“Floating down, through the clouds, memories come rushing up to meet me now. But in the space between the heavens, and the corner of some foreign field, I had a dream…”
Roger Waters
The distant echo of turbines drew my eye to a blinking red light traversing the western sky. As on most evenings, it was well after midnight when Aeryn (my German Shepherd) and I had finally found time for a walk. My days were busy, rather than full. A quick check of Flightradar informed me that the light, now disappearing over the horizon, had been courtesy of JL774; the late-night flight from Melbourne to Tokyo.
Thereafter, on clear nights, I would look up, somewhat enviously, following her red strobe to the horizon. Aeryn failed to grasp the significance of the noisy sky-thing, preferring to scamper around sniffing for traces of feline or fox. And I looked up at the heavens, sniffing for traces of hope…
“The heavens call to you, and circle about you, displaying to you their eternal splendors, and your eye gazes only to earth.”
Dante Alighieri
You see, that was during the time when the world had descended into the mass hysteria of Chicken Little Syndrome, which may be defined thus: "the inference of catastrophic conclusions resulting in paralysis and a sense of despair or passivity preventing action”. Travel was not allowed. Police beat up old people for not wearing masks outdoors in country towns. But it was all for our own good, doncha know… Cough.
Before the sky fell, I visited Japan at least a few times a year. I’d begun to feel quite comfortable there; I had made some friends, started to understand the culture, and to learn the language. I will admit now that my view was, perhaps, an over-optimistic one, but having removed my cherry-coloured glasses, I still love the place.
Before Apocalypse-lite, I preferred flying out of Melbourne aboard JL774, rather than braving the debacle formerly known as Kingsford Smith Airport. I liked the night flight; dinner and a movie, a large whisky and some sedatives; it was like a date with Bill Cosby but ended with waking over Mount Fuji…
So each night we walked, and we waited, and we watched the sky. And we got older. I’ve previously described my German Shepherds as companions, guardians, and friends. But as Aeryn aged, I realised that she was also doing something else for me; she was warning me of what is to come. Age demanded payment for her day at the beach with three days of pain. Her waking hours grew short and her sleep long. And one night, as we began our walk, frosted grass crunching under our feet, she stopped and sat down, looked at me with pain and longing in her eyes and then turned and ambled back to the warmth of the house.
“Nor yet will the Ideal Good be any more good because it is eternal, seeing that a white thing that lasts a long time is no whiter than one that lasts only a day.”
Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
There was a symbol on my bike (a Kawasaki Z H2) that looked a little like this: 桜。The kanji is Sakura, which was the name that I gave her (how can one bond with a nameless bike?) but it also had a deeper meaning. Sakura means “cherry blossom”. Cherry trees and their blossoms hold great significance in Japanese folk law. The flowers bloom in exquisite abundance but last for only a few days before they fall. They symbolize birth, death, and the evanescence of life itself.
Kurt Vonnegut wrote: “Joseph Heller, an important and funny writer now dead, and I were at a party given by a billionaire on Shelter Island. I said, ‘Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday made more money than your novel Catch-22 has earned in its entire history?’ And Joe said, ‘I’ve got something he can never have.’ And I said, ‘What on earth could that be, Joe?’ And Joe said, ‘I’ve got enough.’”
It was on a cold but sunny July morning in 2022 when, sipping a coffee while admiring Sakura parked outside, I realised that I had enough. I had enough. And with that realisation, literally at that moment, I decided to move on. Of course, overseas travel was still not an option, so Sakura and I embarked for the south coast to consider our future.
A couple of months later, I found a particularly bohemian place to wait out the travel ban in Surry Hills. It felt like a good place to think and to write and to finish the teaching course that I’d started earlier in the year. While Sydney may not be what it once was, it is still fabulous, and the harbour city will always be important to me. I woke late and swam in the sea most days, jotting down a few paragraphs of the week’s overdue essay before dinner. I’d found a little Japanese-staffed restaurant where I could practice the language, and went there every night. I was having a ball and I felt a year younger every day…
But my newfound and much-relished urban lifestyle was not to last.
