by Lucy Dickens
I reach the outside of what I think is the teahouse I’m heading to, and it’s a low building bathed in sunlight, with sloping roofs and a stone pathway leading to the door. Beside the pathway is a small wooden sign with 茶 の湯 carved onto it. I remember that first character being associated with tea, because it makes up the second part of the word ocha (お茶 – tea). And the only reason I remember that is because I associate the little character with looking like it was a ‘T’ inside a house. And Japan has a lot of teahouses. Bear with me, okay.
So if tea is there on the sign, and this is where my directions lead me, I’m reasonably confident I’m not going to walk up to a random villager’s door and demand a cuppa. I doubt it says, ‘Move on, tourist, no tea here for you today’.
Later on, I’ll realise this sign literally says ‘Way of the Tea’, while pointing me towards the teahouse, so it really couldn’t have been clearer.
Following the pathway, I reach the door, where a stone basin and scoop invite me to wash my hands before entering. The gardens are so simple, all neutral tones of beige and green, no fancy flowers, no strongly perfumed shrubberies. And looking at the building itself, it follows the same colour palette, with clean lines and humble decoration.
Tea ceremonies in Japan are quite special and sacred, so thanks to me planning for Matt and I to partake in one during the Honeymoon Highlights tour – and knowing what a bumbling idiot he could be at times – I’m pretty clued up on the etiquette I need to follow. Probably not perfect, but I’ll try.
The doorway is purposefully low, and when my host, dressed in a deep sea-blue kimono, meets me at the entrance and beckons me inside, I bow, as I’m supposed to in order to show humility, and remove my shoes.
For Brits, who drink 40,000 cups of tea per day, their home or office kitchens a steam-filled conveyer belt of PG Tips being dunked and squeezed, the ‘way of tea’ in Japan wouldn’t really work. Here, it’s a careful, intricate, drawn-out ritual to appreciate every moment and every drop. Here, it is perfect.
It turns out I’m the only one here for today’s ceremony, a bonus for getting a little further away from the hubbub of the city. I take a seat inside the tearoom on the tatami mat floor. Natural colours of creams and browns add a calming serenity to the room, the only decoration being an alcove with a hanging lilac calligraphy scroll, and the delicate ceramic and bamboo equipment that my host is setting out in front of us.
Using a cloth plucked from her kimono, she cleans the equipment methodically in front of me while I watch. The process reminds me of those fireplace videos you can watch on Netflix, where there isn’t a lot of action but it’s just lovely to gaze at and experience.
Flavoured KitKat’s aside, I think I’m about to try matcha for the first time. She reaches a teeny scoop into a pot and pulls out a spoonful of green powder, which she then stirs with a cool little bamboo whisk into some water. I’ve been fancying jumping aboard the trendy matcha train for a while so this is very exciting. And then she pulls out some little lilac blobby nibbly things and, well, you know I like food. I can’t stop thinking about them.
‘Amai?’ I whisper, ‘sweet?’ because I’m not sure if I’m allowed to say anything.
But my host meets my eyes and smiles, nodding.
I then point to the tea. ‘Nigai?’ I ask, which I think is the word for bitter, though whether I’m using it correctly is anyone’s guess. But she nods again, and then puts on the floor in front of me a little bowl filled with the green matcha tea.
She passes me one of the sweets first, a fruity jelly globe which is yum, and then gestures for me to drink the tea. Now, have I remembered the next bit correctly? I watch my host for signs of shock and horror in case I bugger it up, but I reach out for the bowl with my right hand, place it in my left hand, turn it so the front is facing away from me, and take a sip.
Oh, it is a little bitter! Nice, but, well, I’m glad for that sweetie.
After a few sips I return the bowl to the mat and bow low, thanking my host.
We sit in a companionable silence for a while, drinking more tea, and enjoying the tranquillity, and when I notice the light outside beginning to fade from yellow to mauve, I decide I’d better leave this little fishing village and make my way back into Hiroshima. I leave the way of the tea in Tomonoura, but keep the way of tranquillity with me.
