I found her a few minutes later inside a small traditional building just outside the station. She sat on the edge of the shallow pool, soaking her feet and calves in the steaming water. Several tired-looking commuters—businessmen, students and a few elderly people—were doing the same. I took in the surreal sight and then took off my shoes, rolled up my jeans, and sat beside her.
She smiled at me. “Why do you think it’s called Onsen Station?”
The train, if you can call two cars with a driver a train, left on time. We sped west beside Lake Shinji-ko, following the shoreline, with a tree-covered ridge on one side and a narrow winding road on the other. Small houses dotted the shore, but unlike the lake cottages you’d find in America, these were the homes of fisherman, with nets and narrow boats tied up outside.
Past the lake, the single track sliced across fields, occasionally speeding between little clusters of old houses and barns that stood dangerously close to the tracks. Okaasan, as usual, was sound asleep, her head resting against my shoulder.
We stopped at a few lonely concrete platforms to pick up schoolkids or drop off weary salarymen in identical blue suits. The more kids I saw here, the more I understood why Shoko always wore her uniform. Every teenager wore one here. The styles varied, but I didn’t see one kid in street clothes.
The station at the end of the line was smaller and older, with one elderly ticket checker standing to greet us as we struggled through the turnstiles with our luggage. We found a taxi and were soon on our way. I didn’t pay attention to the address, but within a few minutes it was obvious the driver was having trouble finding the place.
“What’s the problem?” I asked Okaasan. “This isn’t a very big town.”
“Addresses are different in Japan,” she said in English. “Most streets are nameless, just spaces that separate blocks. The address is actually the name of the block of houses.”
“OK, but I still don’t see why it’s so hard to find one.”
“They number the houses in the order they were built,” she said, “so house number twelve might be in between numbers seven and two.”
The street he finally dropped us off at was barely wide enough for the taxi.
“I also gave him a fake address,” Okaasan said, chuckling. “The poor guy will probably be up all night trying to figure it out.” She waited until the taillights disappeared around the corner and then set out at a fast pace up another narrow lane. We towed our suitcases over the cobblestones and open drains through a maze of passageways, getting farther and farther from the main road. I could have sworn we were going in circles. Few houses had lights on and the rumble of our suitcase wheels was the loudest sound, but whenever we stopped, I heard the sound of waves washing over the beach.
“The ocean is two blocks that way.” Okaasan pointed as we turned up a different alley, which took us past more dark houses. “Do you feel anything? You’re better at this than me.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t even feel my feet.
“I hope that’s a good thing.” She took a deep breath and stretched. Then she was off again.
About a block later, she stopped and nodded at a rundown little house with rusty, dented corrugated steel walls. It looked bad even in the dark.
There were no lights on, but the sliding door, which opened right off the narrow alley, was unlocked.
“It’s my grandmother’s house, on my adopted mother’s side. She lived here most of her life.” She looked around with a sigh. “No one lives in most of these houses anymore.”
“Why?”
She rested her hand on the door frame.
“Things changed after the war. Farmers and fishermen didn’t want their children to work as hard as they had. They wanted them to become doctors and lawyers and businessmen. But to do that, the children had to go far away to university. And professional jobs were in the big cities, not here. So they stayed in the city, got married, had families, and most never came back.” She paused. “I suppose I’m one of them.”
“But this is prime waterfront property. It must be worth a fortune. That should bring them back eventually.”
She let out a small laugh. “This is not America. The Japanese are too busy working to relax at the beach. This land is worthless to them. This place is dying, like a fire burned down to the embers. Even the great shrine is growing cold.”
The town might have been dying, but someone was paying attention. We’d been inside maybe five minutes, with a few lights on, when the front door slid open.
“Who’s there?” someone called out.
“Please excuse us!” Okaasan rushed across the tatami to the inner doorway and then knelt and slid it open. There stood a gray-haired, tired-looking man, his skin wrinkled and tanned, probably from years spent on the ocean. He stared at her, and then his eyes opened wide in recognition.
“Misako? Is that you?” He bowed. “I apologize for bothering you in your grandmother’s home. I thought you were an intruder,” he said as he bobbed up and down in a series of low bows.
“Please excuse us, Mr. Ito. Thank you for taking care of Grandmother’s property.” She returned his bows while I stood behind her and wondered if they would go on bowing and apologizing all night.
“Let me turn on the gas on for you. Do you need groceries? I will get my car—”
“No, no, Mr. Ito, please don’t worry. We’re tired and need our sleep. We’ll go for groceries in the morning.” She turned to me. “This is my son, Junya. This is Mr. Ito, my grandmother’s neighbor.”
I bowed to him and he returned it. “He is growing tall in America. The last time I saw him, he was this big.” He held his palm near his knee. Then, after more bowing, he left.
“Nosy neighbor,” I said after the door had closed.
“That’s the way it is here. Everyone knows everything.” She smirked. “Well, at least they think they do.”
The house smelled musty, and everything was covered in dust. Okaasan found a broom and began sweeping the floor while I pulled the futon mattresses out of the cupboard and laid them on the tattered tatami mats. Then I sat and looked around as exhaustion settled over me, leaving my body heavy.
