My memory of this week has, frustratingly, been defined by the constant battle against a vicious cold/flu (tbc – probably a mixture of both) attack which, as of now, seems to have no end in sight. Year after year, I had hoped to evade the winter germs, but what with daily commute on a variety of public transports combined with a sealed ‘open plan’ office (one of the major blights of modern civilisation), it was doomed to be hope in vain. The only comfort is that colleagues who piously queue up to get their flu jabs each autumn don’t ever seem to manage to prove the potency of the injection at all. I’ve always defiantly opted out of the jabs, so if we’re all getting the same germs anyway, at least I can (somehow) be content with the thought that I don’t have the extra shot of unidentified chemical substance in my system on top of everything else.
Out of a week’s mental state of near-total blur (inevitable, when your nostrils are hopelessly blocked – they are located quite close to the brains after all), two events stand out, and they do have something significant in common. On Tuesday we had Steve Reich back in town, who graciously took his bow again and again after the breathtaking performance of his 1970 classic ‘Drumming’ by the Colin Currie Group at Queen Elizabeth Hall. [Disclaimer: Colin is a dear friend and this article is not going to focus on the concert itself. For totally objective reviews who all heap praises on the performance, check the London broadsheets.] That composition date immediately gives the game away: it was hard to believe that this magical piece was written 40 years ago. The cultural landscape has shifted away – quite a long way away – from the modernist rigours that Reich and his peers were working against at the time. But the work itself has truly passed the test of time, and in each of the three live performances I have heard of it over the last four years (one with Reich and Musicians, two with the CC Group), it was as fresh, mesmerising, challenging and exhilarating as ever – all of these things at the same time. And if the size of the returns queue on Tuesday was anything to go by, I am not alone in being an addict to this music.
But I digressed. I was really going to remark on the Steve Reich conversations that I witnessed that day – one that I was actually a part of (a business meeting discussing programming plans for a major feature of his music next year), and the second was his post-concert talk with Colin on stage. I had to intermittently try to convince myself that we were really talking about those concert plans in the context of his forthcoming 75th birthday (the last big birthday four years ago was celebrated ‘in style’ with festivals in New York, London and elsewhere). Seventy-Five?! Not that long ago, most people would be very happy to live to that age, even in developed countries. But this guy talks and moves about with the sharpness, lucidity, humour, agility and energy that most thirty- year-old guys walking down the street will never possess. At the meeting, I would have happily sat there for hours more to hear him elucidate on Baroque music, African music, DNA, and the atomic bomb, but we had to stop because he had another four meetings to attend to before the evening concert. (And I was still trying desperately to breathe like a normal person.)
As if to prove my point, the other musical celebrity for the thinking man that I encountered, the very next day, was a sprightly octogenarian. It was National Theatre’s Platform event (40 minutes of on-stage interview, followed by Q&A) with Stephen Sondheim, the first of many events to take place in London this year to mark his 80th birthday. This was one of the rare Platform events to be held in Olivier, the largest of the three auditoria in the building, and all eleven hundred seats were packed to the rafters before the talk began. As the great man walked on to the stage, the assembled fans erupted with applause – he got a standing ovation before having even uttered a word! In the next sixty minutes, he gave the most fascinating and thoughtful account of his early days working with Oscar Hammerstein, (briefly) of his formal studies with Milton Babbitt (!), of the working method he used while collaborating with the stellar roll-call: from Hammerstein to Bernstein to Harold Prince. This was, as much as anything else, a chance to hear a living, breathing encyclopaedia of the history of musical theatre recollect the highlights of a half-century’s repertoire, and I was especially heartened to discover that the attentive audience was far from a roomful of grey heads. As with the previous evening’s audience at the Reich concert, it was a rather even spread of ages and genders. The twenty-year-olds seemed to have no less connection to a work like Sunday in The Park with George or Sweeney Todd than their grandparents, and Sondheim answered their questions not with the manner of an elderly statesman, but as a cerebral, witty, genial creator of those timeless works who could easily beat anyone forty years his junior in a debate.
