Far Afield

I

3 I I didn’t plan to go to Momo-Jima, but then no one really plans to go to Momo-Jima. The natives tell you that soon after you put down at Dunbar-dori Airport and take the short moko-moko ride to the offhand triangle of worn-out trinket shops and sad, dirty hotels in Ueda Town Center (a six-minute ride, tops). Indeed, what interests them most is how you’ve happened to come to their country —or been waylaid, as some of them will outright admit—and often after hearing your story they will offer a few in return from some of the others who’ve preceded you. Then a tremendously overpriced welcoming drink is prepared and waiting for you in your hotel room, and from there the real business of rapacity begins. In my case, I went for several reasons, none of which were outstanding by themselves to warrant my trip. But more about that, and my tangle of motivations, later. If it was peculiarity that led me here, it was a greater peculiarity that kept me. And if it has taken me longer to figure out the contours of the situation I was escaping, as well as the one I entered into, perhaps it is because the difficulty of fleeing our circumstances also increases with age. At any rate, I’d scheduled myself for twelve days on Momo-Jima, my usual yearly vacation. This time, I was hoping to use my hiatus to think somewhat deeply about a book I was writing on ancient sports (in my working life, I am a freelance journalist), though I suspect what I really was after was an escape from the pressure its existence was exerting on me at home. Still, in a good faith effort 4 Far Afield I’d brought a small trunk of materials on the history of athletics, along with my laptop and a dozen pencils, multicolored pens and legal pads. I envisioned myself absorbing their contents at poolside, sustained by a steady stream of drinks, or perhaps prostrate on one of the beaches with the ocean sounds nudging me on. They had a spectacular one here, according to my guidebook—a two-milelong stretch of sand that had been dyed pink some years back in a bid to attract tourists. Though it hadn’t succeeded (given that the color had an adverse affect on the island’s native gulls, many of which began attacking the beachgoers who ventured onto the sand), the shore still retained a patina that had faded from its original color into a warmer, more beckoning hue. Or, again, so I’d read in my guidebook. So barely an hour after my jetliner had set down on the wide concrete slab that functioned as the national airport, I was forging manfully ahead onto the painted sands with several volumes of sports arcana and two bottles of the local beer in hand. Doing so, I felt the thrill that accompanies the first foray of any vacation, be it in a congested European metropolis or on an island hideaway. “This is what you came for,” the moment implies and before any disillusionment or restlessness has set in, it is easy to believe that you are about to get what you are seeking. Even still, I had to acknowledge that it was rather a dismal Momo-Jiman plain that now stretched out in front of me. Years of gull shit had stained the now salmon-hued sands with voluminous patches of white and green, around which people had carefully picked their way and settled their oversized blankets. And though the temperature was warm, the sky was leaden gray, with only a small amount of sun penetrating the thick clouds that threatened a tropical rain. Yet I also saw there was a smattering of beachgoers gamely out trying to make a day of it. From the old and splintering boardwalk above, I watched them turning themselves over with regularity on the sands as if to evenly absorb as much as they could of the paltry sunlight. There is nothing like the determination of vacationers out to get full value on their time off. Scott Brown 5 With my bulky knapsack filled with my books, papers, and beer, I joined them, eager to begin my vacation after a year without break, a five-thousand-mile trek and some ten hours of flight. Despite...