held.  The shrine’s small parking lot was now filled with stalls.  People were starting to gather.  Traditional Japanese music was playing over load speakers.  

And, there were cosplayers.  Most dressed as kitsune, or Fox Spirits.  Some other types of yokai were represented.  But the majority were Fox Spirits.  

That’s what gave me the answer about what I’d thought I’d seen on the face of the lady with the umbrella.  A fox mask.  A number of the cosplayers were wearing mask that covered half, or all of their faces.  With a fox’s snout over the nose and mouth.  The umbrella lady had been wearing something like that.  I definitely caught a glimpse of what looked like a toothy snarl.  

This meant I might have another chance to take her picture.  She clearly intended to join the gathering crowd to participate in the festivities.  

And festive, it most certainly was.  The list of events, which I found on a big sign in the parking lot, indicated that the festival would start in a couple of hours.  But there was already a growing crowd of people there, a lot of the early arrivals playing the part of kitsune or some other yokai. 

I went to a café I’d spotted earlier a short walk down the highway to wait for the start of the festival.  As I drank my cup of tea a number of Fox Spirit cosplayers entered as well.  The café had a violinist playing music, mostly Disney show tunes, which some of the kids sang along with.  It was when she played a classical piece, Canon by Pachelbel, one of the Fox Spirits jumped up to dance, adapting steps to what looked like a traditional Japanese dance to the music.  As more cosplayers entered, they participated in the impromptu event.  It had an otherworldly feeling.  Like a legend of seeing faeries, or yokai, dancing in the forest.

I I met two of the cosplayers at the counter as I got a refill.  One had a full fox mask covering her entire face, the other a half-mask.  They both had business cards, websites, and social media accounts dedicated to their cosplay.  They stayed in character while I was talking to them. 

I asked them if they went to other festivals to cosplay.  The one in the full mask, who had started the dancing, said she was a “kitsune all the time.”  The other agreed and said she was a kitsune every day.  

“Every day?” I asked.  

“Every day,” she insisted.  

“Even at work?  At the office?”  

She paused a moment and said, “Well… The office is the office…”  And left it at that.  I completely understood.  

I asked them if I could take their pictures and they readily agreed.  

When I returned to the festival, the events had already started.  I saw that the kitsune cosplayers that had formal duties, such as directing people the direction to go, would make the “batsu” sign, crossing their arms in front of themselves, to indicate taking their picture wasn’t allowed.  I looked, but the lady with the umbrella wasn’t with them.

 As the events continued, the feeling from the café grew stronger.  I was in a special place.  An intersection between “Reality” and “Dreams,” where spirits walked the either.  As a dance performance I was watching ended, the woman seated next to me pulled a shakuhachi, a traditional Japanese flute, from her bag and started to play.  Just like that.  There was a “Hyakkiyagyou,” a March of 100 Demons.  A recreation of a legend from the Heian Period, which has become a comical, celebratory procession.  I filmed the entire process.  Unfortunately, the lady with the umbrella wasn’t there. 

Finally, there came the crowning event.  The lightening of the bonfire.  An effort to appease the yokai, Tamamo-no-Mae, inside the Killing Stone to ensure a good harvest.  

I’ve written about the bonfire in a previous posting.  A Moment of Perceptual Change.  It was an eerie, yet strangely moving experience.  It captured my attention.  I got goosebumps when the bonfire was lit.  I watched the entire time, mesmerized by the flames.  And went it collapsed, a felt a sense of accomplishment and applauded with everyone else.

It was done.  It was time to return to the ryokan and carry on.   

My Belief

I’m going to save Thing #3 for last and go to the fourth element of this story prompt, The Belief.

Going to the Gojinkasai was my second trip to Nasu.  The first was in 2023.  Four months after the death of my friend and former creative partner, William Ruzicka.  

William worked at the same company as me when he was just out of High School. His boss told me about him when he found out we liked the “same stuff.”  It was arranged for us to meet at lunch on a Friday. 

At that first meeting he brought me a sheaf of paper which was a comic that he’d drawn.  He heard I’d been published before.  He loved to draw.  He drew all the time.  He wanted to know if I’d read his comic and gave him feedback.  I agreed.  I took the pages with me to read over the weekend.