One morning I had an unexpected call from my friend in Shinjuku, Takashi-san: “Japan is reopening on the 11th of October!” he exuberated. “I’ll call you back”, I replied, falling out of bed. And in ten minutes, grinning like the Cheshire Cat, I did just that; after I’d booked a seat on JL774.
“The cleavage of men into actor and spectator is the central fact of our time.”
Jim Morrison
Even as the 787 swept down over verdant rolling hills interspersed with terraced paddy fields, and its landing gear clunked into position, I still could not quite comprehend the fact that in a matter of minutes I would be standing on Japanese soil. The long-anticipated significance of that moment had to be suppressed as I was jostled through immigration, waving the blue screen on my phone (as opposed to red or orange) that proved I was of minimal threat to society (as I’d had three ineffective vaccinations for a disease that I was already naturally immune to).
It was not until several days later, standing alone on a windswept beach in the wilderness of Hokkaido that I finally found the moment to reach down, grab a handful of wet sand and say tadaima; I’m home. But I’m getting ahead of myself; I have to tell you about River…
“The fool, with all his other faults, has this also, he is always getting ready to live.”
Seneca, Letters from a Stoic
“She’s beautiful” I said quietly as Mine-san rolled the Z900RS from its resting place. I was genuinely surprised at how gorgeous the silver-grey Kawasaki looked in the flesh (I’d only seen one in pictures). Or perhaps my opinion had been swayed by the realisation that the bike was probably up to the task at hand; the circumnavigation of Hokkaido, in less-than-ideal conditions. Whether I was up to it too remained to be seen…
“Kanojo no namae wa nanidesu ka?” asked Mine-san. “Her name is River” I replied. “Kawa” means “River” in Japanese. And while River-san may only pack half the horsepower of supercharged Sakura, her 110 or so ponies were at least enough to scatter the peasants. On the road, she never seemed to lack thrust, particularly in the context of Hokkaido’s ridiculously low speed limits, errant wildlife, and potentially icy roads. There’s a saying that goes “when the needles on the clocks point to God, you're going to jail”, or deportation, in my case.
It was warm and sunny as I left Sapporo, not really sure where I was going, except that it was probably west, in the general direction of Lake Toya. Getting lost is part of the adventure that is motorcycling. I pulled over after an hour or so; not to check a map but to attempt the comprehension of where I was. I didn’t want to miss a moment of the experience but around every corner was another sensory overload; a snow-capped mountain, a pristine river, a deer, steam billowing from a volcanic spring. And everywhere the endless patchwork of green, red, amber, and gold that is late autumn in Hokkaido.
“Be always searching for new sensations. Be afraid of nothing… The world belongs to you for a season… How tragic it would be if you were wasted. For there is such a little time that your youth will last.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
“That is one of the great secrets of life— to cure the soul by means of the senses, and the senses by means of the soul.”
Oscar Wilde, The Picture of Dorian Gray
After a few hours, River and I were getting to know each other, which was just as well, as we were now climbing our first mountain range. Snow began to fall as the temperature plummeted. But just as I started to shiver, we crested a peak into the warmth of the afternoon sun and the descent to Lake Toya. I found a little Ryokan (a small, traditional inn) and parked River for the evening, just in time to grab a beer and watch the sun set over the lake.
Why stop at Lake Toyah? It’s a mystery to me… (someone, somewhere, will get that)
The following day, sunshine flooding through the open window of my small room, I decided to try to make it to Wakkanai (Hokkaido’s northernmost town), before the advancing winter made that impossible. But when I reached the critical T-intersection, the winding road south looked much more inviting than the burgeoning snow clouds to the north. I considered tossing a coin but realised that I’d just keep spinning it until I got the right result, then turned left, to the port city of Hakodate, near the southern tip of the island.
