Go to Goto: Day One

PRELUDE:

When last we wrote the tour plan to get to Goto Island had gone astray. To get back on track the tour put us all on a bus at 7 a.m., gave us sandwiches for breakfast and headed out for the jetfoil terminal. Only one problem - no coffee. As those who work with Nancy can attest, unlike the Dire Straits song, she does not run “on any heavy fuel.” In the morning she runs on caffeine only. Accept no substitutes.
When we arrived at the terminal we had a short wait. I knew that there was a coffee shop in the terminal from the previous day’s sumo watching. Sophisticated world traveler that I am I went to the shop secure in the knowledge that neither the language nor the cultural difference would be any barrier to my functioning as the mighty hunter who returns with coffee.

Once in the shop I asked the smiling lady if she spoke English. “Yes,” she replied. My heart soared.

“Do you have coffee?” I asked.

“Yes.”

“How much?”

“380 yen.”

I began to dig out my money but she asked me if I had a ticket. When I said no she pointed to a large ticket vending machine and told me I needed a ticket. The sophisticated world traveler quickly slipped a 500 yen coin in the slot, retrieved the 380 yen ticket and his change and returned to the counter.

“I will call you’” she said after taking my money.

I stepped back to wait. She served a couple of other early morning customers then beckoned me over. Smiling she handed me a large, steaming bowl of udon noodle soup.
I hesitated a moment then said, “Coffee?”

“After you finish your soup.” She said.

I was puzzled. What had I said to make her think I wanted soup? Was eating upon noodle soup a prerequisite to obtaining coffee in the morning? For one brief moment I flashed on how weird that would make buying coffee at the Starbucks I had seen since arriving in Japan. Not only would you need to adjust to the bizarro language in which grande means small but you would have to polish off the soup before you got your skinny vanilla latte.

I quickly came back to the moment and asked, “How much?”

“100 yen,” she replied.

“Do I need another ticket?”

“No.”

Now I was really fukken (my Japanese is improving, don’t you think?) baffled but I just smiled my best idiot’s grin (especially easy when the available evidence indicates that you are, in fact, an idiot), said, “Domo” and retreated to a table. I stepped out to ask Nancy if she wanted some udon noodle soup. She looked at me as if I had just asked her if she thought George Clooney was butt ugly and she answered in the way you would expect she would answer that question.

So I went inside and ate three-quarters of the soup (which was delicious by the way). I was negotiating with the waitress for the coffee when Nancy came in to let me know we were boarding. There followed a brief moment of tension while I insisted on securing the coffee, damn it. But coffee secured we got on the jetfoil with minutes to spare. Off to Goto and the tour.

The Tour

Following the jetfoil ride to Goto we were met at the dock by our tour buses and ferried to the hotel. We dropped our luggage in the lobby and immediately departed for Tama-no-ura. On the trip we discovered that, outside of the port of Goto City, the island is virtually empty. Like Hawaii it is an island where green foliage covered mountains rise steeply from the sea. Unlike Hawaii the foliage is not tropical. Like Hawaii it is beautiful and has many white sandy beaches. Our guide for this journey was Dr. Chuji Hiruki a native of Goto who received a Ph. D. in plant pathology from UC Berkeley in 1963. He taught at Alberta University in Canada for 40 years publishing over 200 research papers and several books before retiring to Goto in 1996. He is currently a vice-president of the International Camellia Society.

Tama-no-ura the place is famous for the discovery there of a variety of camellia now known as tama-no-ura. The first tama-no-ura plant was discovered by a charcoal worker in 1947. It was virtually unknown outside of Goto until 1970 and unknown outside of Japan until its introduction to the West by the incomparable Nuccio’s Nursery in 1979. Nuccio’s successfully introduced a series of cultivars including Tama Bambino and Tama Americano and the plant quickly became a superstar in the world of camellias.

The original Tama-no-ura plant succumbed to over popularity (too many people took too many cuttings). In 2003 Dr. Hikuri led a successful hunt to find the site of the original discovery. His team was successful and the spot is now marked by a metal plaque mounted on a boulder. A second generation Tama-no-ura is planted nearby. This is the spot that an intrepid group of camellia enthusiasts traveled thousands of miles, crossed from the main island, bussed into the mountains and hiked uphill one kilometer over rocky ground through a forest of Japanese cedar and wild camellias to reach.

That accomplished we bussed to a restaurant for lunch then on to the camellia forest at Osezaki Cape. The original plan was to hike through the camellia forest but as the tour was now trying to squeeze the welcoming party scheduled the previous night into this evening’s schedule the time allotted for the camellia forest was cut drastically. Fortunately despite the fact that the sun was shining and the day was brilliant the temperature was low, the wind was howling off the ocean and it was colder than a well digger’s posterior so no one minded too much.

Dinner that evening included a welcoming speech by the first female mayor of Goto City, camellia sushi created especially for the occasion plus entertainment by both a children’s chorus and a local Taiko drumming team. If you can’t enjoy a group of Japanese school girls singing “Do Re Mi” in Japanese you must have a hole in your soul.

Photos at http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=23102&id=1680191390&l=3fa52d86a6

Footnote: Goto (Go-tow) is one of a chain of islands off the coast west of Nagasaki. The city of Fukue is there but the island is largely rural and agricultural. Camellia oil is a major export. By Japanese standards Goto seems primitive as our hotel had neither Internet access nor heated toilet seats.