A Light for Attracting Attention

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Outside Toyama Station, in front of the Hokuriku Electric Power Company headquarters, there is, for no apparent reason, a statue of Prometheus. I briefly consider shooing away an imaginary eagle pecking at the statue’s liver. Prometheus is carrying a flaming torch whilst posing above a water fountain.

I’m in Toyama Prefecture today for two activities. The first is a special exhibition taking place at the Toyama Glass Art Museum. As I wander the streets, crossing tramlines and dodging potholes, every now and again, through cracks or gaps between high-rise buildings, I catch glimpses of the snow-capped Tateyama Mountain Range in the distance. I’ll be slightly closer to these mountains for my second activity later on, so I’m hoping to get a decent view and a couple of nice photographs.

The Toyama Glass Art Museum is not difficult to find. The building housing it is a unique structure. Designed by Kengo Kuma, it features a dramatic diagonal void that acts as a light funnel, channelling sunlight through the interior and reflecting it off cedar beams and mirrored walls.

Inside the museum, there is a massive queue of people, which is a good sign. The tagline reads Glass Art of Shadow and Light, while the exhibition itself is titled Noctis, Latin for “of the night.” Amidst the darkness, inspiration can be drawn from the mysteries that hide there, illuminated by the glow of the moon, a star, or a small flame.

The ticket price also includes entry to the regular glass art floor, which I visit first. Among the collection are instructions on how this type of art is made, where it originates from, a timeline of its history, and a large boat filled with giant multi-coloured marbles.

On the floor below, the entrance to Noctis begins in the section titled The Twilit Forest, the suspension between night and day. The very first room is filled with lamps and the shadows they create. Then there are vases, and their shadows. I feel like my shadow is being watched by the many all-female seated staff. Should I be photographing this? Have I been standing around long enough? Did I look at all the lamps?

As twilight fades, the next section opens into Gathering Dusk, where familiar shapes are swallowed by darkness. Some of the contemporary work featured here includes Kozumi Masao’s special prize-winning Black Symmetry Vase, depicting the awakening of both fear and curiosity. It’s at this point in the exhibition that the artwork starts to become more unsettling, with encounters with creatures that might or might not be real.

Further along, the museum descends into madness, and everything becomes far less about light and far more about darkness. Encounters with unfamiliar forms and the macabre follow. The depths of our inner world emerge through death, dreams, and nightmares. Kinoshita Yui’s Permeation is my favourite piece of them all. The dense clusters of harshly coloured glass represent the dreadful force of proliferating life forms that slowly destroy us, ignoring everything else around them. It’s absolutely terrifying.

The final section moves into moonlight and the absolute unknown. Pieces here depict not just dreams, but terrors, as we sink into sleep and confront the depths of our boundless imagination. I hadn’t planned to spend quite so long here, and as two hours pass in an instant, I decide to head off to my next destination, an hour away.

Arriving at Namerikawa Station, I finally manage to photograph the snow-capped Tateyama Mountain Range.

The mountains are stunning. They loom over this place as if their presence alone is enough to surround it, despite me being on the coast with the sea behind me. And it is the sea that’s brought me here, to see the world’s only firefly squid museum.

These squid are unique in that they are tiny, deep-sea creatures that light up the ocean in blue luminescence. Each squid is covered in thousands of light organs known as “photophores,” and use this light to match the surface glow, hiding their silhouette as they lure in their prey. They also use controlled blinking lights to trick and lure much smaller fish. I’ve managed to lure in three myself, in a tiny glowing tank.

The museum is pretty interesting; however, almost all of the information is in Japanese. The only parts I understand are that it smells like fish around here, and that no smartphones are allowed in the theatre. I don’t bother with the theatre anyway, as there is a two-hour wait, which is a shame, because apparently the firefly squid put on a dazzling light show.

The gift shop sells glow-in-the-dark squid keyrings and squid-adorned cravat-style neckties. The restaurant sells firefly squid pizza, squid burgers, and squid pasta, but it too has a two-hour wait. I wanted to come here and order the pizza just to add a bitter irony, seeing such beauty, marvelling at it, only to consume it after it’s performed a dance for me. Instead, I take a photograph of the pizza from the menu, just to show how unbelievably unappetising it looks. Had I not had to wait, I would probably have changed my mind about eating here anyway.

I head back toward the mountains, to the station, and decide that the only thing I’ll be consuming today is the view.

Zen and the Art of Samsara Cycle Abeyance

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A woman on the train loudly tells her tourist friends and the entire carriage that Kanazawa might be the most Instagrammable place in Japan.

