Nagatta - Part One of Three

“Tsuyu”, rainy season, 1999. Southeast Kyushu. Japan
We returned to find a window broken, a white plastic stool overturned amongst the glass. I knew the type well. Twice day for the last six weeks, I’d perched on such a stool to be scrubbed raw by naked strangers. Stand up. Sheild larger-than-average genitals with small white towel and lower purified body into naturally-scolding hot spring. The onsen stool. A key player in our efforts to rekindle our passion and out-damn-spot any doubts. How ironic that it was about to be implicated in your arrival.

Charlie sat motionless in the passenger seat of the k-van, transfixed by the darkness of the paddy-fields.

“Maybe it was the poo-people,” she said at last.

The poo-people! With no public sewage system in the village a “Rong Drop Toiret” was standard issue. When his-and-her poo level reached breaching point, the bottom feeders of the japanese cast system came to suck out your unchi for the bargain price of 2000 yen. I held them personally responsible for the decline of our sex life.

“Fuck the poo-people!” I said.

“Go teach in Japan dude!” It had been hailed at Swansea Uni as one of three post-graduate solutions “mystic waves, easy money, japanese schoolgirls.” Others options had included a ski-season or moving to London. No thanks to all of them. I’d been confident I was destined for better things - namely true love and artistic fame… But days after graduating in Anthropology & French (the connoisseur's choice), fate had interceded. High on ecstasy and down on my luck at the beach parties to end all beach parties, I’d spotted a beautiful girl in a camouflage dress. Amongst the whistle-posse and nose-ring brigade The One had shone like a jewel in the rough.

“You sure you didnt call them!?” she asked.

“You really think the poo-people would break a window just to get to our shit!?”

Charlie laughed then froze, her hand like a claw on my thigh. Someone was standing under the awning of the front door, a silhouette behind a curtain of rain.

In reality I knew it was you. I’d seen you in my peripheral vision and hoped that you’d fade into the mist. But now I felt strangely embarrassed at having stayed so long in the car. After all, as Charlie kept telling me, you were my friend, my problem.

Psycho Dave. When exactly did you become “psycho”? When I was first sent to boarding school in England it was “Dave the Prefect” who’d shown me around on the first day. Ten years later you’d dropped out of university to smoke weed and live in a van. You called it the search for “the knowledge”.

“Where the fuck have you been you crazy bastard!” The fear came out as agression. “You were supposed to be here two weeks ago!” The first thing I noticed was that you’d lost a lot of hair. You’d cropped it short to draw less notice to it. “And what the hell have you done!?” I pointed to the broken window but you didn’t look up. You seemed to be staring past me at Charlie, hiding behind me in the rain.

“The door was locked? It was the only way to get in?” Your upspeak was now fully developed. It was the influence of your latest gurus no doubt, traveller types, fake mystics, long-hairs, chasing the dream. (The ashram was mind-blowing? Inshallah, it’ll change your life?”). I gave you an awkward hug and Charlie shook you by the hand. You said nothing. She laid out a futon for you in the tatami room and asked you if you had everything you need. You blew out your smoke and nodded your head. I should have known then that something was wrong.

“I’m going to bed,” she said. “Leave you two to catch up.”

I caught up with her on the narrow staircase, kissed her on the cheeks and held her tight, told her that it would be ok, that you were probably just jet-lagged.

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Our first conversation was in the kitchen. The blinds were down and the light was on which meant the villagers could see our every move like a shadow theatre. Outside the rain was relentless and the frog song was louder than ever. I fixed us a pot of green tea.

“Dave, you ok?” You were slumped at the plastic table.

“Huh? What?” You looked around as if you’d just woken up on the other side of the world, which you had.

“You asleep?”

“Uh…?”

“You’re in Japan,” I said, in case you were that fucked-up. You reached into a pocket of your hippy trousers, which I realised with a shiver were actually mine. From back in the day. You pulled out a soft pack of Marlboro Reds and flipped open a silver Zippo.