The story he created was disjointed.  Derivative.  But his drawings were quite good.  Compelling.  I wrote up my reaction to his his story and printed them out to give him, with his artwork, on Monday.  

On Monday, I read him my notes.  He nodded while I spoke.  When I was done, he looked at me and said, “Thanks.  That was good.  Would you be willing to write the story for me?”  

That began our creative partnership.  We published my re-written version of the story, “Time Venturer,” plus another comic series based on a character he created called Neo-Bioform Go.”  It also started a friendship that lasted until his passing in 2023.  

He eventually decided that his dream was to go into animation.  He broke up our partnership to follow his dream.  We stopped talking for a while.  We patched things up after he invited me to dinner and told me that working on the comics with me taught him that his dream to draw for a living wasn’t a pipe dream.  

William would nudge people to spend their time working on their dream.  The last time we met face to face in person, he gave me a very fine writing journal as a belated Christmas present.  He said as he handed it to me, “This is what you like to do, Write, right?”  

With Willam’s passing, I decided to rewrite a project we’d worked on before.  I created new characters based on us.  I added the story of Tamamo-no-Mae and the Killing Stone as well.  I visited the stone to see it for myself.  I returned after finding out about the Gojinkasai to experience for myself.  

I did this to bring him with me as I tried to move forward on my dream.

Thing #3: Lost on the Mountain

Once the bonfire collapsed everyone headed toward the exit.  I followed them out, heading toward the road that led up the mountain to the ryokan I was staying at. 

I had brought a small flashlight to Japan to use at this time.  In my previous stay in Nasu I saw how dark it could get in the area, even along the highway that ran through the town.  I figured it would help me find the turn I needed to make once it got dark. 

But I realized as I headed to the exit that I had left it in the room back at the ryokan.  I tried to tell myself it should be Ok.  I only had to turn at the correct road heading up the mountain.  After that, I just had to follow the road because it ended at the ryokan’s entrance.  The other paths that turned off of it were narrow, unpaved roads.  It should take me only 30 to 40 minutes to make it back.

Most of the visitors turned left toward the highway at the shrine’s exit.  There was only a handful heading the same way as me.  They all brought flashlights, creating shiny balls of light that rolled up the slope.  I followed them, thinking about my experience.  The chill I got when the bonfire was lit.  The sense that something important had happened.  The growing connection between my reason for coming and that sense of accomplishment.  Walking in the darkness, I had the feeling that I had taken an important step forward toward my goal.  

It would have been better if I had paid more attention to where I was going.  At one point, I noticed that I was alone on the road.  I still hadn’t made the turn up the hill.  It hit me that I was heading the wrong way.  

I stopped and opened the GPS on my phone.  It loaded and told me I was an hour away from the ryokan, and my route was one that twisted back and forth across the mountain before getting to the hotel.

At first, I tried to backtrack.  Get to where I was supposed to turn up the mountain road and follow it to the ryokan.   

Unfortunately, that didn’t work.  When I turned around, and started back the way I came, the route on my GPS kept refreshing and changing, telling me each time it changed I was still an hour away from my destination.  A process of moving forward.  Refreshing.  Finding myself an hour away.  Repeat.   

I began to worry about battery life.  I had a portable battery to keep the phone charged up during the festival.  I also had a portable hotspot I used to give my phone connection while in Japan.  I was doubtful about keeping both my phone and the hotspot charged until I arrived.

I decided to stick with the route I’d mistakenly taken.  I thought that once I got to the road heading to the ryokan, I wouldn’t need either the phone or hotspot to get me there.  I just had to keep trudging along, staying on the paved road, until I got there. 

The GPS kept giving me whacky directions.  It would tell me to turn left after the next turn, only to leave me facing a wall of trees, with not even a hiking trail to turn left on to.  I would backtrack, try again, and find a road to turn left on to, but it felt like I was being sent in a different direction. 

The worst example took place when I tried restarting both my phone and the hotspot.  When it reloaded, it said I was a mile away from the ryokan, with an ETA of four minutes. 

Four minutes.  To walk, not run, a mile on a dark mountain road.  It felt like it would take a gold medal performance to get back to my room.

I started to wonder if something was being done To Me.  That the Umbrella Lady was more than what she seemed to be.  That I had offended her in some way, and she was taking retribution. 