The house was a traditional post-and-beam style, with yellowed and water-stained shoji panels that divided the small rooms. Electricity had obviously been an afterthought, with wires running across the low ceiling beams to the outlets and switches. The small kitchen didn’t have a refrigerator, and there was no hot water. The best this place could hope for was to make it into a renovation magazine as a “before” picture.
It was cold, too. The windows rattled in their frames whenever the wind gusted, and there was a constant draft. Okaasan laughed when I asked her to turn on the furnace. She pointed to a small portable heater at the end of a frayed orange cord, but I decided against it. I’d be warm, all right—that thing would probably send the whole house up in smoke.
“Your grandmother lived here all her life?”
“Until she was ninety-three,” Okaasan said. “The simple life is the best life.”
I gave her a look. When we’d visited Grandpa’s yacht last year, she’d flopped onto the king-size bed in the master cabin and asked Dad if they could go on a cruise—forever. Simple life, my ass.
“This’ll be our home for a few days,” she told me as we slid under the covers of our small beds. It was about nine o’clock local time, but for us it was almost five in the morning. “Tomorrow you can visit Izumo.”
For some reason, the thought sent a shiver up my spine.
The next morning, we were awake before five o’clock local time, our jet-lagged bodies confused. It was too early to buy groceries, so after wasting as much time on our futons as we could, we dressed and walked to the beach as the sun came up. The little bay reminded me of the beaches in Carmel. I headed toward the water.
Any beach was reason enough for Okaasan to kick off her shoes and I was never far behind, but not here. There was garbage everywhere—plastic containers, bo
ttles, Styrofoam—anything that could float had washed up. I kicked a cup and asked her what we were doing today.
“I have people I need to see,” she said, looking out at the water. “But you cannot come with me.”
“Why not? I thought we were done with secrets.”
“It’s not that, Junya.” She kept her thoughts hidden. “It may be possible later, but not now. I’m sorry. Go sightseeing.”
“Are you going to the other side?”
“I cannot go there!” she snapped. “For once, just do as I ask!”
After a silent breakfast of white toast, a cold hard-boiled egg swimming on a saucer, and a small salad, all served by an old woman who looked half-asleep, we walked back to the house. But as we got close, I felt a presence nearby. I touched Okaasan’s arm.
“Someone’s up there,” I mouthed to her, pointing directly above me. We both pulled back against the wall. I took a deep breath and felt a man’s energy—he was here for us.
A loose roof tile creaked. A second later, a rock bounced up the alley behind me. We both looked.
“Damn it!” Okaasan looked down.
At our feet lay a small origami crane. She let her breath out and stooped to pick it up. When she saw my expression, she sighed.
“It’s OK. It’s just friends of my family playing a welcome-back joke.” She smiled. “They like to be sneaky.”
“Apparently.”
Whoever it was, they were long gone.
CHAPTER
23
I gathered a day pack and left the house at nine o’clock. I was mad at Okaasan, but I was looking forward to touring the grand shrine of Izumo-taisha—I almost felt as if it were calling to me. But as I walked up the street from Grandmother’s house, a hill almost as steep as Arbutus Street, I felt myself growing nervous. I wondered how different it would look from my dreams. That was in the back of my mind as I replayed my conversation with Okaasan.
“What did you sense from the man on the roof?” she’d asked me when we got inside. “As much as from that airline clerk?”
“It’s not the same,” I said. “There was a sense of something, not exactly danger but …” I thought of that day on Market Street. “I can pick up on emotions, but they have to be close to me.” I let out a nervous laugh.
Okaasan looked serious. “Go on.”
“I think if I know them, or at least if I’ve met them, I can feel their presence from further away.” I looked at her as it started to become clear. “That night when I helped Shoko, … I sensed the guys who attacked her, but now I’m sure I sensed Shoko, too, even though she was a block away—because I knew her.”
Okaasan sat on the tatami. “I can sense emotions, but not at a distance, and I could never do what you did with the girl in the airport.”
I gave her a look. “I thought you could read my mind.”
She smiled. “I feel your emotions, usually guilt, and I make a calculated guess.”
I rolled my eyes.
“Go to the Izumo shrine today, Junya. You must.”
“You’re still trying to get rid of me.”
“Shoko was sent back after she awoke you,” she said, “which means the Elders are interested in you. I want to know what they want and I want to keep you away until I know—for your own good.”
“And you think you can find that out today?”
“I’m going to try.”
“Great,” I said. “Be sure to let me know.”
She let out a deep sigh. “Junya, there was no need to tell you any of this, because none of this was supposed to happen.” She crossed her arms. “You would have thought I was crazy and you know it.”
I had to give her that.
She crawled across the floor to the corner of the room, lifted the tatami mat, and removed a section of floorboard. She reached under the floor and felt around. “They’re still here,” she whispered. When she sat back up, she held a short wooden bokuto the length of a wakizashi. She slid it across the floor to me. “It’s small enough to fit into your backpack.”
I gave the bokuto a twirl. It had a nice heft.
