'What a splendid spot to stop and scratch out a few lines' , I thought, earlier on, somewhere other than here.
A tiny cafe I'd not never before noticed, jutting out inconsequentially for all except those inside, overlooking the staircase in a bookshop.
Usually bookshops are a kind of haven for all-comers. Peaceful places to dawdle or gaze or even read a little. This one differs a little; at least, it differs for me. Hachimonjiya's backward magazines and indecipherable characters, its up-down not left-right reading lines are, at present, beyond me. Sometimes, Japanese can seem so impenetrable and it seems I've not learnt a thing for the past few months' endeavours. But that's beside the point, just now.
I've been looking for somewhere to stop and watch and write. In many ways, this is all I've been doing since arriving in Yamagata, back in August, to the tune of a million spiral-screeching cicadas and the soggy heat and everything a little unnervingly different, right down to the zebra-crossing noise and the pavement shape. When you don't really understand what's being said all about you, you use your eyes a lot more (of course) and pick out other things than just big words small words blustery words clouding the air in pockets.
The differences between Japan and Edinburgh and Bretforton and Hertford and everywhere around these places are too numerous to recite. (Besides, many have done it better than I could ever.) My reasons for being here, too mysteriously untenable. And my experiences so far, too alien for comprehension, both for you (whoever you are and where ever you may or mayn't be) and for me- as they warp and crinkle in my memory under the strain of another day's silent musings, a hundred dozen hundred more 'It cant've...Did I really?...' and 'Why?'s.
So I'd better start from here.
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