Leaving the station I see a map showing thirty-seven points of interest, and for someone who enjoys walking as much as I do, and with my long legs, it appears everywhere today will be within walking distance. Following a gaggle of eager tourists, I end up at Omicho Market.

This massive indoor fresh food market has been operating since the early 1600s, and the tourists are here for it. The smell of freshly caught fish fills the morning air. A sign at one stall says, “All the firefly squids are sold out,” which is a shame, as they’re something I’ve always wanted to try. As I move through the haze of cacophonous chatter, a multitude of languages echoes from stall to stall, and staff shouting welcomes from every direction feels somewhat overwhelming. So much so that I begin to suffer from a not-so-Instagrammable headache.

I fall out of the market and seamlessly into a garden, specifically Kenrokuen. Ponds, streams, famous trees, mountain views: the garden has everything. With seven individual entrances and two huge car parks, it also boasts a sixty-minute standard walking course. Unfortunately, the popularity of such a place is again a massive draw for tourism. They gather around the only cherry blossom tree whose petals have avoided abscission, blocking views of the ponds, and the paths themselves. And worst of all, the silence.

I honestly thought being in a garden would be a tranquil experience, but my head thumps as a tour guide with a megaphone ushers along a group of ten or so tourists. People shout, crunch food loudly, and whatever calm I had disappears. Even here, surrounded by what should be peace, I can still hear the beeping of a distant pedestrian crossing.

Trying to leave also becomes a challenge. Despite there being seven exits, I can’t seem to find any of them. I imagine this place is better early in the morning, because despite my complaining, it is still quite a good garden, and the views of the city can be pretty nice from up here too.

Outside, I find another map and a name I recognise: Daisetz Suzuki, a famous Buddhist philosopher, religious scholar, and authority on Zen. He has a museum here in his hometown of Kanazawa; well, it probably used to be his museum, he died in 1966. I do almost miss the entrance though as I become distracted by a massive bee hovering at my eye level, buzzing rather loudly.

An information booklet that comes with the ticket price opens up to reveal just a blank white page, and nothing else. I do love minimalism, it’s part of this blog’s identity, so I fully appreciate this. I decide to stand by the Water Mirror Garden for a time, listening to the soft sound of distant running water, the stillness, finally achieving perfect silence.

Over at the Contemplative Space, a white room by a window where the sun comes through, I sit thinking. Looking at the suspended water mirror’s reflection, I try not to think. I quickly realise that I can’t not stop thinking, and then try to work out which part of that sentence was the double negative, which only makes me think even more. That’s the problem with meditation or mindfulness; silence becomes a game of Russian roulette, only the gun’s loaded with your own thoughts.

I continue further on, into Shofukaku Garden, a stroll garden around a pond. A Designated Place of Scenic Beauty, and free to enter, I’m quite surprised to find I have this garden completely to myself. I wander around my own secret space, take it all in, watch the carp, absorb the spring colours, before being chased off by that angry bee from earlier.

I next head up some moss-covered steps into a forest. It’s so incredibly silent here, just the twigs crunching underfoot and the occasional bird, there’s nothing else, and I don’t need anything else. So I pause and stay, for a while, just here, just being, before eventually forcing myself back into the cycle of the noisy world I had briefly escaped. That fleeting moment, now gone.

I walk in the direction of the Higashi Chaya Tea District, which apparently looks a lot better at night. Again, tourists bumble noisily. Regardless, it does still feel like a step backwards in time, with rickshaws, tea ceremonies, pairs of women in kimono, evening geisha performances, so much so that I plan to come back later to take a couple of night shots.

The shops here sell the usual fish-shaped waffles but this time laced with edible gold leaf. Kanazawa is the biggest producer of gold leaf in Japan. In fact, gold leaf here is everywhere. There are gold leaf cosmetics, face lotion and hand cream. One shop is trying to get in on that action and is offering gold beer. But most beer is already gold. There are people queueing to buy gold leaf soft serve vanilla ice cream. I even see one lady come out of the shop holding her ice cream, pose with it for an Instagrammable selfie, before casually tossing it into a bin. She might well just cancel her trip and get AI to generate her holiday for her.

Amongst the tea shops and cafes there is also the Kanazawa Yasue Gold Leaf Museum, so I decide to take a look and learn about this 1/10,000th of a millimetre thick foil that requires extreme focus, almost Zen in its precision. There was supposed to be a hands-on workshop so I could try to apply gold leaf myself, but sadly it’s been cancelled, so instead I admire some art adorned in flecks of gold, before checking to see if there’s a golden toilet on the way out. There isn’t.

