travel

Japan, part 2:
Saga, campus and a lost wallet

a city next to Fukuoka where we spend most of our time on campus

My first memories of Saga are the wooden rooms of Hagakure guest house and alternating division of the beds, until we finally find the right distribution. In the first hour we are meeting Rami and professor Mishima downstairs at the bar and going to a restaurant. We take a long table, carefully hidden behind Noren – traditional Japanese curtains. Food at the restaurant fascinates me, generously brings hitherto unfamiliar dishes to my dining experiences, makes me listen to my body, sensing each texture with my tongue and attempting to recognize what is it I would love to savour once again, out of this bizarre variety. It is no wonder that amidst the myriad photos of this Japanese journey, I find a separate album of food, names of which I would probably not be able to recall right now, despite all of them still holding a special place in my heart.

It is then at this restaurant that I realize: I have no wallet with me, and the last time I saw it was in our first half an hour at the guest house. When we are back to Hagakure, I immediately start my search: I check the new bed and the one I had before, I look at the tables and in the bar downstairs, open the suitcases and go into all possible corners it could get lost in. I ask the rest of the group to help me: it must be somewhere; I vividly remember it laying on the first bed! My intuition and memory keep whispering: it must have fallen behind it, and I ask those in the room to find out. Unsuccessful, nothing there, - they say. The guest house is thoroughly explored, and the wallet is still nowhere to be found. Gone. On the first day of my trip to Japan I remain without a wallet for I don’t even know how long. All of it means that the only money I have is the scholarship I had received that day from the Japanese university, and that all my cards, including various bank cards and two of my ids, have sunk into oblivion.

This is the moment I discover my mantra for the upcoming trip: nothing matters as long as I’m in Japan. Whenever the occasion attempts to affect my mood, or getting news that could potentially upset me – I redirect my mind: how incredible is that I am in Japan, right? I will figure out the rest later. I don’t even need the wallet for it, I’m good, thanks.

As it sometimes happens, despite spending most of my time in Saga, I cannot claim to have gotten to know it well. I can still illustrate the road from the guest house to campus, the blooming trees and a shrine where Tigo, Lenny and I are talking to a charming old couple (extensively using Google Translate). I remember the bars and the karaoke room we visit on our last night, singing out loud our favourite (or totally new) songs. Compared to Fukuoka (thatI wrote about in my previous post), Saga, of course, is a small city for Japanese standards, with some 233 thousand people living there. It is almost intimate for a city – low-rise and spread-out, once again full of small tiles and exterior staircases (that, as I find out, are a way to overcome restrictions in the some of the construction requirements and provide the emergency exists), and with a nearly industrial feel. Ironically, it was there I went to an Indian restaurant for the first time, but also, of course, largely experimented with the unfamiliar supermarket snacks.
I clearly recall how the small police station of Saga is almost closing when professor Mishima and I reach it. I sneak peek into the grey interiors and watch the posters pictured as cartoons, while Mishima is explaining in Japanese the story of my lost wallet to the policeman. The space that most likely seems conventional to the residents, to me is almost surreal, as I have never seen police stations like Japanese ones. The next day at the main police office of Saga I am copying kanji – they say it is my address, but I would not know anyway, so I take it as an extra drawing opportunity. It is comforting for me to think that in a country like Japan things seldom disappear without a trace, and are never stolen – unless, Rami jokes, it is a small umbrella at the entrance of a store (though I would still feel very safe about those too).

Wide alleys of the Saga University campus are marked by the building that stands out from the ‘correct’ Japanese architecture. It is a university art museum where I get lost while exploring graduation projects. I enter a room that shows a video. It is a film of cables and the sky, birds taking their righteous place and nothing else – but the sounds; you are on a walk and exploring with the only view of those cables, you are in a dark room lit up by the film, mesmerized, listening.

These campus alleys are a combination of bikes and trees, the walks we are taking to the closest convenience store, or small tiles that envelope the buildings. The tasteful simplicity of campus, its regularity and diligence of the materials is embellished by the abundance of plants and complemented by the sun. At the faculty of architecture, we occupy one of the biggest rooms with the painting of two squares by a Japanese artist.

The workshop, that is the initial reason for our travel to Japan, we enjoy in two places: the town of Kashima as our project site, and Saga, where we spend our days on campus – and nights going out. The project itself is lovely: we have to suggest renovation of an old sake brewery in the culturally influential district of Hizen Hamashuku, a place that is recognized by high-quality sake breweries that we, of course, are exploring. I believe Hizen Hamashuku deserves a special page of writing, a tranquil place that remains one of my most cherished Japanese memories, and where we devote several days of our time.
Ultimately, I would perhaps say that If you ask me what you should see in Saga, I would unknowingly shrug my shoulders and mumble “wellll the campus was nice, and the central streets were certainly interesting oh and a shrine”, so I recommend asking a more conscious traveller. To me, time in Saga gave a glimpse of what being an architecture student in Japan could look like and I would love to experience more of it. Put in one envelope of memories, the road to university was the most walked route I took in Japan, exploring it as a student, and savouring every minute making sure it remains within me. My memories of Saga also stay within my drawings that I carefully spent time making every night, so that I still now, almost two years later, can remember all the beds and doors at Hagakure – one of which, apparently, was hiding my wallet, as it was found in the hostel one and a half week later.

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