With great creative people like these, you do expect the intelligence to ripe beautifully with old age, but the agility and quick-wittedness that both these guys exuded embody an eternal youthfulness so startlingly, that you have to believe the potency of creative power itself – more than anything that science has come up so far, it gives us the hope of eternal youth. Reich has his composing schedule utterly full for the next few years – the concept of ‘taking a break’ probably shouldn’t exist if you’re perpetually inspired by life itself – and Sondheim coyly revealed at the end of the talk that he had ‘been working on something’ for the last few years which would see the light of day soon. And I remind myself of Louise Bourgeois (89), of Paula Rego (75), of David Lodge (75), of Alan Bennett (76), of Elliott Carter (102) – all of whom are reaching new heights in their respective genre with each new work they give us. If we’re at least able to easily comprehend the senescence that these names are associated with, consider the fact that Stephen Spielberg is 64, Paul McCartney 68, Dustin Hoffman 74 (I know, I was quite startled by this too when I searched online)… The list goes on and on. The lesson seems simple: Create, and Live a Long Youth. In this order.
Saturday 20 February 2010
Friday 5 February 2010
10 Unforgettable Travel Moments (so far) - Part III
#5: The Moment of (Dream) Childhood Revisited
Disneyland, Paris
August 1999
When we arrived in Disneyland Europe, on Day Four of our great Inter-railing trip, I was twenty-one years old and a bit. A real adult, in other words. Even though I had lived in the UK for two years by this point and had got quite fairly accustomed to the way of life here during this time, the maiden voyage to the Continent – the word immediately implying a vast body of land separate from the snug British Isles, at the other end of which lay my true home – still offered up that unique sense of thrill. And the first three days in Paris had been filled with proper, adult itineraries – the museums, the neighbourhoods, the cafes. I had looked forward to the Disneyland trip as a belated childhood treat, but not anticipated any great excitement about it. Thanks to the ‘reform and opening up’ policy of the Chinese government, my generation – the first single-child generation – had been fed on a TV diet of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, though limited to thirty minutes every week, usually on a tiny black-and-white TV screen. The world of Disney was, for the Chinese population of 1980s at large, one of many a gateway that had all of a sudden appeared, to the exciting land that was the materialist, Capitalist Western world. But those of us under twelve, we were utterly oblivious to the ideological significance of those characters at this crucial time in our nation's history. We simply adored them – all voice-dubbed in Chinese – as much as our American counterparts, and the scarcity of their appearance made any virtual encounter with them all the more precious.
We joined the expectant crowd for the daily parade down the central boulevard, and when the ‘magical world of Disney’ soundtrack sprang into life, with the full cast of fantasy characters emerging in their impeccable costumes, my eyes inexplicably welled up (to my great annoyance). In this moment, what had all those years ago existed as the Other, distant, fantastic but alien world, decidedly out of reach except on TV screens, was finally reborn as part of My world. I was there, Minnie Mouse was smiling and waving to me, and this whole surrounding – in 3D, complete with soundtrack – was no longer Myth but a cultural discourse of which I could claim participatory experience, complete with heat and sweat. The dreamland, right there and then, dusted off that dizzying, alluring aura, and entered the diary as just another memorable destination – even for a twenty-one-year-old.
#4: The Moment of Charmed Arrival
Levoca, Slovakia
April 2000
Unlike some of the other off-beat destinations where we’ve left our footprints over the last 12 years, this one hasn’t become the Hot Spot on any Frequent Traveller’s Map, and probably never will be. But this quaint, enchanting little town in north-east Slovakia will forever retain a special place in our hearts, in part thanks to the unexpectedly ‘grand’ hotel where we ended up – well, to be precise, the manager/receptionist who was truly one-of-a-kind.
We had arrived in Levoca station after a creaky train journey from Bratislava, and all the coughing and nose-running I had tried to battle off over the previous two days had chosen this moment to metamorphose into a fully escalating fever. The two uphill miles from the station to the town centre seemed even longer in the rain that was just that little bit too malicious to be called drizzle. The hotel in question, right in the middle of the old town square, was listed in the ‘Top End’ category in the guidebook, and sounded unimaginably lavish by our standard at the time. It turned out to be our only choice by default after the discovery that the other, more budget-friendly option down the road, had closed for good.