By the time the gloaming arrives, my gold leaf soft serve vanilla ice cream has all but melted. I sit in the evening light, sipping a golden beer. I realise now that my headache too has almost faded. You can sort of tell these things.

Strange Tales of the Crescent Moon

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The morning sky gave me a look as I stepped out onto the platform at Yabuzuka Station. It’s a small platform with just two tracks and no one around to ask for directions. I’m certain I’ve arrived somewhere between Gunma Prefecture and the Edo period.

The station exhales me into a residential area of a few low houses, a solitary vending machine, and fields stretching across every distance. Staked into each field, a Japanese scarecrow stands alone.

I walk further. My destination today is below the clouds, along a humid forest mountain path. The cicadas hum with an almost animatronic precision, their vitality echoing across the fields and back from the mountains. As I wander, I see an entrance marked by a billboard that features a samurai riding a snake.

Mikazukimura, which roughly translates to Crescent Moon Village, is a historical theme park that faithfully reproduces a village from Edo times (1603–1868). It aims to capture the nostalgia of the era, but I wonder, is it ever really nostalgia if you were never there? I don’t ever recall the Tokugawa shogunate popping round for a cup of tea.

Anyway, at the entrance I buy a ticket. I also have to exchange some Japanese yen for replica Edo coins. These coins are used to buy fish-shaped waffles, crafts, or souvenirs in the park. The unusual time dislocation here means I’m literally buying the past with the present using fake plastic coins. I don’t mind it though. It adds another dimension to everything.

Inside, thatched tea houses make up the backdrop, layered with tempera paint shops, tempura food stalls, temple buildings, and three main attractions. It’s like looking into a painting of a time long gone, just without any people in it. In fact, the dirt streets of the village are so quiet that it almost feels like the sort of place where a ghost story might have begun… or ended.

The first attraction is Kaiigendo, a mysterious trick-filled cave activity. The sign says, “This attraction is caving,” but I certainly hope it isn’t. To enter, I have to buy a ticket with my special coins. The lady here stamps my attraction card, before rather quickly explaining, in Japanese, what feels like a lot of safety instructions I probably should understand, much to my own confusion.

She then hands me a torch, says, “No ghost. No scary,” and wanders off.

The cave describes itself as an underground tunnel filled with traps and hidden entrances. There are sliding doors, and there are secret doors. There are doors that creak, and doors that open. There aren’t really any instructions, so I turn on my torch and wander through the darkness.

It’s actually pretty scary. I get a bit lost in the maze-like caverns until I reach what I think is a dead end. Eventually I discover a secret tunnel that I have to activate simply by standing next to it. A huge stone tablet mysteriously shifts to the side, revealing a staircase leading deeper underground.

As I pass the stairs, the tablet slides back across, trapping me inside. I follow the rooms, secret doors, narrow passageways, across a bridge, to a room with a waterfall, to another with booming music, mirrors, and red lighting. It takes me far too many attempts to figure out how to escape this claustrophobic panic attack. Eventually I find the exit behind a bookcase that only slides aside if I clap my hands; again not explained at all.

My next attraction is Fukashigidozo, a sloping house. A sign lying on the ground next to the sloping house says, “Don’t fall over,” having itself ignored its only instruction. The purpose of the house is to challenge my sense of balance. The building has been constructed at an angle, on a slope, and confuses me in a way that makes me feel dizzy, like I’m falling over, even though I am standing perfectly still.

I want to sit down. I want to not be standing up beside the house that feels like it’s falling down. It messes with my brain, despite understanding exactly what’s happening. The house is so profound that I am at complete unease as I wander back toward the main village.

Here, the staff stay fully in character, even when no one is watching. I stay fully myself, which requires significantly less effort, yet still somehow wears me out. In the end, Mikazukimura doesn’t quite manage to hold the illusion together, and instead echoes something slightly decayed, enveloped in a careful silence. I head next door to the Japan Snake Centre.

The door here is chained shut despite a sign saying, “Open.” I was hoping to look at some creatures that predated the Edo period by millions of years, but it looks like I’ve outlived them. The Snake Centre is permanently closed. I head back across the fields of crops, scaring away a few crows on my way, and return to Yabuzuka Station, but with no train for two hours, I decide to walk to Isesaki.

