Dating Underwater4. Endless Driving, Endlessly

At Hiroshima Airport, it looked like we parked at the main terminal, but they played with our passports in a smaller room than I would expect from an international airport. Getting into Japan is always easy, but on a private flight full of Japanese businessmen, my passport was stamped without anyone flipping through the pages.

At the airport, Hisoka's friends shook hands, bowed and scattered. Everyone went off to wherever they went and I was happy that they would not be joining us. They were perfectly pleasant people, but I was on a date. Twelve's a crowd.

Hisoka and I took a taxi into town. This was our only taxi ride that was actually a metered taxi. Everything else Hisoka called a taxi was one type of black car or another, driven by some guy who never asked for any money. This taxi driver wanted to be paid when we arrived at our destination, but the car was still black.

During the one hour taxi ride from the airport into Hiroshima, Hisoka apologized that it took so long. There are apparently no trains from the airport, which is kind of strange for Japan. The long drive did not bother me. Even with trains, it takes an hour to get from Tokyo Narita Airport to downtown Tokyo. I can only imagine how long it takes by car. It was not like I was jet lagged. The flight was more comfortable than first class and we only spent minutes at the airports.

I saw almost none of Hiroshima from the freeway. It was obvious when we were in a city versus out in the countryside, but the city was mostly hidden by tunnels and shrubbery. When we finally got off the freeway, we were in a small, suburban town. When we reached the coast, we kept going. Hisoka told me we were in Hiroshima, but on the outskirts of town. It seemed like we had driven long enough, but what I did not know at the time was that we went around to the other side. The outskirts we were in was not between the city and the airport, but on the opposite side of the city.

Wherever we were suddenly got bigger just before the taxi stopped at the pier. I knew we were taking a boat to an island, but we seemed to be leaving from a popular tourist spot of its own. When Hisoka originally suggested going to Hiroshima, he really meant a small island just off the mainland. He was not being deceptive. For the longest time, the island was considered part of Hiroshima. Now, it is part of a different city, but most Japanese still consider it in Hiroshima.

The ferry was quick. It was like taking the ferry from Battery Park to the Statue of Liberty. You can easily see the island from the Hiroshima side. The mountains stand out far more than a single statue holding a torch. The boat travels a little over a mile.

At the ferry terminal on the island of Miyajima, someone was waiting to drive us to the hotel. It was another black van, but this one was much smaller. Hisoka's colleagues would have never fit. From the pier, we drove along the coast for a few minutes before we started winding uphill, passing mostly trees and grass with the occasional house here and there. After we went downhill, we turned onto the coast again and passed a tiny beach. I thought we were going to turn at the hotel we saw on the beach. It was the only building that looked anything like a hotel and beyond it was more trees and woodland. But we kept going. After passing a few more hotels, we went back uphill and downhill.

The coast appeared again at another, even tinier beach. We drove along the coast for a while, passing more beaches and a beautiful nature park, what little we could see from the road. I saw my first deer at the nature park, which is strange since they are all over the island. I would see hundreds later on, but for whatever reason, I did not see any at the pier when we arrived.

Beyond the nature park, we started to really go uphill again. I wondered if there was a more direct route, but it turns out Miyajima is mostly mountains and woods with only a few roads going from one end to the other. The road narrowed the higher we ascended, but it was still paved. It was not, however, marked. I would have been completely lost had I been driving.

We kept going higher and higher, and the road got ridiculously narrow. I could see why we were in a tiny Japanese van. A normal van, or even a sedan, would have struggled to squeeze in between the trees and greenery. Eventually, I caught glimpses of the coast again. Only this time we were high above whatever beaches lay below. And then we started going downhill, a little too fast, but there was no cross traffic. Maybe a deer could have jumped in front of the van, but there were no cars in sight.

Back at sea level, there was a beautiful and completely empty beach. The view from the beach was several islands and the Seto Inland Sea. I wondered why no one was there. It briefly crossed my mind that if Hisoka wanted to murder me and dump my body somewhere, this might be the perfect place. Few people live on Miyajima and you only have to travel a few minutes away from the pier for it to get completely deserted.

Beyond Murder Beach, we were going back uphill. Even if I had jumped out of the van at this point, I would have absolutely no idea how to get to civilization. Up a long and winding road, there were more ocean views with islands as far as the eye could see. It was spectacular, but for the guy driving us, it was just another day at the office.

We started going back downhill yet again and passed yet another empty beach with similar views of probably the same islands. When the beach ended, we went back uphill into the woods.

I usually pick the hotel whenever I travel. Whether I go with others or alone, I'm mostly the one who does the research. I look at the maps and skim the reviews. Even if I have never been to the city before, I can find the hotel on a map. For this trip, all I did was show up. I had no idea where to go or how to get there. I was completely in Hisoka's hands. It was nice to have someone else lead the way for a change.

Surrounded by trees, brush and more trees, we turned off onto a smaller road. I did not think the roads could get any smaller, but this one meandered toward an obvious structure. Some time between 30 minutes and 30 years after leaving the pier, we were at the hotel.