Kei

Chilly winds, Warm hearts, Ghost town

Travelling is a real luxury if you think about it. Only rich people and students can travel whenever they want to. Being a student with a lack of bigger responsibilities in life can grant you this opportunity. That’s what I thought when I decided I should join this two-day one-night trip to Okawa city with our APU bamboo-club comrades and other two universities’ students from Nagasaki Prefecture. 

Other than motivation for travelling, I also had another in mind. Whenever I have to put my motivations in words, in any situation, it feels ingenuine for no reason. It might be because the thought process in the brain is a lot more complicated than our agreed reality of language, words and numbers. Anyways, I also wanted to know more about the city itself and how it can capture tourists’ gaze like myself. 

We departed around 8 am from the rotary of APU, our meeting point which no one, before the event, knew how that little parking place was called. By ‘we’, I mean myself, four other students, and two senseis. From Beppu(in Oita) to Okawa(in Fukuoka), it took about three hours to reach. Except for occasional fogginess that might be a nuisance for the driver, there was no real trouble getting there. The moment we could tell it was already Okawa was when there were no mountains to be seen. The landscape went all flat without bumps, which I would wish my future life path to be like. 

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The place we arrived was Okawa tourist information center near the infamous bridge called Chikugo River Lift Bridge. There we met with students from two other universities. They were all pretty much our age, friendly and excited as we all were.

After some historical explanation from our tour guide, we strolled on the bridge. It was March, but the chill in the air made it feel like winter hadn’t left yet. I couldn’t figure out why the river lift bridge is called the way it is called until I finally witnessed the Lift. The central part of the bridge is movable vertically or perpendicularly to be accurate, adjusted for a ship that is too huge to pass. To be honest, I couldn’t enjoy the stroll that much because of the chilly wind. I suppose, one of the best times to go for a walk on the bridge ought to be in the evening or morning. Imagine when the sun dives or emerges from the horizon and you get to see the sun dives into the horizon without any interference from tall buildings and mountains like most of the cities. 

After the chilly wind, we headed back to the tourist center where we had sushi and karaage for lunch an hour or so ago. I was more excited for this than any other activities of this trip. It was about Kumiko coasters and keychain making. Although I had never participated in a kumiko-workshop before, it was kind of both intimidating and interesting. 

We were given pre-cut wood pieces for making Kumiko, which made things so much easier for us. Later, we found out that to make these wooden pieces as precise length as they were in, was not a simple process. 

The activity was above and beyond our expectations. It was so much fun painting on our wooden block keychains.

Checking into a hotel room with 7 other girls has got to be one of the newest experiences I’d had in Japan. While we finished checking in, we walked around the city to learn about Okawa city and its oldest shrines. During the process, we came across different kinds of myths or stories- such as one where you could have a boyfriend if you succeeded in crawling through a stone-made hole on the ground. Learning about history is so fun when you don’t need to worry about remembering the dates for your mid-term. Seeing all those places withstanding through the test of time made some of us so sentimental. On top of that, that part of the town is so not packed with people, it could even be called a ghost town. It did not have crowded buses packed with busy young people or leisure places for young people like karaoke and fancy izakaya restaurants. It literally felt like a town that froze in time, never moving forward. In this way, this trip was like us throwing a peek into the past and felt rather surreal and out-of-world than sad.

2日目

On day-two, we visited a Kumiko factory and a furniture factory. People working at both places were so passionate about their work I was so inspired. In the first factory of Kumiko, we encountered a family business where the father leads, mother supports and the two sons follow in their footsteps. Before going there, I thought I had prepared to be amazed by all kinds of Kumiko patterns but I was not so, not even a bit. I was out-of-world astonished when I found Kumiko lanterns. Those non-living lanterns looked so alive they could not convince me otherwise. Fainted patterns of Kumiko shadowed upon the wall elegantly. It reminded me of the peacocks spreading their wings to show off their beautiful patterns or stars in the night sky. 

Furniture factory and shop was something else. It was not all dreamy like the Kumiko place. It was more of a blood and sweat kind of place. The more we learned about the process of creating furniture, we came to understand more about their diligent craftsmanship. I was astonished in a different way. 

After all the touring at the factory, we had our long-awaited lunch but it was worth it. 

After lunch, we gathered at our meeting place and exchanged our experiences and opinions of this trip. There, I found out how much of an information gap I had in touring the city because of the language barrier. 

There was no way I could have grabbed the accurate picture of Okawa city on my mind because of that one language difficulty. However, my experiences were as real as those of the other people. It was real when my fingers touched the smoothest wood prepped in the furniture shop, or when the smell of karaage fried chicken rushing into my nose while walking passed the rare karaage shop in the middle of nowhere. It was also real when I felt the warmth of the mother's conversation at the Kumiko family business or the dedicated tone of our tour guide, Miyake. 

As we departed, my heart felt full and replenished by the kindness of the locals and the warmth of my travel companions from Nagasaki Prefecture. Needless to say, I’ll certainly be back to this town for travelling purposes, maybe as a student or a rich person, we’ll see.