On the walk, I spend some time on my phone researching azimuths and lunar illumination percentages. I walk on, mostly in silence. The occasional passing car. The odd cawing crow. There’s no footpath most of the way; and as the sky darkens I don’t particularly enjoy being constrained to walking on unlit country roads. Somewhere along the way, my eyes catch something that looks so out of place that I stop to investigate. A big red London bus parked on a side street.

Inside, a bar. I order a drink and chat with the owner. He tells me that the couple that used to run the bar are no longer here, and that he took over. They used to really like London which is how this place came about. The new owner here can barely speak English, which is a shame, because I wanted to ask him about the ghost children crossing Abbey Road.

Our conversation breaks apart. Neither of us really has anything to say. Eventually he goes out into the back room to cook himself some food. So I sit, sipping on my Suntory Highball in silence. Out here, there’s no one to sit beside.

I finish my drink and leave. The red London bus glows under the Gunma sky. Above, a waning crescent moon hangs like a chipped Edo coin, its dark edge faintly visible in earthshine.

Once Upon a Timeline

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Today, I’m in Yoro, a town in Gifu Prefecture.
I’m here to change my destiny.

First, I decide to take a thirty-minute stroll along the edge of a cliff to visit a famous waterfall. This waterfall is said to be made entirely of flowing alcohol, specifically Japanese sake.

The story goes that there was once a poor lumberjack with a very old, ill father. On his deathbed, the father requested his favourite Japanese sake, but the lumberjack couldn’t afford it on his meagre income. One day, the son walked the treacherous path near the waterfall.

Some say he was out looking for wood for a fire, but he was a woodcutter, so any tree would have sufficed. Others say he was simply thirsty. Regardless, he fell in the woods and definitely made a sound, and after falling and lying on the dirty ground, the poor lumberjack could smell the sweet scent of sake.

It was here that he discovered the water from the waterfall was not water at all.

He returned home with a gourd full of sake, and his father drank it. The transformation was instant, and he miraculously became younger and healthier.

News of this reached the ancient capital of Nara, and Empress Gensho visited the waterfall herself. She was so impressed by the beauty of the area and the magical water that she declared it a sacred site and renamed the area Yoro, meaning elderly care.

It takes me about an hour to reach the waterfall despite it being advertised as a thirty-minute stroll. It’s a tough hike too, up a mountain. It’s humid; it feels like 40 degrees. I’ve probably sweated more water than I’ve seen flow down the falls. I can only imagine how hard it must have been for the lumberjack, carrying that gourd and heavy axe to the top.

Next to the waterfall, a faded poem engraved on stone in Japanese reads:

“Listening to the flow of Yoro Falls,
One’s heart is healed and refreshed,
Like the pure sake that rejuvenated the old man,
Flowing eternally, blessing those who visit.”

I stand looking at the waterfall for a time, enveloped in tranquillity. I think about water flowing down a river, following a predestined path. It cascades over the falls, flows further south, and meets a tributary, where its path diverges and its destination shifts, a choice not made but followed.

Somewhere, after leaving Yoro Falls, a butterfly shivers against the wind. At the bottom of the waterfall, the tranquillity ends and is swamped by the sound of a man with a grass strimmer.

I stumble upon a small souvenir shop selling bottles of carbonated cider made with the magical sake water. The cider tastes delicious. Unlike in England, cider in Japan is a soft drink, so despite the falls apparently being made of alcohol, this drink somehow contains none.

I leave with a healed heart, feeling blessed. Eternally refreshed. Next to the small shop is the Yoro Gourd Museum. I look at a few gourds made into artwork and lamps before moving on.

My final stop today is within Yoro Park, a place known as the Site of Reversible Destiny. A massive outdoor interactive art park dreamed up by Shusaku Arakawa.

It’s quite bizarre, funny, and downright unusual. There’s a house that is a road and a road that is a house. There’s a nostalgia generator, a few mazes, and some piles of things that I don’t even understand.

I pass Not To Disappear Street, the Gate of Non-Dying, and an area known as Geographic Ghost. I climb over the Zone of Clearest Confusion, leave through the Trajectory Membrane Gate, before getting lost in the multicolour of Destiny House.

Shusaku Arakawa was obsessed with the idea of death and destiny. He built this site with his wife, Madeline Gins, as a challenge to mortality itself. That’s the point of the Site of Reversible Destiny: to confuse your soul and reroute your path. When Arakawa died in 2010, his wife said, “This mortality thing is bad news.”

With fate as mutable as the weather, or the seeds of a dandelion, you blow away, only to take root in unexpected soil. My destiny begins to unravel. The sun still rises in the morning and sets in the west, but the days no longer feel the same. Each moment becomes a whispered echo of a choice that altered everything, carried on a timeless breeze.