Having sign-waved our way through numerous conversations in various small Czech and Slovakian towns by this point, we were startled when the only member of staff on duty opened his mouth with what could only be described as a mock-Basil Fawlty accent. ‘Ah, welcome to Levoca. I trust your stay shall be peaceful’ – meaning, as we discovered thirty seconds later, that we were the only guests in the hotel (and, by deduction, the only tourists mad enough to have come to this part of the world at this time of the year). Then, when being presented our passports – ‘Ah, I believe you are the first Chinese visitors we have ever had here.’ When being quizzed about weather in the following days – ‘I’m afraid the weather is expected to be unfavourable.’ Unfavourable! The last time I had heard anyone utter the word in real life was, well, actually no one ever spoke like that in Newcastle. W’ther’s go’a be shite, more likely. We ended up staying there for three full days and I have wanted to revisit Levoca ever since. To this day, not only was it the only hotel in all our hard-travelling years where a truly elegant suite (with art deco bathroom, complete with free-standing bath) cost fifteen dollars a night, but the memory of such ineffable charm, effortlessly exuded by one single person in the most unexpected place, always brings a smile to my face. These are the moments that make travel addicts out of us.
Disneyland, Paris
August 1999
When we arrived in Disneyland Europe, on Day Four of our great Inter-railing trip, I was twenty-one years old and a bit. A real adult, in other words. Even though I had lived in the UK for two years by this point and had got quite fairly accustomed to the way of life here during this time, the maiden voyage to the Continent – the word immediately implying a vast body of land separate from the snug British Isles, at the other end of which lay my true home – still offered up that unique sense of thrill. And the first three days in Paris had been filled with proper, adult itineraries – the museums, the neighbourhoods, the cafes. I had looked forward to the Disneyland trip as a belated childhood treat, but not anticipated any great excitement about it. Thanks to the ‘reform and opening up’ policy of the Chinese government, my generation – the first single-child generation – had been fed on a TV diet of Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck, though limited to thirty minutes every week, usually on a tiny black-and-white TV screen. The world of Disney was, for the Chinese population of 1980s at large, one of many a gateway that had all of a sudden appeared, to the exciting land that was the materialist, Capitalist Western world. But those of us under twelve, we were utterly oblivious to the ideological significance of those characters at this crucial time in our nation's history. We simply adored them – all voice-dubbed in Chinese – as much as our American counterparts, and the scarcity of their appearance made any virtual encounter with them all the more precious.
We joined the expectant crowd for the daily parade down the central boulevard, and when the ‘magical world of Disney’ soundtrack sprang into life, with the full cast of fantasy characters emerging in their impeccable costumes, my eyes inexplicably welled up (to my great annoyance). In this moment, what had all those years ago existed as the Other, distant, fantastic but alien world, decidedly out of reach except on TV screens, was finally reborn as part of My world. I was there, Minnie Mouse was smiling and waving to me, and this whole surrounding – in 3D, complete with soundtrack – was no longer Myth but a cultural discourse of which I could claim participatory experience, complete with heat and sweat. The dreamland, right there and then, dusted off that dizzying, alluring aura, and entered the diary as just another memorable destination – even for a twenty-one-year-old.
#4: The Moment of Charmed Arrival
Levoca, Slovakia
April 2000
Unlike some of the other off-beat destinations where we’ve left our footprints over the last 12 years, this one hasn’t become the Hot Spot on any Frequent Traveller’s Map, and probably never will be. But this quaint, enchanting little town in north-east Slovakia will forever retain a special place in our hearts, in part thanks to the unexpectedly ‘grand’ hotel where we ended up – well, to be precise, the manager/receptionist who was truly one-of-a-kind.
We had arrived in Levoca station after a creaky train journey from Bratislava, and all the coughing and nose-running I had tried to battle off over the previous two days had chosen this moment to metamorphose into a fully escalating fever. The two uphill miles from the station to the town centre seemed even longer in the rain that was just that little bit too malicious to be called drizzle. The hotel in question, right in the middle of the old town square, was listed in the ‘Top End’ category in the guidebook, and sounded unimaginably lavish by our standard at the time. It turned out to be our only choice by default after the discovery that the other, more budget-friendly option down the road, had closed for good.
