The Last Stop

Back home, I would have drawn the curtains back together and entertained the idea that it is okay to do nothing. But as a lone traveller, there exists an obligation – even for fools – to banish the curtains apart, greet the rain and let it tie up your shoelaces before sending you on your way. Okami – the Shinto deity of rain and snow – does not care if that means venturing out alone.

Sounzan, Owakudani and the cusp of Lake Ashi are all connected via ropeway. Stretched along a 3000-year-old crater, it is the thread that ties the mountainous Japanese town of Hakone together and intertwines the shoelaces of all sorts of people upon the descent – children drawing caricatures on the fogged-over window, couples wearing matching outfits, families with heavy DSLRs around their necks. The ensemble of characters drawn by the children included me, cast with frizzy hair and a frown. I remained with my shoelaces tied so tightly together that I tripped out stupidly at the bottom, the drawings laughing at my back.  

By the time I reached Tenzan Onsen, the outdoor bath beyond Lake Ashi, the impending sense of loneliness had festered enough.  

Communal bathing was the spring of my social life in Tokyo; I had become inflexible from the reassurance that someone would scrub my back for me, and when my spine cracked in disagreement, it echoed with the realisation that there wasn’t another pair of hands to push away the hair on my neck. I shouldered that realisation into the dark waters of the onsen – loneliness had become a numbing fiend across the miserable day, one that had been easily swatted away from my wet forehead. The onsen water, however, was stagnant. 

With no distractions, I was forced to sit with myself and my unwelcome companion in scalding heat, sweating out the feelings I had attempted to drown and sitting in the realisations I didn’t want to confront. I couldn’t ignore the way the other women drew closer together in laughter or the way small duos of friends moved away from me when I entered, as if they could sense this monstrous aura about me. I sat in a secluded alcove of rock where the hot water gushed out. It stung my back, beating out sobs as I bathed in a pathetic cocktail of spring water, tears, and the fucking rain.

When dusk fell, I took the bus back and wondered whether it had been worth stepping foot outside the inn in the first place. The traveller’s will had pushed me out the door and into the cold before I could process my feelings and come to terms with my own company – had the rain and the tears made it worth it? 

“終点です。”  This is the last stop.

When I didn’t move, the bus driver turned from his seat to me. 

“Lasuto sutoppu.” 

His pointed stare was enough for me to get off.

It was feeble to try to match the kanji on my map with the guide on the sign when the lamppost kept flickering above me. I compared the now see-through amateur map, my surroundings, and the sign until it was very clear that I was far from the inn. When the rain began to pour, the lamppost finally died.

For the first time that day I was truly alone – the drawings on the window of the cable car had been wiped away until it was just me. The rain poured harder than it had all day. Stranded, I wept terribly.

The traveller’s will shouted at me.

“Fool! Tie up your soggy laces!” it said. “Push your wet hair back, get up – move!”

Perhaps the voice was coming from how hard the rain was hitting the road, but it gifted me a second wind against the biting cold. Through the shadows of trees, fog, tears, and the pelting rain that stung my eyes, I could see three paths before me. There was the option to walk back where I had come on the bus, venture up the path where it had sped off, or diverge in the middle which led steeply into the darkness. Above the forest that shrouded the path, I could see the faintest glimmer of light.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
…
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost was right: it did make all the difference. The pouring rain pushed me down the descent and gifted me with the silence to come to terms with my feelings. It was unlike the way the fog enclosed the cable car and left me claustrophobic with envy, nor was it akin to the water in the onsen that sat stagnantly and forced the sorrow upon my naked body. The rainwater gathered on my eyelashes and dripped down my face when I blinked. It fell from the ends of my hair and wrung out onto the road when I squeezed my sopping jacket. I did not deny the rain, allowing myself to reconcile with every single drop. The water would not sit on me forever; I would not be lonely for eternity. 

I found myself dripping water on the pristine carpet in the lobby of a resort I had overlooked booking when I saw the prices. I was staying at a roguish inn, but pretending to be a customer proved fruitful when I was offered a complimentary shuttle bus, some tea and a hair brush.

At 8PM, nobody else was in line to get on the bus. The driver looked at me curiously through the mirror.

“It’s weird for someone to be going to Gora station at this time.” 

He held my gaze for some time, trying to decipher me and pick apart my soaked clothes like a heap of washing left in the machine.

“I… don’t actually stay at that hotel.” 

It was hard not to admit under his stare through the front mirror. I was expecting a grunt of a response, even a pointed expression like the bus driver before, but instead this man laughed so hard my heart leapt – it was the first meaningful interaction I had had all day.

“How odd!” He had an expression like that of a grinning beaver. “So you’re trying to get home. 帰りたい。”

“I wanted to call a taxi to the Hakone Tent Guest House.”

“Are you staying there with friends?　友達は？”

“No… It’s just me.”

I explained to him how my day had transpired until I sat on his bus, and our conversation leapt between English and Japanese. If we struggled to find the right words, we interjected others, or explained in our native tongue in hopes the other would understand. We made conversation about our lives, about travel, about being alone. All these conversations were connected by the rain. 

“Nobody comes to my bus in rain. 私も寂しくなってしまう。” I get lonely too.

He was right: nobody came on the bus, but in gratitude for our conversation, the bus stopped in front of my accommodation rather than the station. 

“Thank you for helping me practice English and keep me company. 終点です。” This is the last stop.

Before the bus doors closed behind me, the driver called out to me, almost falling out of his seat with a cheery thumbs up.

“Being alone is okay! You are kind!”

I had not noticed that the rain had stopped for a long while, and my clothes had dried.