travel

Japan, part 1: Fukuoka

first long-haul flight, first day in Japan, and lovely umbrellas

I didn’t quite imagine going to Japan: If someone told me in November 2022 that the following February I would be at the bottom right corner of the world from my current map location, I’d most likely look with my eyes on stalks and say ‘you gotta be kidding me, what would I even do there now?’

Oh, many things. First of all, get surprised whenever using Google Maps and seeing this point far outside Europe; work on a project, lose and find my wallet, lose (and not find) the JR pass halfway to Tokyo, watch the Pacific Ocean from an observation deck, laugh (a lot), spend (a bit too much) money on shopping and travel back with three suitcases instead of two. Eat – lots of rice, of course, but probably overdose on matcha in Kyoto as well, that back in Eindhoven I could not look at it for a while; spend time in onsen – the Japanese Hot Springs – or sing my heart out in karaoke during the last night in Saga. I probably wouldn’t have much time to travel around and would think to myself that I certainly have to go back – for longer and better prepared. I would see that even when I try to control the flow of life, life itself knows better than I do; and even if I do decide to learn a bit of the language before planning my next trip there – sometimes it is much needed to get a bit Lost in Translation.

It all starts in a hostel in Amsterdam. It is me meeting Thiago, a Portuguese guy who talks to me in the hostel while I persist on my night daily drawing routine I have; this time I depict the kitchen of the hostel, its narrow and decorated with ornament wallpaper walls, the glass table top under which I see the Transnistrian rubble, and eventually go to sleep, hiding from Thiago’s messages on Instagram. Sleeping in the hostel before a long-haul flight means no sleep at all, as the mind wanders with the versatility of things to worry about: keeping the valuables close (still, a hostel), waking up in time for the flight, getting to the airport and many other things. It means that I am awake half of the night, or waking up every other hour with the thought: ‘Oh no! Did I miss the alarm?’

But the alarm rings on time, when I am already awake and ready to reach the airport. The flow is further blurred: security check, airport library, people-people-people, waiting times and, finally, getting on my first big airplane ever, debuting in long-haul flights.

Long-haul flights are the places of rotating times, the wheel of fortune that brings you back and forth, making Kant’s philosophy dissipate. If, according to the great philosopher, we use time and space to orientate ourselves, what do long-haul flights do with these essential mental constructs, breaking the patterns as we have no clue – are we still following the old, or already adjusting to the new time zone? I never experienced one before, and the threshold of days disappears: one is slowly blending into the other and the sky is being lit by red sunlight while the clock says: 23:45. You are not quite reaching tomorrow already, but are still somewhere around yesterday. The flight is long – and here come the meals, the movies, the blankets, or the words coming together for a bigger – book – picture. The flights are in-between spaces, in-between time constructs that leave us with nothing but self-reflection. I watch a movie and set to myself as an intention to dissolve in architecture while in Japan, and dedicate this time to what I love, enjoying my life. I do the daily drawing of the plane in the darkness and end up talking to the couple next to me.

It is the flight from Taipei to Fukuoka where we find turbulence immediately after a meal. The rollercoaster feeling with people wooing on ups and downs where I try to catch the look of flight attendants: why is this shaking so strong? Before that, I used to think that turbulence was merely a resemblance to the vibrations of Moldovan public transport. Turned out, it can be much more – and that is, frankly speaking, quite unnerving. Fortunately, the drinks and meals were finished before, which helped avoid unnecessary mixing.

Fukuoka

My first Japanese notes say: many high buildings. Rain.

Indeed, my first memories of Fukuoka bring my mind back to the reflections of the streets while we try to find the hostel, surrounded by kanji, that tell me nothing but inspire. It is a walk after more than 30 hours of no sleep; a walk with the suitcase in the stillness of the evening Fukuoka, and this first part of the trip where you repeatedly tell yourself: hey, you are…in Japan, - while still considering it unbelievable.

