June 17th, the first day in the mountains

The house is hidden on the top of a mountain. To reach the place is a 45-minute ride from Yonezawa Station. Michael and Yasuko – Yachan – moved in here last year, just before the winter arrived. They pick us up from the station by car. We are their first visitors since they moved from Tochigi to Yamagata. Michael adds with a laugh, that we were also the last visitors at their old house in Tochigi, two years ago. They don’t see a lot of people, although they have a few writing pals.

Writing Pals

We used to write to each other too, but since my mum died few years ago, I haven’t felt like writing anything. When I write, boundaries become fluid and intimate and personal. Since she died, I feel heart broken and I don’t have the space to feel heartbroken with two children around. I don’t want to open a door that I closed. It’s not that I don’t want to feel the pain. I cry when I need to. It’s just that I don’t want to look for it. Writing letters without becoming passionate and personal seems like an impossible task, I don’t even try.

Since this trip, I started writing. I wanted to keep a journal of this trip for the guide. And I’ve come to realise that I am ready to continue the letters. I missed them.  

Car Sickness and Bumpy Mountain Roads

After 30 minutes of driving over a well maintained country road, we turn into a narrow mountain road. The last 15 minutes of the ride is extremely bumpy. Both our kids tend to get car sick. I watch them carefully and tell them – for what it’s worth – to watch the road ahead of them. Lila ate well in the train and slept after. It helps to reduce car sickness. Ima is tired and starts whining.

Micheal explains that when the snow came last year, they had to park the car all the way down the mountain road and walk up. The snow was more than three metres high and it would take them at least an hour and a half to get up or down, walking four kilometres. 

The new house in Fukushima

The new house from outside looks different from the house in Tochigi, which was the school example of a country house in Japan. The type of house you’ll find in Totoro and many other films that look back upon the history of the country. It was beautiful but old, with cracks in the walls, thin wood, paper doors. You couldn’t get warm in winter and you could not cool down in summer. This house looks much more solid. It looks like a mountain house. It’s tall, and at the feet I see a base of cement. A pleasant thought, when you think of the winter Michael just described. 

“It’s an oasis of beauty and wellness on top of this mountain. But one with no running water.”

When we enter, I recognise their house again. The walls are filled with literature, poetry, vegan cooking books, posters, films on DVD and music on CD and vinyl. The floors are covered with beautiful carpets. Woven cloths hang from entrances or above beds to make the spaces cosy, colourful and warm. It’s an oasis of beauty and wellness on top of this mountain. But one with no running water.

There is a spacious kitchen with a wood-fire oven and stove. Shelves in and around the kitchen are packed with spices, jars with several types of flour and beans in all the colours of the rainbow. A small staircase in the kitchen leads down to a stocking room inside the cement base. 

Pom Poko (1994)

They cook really nice food for us. Rice, lots of vegetables, tofu and glass noodles with shiitake. Lila only tries some of the white rice; Ima enjoys everything. Micheal helps us to pick a film for Lila. She watches, while we take our time to eat. Pom Poko (1994), a perfect film for the middle of nowhere. In the film a group of shape-shifting tanuki (Japanese raccoons) use their powers to try to save a forest from urban developers. It’s a film produced by Ghibli Studio and just as most Ghibli films it is incredible. Lila too is blown away by it. She is completely absorbed. 

I put the kids to bed around 8:30 and fall asleep too. I wake up in the middle of the night and go out to pee somewhere with a good view. I see endless, waves of mountains painted on the horizon. There are stars all over the sky. The moon is big. Almost full, but not yet. There is so much sound and life.