"When She Comes Around"

Tsukamoto is the end of the local rail line. From here on out, we’ll be taking buses, and unlike Tokyo, they’re not coming every fifteen minutes. We got an hour to kill at this bus stop, but fortunately, the recent heat wave has broken up. Unfortunately, the sky’s cloudy and gray, and the trees in the forest sway like early storm warnings.

Sitting next to me in the bus stop shelter, Shizuko looks pretty tired. I don’t blame her - she did literally run a whole race yesterday. She has a pair of earbuds on and falls in and out of sleep, eyes closing and opening, head slowly sinking forward until she snaps awake, rightens herself, and starts the whole process over again. Her hair’s grown a bit longer now, with the natural black spreading from just the roots to forming a sort of cap across the top of her head. As for me, I smoke my last Orange, wish I brought something to read, and stare out into the countryside. Farmers are at work, as are the cicadas.

The rumbling of a cement truck down the street jolts Shizuko awake for good. She rubs her eyes and shakes her head. I take the opportunity.

“Hey,” I ask, “What kind of music do you listen to?” You can learn a lot about a person based on the type of music they like.

She looks away for a second, then pulls out an earbud and offers it to me. As I go to put it on, I’m a little excited to hear what plays. Modern hip-hop or electronica? Dreampop or shoegaze (there’s a difference, you know)? Bubblegum pop? And then I get my answer.

I wanna take you 'round the river, 'cuz we're bored as hell-

 Dreams and visions made from last night's beer.

Concrete streets and summer repeats, if you couldn't tell-

Let's take that leap and get right out of here. 

“Punk rock,” I realize. “Nineties, right? But not that hardcore kind of vibe. Softer.”

Shizuko nods. “I started listening to Molotov when I got to college. I like their sound. And their lyrics.”

If I remember right, Molotov picked up on the legacy left by the punk bands in the Eighties - who were all about alienation from the bubble society - and built on it, concerning themselves with the loss of cohesion in the lost decades that followed it. For someone feeling down and out - and for someone who likes fast-paced guitars - I can see her liking their music. I can't help but smile when I imagine her painting landscapes in her Tokyo apartment while this blares, making her neighbors turn their heads, because why is a quiet girl playing such loud music?

The song comes to an end, and Shizuko is clearly expecting another song on Molotov’s album to play. Instead, synths and quick hi-hat rolls come out of my earbuds - the sort of electronic music Japan is known for - and a high-pitched voice starts squealing out an anime opening at me.

YOUNG BOY, GO FOR GOLD

YOUNG BOY, GO FOR BROKE

YOUNG BOY, TAKE ON THE WORLD-

Shizuko rips the earbud out of me and disables her phone. She’s breathing heavily and even her ears are red. Today’s not even that hot, but all of a sudden she’s sweating up a storm.

“That’s the theme song for Fox Knight, right?” I ask. “My friends in high school were big into that.”

She’s wound up like a coil and gives a slight nod. “It’s approaching its final arc. Are you caught up?”

I shake my head. “Never seen it. I just know the song from online.”

Another truck rumbles by. Having regained her composure, Shizuko raises an eyebrow. “Shunsuke, you’ve never seen Fox Knight? But everybody’s seen it.”

“Guess I’m the exception that proves the rule.”

“Hmm,” she mumbles. She has a point - Fox Knight is maybe the most mainstream anime out there. You see the main protagonist adorning advertisements on shrines; you see the two rival girls they got in that show pointing from posters at salarymen during their subway commutes. “Shunsuke, what do you like to do? I know you like to write and to explore.”

“I like to read, too, but that about sums it up,” I answer. “I like to experience, I guess. Not trying to sound pretentious. But I like to go around and people watch. Or I pick a spot out at random on the map, like a small park or road, and go over there in my free time and see what the fuss is all about.”

She puts her phone and earbuds away and asks the ground this next question. “Do you visit those places with friends? You know, like your guy friends…or girl friends?”

I try not to think about things like that, so I’m reluctant to admit it. “No. Usually I’m by myself. Most of my high school classmates in Saitama went to local schools. I only had a few good friends back then, anyway - Suga and the Class Prez. And my university, well, it's alright. I mean, it's an elite school, and it'll help get me a job...but the way everyone talks there, the way they carry themselves and act and live, it’s hard to make friends with any of them.”

“I see,” she says. It seems like she feels conflicted about my answer, so she cracks a rare joke. “You're kind of a loser, Shunsuke.”

“Everybody’s a critic. And what about you? How’s art school?”

She taps her fingers on the metal bench inside the bus shelter. “It’s okay. I grew up in Yoshiaki. So it’s tough being from the country trying to fit in with all these city kids. I got better at it. But I always feel like I’m alone in a crowd.”

“Yeah, I know that feeling.”

We slump in our seats. Both of us pursued our dreams, but reality often falls short of the image in your head. I never once considered potential social difficulties while trying to get into Ichigo. I never considered how old friendships could drift apart, or how hard it would be to make new ones. Or how easy it is to remain content with living a life of familiar sadness.

“We can be alone together,” Shizuko proposes, tapping her index fingers together, but at least she’s looking at me rather than the cement below us.

“Beats being alone separately.”

In the distance, a patch of sunlight breaks through the gray, shining down upon one of the many rolling hills. Shizuko raises a finger and points. “What do you see right now?”

"Hmm...well, hills and mountains. The green forests on them. The little bits of sun poking through."

Shizuko hesitates a moment before speaking. “But that’s what I see. Maybe I'm approaching this the wrong way. How do you feel?”

I ponder and then shrug. “It feels nice.”

She’s following up on our conversation last night. Trying to experience the world the same way I do. That’ll be tough…for a number of reasons.

“Nice,” she repeats. The sunlight dances for a moment on the hilltops before the gray swallows it back up again. Shizuko nods in agreement. “Yeah, pretty nice.”

The bus arrives a few minutes later. There are a minimal amount of passengers on there to keep us company, so at least we get a nice seat in the back. I give a salute of farewell to Tsukamoto, a small town surrounded by fields and hills, as we head deeper into the prefecture. We pass by a portion of the race trail, but we soon head in a different direction and our bus takes us through a mountain pass.

The gray blanket known as the sky emphasizes the deep green hue of the forest-covered hills. Within this narrow pass, everything feels boxed in, closer to the chest. The signs of industrial decay don’t help us. We pass by crumbling villages on life support; stone stairs up to hillside shrines are overgrown. In an adjacent meadow, a factory rots, covered in vines. All the while, an advertisement featuring yet another anime girl tells me to buy her brand of milk tea. When we started through the pass, Shizuko was trying to concentrate, to keep her eyes on these same sights out the window, but she ended up throwing the earbuds back on and closing her eyes. I don’t blame her.

By the middle of the day, we make it back out into open country. Similar to Tsukamoto, hills and fields of gold and green ring the town of Hoshinomori. The towns have steadily decreased in size since Mabuchi, going from prefectural capital to the commuter suburb of Kenji to the town of Tsukamoto. Hoshinomori doesn’t even have a high school - it sends its students to the school at the regional junction of Soga further into Yoshiaki.

Hoshinomori, with its wooden roofs and country roads, seems like a town out of time. But there’s one element of modernity here - and that’s our destination for the day. At the bus stop in the town center, a woman in her late twenties stands there expectantly. When we get off and approach her, she spreads her arms wide.

“Are you two ready to see the (unofficial) Hoshinomori Museum of Anime?”