Postcards From Japan
Four short stories inspired by the rising sun
By IAN MACKENZIE


                                     Kaya

On the back of his truck there is a sticker that reads: IF YOU DRINK AND DRIVE YOU ARE A BLOODY IDIOT.

He is standing behind it, looking up the crane, a long, blue arm holding a skinned log swinging slowly. The remote control is in his left hand, the sleeve of his Hanten halfway down his forearm. The thick, black collar is covered with white kanji, the mark of a carpenter. He is watching the log, gently coaxing it into place with his thumb, before lowering it onto the second story frame. I wait on the back of the lorry with the remaining logs.

The sun is out but the first winter chill has crept up. Everyone is wearing an extra layer. Kaya shouts across to the guys on the structure who are holding crowbars and waiting. They signal an okay, "Hai," and the log slowly settles into place.

At the house, Kuma has finished the last log. He joins us covered in sawdust. Everybody smiles and says "Otsukare," the standard phrase when you finish work. He gratefully accepts the beer. The barbecue is spread out between the house and Kaya's woodframe garage. His Mitsubishi jeep is at the back, gun-metal and dusty. The tires are large. Kaya likes large tires and engines. The red Ferrari-look-alike GTO is parked in front of the jeep and has been covered for winter. Squeezed in between the side of the garage and the GTO are the bikes. A dirt bike and a chopper sit side by side. His garage is a toy box, only the toys are big and have tread.

At the back of the yard, Kaya's shed is full of chainsaws. They are arranged neatly, covered in dust and wood chips. The shed smells like summer. Across the main road, outside his yard, there is a calm wooden face. It has been carved by a 74cc Husqvarna from a maruta, a log. Perfect features and worn by the weather.

The barbecue is huge. Chilled bottles of VB and Asahi beer litter a makeshift table of four-by-two and chipboard. There are strips of beef, soaked in rich sauce, chunks of raw fish, and hand-made rice balls wrapped in seaweed. Chopsticks shuttle food onto the mesh grill and flip burning meat. Everyone takes long pulls on the last of the autumn beers with half an eye on the sizzling sagari beef, one hand holding a bottle, the other clutching a paper plate with yakiniku sauce.

We occasionally glance at the volcano, Yoteizan, now covered in snow. It dominates the scenery. Not long until we are skiing. Kaya is reluctantly packing up his yard day by day. Yoteizan's shadow is growing longer and longer. Like a bear he will hibernate, tuck himself away in his log house and stubbornly wait for the snow to leave before coming out again to build houses.

We drink until the coals can't keep back the chills. Kaya has worked hard through summer and autumn and we wash away the warm season until late with cool drinks.



                              Opening Ceremony

Someone made a speech again and the head of the local tourist office is dressed like a koala. I have politely buzzed around all of the correct tables and I find myself being taunted by a Japanese koala bear, a furry swashbuckler with a Kirin beer bottle, a stubby little glass wrapped in his paw. He has said "Chiiazu" to everyone in a slurred Japanese accent. I can almost see his wallet falling out of his pocket, full of money.

The suits line the exit and press us into the night. Our plastic bags are full of trail maps and an awkward poster and we are bowed at as we leave, asked to humbly support the resort again this year. Pension owners hover slightly as if they may be invited back to finish the party those buggers started. But they soon drift away, like summer. The restaurants and bars are dark with browned leaves blown against the doors. Wind forces jackets open and plastic bags to flap among mumbled goodnights.

I see ghosts of old boarders and skiers clambering over a stuffed bear that isn't there and see white men drinking beer in the dark light of the ramen shop. The road is quiet as I wander home, the ghosts whirling around me.

The convenience store burns gold with hot rice balls and cans of coffee. I remember a six pack of beer and a half pipe in the snow on New Year's day, the rain slick on my jacket. My hand finds an ice cream called Mow but I discard it, like the ghosts, and pull a Georgia coffee from the glass-doored hot box.

The last ghost is waiting on the corner by the rubbish bin. He is wearing a jacket, torn along the sleeve, his thermals visible beneath. The coffee tastes like Scotch as I near him. My face is frozen with tears. His cigarette burns brightly, fades, and his eyes disappear. His voice is ice. "After you," he says.



                                    Mr. Bab

The waiting room is blue, with a neat stack of Manga comic books in the corner. Bab san is there in blue jeans and a rumpled sweater. He is leafing through a magazine, but looks up and smiles when he sees me.

He is the same age as my father, only leaner and with a better tan. He has grown a goatee. Right after the accident, his face bandaged, he started to grow it, as if his face felt too light without his teeth.