One day, I’d like to live somewhere I can catch a ferry to and from work. Can I do that in London? I think that some people do. And if I don’t go to London … maybe it won’t be so bad. As I sit here the following morning, leaving Hiroshima City and sailing the ten minutes to Miyajima Island, I feel worrisome thoughts drift away in the breeze, like broken spider webs. And it feels good.
My hair will be a haystack by the time we arrive, but I refuse to go inside, instead leaning my arms on the side of the ferry, face to the sun, waiting for us to be close enough for me to see one of Japan’s official top three views.
I wonder who picks the top three views … surely dream views mean something different for each person, and I wonder what would be my own so far in Japan. The view under the surface of the water on Ishigaki, for sure. The view of the moon garden from the veranda of Kiyomizu-dera Temple in Kyoto. And what else …
When I see a glint of bright vermillion centred in the azure water, I stand up straighter, and get my phone out to take some footage. I think I just found my what else, and I might just agree with the mystical top three list creators.
The Itsukushima Shrine’s torii gate appears to float during high tide, and if you’d ever casually flicked through a Japanese holiday brochure, as you do, you will absolutely have spotted this. And here it is, in real life! It’s fifty foot of wooden gloriousness and I bow my head at it a little, just in case I’m supposed to from this distance.
Stepping off the ferry and onto the island, I join the other passengers in taking 10 million photos and fourteen hours of video footage before dragging my gaze away to go and explore the rest of the shrine, and the island. What would my top three views have been if I’d never come to Japan? That’s a question I’m happy that I don’t have to worry about.
I’m really loving this bright, orangey red on the shrines. It causes the bridges and the tunnels and the buildings to pop with colour in a way you rarely see elsewhere. I spend a happy few hours on Miyajima, making videos, taking pictures, exploring the shrine, which even has a whole room dedicated to barrels of sake! I wonder if I’ll try any more sake on this trip. Probably shouldn’t just start helping myself to this collection, though.
I follow a walking trail up to the Tahoto pagoda, passing deer on the way, and reach a viewpoint that lets me experience the beauty of Japan laid out in front of me, with the torii, the islands, a few cherry blossom and this beautiful sixteenth-century structure. Hiroshima City glitters in the distance, strong and proud.
I lift my head to the sun and take a deep breath. There’s something about this city that makes me want to be the same. It makes me want to live a little.
Chapter 12
Lit from within, and
Actually I’m not thinking
About you at all
I’m back in the hostel early evening, squished deep inside an armchair in the communal lounge just off reception when I hear a lot of chatter in Japanese. I look up from the tattered Jackie Collins novel I found on a ‘take one leave one’ bookshelf that it looks like many people have loved before me and try and catch a word or two. I keep hearing the word for six, and one, and sorry, but that’s about all I can distinguish.
‘Excuse me,’ the woman who checked me in at reception is leaning over her desk, calling to me.
‘Me?’
‘Yeah, hello English girl.’
‘Hello.’
‘Do you want to go sake tasting?’
What? ‘When?’
Rather than the receptionist, it’s a Japanese guy with playful eyes, a cute face and caramel-coloured let-me-run-my-hands-through-that hair who pokes his head around the
corner, causing me to sit up in my chair and stop picking at my spot. He’s dressed in jeans and a white, slim-fit shirt, rolled up at the sleeves, open at the collar, with a flash of olive skin peeping out at me and I hold his gaze for a fraction longer than is appropriate of me. He grins at me and my loins melt a little, if that’s a thing and not something to be worried about, medically. ‘Now,’ he says. ‘With us.’
I put my book down and clear my throat. ‘What?’
The receptionist continues to holler at me. ‘The guys have booked a sake tasting but the tour company won’t go unless there is a minimum of six people and they are only five.’
Cute guy adds, ‘If you don’t come with us, everything will be ruined.’
‘Everything?’
‘Everything.’
I mean, I did have big plans to get a vending machine ramen and take it out to eat it next to the river, but I suppose I could go drinking with a bunch of strange men instead? Is that dangerous? Probably. I’m still weighing up the decision when a couple more of cute guy’s friends emerge from around the corner. They all look to be about my age, or perhaps a bit younger, and they’re all smiling at me encouragingly.
