Dear Bourdain 7: Sleeping in a Public Park
Dear Bourdain,
Well. I’m alive. I got a chilly 6 hours or 7 hours. 5 of them were even consecutive! So honestly, not bad at all.
I didn’t have a hostel in this town. Toyako is the sister town to Toya. They occupy the 4 or 5 miles between the Pacific ocean coast on Japan’s largest Northern Island of Hokkaido, and Lake Toya, a bed of volcanic activity in the region that leads to plenty of natural hot springs, eruption craters, soaring mountains, and an island in the center of the lake. I had come in on the ride with Edo [a Brazilian student studying in Tokyo. We met in Sapporo and decided to take the day trip together.]
The towns were beautiful. They were also small. The only hotel/hostels in the area were over $100 a night and the latest check-in I could find was 7pm. Not to mention all public transit ended by 7:30.
Which left me, my two bags, and $7 worth of supplies from the local 7/11. [apparently called 7&iHoldings in Japan. A Merger of 7/11 and an international conglomerate.] This included 1 pack of cigarettes, 1 plastic can of a sweet potato liquor [40 proof], 2 onigri, and a small seaweed/mushroom salad.
I set up in a very public park, host to a menagerie of children’s play pieces. Home to a beautifully gnarled tree tangled into a support structure from which I could tie my hammock. My tarp tied down overhead to protect from the very light rain.
After a few stop and starts, I popped three edibles, a heavy dose of CBD and fall asleep thinking about how the individual raindrops on the large tarp and field around me gave an excellent sonic representation to levels of music. They have depth and frequency and range.
It was a surreal level of insecurity. The hanging hammock on my overhand knots. The wind whipping at my loose tarp. Fighting to keep the quilt tucked under my body to conserve warmth.
It was difficult, and my brain spun nightmares of getting attacked by lunatics, or policemen with batons, or a fleet of neighborhood Obaa-san’s who would be disgusted at a homeless American sleeping in their children’s playgrounds!
Cars zipped by, infrequent but nearby, and at least 2 turned up the residential street I was closest to.
In the end, it was the elements that were the most cruel force. Late night drizzling turned to morning gusts, exactly angled to balloon my tarp above me and wick away all the heat around my suspended cocoon. In a flash of realization, I added my air mattress below me, into my hammock, to further insulate my body.
That’s about it. I was not disturbed at all, although peeing in the cold rain was unfun to get into, but very necessary. I woke up around 5:30, napped to about 6:15 before packing up. I walked 10 minutes to the beach to eat Japanese 7/11 food and smoke cigarettes next to the waves. I made a train 2 hours later to Hokkadate, the southern-most providence in Hokkaido, in preparation to make it to Tokyo.
I think I imagined more difficulties than anything I actually had to face.
I think I was never insecure, and if people noticed, most only wanted me to be safe and move on.
I survived. It was daunting scouting a likely sleeping spot in a foreign city I had never been to before.
But it was fine, and besides a little rain and a little wind. [also it was cloudy so no good stars!] I was pleasantly surprised how well sleeping outside went.
I’m homeless in Japan!
That’s pretty cool, all given. As I constantly say during all the shrines and temples I encounter here, I’m grateful. I’m blessed. This has been a wonderful journey, and I’m astonished how enjoyable a night without a roof can be. How cold breakfast and lonely drinking is rewarding. That the natural elements are blissfully unaware of you but manageable, and the human element is aware but uninterested.
If these are the worst of days, then I am the luckiest person on the planet.
I hope I don’t eat my words.
Cheers,
Winston