Bab san always has a story. You bump into a friend who tells you that Bab has torn ligaments or cut himself with a chainsaw or crashed his dirt bike. You both chuckle and comment on how he'll kill himself one day.

Lost in the powder, this time he smashed into a tree, an abrupt exclamation mark on a life full of crashes. He lost 10 teeth, and now we are sitting together waiting to see Nakagawa Sensei.

Bab san is one of the last telemark mafia, the local pension owner who grabs snatches of powder between guest arrivals and departures. Only a handful remain, those who swagger around the Seicomart buying Onigiri riceballs before a backcountry trip. They are wrinkled with thinning hair and wear Oakley sunglasses. They started this place. They first put the lines in that we take for granted. They hiked when there were no lifts and they skied untouched powder until their wives called them home.

I remember, deep in February, snowflakes the size of coins. Bab was with Igarashii san, their voices heard long before we saw them. They raced through the trees, playful ghosts from years gone by. They whipped by us, wiping goggles and spitting snow from huge grins. They were a skiing history lesson, skiing the lines of 20 years ago. I am sure they did not see us.

Before patrollers cared about ropes and the bubble-year masses skied in bright pink suits on the groomed runs, Bab san and his fraternity scythed through light, dry powder, away from the crowds. He gave up his job as a mechanic and chose waist-deep, and became a ghost in the trees.

He skis memories. He is back in the old days, away from Tokyo. He is here now, skiing past me, not seeing me. He is with the pack, the 20 guys from 20 years ago. He has just left Tokyo. The line is the same, the powder is the same and he is skiing the memory.

He has shared turns with all of us, through Fujiwara no sawa, down Jacksons, or Kitashamen. It's almost as if we are there, skiing with the mafia, 20 years ago. With have all shared turns with him, the first time we skied Higashione, or Strawberries. We skied with him and we have shared his roguish smiles.

I feel like his guest, waiting in his pension with a cold Sapporo Classic, waiting to pat him on the back and thank him.

I leave the dentist, my jaw numb. He has already left. With new teeth, he will be smiling. He will be hiking the peak, and I will see him in the first gulley, laughing like a ghost with Igarashii san.



                                      Onsen

We emerge from the onsen, the hot spring, to the street. Steam rises from the drains by the road like patient ghosts. The worn weatherboards around the outside pool look like an old fort on the corner of the street. Snowflakes the size of 500 yen coins fall under the lights and into the steam.

Hot water, beer, and lack of food has made us slap-happy and ravenous. With the snow settling on our hats, someone says "Nonbei," and we clamber into the Hiace, laughing and pushing, wet towels and frozen hair.

The steady incline takes us past Seicomart. The car park is swarming with day-trippers grabbing rice balls for the drive back to Sapporo and people buying their groceries or their booze for the night. Tourists cross the car park carrying six packs of Sapporo Classic and bottles of sake, packets of dried squid already open.

Nonbei is full but we squeeze in. Jeff knows the girl. Two large electrical cable drums have been turned on their side to make tables with a cup of chopsticks in the middle. We shout for beer and hot sake, sumimasen, and order edamame. Hectic hands press the hot, salty beans into mouths and drop the shells in the small brown dishes.

They bring a basket with cups. All colors and styles, we choose one each, the girls taking the small ones and the guys already clasping the piping hot sake by the neck, filling a friends cup before lifting their own. We order yakitori, sashimi, mochi, and hokke, orders rolling over orders at the waitress’s scribbling pen.

Chopsticks click and dive, and grilled fish is torn apart. Japanese girls deftly separate the good bits from the bones, and the blokes shout for more hot sake, their throats still sweet and warm. Another pitcher of Sapporo draft and someone pours for all, then shouts for more when it runs dry.

On the walls the menu is written in marker pen on fluorescent paper. Bamboo blinds hang between tables and Japanese girls giggle behind their hands at bleary nods and smiles from the foreigners' table. Waitresses glide between tables and shout "Hai!" in unison or "Irasshaimase!" as new guests come in.

An oval dish of sashimi, blood red tuna, and lucid yellowtail is placed in the middle of the drum. Large green leaves and bundles of white stringy radish cover the plate and the fish. The wasabi looks like play dough. We dive in, wasabi into soy sauce followed by chunks of octopus and salmon.

Laughter rolls into shouts for hot sake. The girls drink chuhai, fruit and alcohol, red cheeks and giggles.

Streetlights line the pension village, orange over snowfall, the headlights catching flakes as we drive past the pensions. Half Note is setting up for the jazz night and Kimamaya is having another indoor Barbecue. Each place is a photograph of smiling faces and raised cans of beer, snow piled high under soft, inviting windows.


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