travel tuesday | a scene at a train station in japan

As a travel blogger it gets easy to rely on posts that provide itineraries, guides, tips, and "5 things..." about such and such. I like that format. I find it useful when I read blogs, and I aim to use my own blog to help others travel smartly, on a budget, and see and do the things that match their unique interests and talents. But from time to time, I try to remind myself that the reason I started this blog, have written a journal or even jotted words down on a napkin to capture a moment, and sought to publish occasional works, is because I love to write. Words on paper is the lens through which I see the world. So from time to time I want to get back to my roots and share some more journal-style entries, creative nonfiction, and even bits of pieces that never quite got there and found their way into a full essay.

Today's post is a slightly edited journal entry description of my experience waiting for a train on a rainy afternoon in a small southern town in Japan. Train stations became characters in my story and life in Japan. I do hope you enjoy it.  

March 2010, Tabuse Town, Japan 

 

It's raining on the train tracks. It's raining elsewhere - like on the stocky, gray-haired man who stepped out from under the awning to stomp out his cigarette butt. It's raining elsewhere, but in my line of sight - it's mostly just raining on the train tracks.

Five or six school boys sit on the weathered wooden seats to my right. Each holds a Nintendo DS and skillfully mashes every key at once. The boys rib one another all the while without looking up from their games - laughing at one comment and making a quick retort at the next. Maybe media doesn’t diminish human interactions; it just makes us all better multitaskers.

The contrast between the modernity of the technology and age of the tracks and the scene catches my attention, and holds my stereotypes of a sleepy, ancient Japanese town hostage. There’s room enough at this train station and in the mountains, rice fields, temples, and shrines around it to hold the old and new, to tell the stories of the past and create ones in the present.

The boys sport navy blue school uniforms. The tracks are dull brown, the pavement gray and the sound of the rain decidedly ash, if I had to say. It feels like it should be a lonely scene - a depressing day in a run-down, rural town - but it's not. It's simple. Sometimes it's not even simple really - in 20 minutes you can wait for a train for days.

Three high school girls walk into my line of sights on the platform, also to my right but not close enough to the boys or me to hear them speak. This is intentional, I gather, as they steal glances at the boys and giggle and animatedly lean in, whispering. Their umbrellas are pink, blue and orange. Combined with their yellow, blue, and red cell phones, they make up a complete rainbow.

Everyone's waiting, and we're all waiting in our own way. Some, like the girls and boys, with their phones and games to distract the time away, while the stocky man loses himself in his own thoughts or maybe the tranquil sound of the raindrops on the iron rails.

I'm waiting, too, with my pen and my journal, and my eyes alert. I shiver from the cold.

This is Tabuse Town, shadowed by the mountains in southern Japan - where today, it's raining on the train tracks.