Me and my 30 pounds of luggage hauled our sorry little butts down the dark highway to a bus station. Soon, a bus pulled up and drove me slowly through endless acres of sprawling chain restaurants and karaoke bars, with no Kokura Station in sight. As the minutes ticked by I leaned over another passenger and anxiously studied the bus map next to the ceiling.
"Hey, gaijin-san!" shouted the driver in curt Japanese. "Where are you going?"
"Kokura Station."
"I'm going there, so siddown!"
I would not recommend Northern Kyuushuu City to tourists.
Twenty stops and one hour later, the driver kicked me off at Kokura Station, a sprawling mass of monorails and skyways. I made a hasty and apologetic call to the hostelkeeper, who gave me directions to his part of Northern Kyuushuu City in such rapid Japanese that I simply couldn't handle it and had to deduce things myself inside the station.
When I got to Yahata Station, the hostelkeeper picked me up right outside, drove me up a steep hill to what was undoubtedly the most scenic part of the whole city, told me brightly (in Japanese) I was the only guest he'd had in several weeks, showed me my private room, and left at 9PM to get a much-delayed dinner. I turned on the heat, took a shower, and thought long and hard about how much of an improvement this was from Tokyo, then slept gratefully.
The next day I was served breakfast, then the hostelkeeper dropped me off at the station. The entire stay cost me $35. I rode the train to the last stop, Mojikou, which to my delight was barely Northern Kyuushuu City at all.
Mojikou, port of the city of Moji, was merged into Northern Kyuushuu City by the Japanese government in the 1960s. Around this time, perhaps, the little town realized it was no longer going to be able to sustain itself by its port alone. They were probably clued in by the immense bridge running into their hillside from Japan's main island, and the enormous factories being erected to the south which Mojikou was not receiving. It was therefore decided that Mojikou should become a tourist trap. The definite emphasis here is on "trap" because there was no preexisting attraction to Mojikou, except perhaps the World Peace Pagoda. Instead, they started preserving their old buildings from the Meiji period, such as the old post office and the old train station.
This sort of building, which you might call fairly typical in New England or a novelty in California, is the main attraction of Mojikou Retro. I think there are seven or eight of them. The town cannot really decide whether these buildings are meant to represent something cool about early modern Japan, or if they are meant to be a taste of Western architecture (as they were when they were built). Luckily, this lack of consistency is overshadowed, quite literally, by the construction of insanely inappropriate buildings in the name of revitalization.
You can see the "retro" building (the "old library", constructed 1994) on the bottom right if you squint. The building on the left is an office building that doubles as an observatory for tourists, so they can look at all the retro.
The wall on the far left reads "Welcome to Mojikou Retro". Scratching my head over that one. This is a strip mall for tourists which is right on the water. It has little to distinguish itself from a strip mall in, say, Los Angeles.
The nice bits of Mojikou include their local specialty, fried curry; the railway museum which was creatively built next to the real rail station and continues to attract otaku; the inexplicable one-room "exhibit hall" of old telephones; their genuinely pretty old temple; and the World Peace Pagoda.
I reached the Pagoda by hiking past some houses made out of corrugated metal and into the woods. The Pagoda is actually two buildings. The first is the literal pagoda you see here, which is a memorial to Japanese soldiers who fought in Burma. The second is a decrepit old monastery which continues to house three Burmese monks. One of the monks was pacing around when I came up the stairs and insisted that nobody spoke any English. When I asked him how the Pagoda came to be built, he referred me to the abbot U Khe Min Da, who turned out to speak perfect English. I found the abbot sitting in his room writing New Year's postcards.
"I'm researching this pagoda," I told him. "I was wondering who it was who founded it."
The abbot did not even look up from his postcards. "He's dead now," he eventually responded. "Died long time ago."
I realized this was going to be a difficult conversation. The abbot did not volunteer any names. I had to wring out of him the surname Ichihara, a veteran of the Burmese front who "died long time ago". I did not find out the name of the Japanese Theravada convert who I heard played a role, but the abbot felt fit to inform me that he had been a mere scammer who had no interest in Buddhism.
I was eager to hear if there was any Japanese interest in Theravada Buddhism. "No," said the abbot, still working on his postcards. Did anyone come to the monastery with questions? "No." Have you communicated with the Japan Theravada Buddhist Association? "No."
Eventually, I got up to leave, at which point he offered me a cup of tea. I drank the tea alone, sitting at the desk where he had apparently kept the books for the monastery for the past 50 years. The desk was deeply stained and the edges were rusty, but like the rest of the monastery it had never been replaced. This was certainly a case of single-minded devotion to carrying out the Buddha's teachings. I was not sure why it was necessary to maintain this place in Japan, but I did not ask the abbot-- I am sure it is a question he had either asked himself many times or never thought about.
"Isn't Mojikou a pretty town?" I asked the Japanese volunteer.
"Oh, yes! Mojikou Retro," she said.
Next: Kurume