I felt the impulse to call out in the darkness.  “I think you were framed!  My story will tell the world that you were falsely accused!”  It was part of the premise of the story I was writing.  The Fox Spirit should be pleased either way.  It would be an acknowledgement of her innocence, or an alibi to dissuade guilt.  I didn’t yell out.  Though I was sorely tempted.  Getting lost on a mountain road at night will do that to you.

I continued to follow the four minute mile route.  I kept switching my battery from phone, to hotspot, and back.  I wondered if I should knock on the door of any house with a hint of habitation.  To get directions.  And a chance to charge up devices.  By this point, I was high enough up on the mountain to have only the ryokan left to see.  I worried that I might have to spend the night under a tree after my devices died out.

A light starting shining from behind me.  I could hear the sound of a car engine too.  I stepped to the edge of the drainage ditch by the side of the road to give the car room.  A white, boxy minivan drove past me up the slope.  

After it passed, I thought to myself, “That’s Ok.”  I held no hard feelings.  If In their shoes, I wouldn’t stop either.  To check out a stranger walking on an empty mountain road in the darkness?  Especially if I didn’t know the area?  I didn’t blame them.  I wished them well.  I moved back onto the road and kept going.  

Minutes later, another light, this time coming down the road, around the corner.  I moved to the side of the road once more.  Another white, boxy minivan came around the corner.  

This one pulled to a stop.  I heard the whirr of the driver’s window roll down.  Then a voice in accented English.

“Do you know where you are going?”  

I called back.  I told them I was going to the ryokan at the top of the mountain.  The voice called back.  “We are staying there, too.  Do you want a ride?”  

It was a young married couple.  Takeru and Kinoyo.  They were the same ones that drove past me the first time.  They told me they had asked themselves, “Do you think he has a reason for walking up the mountain at night?”  The other replied, “I don’t know, maybe we should find out.”

Takeru and Kinyo struck me as two, lovely, kind, and caring people that were perfect for each other.  Kinoyo pulled her things from the back seat so I could get in.  When Takeru said, “Anou…” she jumped out to guide him through a multi-point turn around.

“Ike…  Ike…  Ike…”  She called out as the car crept forward.  

“Hai!  Sutopu!  Kite…  Kite… Kite…”  She called out to get him to back up.  

In no time, they had the car facing uphill and moving forward.  

We talked as Takeru drove.  I thanked them profusely.  They asked me what happened.  I told them about missing my turn and the GPS going crazy.  They said, “Waa…” and “Oohhh” together when they heard that.  They told me they were in Nasu for a weekend away to see the Gojinkasai.  I thanked them again.  They told me it was nothing. 

We pulled into the ryokan’s driveway soon after that.  Though it did take longer than the four minutes my GPS said it should.  I thanked them in the parking lot.  And again, in the lobby.  I offered to buy them whatever they wanted from the hotel’s convenience store.  They said it wasn’t necessary.  I told them I didn’t pray much, but I would pray for them because they deserved it.  They thanked me for that.  

I put my stuff in my room.  Then went back downstairs to see if they were still around.  They weren’t.  In the morning, I looked in the parking lot.  Their minivan was gone.  

That’s my story.  My belief tying this all together tells me the Lady with the Umbrella, and the perfect couple, Takeru and Kinoyo, were something more than what they appeared to be.  That I’d been put through some sort of test.  A test of my resolve.  To see if I would give up when things were dark and my way unclear.  Through my resolve, I was able to find my way home.

Or something very much like that.

Moments of Omotenashi

On my most recent trip to Japan, I ended up staying in ryokans, two of them, the entire time I was there.  

The two ryokans I stayed at had some similarities.  Both of them did not offer food service during the stay, something which I had come to think of a standard practice for ryokans.  On the other hand, both were very reasonably priced, with a stay of several days being about the same as a single night’s stay at other ryokans I had stayed at.  Both had rooms with tatami mats on the floor.  Though for the first one, the accommodations, with the exception of the tatami flooring, were more like a standard hotel room, rather than a traditional washitsu, or Japanese style room.  The first one didn’t have much greenery found at the ryokans I’d stayed at before, in the form of gardens or nature around the inn.  