Three hours later, River and I were both low on fuel when we met Hakodateyama; the 344-metre-high mountain right next to Hakodate. I’m not sure how quickly River leaped, gazelle-like, up the switchbacks that spiraled to its peak but I know it took me about half an hour to stop laughing when we reached the summit. Back at the feet of the mountain, I considered turning around to do it again. But with River’s fuel light flashing, the sunlight fading, and the cooling road feeling a wee bit slippery on the way down, I decided not to push my luck, and headed for the pub; or Izakaya, in this case.
Hakodateyama was my first real taste of just how much fun the little Z900 could be. River’s surprisingly fruity, stock exhaust note and trademark Kawasaki induction howl may be a long way from Sakura’s snarling, screeching, spitting supercharged symphony but then, fun is a lot less visceral than terror. Riding most large-caliber bikes these days feels like being shot out of a canon but riding the H2 family is more like being set on fire, then shot out of a really big canon. The Z900RS gives the satisfying illusion of being an old-school, rider’s bike; whilest covering up a multitude of cockups with traction control and ABS.
Hakodate, from the sumit of Hakodateyama.
I’d been told that the good people of Hakodate could be less than hospitable but I found the opposite to be true. A few days later though, a cold wind from the north reminded me that it was time to move on. I headed west, towards Esashi, looking for roads less traveled.
I stayed for a while in a Buddhist temple on the west coast. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said: “you become what you give your attention to”. My attention was given to the sounds of the ocean, lilting through curtains gently stirred by sea breezes, and to the beautiful simplicity of the room. River and I would go on expeditions into the mountains early in the mornings, then return to the temple to bask in the warmth of the sun’s last hours. I had found serenity…
Without a phone or internet, I spent my time off the road enjoying more interesting pastimes. For example, on one afternoon, as I watched a yellow dwarf star plunge into the golden horizon of a blue planet, I considered how much better life is without the overwhelming chatter and bickering and badgering and inanity of the modern world. At that moment, I was tempted to stay. So the following morning I headed north again.
Carl Jung wrote: “The highest, most decisive experience is to be alone with one's own self. You must be alone to find out what supports you, when you find that you can not support yourself. Only this experience can give you an indestructible foundation.” And with that in mind, I took the coast road, toward the wilderness of the far north.
“Nowhere can man find a quieter or more untroubled retreat than in his own soul.”
Marcus Aurelius, Meditations
The coast road was magnificent. Actually, I should refer to them as the coast roads: While the main road skirted the sea, and riding it was an amazing experience, the little lanes that run parallel to it and snake up into the mountains are nothing short of Motorcycle Nirvana. They are the vascular system of the hamlets and farmhouses that lie between the mountains and the sea along the otherwise-deserted northwest coast. And while you may wonder in what condition the roads in a wilderness that sees frequent seismic activity, heavy snow, and temperatures from -33°C to +39°C may be, I can report that the producers of Pot Black would be envious: Intertwining ribbons of tarmac-coloured-silk, wide sweeping corners, slender chicanes, impossibly beautiful avenues crisscrossed by tiny lanes that wind up into the serenity of the mountains or down into the splendor of the forests… Nirvana.
I realised at about that point in my odyssey that everything I needed to live the life that I had dreamed of for so long was contained in those two panniers, firmly secured to River’s typically-svelte Japanese rump. I don’t mean for my journey, I mean forever. A few changes of clothes, some basic tools, chain lube, and a toothbrush. Anything else could be acquired as needed. And while I was tempted to regret all the time that I’ve spent acquiring the security that I’ve now rejected and the assets of which I’ve now disposed, I was overcome with relief in this sudden realisation; “thank Christ I figured it out, before it was too late”.