“Nice lighter.”

“Tom…?”

“Yeah….” You lent me your flame and I lit one of my own - a Mild Seven Super Light 0.5 mg.

You were checking out your new surroundings, eyes finally settling on me. “You’re not a paedophile are you?”

“What the fuck are you talking about!?”

“Teaching kids…?”

“No…Do highschool girls count?” You stared into your tea. “Dave! I’m joking! What the fuck’s going on!? Why d’your dad say not to invite you out?”

“He’s full of shit? It’s him who needs a shrink…?”

“You were supposed to be here two weeks ago. I called your house, they freaked out, said you’d gone…”

You smiled that psycho half-smile of yours. “I was working at the fun fair…?”

“Ok,” I prompted.

“I just knew something weird was going on…?”

“And?”

“You trust people….?”

“Is that a question or not?” Your upseak was getting ridiculous.

“You trust people and then they let let you down? I could have killed him?”

“Who!?”

“My boss? He was a fucking paedophile…? But they were all in it? Even some of the customers…?”

“How did you know?”

“I just knew?”

“So what happened?”

“I grabbed this guy out the queue? Spent a week in jail and then hitched up to London? Had to wait another week for a flight?”

“How the fuck did you find the place!? Why didnt you phone!? ” It truly was a miracle. We were three hours from a major airport on the shouthern tip of Japan. Urbanites would refer to the area as Inaka, with a bit of a laugh. Countryside. No panty vending machines here, no bright lights or bullet trains, no central heating or flush toilets either, just paddy-fields, volcanoes, a rusty old downtown bi-passed by shopping malls…

“Got a ride with some dude, covered in tatoos?”

“A yakuza!?”

You shrugged. “He spoke some english? Said that he was a surfer, that the waves were shit right now with the rainy season but they’d get better soon with the typhoons? We stopped for a beer at a american-style restaurant called Joyful..? He brought over some chicks who kept looking at me and giggling saying I looked like Bruce Willis? I think he said I could fuck one but then I started thinking he was a spook? I went to leave but he came after me? We stared each other down and I realised he had the knowledge? That’s when he told me about a secret big wave spot called Na…ka… Naka something?”

“Nagatta.”

I’d heard about it in much the same way - a Yakuza in an onsen. You could always spot them with their bodysuit tatoos of coy carp and cherry blossoms. The man had spoken little English but combined with my smattering of Japanese we’d managed a converstaion. Apparently he’d seen me in the water at a spot called Udo Shrine - a critical wave that broke over shallow reef a stone’s throw from the temple. But from what I’d understood, the fact that I’d come so far by scooter merited more respect than my actual wave-riding. Armed with a hieroglyphic map, it had taken me four months to find it. Not once had I seen it break. The fishing village with its misty headland had become my obsession.

As you rightly said, “He obviously thought you were a worthy candidate for the knowledge?”

This all sounded very Yoda. It was probably the longest conversation of your stay and it filled me with immense hope. However twisted you’d become, we still shared the essential things in common. Right now I was so pleased you were here, you were giving me goose-bumps.

“This is fate? We have to ride Nagatta?”

It was almost too easy and I confess to feeling a little bit guilty. You’d always followed me. I’d always been the guru, the Morrsion figure whilst you’d been the groupy. Perhaps you’d taken it all a bit too seriously. Why did I invite you out? Because I wanted to show off what I’d acheived - three brand-new imported surfboards, a house with a view of two volcanoes and an upgrade from a scooter to a K-van. I had a fake UN driving license I’d bought on the Kao Sahn road in Bangkok. I was on “Official UN Business.” But none of that existed if I had no-one to share it with.

“Tom?” You seemed lucid now, almost jovial. “How’s things with Charlie? Still think she’s The One?”

I prepped a second pot of green tea, lit another Mildo Seven.

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To be continued...