If I could turn back time; if I could find
a way…
My silent reverie was broken by the soft sound
of air brakes in the distance. Behind
me I heard the growing purr of an engine, growing louder as the source of the
sound grew closer. Turning to look
behind me, I noticed a mid-sized gray and red bus creep slowly up a paved hill,
then turn on a dirt road continuing behind me and off to my right. I looked quizzically at the characters
painted on the side of the bus.
Whatever was written there was not English. What I initially mistook for a logo of some sort was actually the
pictographic characters of Kanji, one
of the written forms of the Japanese language.
I thought it extremely unusual for such a vehicle to be so out of place
here. Perhaps they're foreign-exchange
students, I thought to myself.
The bus stopped at what appeared to be a
gravel-floored parking area. Behind the
bus was a small covered pavilion that resembled the roof and outer framework of
a nipa hut. Nipa huts were traditional
Filipino homes built of wood for the house's frame, bamboo for the floors and
walls, and a kind of woven thatch for walls and window shutters. Long, leafy branches of banana trees were
dried out and used as the shingled coverings for these homes. On the concrete pad beneath the roof were
several picnic tables arranged in three rows of four. A small waste receptacle stood at each corner next to the wooden
columns that held the structure up.
Small power outlets were mounted on the columns with a main power box
mounted on the support in the far left corner.
To each side of the pavilion were a couple of small buildings. The ones immediately adjacent to the pavilion
touted the image of a man on the right one and a woman on the left, the
universal images associated with the perfect place to relieve oneself in
privacy. To the left of the women's
restroom stood a smaller covered area with various snack and drink machines. The building to the right of the men's room
resembled a small short-order kitchenette.
Probably used only during the busier season of Summer, it was shuttered
and boarded up. I noticed a faded sign
near the closed order/pickup window listing various artery-hardening delights –
at least that's what I assumed. My
eyebrows furrowed together in confusion as I noticed the descriptions listed
in…Japanese? The prices were listed in Arabic numerals
but instead of the ever-familiar and almighty dollar sign, I saw the "¥" of the Japanese yen. How odd.
My attention was drawn back to the bus
offloading its passengers out onto the gravel lot. I looked on in confusion yet again. Something didn't seem right about this picture. The bus was pointed to my left (once I had
turned around on the boulder to give the scene my full attention). The passengers should have exited on the
opposite side of the bus.
Okay, deep breaths. Reboot the brain here. Closing my eyes, and counting to ten, I
looked and saw nothing had changed.
Maybe this was some sort of setup to give these exchange students a
small taste of home. Yeah – that's it. I tried to calm myself as I stood up and
took a closer look around. Wait a sec.
There aren't any cliffs near the bay, not ones like these. I looked up. The sun was also in the wrong place. I took out my watch. It
had apparently gone dead, but there was Mario, grinning stupidly at me as he
flew, suspended, in the watch face's hologram.
I knew it was morning, that much I was certain of, but facing the water
at this time of day should have revealed the sun to be behind me. Now I was really
stumped. Where the hell was I?
About twenty or so very Japanese-looking
teenagers departed the bus, carrying an assortment of towels, bags, backpacks,
baskets, tape decks, swimwear, etc. – all the makings of a beach outing. Some of the students headed to the restrooms
while others unloaded their belongings on the picnic tables. A couple of the girls in the group moved
toward the vending machines, digging into small purses for change.
The approaching roar of a jet aircraft
captured my attention as it swept across the sky, crossing the coast as it
headed deeper inland. It slowly banked
and traveled (north?) along the
coastline. As it did so I noticed on
its wings a red dot I'd associated with old World War II movie depiction's of
the Japanese Zero; on the aircraft's tail, clearly defined, was the red and
white emblem of the Land of the Rising Sun.
Quickly, I closed my eyes and clicked my
heels together three times. "There's no place like home. There's no place like home. There's no place like home…" I thought
aloud. I opened my eyes. No change.
The jet flew on and soon became a pinpoint that disappeared over the
horizon. One of the students, a young
girl of maybe sixteen, exited the women's restroom and picked up her things
from a picnic table. As she exited the
pavilion's shade, she stopped to stare at the spectacle I was suddenly making
of myself. She was a short young lady,
the budding evidence of adolescence well under way. She had short, dark, blue-black hair and huge, beautiful brown
eyes. I found her quite cute in an
unabashed sort of way. Her head was
cocked to one side, eyeing me quizzically.
She was dressed in a rather modest one-piece yellow bathing suit with a
thick black stripe cutting diagonally across from shoulder to hip. She sported a blue and green towel over her
shoulder, and sunglasses propped on her head.
I waved sheepishly, sighed, then sat back down on the rock and faced the
waters again. Shrugging with a smirk,
the girl bent to pick up a basket, another blue and green towel, and walked
toward one of the nearby cliffs. She
stopped to peruse them, settling on one nearby that perhaps had an even better
view than my own.
Most of the other students had made their
way down a broad, sand-strewn path that led to the beach below to my
right. Most of them spared me hardly a
second glance as they spread towels, opened umbrellas, applied oils and
sunscreens, and prepared for an enjoyable day at the beach.
Watching the small crowd with some
interest, I noticed one of them detach himself from the rest of the group and
walk off in my direction, passing below me to the left. He walked maybe half a mile before turning back
in the direction he had originally come.
This young man stood a little taller than I; I figured he was probably
the tallest guy in the group. He had
long dark, almost solid black, hair braided in a ponytail. He wore a simple yellow pair of swim shorts
with a bold light-blue stripe down each side.
He was of moderate frame, slender, and incredibly well-toned. He stared at the ground as he walked, deep
in thought, occasionally kicking at seashells that had washed upon the shore
and were scattered along his way.
Looking back to my right, I noticed the
young girl setting up a tablecloth taken from the basket she carried to the
cliff's top. She spread out several
covered plates of food and set a large white thermos with yellow flowers
printed on it to one side. Careful
adjustments here and there, and then she stood up with a satisfied smile. Her face took on a hopeful look as she
walked to the cliff's edge and looked down at the group below. A look of disappointment began to cross her
face, then she looked down the beach in either direction. Spying me watching her, I waved. She waved back, then went back to her
apparent search. All the students were
assembling for what appeared to be lunch.
Assuming the young lady was looking for the young man I had been
watching, I pointed toward him when she looked my way again. Her face lit up in understanding. Smiling and bowing slightly toward me, she
quickly made her way to the path and ran down it to the beach. Turning my gaze back to the boy, I noticed him
reach down to pick up a shell…no, it looked flat and round. Maybe a stone or a sand dollar. He studied his find in a moment of quiet
consideration.
The dark-haired girl called out to him as
she approached. "Lanma!" it sounded like. Lanma? Where had I heard that before?
The lad quickly slipped the item into a
pocket then waited as the girl quickly crossed the remaining distance in a
slight run. When she reached him, she
began to talk softly, too softly for me to hear the rest of the
conversation. She pointed toward the
cliff where she had set up the picnic lunch.
The boy spoke, hesitantly, a brief hint of fear on his face that quickly
disappeared as the young lady took him by the hand and led him across the sand
to the path upward. Several of the
other students called out to the young couple, seemingly in invitation; the two
continued without breaking their stride up the path. The young man seemed a bit embarrassed. I noticed I couldn't understand a word of the one-sided
exchange. It sounded Japanese.
No way. Absolutely NO WAY. I
can't be in Japan! How the hell did I
get here?