The receptionist comes out from behind the desk, holding a phone in her hand and covering the receiver. ‘If it helps, the tour guide is a woman, and that one there,’ she points at one of the other four guys who have now all edged into the common room to see who their mysterious chaperone might be. ‘That one is my little brother. You will be safe. And he and his friends will divide the cost of your tasting.’ She talks sharply to the one she pointed to, who looks a little put out at, presumably, being told they have to cover my costs if they want to drag me along so they can still go.
This is new territory for me in so many ways. I’ve spent my whole life with an entourage of siblings, my boyfriend, my close circle of friends. I’ve never gone to a party on my own. I’ve never walked into a room and had to make friends without at least one friendly face already by my side. I’ve always thought of that as a good thing, but maybe I was wrong. Catch every adventure, Ariel Cortez once told me. And I suppose sake tasting in Hiroshima is a little more adventurous than ramen eating by a river, so … bugger it! I agree, and before I know it a bus is pulling up outside, I’ve barely had time to haul my arse back to my room to change into something more appropriate for nightlife (which is basically just the one going-out top that I brought with me, underneath a black sweater), and we’re off.
Caramel-haired hot guy sits next to me on the bus, and introduces himself as Riku.
‘Hi, Riku, I’m Charlotte.’
‘Hajimemashite, Charlotte.’
‘So why is this sake trip so important to you all?’ I ask him.
‘It’s kind of my fault,’ he admits. ‘We are all at university, but this summer I’m moving to the US to do a year abroad – I study engineering with English language. This is a vacation week in Japan, and it’s going to be the last time we can all be together for a while. We’re all studying in Tokyo, but none of us had visited Hiroshima before now, and we get free accommodation through my friend’s sister at the hostel.’
‘So they want to send you to foreign lands with one last sake knees-up?’
‘Why are my knees up?’ he asks, looking down at his legs.
‘No, it’s just an expression.’
‘Like this?’ Riku brings his knees up towards his chin, tucking himself into a strange ball between the seats of the minibus.
I laugh with him. ‘No, you don’t need to actually put your knees up, it’s an expression, I mean you are going to have one last night of sake-style fun together.’
He unfolds himself, looking shy but pleased at having made me laugh. ‘Yes, you get it, I knew you would be a good companion. Where are you from?’
‘England. Your English is very good, by the way.’
‘My mother spent a long time in England before having me, so I’ve grown up trying to learn it really well. How come you’re in Japan on your own?’
I pause. ‘Well,’ I start, quietly. He leans in towards me a little and, if I’m going to be completely honest with you, I want to push that lock of hair out of his face and go in for a kiss. What is wrong with me! My whole life I have never so much as looked at another man who wasn’t Matt. No need to take that too literally; I do have a minor ogling obsession with the Hemsworths. But I have never found myself cosying up to a stranger that I met in a hotel reception, especially not a stranger with such soft, dark eyes … I realise that Riku is staring back at me, waiting for my response, and in a snap decision, I choose to not to be a Debbie Downer and regale him with my sorrowful tale, so instead I say, ‘Just having an adventure.’
Ammmm I flirting? I think I might be. I think those teen mags I used to read, when I wasn’t nose deep in my travel mags, would probably say that yes, all this flittery eye contact and leany-leany-body language is indeed a dash of flirtation. I kind of like it, it makes my heart race. And what’s more, he’s flirting back.
It turns out, a sake tasting is quite the thing to do in Hiroshima; they even have sake districts, which people visit on day trips and where you can hop from brewery to brewery. We, instead, are going to a sake bar in downtown Hiroshima and our guide will talk us through different sakes from these same breweries. Riku says there’ll be food as well, which is jolly good news.
‘Have you tried sake before?’ he asks me.
‘Yeah,’ I say, though I must have made a bit of a face because he laughs.
