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A speck of land between Japan and Korea, Iki Island is
a 2 hour ferry ride off the coast from Fukuoka, the
largest city on Kyushu. In late August I caught one
of those ferries packed with Japanese high school students
who crowded around me to translate. Pressed in on all sides,
I patiently took in the new vocabulary as the sea breeze blasted
us and the boat heaved in the huge, typhoon charged waves.
Upon arrival in the tiny harbour, the students said a cheery
goodbye and piled into their buses. As I walked up the hill,
I looked back to see all of them peering at me through the
bus' windows, with looks of genuine concern. My guidebook
didn't even have a chapter on Iki, so I was on my own, without
a reservation, and absolutely no Japanese. When I got my bearings
I headed up the hill, dragging my suitcase. I was relieved
to see the buses roar off in a cloud of exhaust, the students
frantically waving, their faces like yin and yang symbols,
half smile, half scowl. What was I doing?
A half an hour later I had found a ryokan run by a squid fisherman's
family, who rented me a sturdy bicycle to get around the island.
It was still early, and the mother gave me a quick Japanese
explanation (with furious hand motions) to explain the layout
of the island's roads. From her spiel I gathered the hills
would be difficult, but clean, empty beaches would be the
reward.
I spent that afternoon puffing up hills and coasting down
steep valleys, walking deserted beaches and listening to the
rush of the wind through the green rice fields that sat literally
next the ocean. All around me were tiny villages dotting the
hilltops, with lines of laundry flapping in the breeze. I
never passed another bicyclist, and only a few cars passed
me with polite toots of their horn.
On one hilltop, I stopped to write in my journal, and gather
my strength for the three very large hills I had coasted down
earlier in the day. As I sat, absorbed in my writing, I heard
a muttering, a cackle, and a laugh coming from the road.
At first, I saw no one, but then a woman, bent nearly double,
came up the road and gave me a huge grin, her few remaining
teeth pointing crazily in all directions. With a formal greeting,
she sat down next to me and peered at my writing, as if it
were Egyptian or Swahili, and she chatted with me as if I
understood her every word. We sat there, the old woman and
I, as the sun crashed into the sea, and dark clouds on the
horizon announced the arrival of the typhoon that would come
ashore the next day, churning the sea so badly that the ferry
service would be cancelled for two days.
Eventually I stood up, realizing that if I didn't get a start,
I would arrive back in the harbour after dark, and I wasn't
able to understand how long my bike rental was good for. As
I dusted off my bag, the old woman looked at me sadly, and
was about to say goodbye. But then I realized the 2nd seat
on the bike would be large enough to give her a ride. In a
pantomine similar to that of the woman who had rented me the
bike, I tried to offer the woman a lift; she couldn't live
that far away, and I didn't want to leave this woman who had
been such good company.
At first she couldn't understand what I was saying, but then
the penny dropped: she stared, her mouth open, at what I was
offering. She started to bow again and again, shaking her
head at me in a violent refusal. But then she stopped, and
looked around: there would be no one here to witness the sight
of her riding on the back of a tall, crazy foreigner's bike,
so why not?
She hiked up her skirt, and I stabilized the bike as she got
on. She gingerly reached out and grabbed my shoulders, unsure
of what she was getting herself into. Before she could say
no, I was off, jumping on the seat as I coasted down the hill
towards the bottom; the wheel wobbled, the bike lurched, and
I almost dumped that poor woman into a rice field.
But she hung on, desperately, as I pedaled up the next hill,
and the pace slowed as I slowly reached the top. I glanced
back, the old woman was muttering silently to herself, as
if praying.
Over the next few hills, we struggled up, coasted down, and
laughed our heads off. The woman never fell off, although
it came close a few times. No car or any pedestrian saw us,
and if they had, what could they have done to stop us from
having so much fun?
And then the tap that I had been dreading came on my shoulder;
we had reached the tiny road where her house was, and she
needed to get off. Flooded with sadness, I braced the bike
as she hopped, off, and she collapsed in a series of deep
bows. In the most honorific Japanese she was thanking me,
and I returned the gesture as best I could.
So we stood there, in the setting sun, bowing to each other
like two old friends, in the middle of the black asphalt road,
on that tiny speck of land in the Sea of Japan, two people
from completely different cultures, ages and religions, not
wanting to say goodbye.
As I hopped back on the bike, and coasted down the hill, I
looked back to see the old woman still bowing to the ground,
the grin still there, from ear to ear, and the crooked teeth
pointing at me.
Text © Dave Lowe, all rights reserved.
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Travel Writers: Tandem meeting by Dave Lowe
Globe Trekker: 