The first one didn’t feature the same degree of Omotenashi, the Japanese word for a traditional form of hospitality, that I had come to expect from ryokans.  The staff was very polite and helpful, in the manner I’d come to expect from Japanese service personnel at hotels, restaurants, and stores that I’d visited.  It wasn’t a bad place at all.  Something like a standard hotel, with good service, and a serviceable daiyokujyo, or common bath, available. 

The second one was quite a different experience.

It was in Matsushima.  A place famous in Japan for its scenic beauty.  The Matsushima Koumura Hotel was a 15 to 20 minute walk from the Takimachi Station on the Senseki-Tohoku line.  The route my GPS gave me to follow included an unmarked service road that ran behind what looked like a school’s baseball field.  Then, a turn to the left to another service room along the Taki River.  I came upon the ryokan from behind, spotting it when I turned around to see if I had passed it.  

It definitely looked like my expectation of what a ryokan should appear like.  A garden-like area at the entrance.  Wooden frames visible in its construction.  Sliding, paper screen doors at the entrance.  Very traditional.  

What set it apart from the previous ryokan I’d stayed at, and from the other ryokans I’d visited on previous trips, was the landlady.  When I stepped into the genkan, I heard her voice coming from behind the front desk, bright and clear.  “Irashaimase!”  Welcome!

She came out quickly, greeting me before I had time to step up into the hotel proper, telling me I didn’t have to take off my shoes.  She then asked me if I was “Erick Melton,” which I verified that I was.  

After checking me in at the front desk, and explaining the features of the hotel, the location of the bath, the fact that the elevator wasn’t working, and asking if I minded that my room was on the third floor, which I said it didn’t, for which she thanked.  She then told me there was a quiz, and a prize if I got it right.  

She pulled out a card with a question on it.  “How many Islands are there in Matsushima?”  I thought for a moment.  I could remember the exact number, so I answered, “Three, four, maybe five hundred, I think?”  

She flipped the card over.  It had three answers to choose from.  A) 26.  B) 260.  C) 2,600.

I looked at the card, suddenly getting the idea that I had underestimated the number of islands in the bay.  “Is it…  C, maybe?” 

“Oh.  But you just said a few hundred just now…”  Giving me an encouraging smile.  

“Ah.  Ok.  I’ll pick B.”  

“And the answer is…  Tatata-Dum!”  She threw up her arms.  “B!  Omedetou!  Congratulations!  And here’s your prize!”  She produced a small bottle of sake from beneath the counter.  She then had me take a picture holding it, like it was a trophy.  

After that, she lead me to my room.  She pointed out where the entrance to the daiyokujyo was located, half a floor below the one my room was on.  The interior of the Matsushima Koumura Hotel was lovely.  The floor of the corridors were made to look like stepping stones crossing a running stream.  And the interior was done in the same traditional fashion as the exterior.  

My room was very much a traditional washitsu, with a genkan where I did have to take off my shoes.  Paper screen doors.  A futon, already laid out.  The landlady showed me every detail, from where all the light switches were located, from sleeping/living room, to bath and toilet room to how to work the remote control that worked for both the lights and the air conditioner.  

After putting my things away, I decided to go for a walk and check out the surroundings.  Since there was no food service here, as with the previous place, I would have to find a convenience store or a supermarket to get something to eat.  The previous place had a small convenience store in the lobby where you could buy frozen bento boxes that you could heat up in the microwave in the dining room.  Because the Matsushima Koumura Hotel only had a small  “Eating room,” with a microwave and refrigerator for the guests to use, with a table and chairs, plus a vending machine with things to drink, I’d have to buy food, or find restaurants to eat at.

When I came downstairs, the landlady was talking to a couple, with backpacks and hats, like they were about to go hiking.  They were chatting like they’d known each other for years.  The landlady introduced me as, “the new guest, starting today,” and told me they had just finished their stay and were moving on.  The man, turned and told me it was their first time there, and that they’d enjoyed it greatly.  