Having sign-waved our way through numerous conversations in various small Czech and Slovakian towns by this point, we were startled when the only member of staff on duty opened his mouth with what could only be described as a mock-Basil Fawlty accent. ‘Ah, welcome to Levoca. I trust your stay shall be peaceful’ – meaning, as we discovered thirty seconds later, that we were the only guests in the hotel (and, by deduction, the only tourists mad enough to have come to this part of the world at this time of the year). Then, when being presented our passports – ‘Ah, I believe you are the first Chinese visitors we have ever had here.’ When being quizzed about weather in the following days – ‘I’m afraid the weather is expected to be unfavourable.’ Unfavourable! The last time I had heard anyone utter the word in real life was, well, actually no one ever spoke like that in Newcastle. W’ther’s go’a be shite, more likely. We ended up staying there for three full days and I have wanted to revisit Levoca ever since. To this day, not only was it the only hotel in all our hard-travelling years where a truly elegant suite (with art deco bathroom, complete with free-standing bath) cost fifteen dollars a night, but the memory of such ineffable charm, effortlessly exuded by one single person in the most unexpected place, always brings a smile to my face. These are the moments that make travel addicts out of us.
10 Unforgettable Travel Moments (so far) - Part II
#7: The Moment of Farce (aka The Journey from Hell)
Train journey from London to Manchester
January 2007
This was the Day of The Great Gale. True enough, all the other severe wind conditions before or since, as least as I've experienced in London, have been mere breezes in comparison. But nothing really justifies the way it turned out to be the Day of The Great Farce, as I’m about to tell you now.
This was also the first day of the annual conference of the Association of British Orchestras, this particular year being held in Manchester. Having been accustomed to the vast array of possible reasons obstructing normal operations of any form of British public transport, I wasn't entirely surprised when the 9:35am train I was supposed to embark on was cancelled before departure. It did mean that the passengers from two near-full services would be packed into one, the 10:05am train. I could take this, I thought. But little did I know that that was barely the beginning of what was going to be a very long day indeed.
Five minutes after the train pulled out of Euston station, the announcement came on that due to weather-related speed restriction, the journey would take five hours instead of two and a half. A sea of very un-English groans duly ensued, mostly – rightly – pointing out the absurdity of delaying this news until just after departure. About half the passengers in my carriage commented that they would have opted not to make the journey at all had they known. Well, it seemed that Virgin Trains knew exactly what they were doing – imagine them having to deal with all those refunds if that had been the case.
So we traveled on, at the greatly reduced speed of 55 miles per hour (supposedly – it felt slower). There were intermittent (unannounced, unexplained) stops along the way in between stations, so by the time we ground to a halt completely at Tamworth station, just outside Birmingham, it was well past one o’clock. After a thirty-minute pause, the announcer informed us that we were, well, to be held at the station indefinitely, because a tree had fallen on the tracks some twenty miles ahead and – I’m not making any of this up – ‘a team of engineers were on their way to the site with a view of removal of the said tree’. It was also advised that we got ourselves something to eat and drink at the station, especially as the shop on the train had sold out every last pack of crisps some time ago. I reacted quickly enough to be near the front of the queue at the single tiny shop at the station, where the flustered lady-in-charge was clearly bewildered by the sight of a meandering file of some two hundred customers suddenly materialising in the hope of getting their hands on the five sausage rolls she had for the day (my guess was that she usually had about seventeen customers a day on average). I succeeded, but the one hundred and ninety-seven people behind me had to make do with Maltesers and Mars bars – until they also ran out at customer No. 134, that was.
