Today I went exploring in the rain, which is really to say that I went driving in the rain, which is really to say that I didn't do much exploring at all. In fact I ended up at a truck stop for tourists on their way to grander places. Tourism is as tourism does; I guess I felt like blending in with the other tourists for a bit so I ate the greasy truck stop food and wandered around the kitschy shops. And nothing much happened.
Until I left.
On the way to the car I noticed some steps leading up into the mountain. Mossy, crooked stone steps, right out of a fairytale (or, alternatively, a cautionary story about mountain bakemono). The top of the steps was hidden by the trees.
I might have mentioned this before, but if you ever want to see something beautiful in Japan, look for the trees. The Japanese, in their enduring reverence for the ancient plants, never fail to build something serene and breathtaking to keep them company. So I climbed the steps, which got progressively mossier, through patches of blue flowers and crumbling stone figures until I reached the top. There I found a huge field with (of all things) a giant slide made from poured concrete in the middle. It was useless as a slide; too rough by far--but I couldn't see what else it could be. Everything around it was eerily still and untouched. I felt certain someone would rush out at me and chase me away from the forbidden field but no one appeared, even when I discovered the little temple off to the side and rang the giant gong hanging above its lattice door three times. There were paper cranes hanging everywhere; thousands of them, definitely enough for several wishes. And statues and wooden carvings of temple guardians, all as mossy and forgotten as the steps had been, all mine to examine at leisure. I wandered around them, all curious eyes and fingers, until the rain finally drove me back to the car.
If I could give you all one experience of Japan--draw all of its variety and charming strangeness into a simple account--it would be this: the day I discovered the secret temple and its playground watching over a truck stop.