After they left, I asked the landlady about where I could get something to eat.  She immediately pulled out a map of Matsushima.  She began a very detailed explanation of where most of the restaurants were located, on a road that faced the ocean, the closest end of which was ten minutes on foot from the hotel.  Did I like sea food.  Matsushima had excellent sea food.  Especially clams.  She circled several spots on the map, drying lines from the circles to draw other circles where she entered notes about the food and hours they were opened.  When I told her I’d tried gyutan, beef tongue, a speciality of the region, on a previous visit to Sendai, she circled more restaurants and added more notes.  There were two gyutan restaurants that had the same name, run by the same owners.  One was styled as a family restaurant, the other as an izakaya, a local pub.  The food was the same, she told me, only the atmosphere was different.  When I left with the map, I had a dizzying array of choices on where to go to eat.  In the end, I went to one of the two gyutan places, the family restaurant version, during lunch on my walking tour of Matsushima.

I used the map to find a supermarket by the train station, where I bought some items for breakfast the next morning.  

The next day, I took my walking tour of Matsushima, lead by a private tour guide I’d hired.  You can read about that in my previous post last month.  

When I came back, though, I had another surprise for me.  

They had cleaned my room while I was out.  That wasn’t the surprise.  Hotels do that sort of thing.  But what startled me was what they had done with my stuff. 

Everything of mine was organized and put in order where I had left it.  My laptop, notebook, writing utensils, computer mouse, were organized next to the wall where I’d left them.  My sweatpants and t-shirt, which I’d left on the table, were both folded and set next to my futon.  I knew I hadn’t folded them, because I don’t fold things that neatly.  The items in the bathroom, toothbrush, toothpaste, vitamins, personal cup, everything was set up and group logically together.  Even my canvas shopping bag, which I’d tossed on to the shelves in the genkan, was neatly folded, handled on top, ready to grab, on top of the shelves where I’d left it.  

“This is crazy,” I thought to myself.  I couldn’t believe anyone would go to this length for someone, even a paying guest.  

The most touching incident, though, had taken place early that morning.  

I got up early, around 4 AM, to write.  This is part of my regular practice at home, which I maintain as best I can while traveling.  

I had been walking a great deal during this trip, first up and down the mountains around Nasu, my first stop.  And now, from the station to the hotel, and then around the neighborhood to find the convenience store to by my food for breakfast.  As a result, I didn’t think sitting on a cushion to write on the low table sounded very comfortable for me.  So I decided to go downstairs to the Eating Room and use the western style table and chairs to write. 

As I carried my laptop, notebook, and writing tools in my backpack downstairs, I ran into the landlady, getting cleaning supplies out of a closet.  She asked me if I was going to take a walk to see the sunrise?  I told her I wasn’t.  That I was going to use the table in the eating room downstairs.  Then, as an afterthought, I added, “To write.”  

“Ah, so…”  She bowed to me and added, “Ganbatte.”  The Japanese word that means, “Do your best,” which is sometimes translated as “Good Luck!”  A wish for my success.  

I set myself up at the table.  Per my usual practice, I wrote a page in my notebook.  An exercise to notate thoughts of the day to clear them away before concentrating on the story I was going to work on.  Then I set up my laptop to start working on it.

It was after I started typing on my laptop when I heard the sliding door to the room being opened, slowly and quietly.  

The landlady walked in on small shuffling steps.  A tray was in her hand.  She moved to the end of the table.  Placed the tray there.  And bowed to me.  

“Ocha, dozo.”  Some tea.  Please have it.  

She then backed away, closing the sliding door just as quietly as she opened it.  

I paused.  I looked at the tray.  On it was small pot of green tea.  A small, lovely tea cup.  

I felt something welling up inside.  Her simple gesture carried a profound degree of respect.  I was moved.  It felt as if not only my presence in her ryokan as a welcomed guest was being acknowledged and welcomed, but my dreams to write stories, and my being as a person with such dreams.  

“Itadakimasu,” I whispered.  The Japanese word used with accepting something with humble gratitude.  I took a sip of tea, which I honestly thought was the best green tea I had ever had in my life, then continued with my writing.  

The two ryokans I stayed at this trip were both inexpensively priced.  Neither provided food service.  One was looked more like a traditional Japanese in, with an interior decorated in the same manner.  The common bath at both was decent, though not spectacular.  And the staff at the first one were polite, helpful, and friendly.  

It was the omotenashi I experienced at the Matsushima Koumura Hotel that turned it from an inexpensive stay at a place I wanted to visit, into a special moment that I will remember always.