Back in the carriage, just as I foolishly started to feel smug about the warm sausage roll and the cup of tea I had gulped down, darkness fell – all the lights and, worse, the heating, suddenly went out. We must have, subconsciously, all been preparing ourselves for a very long doomed destiny with this journey, for by the time the next announcement came up ten minutes later it was greeted not by rage or even disbelief, but bemused roaring laughter. The new development was so utterly surreal, it could only be a true-life incident on a British train journey:
‘Ladies and gentleman, you will have noticed that we lost our power about ten minutes ago. I regret to inform you that not only were the engineers who arrived at the site unable to remove the fallen tree, the tree has apparently caught on fire, which has caused the entire West Coast main line to be out of power, and therefore this train – along with all other trains currently stopped between London and Manchester – will not be going anywhere today…’
Was there a happy ending to the story? Perhaps I should have sought a way back to London – geographically it would have made (just a little) more sense, but professional duty propelled me in the other direction, and I ended up in a rental car with two complete strangers, fellow young female professionals who were both returning home to Manchester after a work trip to London. My navigation skills faced the ultimate challenge – and proudly passed the test with flying colours – as we went through a whole maze of small country lanes across Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire (all the major roads were totally bottle-necked thanks to the weather and the railway fiasco) with nothing more than an old-fashioned road atlas courtesy of the rental company. SatNav? What was that? The three of us quickly bonded over an almost primal urge of taking things into our own hands, especially after all those hours we had spent on the farcical train journey that never ended. By the time I turned up at the conference it was just past 9pm, and the day has henceforth gone down in the memory lane – and to anyone willing to listen to my one hundredth retelling of the story – as ‘my epic eleven-and-a-half-hour journey from London to Manchester. Boy, was I determined to get there or not!’
#6: The Moment of True Community Spirit
Ultra-triathlon, Sado Island, Japan
September 2009
We found out that our weekend in Sado Island – our first-ever visit to this stunning part of the country where most Japanese have not visited – was going to coincide with the famous ultra-triathlon when booking our car ferry journeys. We did it just in time to get the tickets we wanted, but couldn’t help pondering whether one of our only three days on the island would be seriously disrupted by this big event on a small island. The new friends we made on the day before the race waved off our concern with a hearty smile: ‘Don’t worry at all! We’re very laid-back about these here – you’ll see.’ He also confirmed that the race would consist of 9km of swimming, followed by 140km of cycling (circling the entire island), and finally 45km of running. M beamed. I gulped.
The next morning, we took to the coastal road after breakfast, around nine o’clock. The second leg of the race was in full swing, and it was impossible not to be impressed by the gusto with which the cyclists were flying by us, considering they had done more swimming before I even woke up than I had ever done in my life. Our friend was right – there was no major-city marathon-style mania. Everything seemed, in distinctly Japanese manner of course, perfectly in order, with the clockwise side of the costal road reserved for the formidable triatheletes and the counter-clockwise side functioning as usual for us mere mortals shamefully moving about in our four-wheeled vehicles. There were the occasional policemen at major junctions, but mostly to bow their courteous bow and smile their courteous smile at similarly well-behaved motorists, rather than undertaking any ‘police duty’. So were there no cheerers with banners at all then, you ask – that fundamental element to all such events that keep the people going (especially as, let’s face it, the distances involved here are anything but human dimensions)? Well, the London/New York-sized crowds are nowhere to be seen, these toughened human beings perhaps do bristle at the idea of having their families traveling to this remote corner just to cheer them on, and for a short stretch of the road you do wonder if things are not a bit too much on the quiet side. But then you start to notice the locals sitting by the kerb, literally just outside their own front doors. Many were sprightly-looking septuagenians and beyond – Japan is known for its nation-wide longevity, and Sado Island is not a chosen destination of the young by any means. They pop themselves on little hand-made wooden stools, wearing a simple hat to shield the unforgiving sun, and cheer for each and every brave man and woman passing by in a rather quiet, understated manner. Catching these captivating sights at 50mph, I suddenly felt like being placed in an Ozu frame at slightly more modern pace, a beautifully seductive prospect. But then, at approximately five-hundred-meter intervals, there would be a bigger gathering of multi-generational families, usually led by an earnest female in her thirties, lifting – we slowed down especially to ascertain – large bowls of freshly-cut, mouth-watering (we knew because we had stuffed ourselves with them since arrival) local fruits. The pragmatism of taking pick of these seemed at once problematic, but they were a truly delightful sight compared with all the Lucozades that would be on offer instead along Tower Bridge or First Avenue. After all, for every cyclist intent on having a winning place in the race and was hard enough not to be allured by the juice watermelon chunks, there would be four who were grateful that they were there. They did not scrimp on their time so much and would stop for a few seconds and exchange a grateful smile with the ladies, take a much-needed mouthful of vitamin-filled liquid food and nod the emphatic thanks, before charging on. The race was meant to be an international gathering, proved by the dozen or so foreign faces we saw on the return ferry to the main land the next morning (although the universally expired look did not differ by nationality or any other criteria). Yet to me its exceptional charm lay in that easy, local feel. I certainly would never again be able to watch a marathon, live or otherwise, without thinking about those diminutive, smiling elderlies, or the ladies with their heart-warming fruit bowls.
