Travelling North

by Simon Rowe

Uramoto was short, in his thirties, with a buzz cut and a smile that practically broke his face in half. At eight p.m. he fired up his Fuso and told me to jump in. We would be carrying a consignment of senbei to Kōfu city in Yamanashi prefecture, he said. As we pulled out of Himeji under stormy skies, I imagined the accident scene—the cops, ambulance crew, everyone standing around munching on prawn crackers while the victims bled to death.

The night was a dirty one; rain hammered down all through Kakogawa, Akashi, Kobe, and even beneath Osaka’s neon glow, the heavens did not close for the night. My thoughts turned to other travellers also heading for Tokyo. How many of them were hitchhiking? How many of them were hitchhiking in a truck? How many of them were hitchhiking in a truck filled with prawn rice crackers? The thought made me peckish.

We fell in with a convoy of other long-haul drivers, and soon the night was filled with a constellation of heavy vehicle lights, swarming and swirling like fireflies about us. Uramoto worked his gear stick like a one-armed bandit, barrelling us in and out of tunnels, pinballing us over flyways, slowing only at toll gates to toss in some coin and sniff the air. Day belonged to the commuter; night belonged to Uramoto and his rig of rice crackers.

I caught glimpses of other truckies—the most unlikely faces you’ve ever seen: young men who looked barely old enough to drive, women with makeup and trinkets in their hair, others resembling moonlighting rocket scientists, all Coke-bottle glasses and lantern jaws, lit by the eerie glow of dashboard lights.

Uramoto was single. He had a girl somewhere down south, near Fukuoka. On this subject he laughed nervously and lit one cigarette with another. Then our conversation dried up and I went to sleep. Rain beat down on the Fuso’s cab and Ladysmith Black Mambazo sang ‘Homeless’ on the radio.

A little after midnight we pulled into a roadhouse. The rain had subsided leaving the night mist heavy, the mountain air chilled and calm. Dozens and dozens of trucks lined up in the parking bay, all of them idling, their drivers dozing, exhausts bubbling oily fumes in the cold night. I went in search of a snack.

Uramoto had kept his pedal to the metal; we were in Yamanashi and closer to Kōfu than I had thought. Somewhere in the Kōfu Basin we pulled in at another roadhouse. This time we drank some beer, and in weary silence, reclined our captain’s chairs and fell asleep to the caress of the Fuso’s faux-lace curtains.

At six a.m., I awoke to Billie Holiday’s ‘Stormy Weather’ and we cruised into Kōfu with its wide, mist-filled streets, deserted save for the old-timers pacing the sidewalks in their Uniqlo sweats.

High over the city, the mountains of the Kōfu Basin loomed large wrapped in their blankets of mist. I said farewell to Uramoto—thanking him for the ride, bidding him safe travels. He slipped me some rice crackers for my onward journey. Then I bought a one-way ticket to Shinjuku and jumped aboard the next local train.

Icy mountain streams gushed from valley sides each side of the rail line. Traditional wooden houses perched impossibly above them. On the balcony of one, I glimpsed a housewife in the midst of hanging out her laundry. She looked as if she hadn’t slept in a thousand years. She had fallen asleep in the morning sunlight, peg and clothes still in hand.

Then I too was asleep, rocking and rolling with the motion of the train, following a river to a great city, with a rice cracker in hand.

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For a previous short story by Simon, see https://archived.writersinkyoto.com/2018/03/sword-dancer-rowe/

For Simon’s account of marketing his self-published collection of short stories, see here