Yagami River Stories

Several hours ago, I was sitting at the Aiea Public Library (because they close at 8pm on Thursday) trying to remember why it was that I write. Recently, as it happens everytime, I've hit that point where writing just isn't as much fun as it was (probably because I was doing it constantly) and now I'm stuck wondering why it is I'm doing this writing-thing. As you may have noticed (though probably not), I haven't written a story for a couple of weeks. I brought a picture book I used before to help me practice and to even get inspiration for stories. You know, just flip to a random page and start writing about what you see on the page. Because I haven't actually looked through this book for years (it's been sitting in a shoebox under my bed), I started flipping through it, page by page and I came across this one:

Yagami River. Photo credit to Allison

And then I started thinking about how I used to write at that exact spot. How I would try to get out there whenever I felt that I'd been holed up in my room for too long. How quiet and relaxing it was. Mostly, though, about the stories I have associated with it. They say when you've forgotten how you got to where you are the best thing to do is remember where you started. No, that's not real. I think I made that up, but meh. Anyways, here's some stories from Yagami River, the place where I first started to write seriously.

Also, if you were wondering which picture book it was, well, it's the only one I own.

not sure if it's still for sale

I used to go writing down at Yagami River back when I was studying abroad in Japan. Yeah, I could just as easily write in my air-conditioned room but I thought it was still important to not spend the entire day in my room, even if it was just for a couple hours. I would typically take my notebook, a pen, bottle of coke, bag of chips, and a pack of Marlboros and just sit and write stories at the edge of the water. They all sucked back then too so it looks like nothing has really changed.

There was the cat incident. I was sitting at the river like I normally did and a cat started slinking its way toward me. Now, I don't have a very good relationship with cats so I was nervous by how close it was getting. Then it just started rubbing itself against me: my legs, my back, my arms. Petrified, I just sat as still as I could assuming that eventually it would strike and sink its claws into me. Eventually, I realized that this is what it probably does to the old guys who fish in the river so that they give it food. Well, the cat finally got bored and left. But the fun doesn't stop there. On my way back to the dorm, I ran into ... someone, crap I don't remember, anyways whoever it was pointed out that I had orange fur all over me, of course, easily visible on my white t-shirt. But that's not all. As we're dusting the orange fur off, there's these red dots that start moving. Yeah, so now I've got fleas on me. I dusted myself off as best I could before getting into the dorm and then immediately threw all my clothes into the washing machine. Fuck cats. Oh, and whoever that was on the bridge back to the dorm, thanks for the help.

Once, the dorm got busted for launching fireworks. I think at this point we'd been banned from using the dorm lounge after 10pm so that night we went down to the river to hang out. I don't even remember why we bought the fireworks. Either someone knew that the Lawson Hyaku-en sold them or else we just randomly saw them as we were buying beer. Either way, Jon and I were now standing at the check-out counter with a couple cans of beer and close to a dozen 100 yen aerial fireworks and now the clerk was looking at us very suspiciously. I don't remember it all in Japanese, but for the most part the conversation went something like this:

Clerk: "Where?"
Jon: "Yagami River."
C: "You can't use tonight."
J: "Tomorrow"

And then we finished paying and got out of there. Immediately, once we got to the river, we started lighting the fireworks, one at a time, two at a time. These were some quality aerials, especially for just 100 yen (like $1.50 at the time). I want to say we finished by firing off 6 at once. And that's when the police showed up. Luckily no one got arrested or in any serious trouble, at least from what I can remember. I do remember that a couple people who could speak fluent Japanese managed to run off. Also, a couple of fluent Japanese speakers were left to answer some questions while the rest of us just stood around.

It didn't happen at the river, but I did once tell Terry that I had been going down to the river to write. I don't exactly remember what we were talking about or why I brought it up, maybe we were talking about what we had been doing or something. the important thing is that it was probably the first time I told anyone outside of English class that I write stories in my free time. The story I was writing at the time (was crap) was about a world where people would receive mysterious red envelopes in the mail. No one knew where they came from but if you did receive one, it meant you were going to kill someone within the next 24 hours. What I mostly remember from all this was the priceless look of shock on Terry's face. I think when I said that I wrote stories down by the river, he assumed I was actually drawing inspiration from the peace and serenity and that I was writing poems or something like that.

I guess that's it for now. At least that's all the stories I could come up with involving Yagami-Kawa. Did writing any of this get me any closer to getting back into writing stories again? Maybe. Mostly it was just fun going through all those old memories again. But really, just by being fun again is definitely a step in the right direction. Hopefully I'll come up with something else soon.