"A man can be himself only so long as he is alone; and if he does not love solitude, he will not love freedom; for it is only when he is alone that he is really free." Arthur Schopenhauer, Essays and Aphorisms
With Wakkanai in striking distance, I stopped to watch the sunset from a deserted volcanic beach, where I sat, propped up against River’s rear tyre. The sun looked exactly like what it is as it sank below the waves; a nuclear fire in the sky. That was my last sight of the west coast. Forty minutes later, we ambled into Wakkanai, cold, exhausted, and elated.
The new day brought with it a fine mist and little rainbows that flashed in and out of existence in the morning sun. From Cape Sōya (the northernmost point of Japan) I watched the rain clouds roll in, drawing a veil over the Russian island Of Sakhalin, only twenty-seven miles to the north. I realised how kind the weather had been so far, and decided to head due south, anticipating warmer climes; how wrong I was.
There comes a point when the weather gets so bad that the road could lead through the Garden of Eden and I’d not so much as stop for an apple; a level of discomfort so unendurable that the night’s sanctuary (usually involving a hot shower and a cold beer)is more desirable than the ride, no matter how spectacular the route. But as we climbed ever higher into the mountains, and River’s incongruous digital temperature display (nestled between her old-school analogue clocks) slid down to a single digit, I still could not help but be overwhelmed by the grandeur revealed around every corner. By the time the display started flashing “ICE” at me, my neck hurt like hell; not from the bitter cold or the torrential rain but from constantly turning my head in a futile attempt to take everything in.
“Are we having fun yet?”, I enquired sarcastically of River, as we drifted across another large patch of black ice. “Harden-the-fuck-up and get on with it”, I answered back for her. Familiarity, comfort, dependability, and a mutual love of going around corners slightly faster than our limited abilities safely allowed had completely anthropomorphized the little Z. “Good Girl” I said, patting her ample fuel tank while considering if it was actually hypothermia talking. Then came the snow…
The descent to the east coast town of Abashiri was closer to skating than riding. But by dusk, an ice-encrusted River sat melting on the curb as I darkened the door of my host, Tanaka-san. Three solid knocks were all my par-frozen arm could manage but it brought him scurrying to the door. “How did you get here?”, he exclaimed, peering around me and up at the sky, either to confirm the severity of the weather or locate a trace of the craft that had dropped me off. Too cold to speak, I held aloft my dripping helmet as evidence while attempting a shakey bow. A sheet of ice slithered off my jacket and smashed on the doorstep as corroboration of my claim.
“Sumimasen” (please excuse me, I’m sorry) was what I attempted to say but all that came out was “S,s,s,s,em”, as though I were a Tourette’s afflicted python. Tanaka-san chuckled, shook his head, and beckoned me inside.
As the warmth of the little room’s blazing fire returned to me control of my limbs, I felt steeled by the experiences of the day. But nothing could have prepared me for what happened next…
“There’s no such thing as bad weather to be on a motorcycle, just the wrong clothing, ”
Billy Connolly
The days that followed were warm and bright, as though summer had returned for a brief encore. Sunlight filtering through the trees softly lit the mysterious little side roads that flashed by on our daily expeditions into the Akan-Mashu and Shiretoko National Parks, and I often yielded to the temptation to brake hard and investigate them.
One such investigation lured me down a particularly ethereal tree-canopied lane; a glimmering green tunnel, like the entrance to some sylvan cathedral. As the path narrowed, winding in and out among the trunks, a thick carpet of leaves began to crunch and slip under River’s tyres, so I flicked her killswitch to “OFF” and coasted to a silent stop.
“It seemed to him that he had stepped through a high window that looked on a vanished world. A light was upon it for which his language had no name.”
JRR Tolkien
Leaving my helmet, jacket, and gloves with River, I walked toward a forest knoll, just visible in the distance. Slender beams of sunlight cradled little leaves that floated down from above, imparting the feeling that I had stumbled into Through the Looking-Glass, rather than Hansel & Gretel… But on cresting the knoll I saw where the lane led, and why it was long unused; in a sunlit clearing, now partially reclaimed by the forest, was an akiya.