We enter the hostel and I get offered a towel for the wet suitcase; I think of it as an act of care, while later I notice how vividly clean the place is. This is my first encounter with the tradition of taking shoes off inside public spaces, a tradition that in a good sense caught me off-guard, and instantly accommodated. That very moment I felt at peace there, in the first Japanese hostel I came to, and immediately fell asleep, exhausted after a long commute.

13.02.2023
I wake up energized in Fukuoka: without any jet lag. Japanese convenience stores are full of unknown signs that tell us nothing, but I will always recognize a mochi. Lines of vending machines, the first coffee I buy myself in Japan, fascinated by that special (very regular, of course – but not to me) Georgia black metal can. To me, it even seems to suit the surroundings, which then become a continuation of this steel-cut, as if artificially functioning, urban scape. I once again observe kanjis around me, that are busy convincing my adapting mind that here I am, in a place that is so different and similar at the same time, that I am struggling to comprehend the geographical orientation. Is it really that, despite being in a different hemisphere, are still walking around the streets and can take the umbrellas in the stalls next to the main door?

Umbrellas are a movie frame, a long line of people queuing to enter a building. Mind your umbrella, maintain the clean setting you are encountering. Put the umbrella in its place next to the entrance, the one that I continue calling the umbrella parking. Later in the trip, when walking with Rami in one of the streets of Hizen Hamashuku, he is joking that stealing umbrellas might be the only ‘acceptable’ crime you can see in Japan. I need no sun – give me umbrellas and give me the rain that articulates the architecture I am submerged into. Give me the sound of rain creating a symbiosis with cars, and allow it to be this February musician that I would happily allow to join my playlist. Walking in Japanese rain is distinct from other rains: hey, here is a plastic bag before you enter this shopping mall. Please make use of it, keep the place clean and, in case you haven’t noticed, this is what we generally do. And so I take the bag, clean the umbrella with one of the brushes, and come in. The shopping mall meets us with architectural models as if welcoming our intentions.

Fukuoka feels surprisingly spacious and small for 2.6 million city. It barely has an abundance in colours – and, perhaps, this is the overall charm of Japanese cities and streets in their modesty, that February seems to highlight. In my notes, I once again point out the rain and have I mentioned umbrellas already? Yes, those. Fukuoka is the river, a brief half-day stroll around the city, and the first Muji store (essentials) I get to see in Japan. Getting lost in the several floors of what makes it one of my favourite stores, inevitably drinking matcha (as you should) with lunch and some rice, of course.

At first, I point out exterior staircases. As I discover later, they are the dominant architectural trait of Japan serving as the exterior emergency staircase. They inevitably become a part of the story the streets and buildings are attempting to narrate, and we listen to them – carefully – in this Japanese functionality. Tall, pointing upwards buildings, self-standing – as an accidentally dropped pen on the street facades, that suddenly transformed into a real building and now remains there, in Fukuoka, still slightly separated from the rest.

Tobias and I are sharing the observations and land ourselves in them: what else do we see here, in these streets of Fukuoka?

“Oh, look, quite a funny building!” (All of a sudden, as I found out today, one and a half year later, it was a building by Aldo Rossi - one of the influential architects of the last century, third picture below).
“So many buildings with small tiles!”
“Green roofs look so different here, and greenery in general – so massive and natural!”
“What is this road sign even?”

The first day in Japan inevitably feels surreal. First day on another continent, architecture that is still speaking, but speaking a different language, the one that you admire by the look of it. It is, amidst the grey and strict functional architecture, a splash of colour that is a Shinto shrine, with red painted timber, a garden, and the signs of the beginning Japanese spring in its blooming. All of it, together and separately, is special to me: there is something about this Muji pencil box and the Buddha statues, something about the peculiar views I perceive, or the elegant, self-sufficient colour palette of the village houses we pass on the way to Saga.

Japan, part 1: Fukuoka

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