‘It’s not everybody’s favourite. To be honest with you, we would usually drink beer, but this is a bit of fun. I’m sorry now for any silly behaviour. Sake tends to sneak up on you.’
‘Don’t be – nothing wrong with a bit of silly behaviour,’ I say, without meaning that to sound quite so coquettish. You know what, actually, I fully meant it to.
The bus stops and I look out to see crowds of locals and visitors filling the street, dark skies above and those neon lights glowing all around me. It’s certainly busy, and when we get off the bus, our guide, Moko, leads us straight into an adjacent bar where we all have to duck to get in and go straight down a flight of stairs. Riku reaches behind him and takes my hand, just to keep us all together, of course, but it sets my heart ping-ponging. I haven’t had my hand held for … well, it feels like for ever. It’s only been a month or so, really, but when you get used to having someone hold it every day and then they’re gone, I guess I’d been reaching out to feel that touch again without even realising it. There is a split-second where I don’t know how I feel. It could go either way. I could either lean into it, or make my excuses and go home. I let him hold it as we move through the crowded bar, feeling comfortable but also electric, and at one point, just for a fleeting second, Riku glances behind him and holds my gaze. He half-smiles and turns back in the direction he’s moving and it’s everything I have not to let my fingers squeeze into his. If this were a teen movie, that bit would have been in slow motion, and to be honest I kind of feel like I am in a teen movie right now.
‘We’ll sit here,’ Moko calls to the group politely for my benefit, and then repeats the same in Japanese. She points towards three empty seats at the bar and leans in to say into my ear so she can be heard, ‘My English is not good, I’m sorry.’
‘No, it’s fine, you weren’t expecting me to be on this tour. I’ll figure it out, please don’t worry.’ God, everyone has been so nice to me since I got to Japan. I remember how nervous I was getting on the plane about not speaking enough Japanese, but it hasn’t been an issue at all. Everyone has been so accommodating and kind, continuing to apologise that they don’t speak enough English, when my grasp of their language is so clearly appalling. There are seven of us, including Moko, and three seats, so before I can even protest, Riku angles himself beside one of the barstools and gestures for me to sit.
‘No, you sit down, it’s your thing, I’ll stand at the back.’
‘Please, I insist,’ he grins. ‘I can stand
behind you.’
Well … okay. The room is too loud and jostley to have a ten-minute debate about it, so I climb up onto the stool facing the bar and Riku rests on the back of it.
Moko leans across the bar to the bartender, speaking to him and showing him a piece of paper, which I’d guess is a booking confirmation, and whoosh, all of a sudden seven little cups, almost like egg cups, are placed in front of us, and the barman is unscrewing a bottle, decanting the almost clear liquid into them. He explains the type of sake and Moko repeats it to the boys. I catch the word amai.
‘Sweet?’ I ask Riku.
‘I’m sorry, what?’ he says back and leans in closer, so my lips are near his ear.
‘Sweet?’ I repeat. ‘Amai?’ Oh my.
‘Yes!’ he cries, and reaches past me to pick up a cup. ‘Kanpai!’ He cheers first me and then the others.
I knock back the sake and only realise afterwards that that is clearly not how you’re supposed to do it, because everybody else has taken a sip and I’m trying not to cough my guts up. ‘It’s very nice,’ I wheeze, and the barman laughs and tops up my cup.
Riku holds my cup up for me again and I take it. He brings his towards his mouth and says, ‘Like this. Kanpai.’
Gently he clonks his cup against mine and then sips, and I watch him like I’m being a very good student when all I’m really thinking is …
Seriously, what is wrong with me tonight?
Or … what is right with me? It’s not that strange that I’d be feeling an attraction to a good-looking guy again when Matt and I haven’t been together for over a month, is it? When Brienne broke up with her boyfriend last year, she watched Magic Mike every day for seven weeks, until we had to have an intervention because I found her looking at flights to Las Vegas and wearing a backwards cap.
I’m not saying I’m sitting here wanting Riku to be my new boyfriend, but I am a straight woman, and he is a man and he is just, well, delicious. And it’s nice to feel a spark again in my cold, dead, crumbled heart.