An akiya is an abandoned house, and due to Japan’s rapidly declining population, there are millions of them. Sometimes they are jiko bukken; a place where some kind of tragedy has occurred, and superstition has made all but unsaleable.
It was once a big, family home, and as I tentatively approached it, I thought of all the summers and the winters it had seen; the laughter of the children who must have played there, and the solitude of its final inhabitant. And then, I saw the path…
It was a well-worn path of smooth black stones, and it led from the akiya, through a grove of fruit trees, down to a crystal brook, and, eventually, to the mirrored surface of a deep, black pond. Forgetting the apparent mystery of a well-used path from a long-abandoned home, I did what most Australians do when confronted with a potentially dangerous body of unfamiliar water; I went for a swim.
The icy water was strangely comforting; I sank to the riverbed and lay there for a while, looking up at the rippling sun. But the novelty of reprising my New England childhood wore off as my core temperature fell and, once again shivering, I lay in the warm sun, on a smooth slab of black rock that looked like a druidic sacrificial alter… “No druids around here”, I thought. And with the murmuring of the brook, the radiant warmth of the stone and the gentle shimmering of the forest, I fell into a deep sleep.
I was woken by the splashing of water. I blinked a couple of times and realised that the sun had sunk low in the sky, and that I would be hard-pressed to make it back to Abashiri before dark. Snap! Something broke a branch behind me; I turned but initially could not comprehend what I saw. Then it sunk in and I looked in awe across the pond. There he was, on the other side of the water, in all his majesty, a higuma; the huge Hokkaido brown bear.
“For believe me! The secret for harvesting from existence the greatest fruitfulness and the greatest enjoyment is: to live dangerously!" Friedrich Nietzsche
I considered a strategic retreat, before remembering Tanaka-san’s stern warning; “if bear you see, run not you must” (literal translations often sound like Yoda), and also the fact that I’d parked River well out of my sprint range (but not a bear’s). Meanwhile, the higuma had noticed me too.
He was sitting upright, chomping on something, with long, deliberate motions; like an old-timer with a plug of chewing tobacco. He ceased chewing and looked down his broad muzzle at me, as though I were a spittoon.
“Hello bear”, I said, trying to sound unperturbed. The bear resumed chewing. “I just retired”, I continued, before realising that the statement may have sounded too much like a plea for mercy. The bear swallowed the remains of his dinner, resumed all-fours and took a step toward me…
“Great”, I thought, “barely three months into retirement, and tomorrow I’m bear-shit”. But the bear just bent carefully down to the surface of the pond and took a few mouthfuls of water. “He’s a haggard old thing” I said to myself, realising that he may have come to the same conclusion about me. He looked at me with his big, sad eyes and let out a deep, long sigh.
I realised then that he was the one who was using the well-worn path to the stream; the final, lonely old inhabitant of the house, not yet totally deserted. I’d heard stories of such bears seeking human company but I’d heard other reports that made me choose discretion over compassion. I gathered my things and backed slowly away. Of course, I knew that he was a male bear, as, despite having ample opportunity and ability to do so, he had not torn my heart from my chest.
Conversation in the izakaya that evening was more concerned with the cold winds, a portent of ryūhyō (drift ice) from the Sea of Okhotsk, rather than my ebullient report of a lonely higuma. It was a reminder that winter was on the march from the north, and that my Indian summer was, like all things, transitory. So, the following morning I bade Tanaka-san a courteous farewell, and headed over the mountains one last time. By dusk, we had descended to the endless green of the plains and farmlands around Obihiro.
It says something like “Brown bear infested area”, but I doubt the higuma considers himself to be an infestation.
Three days later, from Cape Erimo, the southeastern tip of Hokkaido, I looked across the Pacific Ocean to Honshu; the main island of Japan. With my original starting point of Sapporo only a few hours away, and over 4000Ks of traversing the increasingly glacial north behind me, it was time to fly south for the winter.
