Koma

If you ride the Seibu Ikebukuro line all the way to the end, you’ll arrive at a station called Hanno. Transfer there and ride a couple stops further and you’ll find yourself in the quiet exurban town of 高麗, Koma. In the small station plaza there are two bright red totem poles, topped with grinning, devilish faces, like demons popping up from Hell in periscope form to take a look around.

Towards the mountain there’s a river, and beyond the river a field called Kinchakuda. At certain times of year it blooms with flowers, the same bright red color as the totem poles. If you get there in the morning, you might get to see the mountains partially wrapped in mist, like a wuxia fairy tale. Up the river there’s a quaint vegan cafe called Alishan, which always serves the most perfectly brewed tea and a thick vegetable soup that’s incredibly sweet and earthy.

There’s a small mountain 日和田, Hiwada, an easy climb from which you can see Mt Fuji to the SW and the Tokyo Skytree to the SE. Supposedly, on an exceptionally clear day, you can see Yokohama, although I never have.

If you take the long way down the mountain, through a network of paved roads and poorly-mapped trails, you’ll come to this spot. It’s deadly quiet: the mountain shields it from the wind, and the isolation shields it from human noise.

There’s nothing remarkable about the town of Koma, or Hiwada, or this unnamed waypoint. It’s beautiful, but it looks just like many other exurban towns of Japan. No doubt I’ve been to others that were more beautiful, more unique. Yet I keep returning here, to Koma Station, to Alishan, to the summit of Hiwada, to here, taking care to catch the posh limited express train with its cushy teddy-bear-shaped seats and impossibly yellow interior. I can’t articulate why. I just love it irrationally.

The last time I came here, I thought: the one I’m waiting for will love this place as much as I do. Maybe she comes here on the weekends too. Maybe I’ll meet her here.

I played with the thought in my head, and drifted into a sort of fugue state. The kind where your eyes are open, but you aren’t seeing, because you’re deep in thought, and I realised I miss you. I miss your dog. I miss the smell of your shirts and your weird memory foam mattress that always made my back hurt. Last week when I was falling asleep with fever, laid up with delirium from some crazy Japanese bacterial infection, I hazily saw you laying next to me. We talked. We laughed. I wish I could remember what about, but I felt it was gonna be alright.

I know it was not gonna work between us. I know we had different goals and dreams, that we couldn’t communicate, and maybe that was my fault. And I know there are billions of people on Earth, many of them like you. But I keep coming back to you, specifically, irrationally, because of course that’s what love is. I can’t decide if it would be more tragic if that feeling never went away or if one day it did.

A nearby bird called, echoing down the valley. In my meditative state it at first sounded like music, then the world comes rushing back into view. I’m not sure how long I’ve been standing here. You’re not here. She’s not here. Nobody’s here.

I walked back to the station and took the yellow teddy bear train home.