“So what’s this for, in case I’m attacked by ninjas?”
Okaasan frowned. “If you’re attacked by anyone, defend yourself with everything you’ve got and try to get back here.”
I finally reached the parking lot, which was already filled with a row of tour buses and a few dozen small cars. I caught a glimpse of wooden buildings through the trees, but it wasn’t until I passed the souvenir shops and entered through the west gates that I saw the main shrine rising above the wall that surrounded it. Only its massive X-shaped roof was visible, but that was enough to send shivers up my spine. It looked just like the shrine in my dream except that it sat firmly on the ground—no massive red pillars in sight.
The place was packed with tourists, mostly Japanese, carrying an arsenal of cameras and surging from one sight to the next, their energy as negative as the people on Market Street. Near the west gate, a long wooden roof ran along the wall, overhanging six rows of wooden stairs that rose like bleachers toward small rooms—like Grandpa’s box seat at the stadium. The rooms faced the shrine, and there was an identical structure on the opposite side of the shrine.
I leaned back against a post and stared. It had been only a week since Shoko stole the journal—since she threw open the doors of my world and exposed me to what lay beyond. I suddenly felt so alone.
“This is where the gods stay when they come to visit.”
I turned to see a gray-haired man, shorter than me, wearing the uniform of a taxi driver. He was pointing to the little rooms at the top of the wooden bleachers.
“The gods?”
He nodded. “According to the ancient Shinto myth, all the kami—the earth spirits—gather for a month of festivities here at Izumo-taisha.” He smiled. “They hold meetings and decide what will happen to the earth in the next year. Perhaps it’s also a holiday for them, a chance for fellowship.” Then he pointed to the stack of sake barrels outside one of the buildings and grinned. “They drink, too.”
I eyed the benches. “Are they here now?”
The man shook his head. “No, the time of Kamiarizuki is in the autumn. They arrive from the sea.”
“You know a lot.”
“And you speak Japanese well for an American.” He chuckled. “It’s helpful in my duties as a taxi driver.”
“Do you think the shrine used to be higher off the ground, a long time ago?”
He pointed to a nondescript concrete building on the far side of the grounds. “Over there is a model and pictures of the huge posts they excavated here a few years ago. That leaves no doubt.”
I stared at the replica of three huge red posts tied together with a black metal band.
The man cleared his throat. “I must be getting back to my taxi.”
I turned and bowed low. “Thank you very much.”
He returned the gesture. “I hope the rest of your day is pleasant.”
I circled the shrine, but when I reached the back, far from the noise and negative energy of the tourists, I stopped. I felt something different here. It radiated from the shrine and crackled in the air like the hum of power lines. Entranced, I sat down cross-legged under a black pine and focused on the energy.
At first, it passed by me, like water washing over a stone, but ever so slowly my mind tuned in to its frequency. The energy brought serenity and peace, similar to the feeling Shoko gave me. But behind this energy was a force that rippled the air with its intensity. Like on that day outside Ghirardelli’s, energy rose inside me, too fast, filling me until I felt as if I would burst.
The world around me started to spin and everything went black.
CHAPTER
24
I lay in a meadow, lush and green and speckled with wildflowers. A large buck with huge antlers grazed not far away, along with two spotted fawns. Behind them, familiar mountains were outlined against the sky.
I must have gon
e across.
I waited for the dizziness and the headache, but nothing happened. After a minute I sat up and let the sun warm my body and the peaceful energy fill my soul.
The two fawns moved closer. I glanced at the buck. Our eyes met, and then he went back to grazing. Obviously, the gods didn’t eat venison.
I stood and took in a quick breath. In the distance, maybe four or five miles away, the Izumo shrine rose above the treetops, the same building from my dream. I couldn’t see the staircase, but I knew it would be there.
I started toward the shrine, drawn by the energy that radiated from it. At the meadow’s edge, I found a narrow trail meandering westward through a forest of pine trees. Raspberry and wild strawberry bushes lined the path, their branches heavy with fruit. I picked some and ate them as I walked. The sounds of birds’ wings flapping and the breeze blowing through pine needles were the only disturbance. The only messages here, emanating from every leaf and blade of grass, spoke of peace and tranquility. I wondered when the Gatekeepers would come.
The trail wound closer to the forest’s edge, and through the trees I saw a wide valley, lush and green, spread out below me. My brain told me it had to be the same river delta we’d traveled across on the train to Izumo, but here it was dotted with square fields of rice. Fruit trees and small vegetable gardens surrounded a scattering of huts with steep straw roofs. I saw people working and small children running in the fields. I sat down and stared at the valley, an overwhelming sense of awe growing with every moment. I was sure these people had problems—that was just the way things worked—but the energy that radiated from them was positive.
I caught a message, subtle but clear. Something was watching me—several somethings.
I heard a giggle and turned to see a group of children crouched in the forest, peeking at me from behind the trees. There were five or six of them, dirty little kids dressed in traditional clothing—they looked like extras in a samurai movie. One boy, about seven or eight, stepped forward. He had a small bow in his hand.
The Gatekeeper's Son Page 16