"All that is gold does not glitter, not all those who wander are lost. The old that is strong does not wither, deep roots are not reached by the frost."
JRR Tolkien
From my precarious rooftop vantage point, the eclipse was taking much longer to culminate than I’d anticipated, so I considered pouring another whisky. When contemplating whether a particular vice should be excised or indulged, I always turn to Oscar Wilde: ”the only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it”. It was, after all, a particularly fine whisky; a gift from my Tokyo friend Takashi-san. I don’t need an excuse to sit on the roof and drink Japanese whisky but if I did, the total lunar eclipse would have been a good one. “A once-in-a-lifetime event”, they said.
The fact that my other “once-in-a-lifetime event” of late, the Hokkaido adventure, had been far too much for my feeble brain to comprehend, would hitherto have caused me some level of discontent. Memories, that a few days ago were so vivid, were now already fading into indistinct pictures. Sounds and smells forgotten and intense colours already fading to sepia. But such things are no longer “once-in-a-lifetime events” for me. I’ll be back to Hokkaido in summer and River and I will do it all again, and again, and again, perhaps comprehending a little more every year. Such is my life now, and all it took to get here was the decision, on a cold July morning, to stop. It was, by far, the best decision I have ever made.
Will I miss life as it was, you may wonder. Well, if I never pick up another soldering iron again it will be too soon. And I do appreciate the flattering sentiments of those who have suggested that I can’t be replaced, but nobody is indispensable. Evan Thomas wrote: “Take a bucket, fill it with water, put your hand in, clear up to the wrist. Now pull it out; the hole that remains is a measure of how much you’ll be missed.”
The eclipse turned out to be quite a few whiskies in duration, so, for safety’s sake, I climbed down from the roof of my little house, and sat by the canal that winds gently through the town. I dangled my feet in the cool water, wondering if anything would bite, and looked at my orange reflection in the eclipse-light…
“If thou wilt make a man happy, add not unto his riches but take away from his desires.”
Epicurus
No, I’m not about to pinch the ending of Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles:
They reached the canal. It was long and straight and cool and wet and reflective in the night.
"I've always wanted to see a Martian," said Michael. "Where are they, Dad? You promised."
"There they are," said Dad, and he shifted Michael on his shoulder and pointed straight down.
The Martians were there. Timothy began to shiver.
The Martians were there, in the canal, reflected in the water. Timothy and Michael and Robert and Mom and Dad.
The Martians stared up at them for a long, long silent time from the rippling water...
My reflection in the canal behind the house will never be that of a Japanese person, nor would I want it to be. I’m as Australian as Australian gets, in an old-school, New England country boy kind of way. Which is why I thought it was a good time to leave. I literally get to ride off into the sunset, and surely, anyone should be happy with that epitaph.
And as to the future, well, I’ll keep riding and diving and exploring and learning and repeating those “once-in-a-lifetime no more” events as long as I am spared. Summers in the north to avoid the humidity. Winters spent exploring the south, or scuba diving the ever-balmy Yaeyama Islands (between Okinawa and Taiwan) with my intrepid son and daughter:
"To every man upon this earth Death cometh soon or late. And how can man die better than facing fearful odds, for the ashes of his fathers, and the temples of his Gods."
Thomas Babington Macaulay, Lays of Ancient Rome.
And in the end? There will be no nursing home for me. When I can't ride, I can dive (after all, it's literally as easy as falling off a boat) and when I can't do that anymore, one last descent into the abyss: into the painless embrace of nitrogen narcosis and eternal sleep. A return to the sea.
And where will I go tomorrow; Shikoku looks beautiful at this time of year. I haven’t been to Kumamoto or seen the shrines of Yamaguchi or the volcanoes of Kagoshima yet… So, I won’t plagiarise Ray Bradbury, but I will paraphrase Peter Pan:
Where will we go today? Second mountain to the right and straight on 'til dusk…
William Crampton