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.