Train journey from London to Manchester
January 2007
This was the Day of The Great Gale. True enough, all the other severe wind conditions before or since, as least as I've experienced in London, have been mere breezes in comparison. But nothing really justifies the way it turned out to be the Day of The Great Farce, as I’m about to tell you now.
This was also the first day of the annual conference of the Association of British Orchestras, this particular year being held in Manchester. Having been accustomed to the vast array of possible reasons obstructing normal operations of any form of British public transport, I wasn't entirely surprised when the 9:35am train I was supposed to embark on was cancelled before departure. It did mean that the passengers from two near-full services would be packed into one, the 10:05am train. I could take this, I thought. But little did I know that that was barely the beginning of what was going to be a very long day indeed.
Five minutes after the train pulled out of Euston station, the announcement came on that due to weather-related speed restriction, the journey would take five hours instead of two and a half. A sea of very un-English groans duly ensued, mostly – rightly – pointing out the absurdity of delaying this news until just after departure. About half the passengers in my carriage commented that they would have opted not to make the journey at all had they known. Well, it seemed that Virgin Trains knew exactly what they were doing – imagine them having to deal with all those refunds if that had been the case.
So we traveled on, at the greatly reduced speed of 55 miles per hour (supposedly – it felt slower). There were intermittent (unannounced, unexplained) stops along the way in between stations, so by the time we ground to a halt completely at Tamworth station, just outside Birmingham, it was well past one o’clock. After a thirty-minute pause, the announcer informed us that we were, well, to be held at the station indefinitely, because a tree had fallen on the tracks some twenty miles ahead and – I’m not making any of this up – ‘a team of engineers were on their way to the site with a view of removal of the said tree’. It was also advised that we got ourselves something to eat and drink at the station, especially as the shop on the train had sold out every last pack of crisps some time ago. I reacted quickly enough to be near the front of the queue at the single tiny shop at the station, where the flustered lady-in-charge was clearly bewildered by the sight of a meandering file of some two hundred customers suddenly materialising in the hope of getting their hands on the five sausage rolls she had for the day (my guess was that she usually had about seventeen customers a day on average). I succeeded, but the one hundred and ninety-seven people behind me had to make do with Maltesers and Mars bars – until they also ran out at customer No. 134, that was.
Back in the carriage, just as I foolishly started to feel smug about the warm sausage roll and the cup of tea I had gulped down, darkness fell – all the lights and, worse, the heating, suddenly went out. We must have, subconsciously, all been preparing ourselves for a very long doomed destiny with this journey, for by the time the next announcement came up ten minutes later it was greeted not by rage or even disbelief, but bemused roaring laughter. The new development was so utterly surreal, it could only be a true-life incident on a British train journey:
‘Ladies and gentleman, you will have noticed that we lost our power about ten minutes ago. I regret to inform you that not only were the engineers who arrived at the site unable to remove the fallen tree, the tree has apparently caught on fire, which has caused the entire West Coast main line to be out of power, and therefore this train – along with all other trains currently stopped between London and Manchester – will not be going anywhere today…’
Was there a happy ending to the story? Perhaps I should have sought a way back to London – geographically it would have made (just a little) more sense, but professional duty propelled me in the other direction, and I ended up in a rental car with two complete strangers, fellow young female professionals who were both returning home to Manchester after a work trip to London. My navigation skills faced the ultimate challenge – and proudly passed the test with flying colours – as we went through a whole maze of small country lanes across Worcestershire, Shropshire, Staffordshire and Cheshire (all the major roads were totally bottle-necked thanks to the weather and the railway fiasco) with nothing more than an old-fashioned road atlas courtesy of the rental company. SatNav? What was that? The three of us quickly bonded over an almost primal urge of taking things into our own hands, especially after all those hours we had spent on the farcical train journey that never ended. By the time I turned up at the conference it was just past 9pm, and the day has henceforth gone down in the memory lane – and to anyone willing to listen to my one hundredth retelling of the story – as ‘my epic eleven-and-a-half-hour journey from London to Manchester. Boy, was I determined to get there or not!’
