My words had failed. Unless, that is, I had inadvertently requested silence. Whatever the case, I was being outclassed by my fellow adoptee, an 18-year-old Korean with some competence in the language and a decidedly more kid-friendly brand. But what I lacked in everything other than the ability to fool young children, I made up for in my ability to fool young children. I stopped abruptly in the centre of the gravel path and spun round, revealing, by careful concentration of jacket sleeves, two bone-white forearms. Three stopped with me, curious. I had my audience. Flanked by damp corporate graves, I waved my right hand over my empty left palm. Then I waited. The spectators leaned in to study the still-empty palm, their scrunched faces signalling confusion. I smiled, or managed some approximation thereof, and waved my hand again. Three tiny jaws dropped. As if by magic—because it was magic—a 1-yen coin had appeared in the centre of my left hand.
I'm not especially good with children. Part of the problem, I suspect, is my insistence on treating them as I would an adult, feeling that any deviation in behaviour would qualify as condescension. This might prove an effective strategy if I happened to possess one of those cheery, personable dispositions, the kind that effortlessly engages child and adult alike. But as I've only a reserved, distant aspect, I've long grown used to being gaped at wordlessly from behind the clung leg of a parent. Of course, it doesn't help that I can't really speak Japanese. The youngest, a spirited little thing whose name was frequently intoned reproachfully by his mother, the two syllables landing like gong strikes, was the most adaptable to my presence, and it was with him that I developed something approaching a rapport. But my invocation of magic constituted a breakthrough of sorts. Unlike most actual magicians, I find sharing the techniques behind a magic trick to be more rewarding than the initial deception. And so, mere moments later, I had the three of them dashing about the dead with coins stuck tenuously to the undersides of their hands, ready to astonish the rest of the family.
That family, as I learned from the video screened during the three-hours-plus drive, was the product of a merger between two neighbouring divorcees, each of whom contributed a boy and a girl from a previous marriage before joining forces, as it were, to form a fifth member. My Korean friend and I felt especially like a sixth and seventh as we sat in the backseat trying to eat our rice balls while said fifth treated us like terrain and the remaining four snored peacefully in the boot. The trip, which was undertaken entirely for our benefit, was but further evidence of ours hosts' selfless generosity. Earlier in our stay we had each been treated to a family dinner, mine complemented with homemade plum wine and patiently adapted to suit my vegetarianism. It was all the more humbling considering the paltry price I had paid for the room. The guest house, clean, comfortable and well-equipped, was among the best places I had stayed in, even discounting the advantage of its Totoro-themed living area. Admittedly the location was rather on the remote side, but since I had already explored urban Osaka, and Tokyo before that, I was glad to be nowhere for a while.
During these last days in Japan I drank nothing more potent than green tea (all right, and that one glass of plum wine). This was not so much heroic abstention as mere circumstance: the village that contained the guest house consisted of little more than a supermarket and a bakery, and that little more did not include a bar. With no itinerary to speak of, I relished plodding about purposelessly and losing swathes of the afternoon inside a book at the bakery, which in addition to tall bread provided armchairs and good coffee. Occasionally I ventured into the shrines by the mountain and took photos to one day bore my family with, but mostly I stuck to familiar paths, passing the same agricultural fields, slim houses and barren lots where neighbourhood children played. Invariably I would stop in the middle of the short wooden bridge that led under the train line, and stare at the mist hanging over the stream, and the fishing limbs of bamboo.
The other guests varied in quality but not friendliness. A Canadian I scarcely interacted with offered me a gig in Quebec, or at least the possibility of one, solely on the strength of my ability to have a guitar. Of course, he immediately discredited himself by admitting to having seen Xavier Rudd perform on five distinct occasions. I mean, once or twice you could write off as an accident. But five times? That takes intent. Of more substance were my dealings with a charming Indonesian man and his mother, one of whom slept so noisily I genuinely thought someone was renovating the adjoining wall. But I spent the most time with my Korean friend and a young Japanese woman who was staying there long-term in order to experience village life. She worked in education, in the impressive-sounding field of Sustainable Community Development, and in the evenings after long days she could be found crosslegged in front of a cartoon. With unfailing patience and kindness she indulged my fumbling attempts at Japanese, making me realise how invaluable genuine interaction was in the process of language acquisition. I didn't get terribly far, but I did learn how to say I was a strange person. She nodded without further comment.
The overworked parting card I left my hosts.