Ghost Train to the Eastern Star

I had seen Toyotomi from the train, snowy streets in lamplight, clusters of houses, a station platform. Snow glow and lamplight gave it a certain grandeur in the night. In daylight it seemed tiny, the houses buried, no cars on the streets, just a village of smoking chimneys.

Only I had gotten off the train. I stood outside the station wondering where the hot springs might be. A woman sweeping snow nodded at me. I said, "Onsen?Taxi?"

"Go there," she said in Japanese, pointing through the falling snow to an open garage door.

By now, my not speaking the language was no barrier to communication. People spoke to me in Japanese, making helpful gestures, and I instantly understood. The Japanese language was so full of cognates that it sometimes seemed like a version of English, and when someone said puratto-homu, I knew they were saying "platform," just as byuffe could not be anything but "buffet car."

"Onsen," I said to a man in the garage. He wore a tweed suit and knitted tie and white gloves—the uniform of a rural taxi driver. He spoke rapidly in Japanese.

Somehow I knew from pulses in the air that he had said, "I can take you there in my taxi for two thousand yen. Another two thousand to come back. The onsen itself will cost you about five hundred yen."

He took my bag and put it on a high shelf.

"Shall we go?" he said.

I realized that I had forgotten to change money in Wakkanai. I had a few thousand yen and the rest in dollars. I showed him my dollars. "What's the exchange rate today?" he asked.

He made a few phone calls, but no one knew exactly how many yen to the dollar, just the general rate of about 110.

"Where's the bank?"

"We don't have a bank in Toyotomi. It's a small place!"

He stared out of the garage at the falling snow.

"Ah, I know," he said, still in Japanese, which I seemed to understand. "There's an American here in Toyotomi. We'll go find the American. The American will help."

"The American?"

"At the school," he said. "Get into my taxi. I won't turn on the meter. Let's find the American."

In the snowstorm, rolling slowly through the white-packed streets of Toyotomi, he told me his name was Miyagi, that he had been born here, and that summer was a better time to visit, not now in the cold and the snow.

"But the onsen," I said.

"Yes, the onsen. Very healthy."

He drove through the gate of what looked like a municipal building, brick and rather forbidding. It was Toyotomi High School, snow piled to its windowsills. Like every other Japanese building I'd been in, it was very tidy, clean, and somewhat spartan.

In a glass enclosure, behind a counter, I saw a Western-looking woman in a black dress. She was the first gaijin I had seen in four days in this region. She greeted Mr. Miyagi in Japanese. I saw from her nametag that she was Roz Leaver. She was the American. She had a responsive manner, an attractive laugh, and a directness that was unusual in Japan. She stood out less for being a Westerner than for being so much heavier than almost any Japanese I'd seen.

"What's the problem?"

I explained that I needed to change some money.

"Right. There's no bank here," she said. "I don't carry a lot of money." She slapped at the pockets of her loose dress. "I've got about thirty dollars in yen on me."

She was friendly, said she was glad to help, and she looked imperturbable—apparently unfazed by the snowstorm, by the remoteness of the village, or by the Japanese language, which she spoke with convincing ease. She was, she said, from Billings, Montana.

"These guys said to me this morning, 'It's cold,' and I said, 'This is not cold. I can tell you what cold is.'"

She had been sent as part of a program that sponsored teachers to work in different countries—she'd taught in many others.

"I love these students here in Toyotomi," Roz said. "They work. They study. No excuses. They're great in the community. And they want to get out of town. Like every kid in small towns all over the world. Hey, like me!"

"Seems a nice place."

Roz laughed. She had a full-throated laugh that rang in the severe-looking school office. "This is just a wide spot in the road. What are you doing here?"

"I'm going to the onsen. The famous hot springs here."

She shrugged and blew out her cheeks, so as to seem unimpressed, all the while counting hundred-yen notes onto the desk.

"You must go there a lot," I said.

Without looking up she said, "No, I do not go to the onsen."

"It's supposed to be healthy."

"Look at me," she said, raising her head and smiling grimly. She jogged her heavy arms and smacked her belly through her dress. "Do I look like I'm interested in 'healthy'?"

She spoke the despised word with a grunt of gusto, while I equivocated. One of her coworkers said something in Japanese.

"Don't listen to him," she said. "All he does is play pachinko and try to hit the jackpot."

"The water in the hot springs here is said to be good for your skin."