The Red Gate

            Me and the Croatian headed out early, intent on getting good and lost before the sun could burn us out at midday.  He had a thick Aussie accent from growing up in Perth and sometimes it was hard to understand him over the roar of the cicadas.  Their buzzing rang from every tree and every bush until all I could hear was white noise.  Then the individual bugs varied their tones, the songs settled into their own grooves, and I began to cull out a pattern from the noise.

“Man, this getting lost thing really pays off,” said Goran.

“Yeah?  You found some good spots?”

“Yeah, fully.”

Goran had already hiked some of the mountain trails on the outskirts of Kobe, but there were still plenty of new paths open to us.  The trails at the base of the mountain hid behind tall apartment complexes, and we wove through a maze of narrow residential streets before the houses gave way to the forest.  Rock steps marked the start of the paths, and small, stone gutters lined the sides of the trail, ready to divert rain water down the mountain.  Even there in the forest, there was a sense of human control and aesthetic, but instead of imposing on the natural system, the stone gutters seemed set in to age with the moss and the trees.

            The air was already hot and humid, and halfway up the mountain we were drenched with sweat.  We hurried to the summit, eager to see the view.  Even though it was more like a large hill than a mountain, we could still see all of Kobe spread out before us, crouched down against the mountains and reaching to the edge of the bay. 

            “I think that’s us,” said Goran, pointing to our apartment building.

            “I think you’re right,” I said.  “Our supermarket is there, and our station is down that road.”

            We drew a circle around the city and called it our own.

            After taking in our fill of the view, we headed back down the mountain in the opposite direction.  The paths split often and we eventually found a patch of bamboo forest. 

            “This is wicked,” said Goran.  “You up for a bit of bush-whacking?”

            He grabbed a small bamboo branch and waved it in the air in front of us to clear the spider webs.  The bamboo shaded us from the hot sun, and the whole forest was noticeably cooler.  The path disappeared among the thick brush, but we pushed on, scratching at our legs to check for tics.  When we finally reached a clearing, the forest stopped at the edge of a field.  The grass was tall and shined emerald green in the sunlight.  The wind brushed its hand across the top of the field and drew circles among the grass.  When we got closer we saw old piles of farm equipment, large-leafed plants growing in rows, and several greenhouses.  The fields of tall grass were flooded with water.  Not grass then, but rice.  Fields and fields of rice, right in our backyard.  In the distance, an old farmer with a broad white hat bent over to dip his hand into the earth.  Goran, who had grown up on a plantation, was in his element.  His grin spread wide across his face like a school boy.

            This was the first of several getting-lost expeditions into the city and our surrounding areas.  We found all the shops we would ever need right next to our subway stop, a new shisha bar in the heart of the city, and waterfalls behind a major train station in the north.  Our walks were set to the buzzing of the cicadas and the hot, burning sun.

            Last night, for the first time in weeks, the clouds gathered and dropped rain across Kobe.  Lightning hammered the mountains around the city for over an hour.  I watched from my balcony on the 11^th floor as white electricity arced from one thunderhead to the next, lighting up the bellies of the clouds.  The storm was eerily quiet.  I heard no thunder, only the wind ringing a bell hanging from a neighbor’s window.  It was late when I finally went back inside, but the clouds remained perched around the city until morning.  Today is the first cool day I have had in Japan, and the cicadas have finally fallen silent.