#6: The Moment of True Community Spirit
Ultra-triathlon, Sado Island, Japan
September 2009
We found out that our weekend in Sado Island – our first-ever visit to this stunning part of the country where most Japanese have not visited – was going to coincide with the famous ultra-triathlon when booking our car ferry journeys. We did it just in time to get the tickets we wanted, but couldn’t help pondering whether one of our only three days on the island would be seriously disrupted by this big event on a small island. The new friends we made on the day before the race waved off our concern with a hearty smile: ‘Don’t worry at all! We’re very laid-back about these here – you’ll see.’ He also confirmed that the race would consist of 9km of swimming, followed by 140km of cycling (circling the entire island), and finally 45km of running. M beamed. I gulped.
The next morning, we took to the coastal road after breakfast, around nine o’clock. The second leg of the race was in full swing, and it was impossible not to be impressed by the gusto with which the cyclists were flying by us, considering they had done more swimming before I even woke up than I had ever done in my life. Our friend was right – there was no major-city marathon-style mania. Everything seemed, in distinctly Japanese manner of course, perfectly in order, with the clockwise side of the costal road reserved for the formidable triatheletes and the counter-clockwise side functioning as usual for us mere mortals shamefully moving about in our four-wheeled vehicles. There were the occasional policemen at major junctions, but mostly to bow their courteous bow and smile their courteous smile at similarly well-behaved motorists, rather than undertaking any ‘police duty’. So were there no cheerers with banners at all then, you ask – that fundamental element to all such events that keep the people going (especially as, let’s face it, the distances involved here are anything but human dimensions)? Well, the London/New York-sized crowds are nowhere to be seen, these toughened human beings perhaps do bristle at the idea of having their families traveling to this remote corner just to cheer them on, and for a short stretch of the road you do wonder if things are not a bit too much on the quiet side. But then you start to notice the locals sitting by the kerb, literally just outside their own front doors. Many were sprightly-looking septuagenians and beyond – Japan is known for its nation-wide longevity, and Sado Island is not a chosen destination of the young by any means. They pop themselves on little hand-made wooden stools, wearing a simple hat to shield the unforgiving sun, and cheer for each and every brave man and woman passing by in a rather quiet, understated manner. Catching these captivating sights at 50mph, I suddenly felt like being placed in an Ozu frame at slightly more modern pace, a beautifully seductive prospect. But then, at approximately five-hundred-meter intervals, there would be a bigger gathering of multi-generational families, usually led by an earnest female in her thirties, lifting – we slowed down especially to ascertain – large bowls of freshly-cut, mouth-watering (we knew because we had stuffed ourselves with them since arrival) local fruits. The pragmatism of taking pick of these seemed at once problematic, but they were a truly delightful sight compared with all the Lucozades that would be on offer instead along Tower Bridge or First Avenue. After all, for every cyclist intent on having a winning place in the race and was hard enough not to be allured by the juice watermelon chunks, there would be four who were grateful that they were there. They did not scrimp on their time so much and would stop for a few seconds and exchange a grateful smile with the ladies, take a much-needed mouthful of vitamin-filled liquid food and nod the emphatic thanks, before charging on. The race was meant to be an international gathering, proved by the dozen or so foreign faces we saw on the return ferry to the main land the next morning (although the universally expired look did not differ by nationality or any other criteria). Yet to me its exceptional charm lay in that easy, local feel. I certainly would never again be able to watch a marathon, live or otherwise, without thinking about those diminutive, smiling elderlies, or the ladies with their heart-warming fruit bowls.
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