The concept of a multiverse unfolds like a kaleidoscope of infinite reflections, where certainty and uncertainty intertwine like vines in an ancient forest, tangling into something that resembles fate.

Yet, if every possible outcome and path exists, there must also be a universe where the notion of such multiverses is impossible. It is here that we find ourselves staring into the paradoxical abyss.

Sweeping aside the contradiction of parallel worlds, it is on the train that I ponder the existence of a universe where I do not exist. As the train changes track to a branching line, the landscape blurs past, indifferent to my absence. My reflection in the window shimmers, quantum-thin.

For a moment, I am here and not here, observed and unobserved, a wave function waiting to collapse. I step off the train. I step into the world. And the world, impossibly, steps into me.

A Flood Day to Dry Hard

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The news tells me that today there is an excessive heat warning in place in Wakayama. My oh-so-reliable weather application tells me that it will be cloudy all day. The gods split the difference. As I exit the bus unprepared for anything other than heat or cloud, the heavens split open in a thunderous rage of fury.

I am at Kumano-Nachi Taisha. As the thunder rolls over the sky I manage to take just one photograph of a torii gate and the mountains beyond, right then, before the rain catches up with the thunder. Luckily for me, there is a shop, so I enter, purchase, then poncho up.

I duck inside the Treasure Hall. No photos allowed, but I explore freely. I wrote about the Nachi Pilgrimage Mandala yesterday, but seeing the real thing up close is something else. I enjoy the other art, artefacts, simple objects from a time lost in the past. Most of the treasures here were discovered in 1918, but are from around the 10th century, with the shrine itself being 1,700 years old.

Stepping out of the Treasure Hall, the rain has intensified fivefold, and some of the ground has already flooded. People cower with umbrellas.

The rainwater crashes down and smashes into the roof of the shrine like a torrent of broken glass, slicing through the air with a merciless, unyielding force. I have never experienced rain like it. The raindrops actually hurt.

I came for the waterfall. Or so I believed. Right now, I feel like I’m inside one. I struggle to see where the waterfall could even be in comparison to the falling water. A monk passes me, dressed in dark blue. He carries an umbrella and seamlessly manoeuvres the flooding and the puddles, calm as you like.

Legend has it that the first emperor of Japan, Emperor Jinmu, found the waterfalls when his boat landed on the Kii Peninsula and he saw something shining in the mountains. At the time, he had been following a Yatagarasu (a mythical three-legged crow sent by the gods as a guide).

I follow the path down the mountain toward Nachi Falls. The sky bellows with more thunder, the road is full of water. Am I walking in the rain? Or am I swimming in a river? At points the water is knee-high. The drains can’t handle it. I can barely handle it, but I persevere.

I make it to the pagoda view, the one that’s often featured on the cover of a largely poorly written guidebook. They’ve never featured it in the rain. I enjoy my photograph very much.

Beside the pagoda sits a big statue of Hotei. God of fortune. The Laughing Buddha. Naturally, despite my soaking wet legs and shoes and inability to understand the point of it all, I rub his massive belly. Good luck and prosperity coming my way, again.

I venture on, down flooded sloped paths and dangerous steps, and eventually, I do arrive at Nachi Falls. The heavier rain drowns out the sound of the waterfall. There’s a story of some star-crossed lovers that leapt from the top of the waterfall in the belief that they would be reborn into Kannon’s paradise. I also know that this is one of the Top Three Waterfalls in Japan, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, and also plummets 133 metres, making it the tallest in Japan.

I head down some slippery steps, careful to hold the handrail. Below, the waterfall itself. Having already taken a spectacular photograph of the rain-soaked pagoda pavilion with Nachi Falls as a backdrop, I find it to be immensely difficult to capture the waterfall from up close, due to the intense rain and heavy flooding.

I stumble back up stone steps to a bus stop. Typically, upon arriving back at Kii-Katsuura Station, the rain suddenly stops. At the Turtle Boat back to my hotel, I stand at the dock. A Japanese salaryman stands beside me, perfectly dry. He glances at my poncho and then at the sky.

From the boat, I see a crow in the air. It looks as though it has three legs, but it’s just the tail feathers, fanned out in silhouette against the sky. Something that could easily be mistaken for three legs.

Back at the hotel, I hairdryer my shoes for two hours whilst waiting for my laundry to wash and dry, before heading out in search of a crow to photograph. In the end, all I find is this lousy t-shirt.