Travelling to the Northern Alps

Travelling on a train through Japan, one might suppose at times that the whole of the central island of Honshu, except where a mountain disturbs the flow, is a continuous city. In pinprick contrast to the murrain of concrete, asphalt, steel and wire that litters the land, Japanese people plant tiny urban gardens, often on the city pavements themselves. Before coming to Japan, I had imagined wide paddy fields, with blowing seas of young rice plants; apart from the fact that the rice planting season is more than a month away, such fields as appear are hemmed in by the railway line on one ide and urbanisation on the other. Only the wild and woolly hills, heaped on most horizons, truly defy the clutter of Japan's post-war sprawl.





Going North, into the Japanese Alps, the train meanders along a wide river valley, gradually climbing as the hills grow larger and behind them white mountains loom. As we rise higher, it is as if we have gone back in time two weeks: below, on the coastal plain, cherry blossom has been and gone. Here, higher and cooler, it is still in its fullest bloom, clustering in clouds in the populous valleys and smouldering high among the still bare trees on the mountainside.





I found myself unable to resist the challenge of Japan's most famous poetic form, so here are

Two haikus

The big man enters
a noisy toyshop and buys
a paper balloon

* * *

The baby's eyes close
slowly like the sun setting
on the horizon