Winner of Letter of the Month in Decanter Magazine

Chikugo

          In 2002 I went to Japan for the first time and stayed for a year in a small city called Chikugo. It was inaka, a rural place. There wasn’t much to it beyond the main drag which led north towards Kurume and Fukuoka. It did, however, have a train station, outside which there was a statue of a dog.

          On the narrow road that led from the station to my apartment someone had a rooster. It would crow loudly when the sun rose, waking me up early every morning except on Sundays, when I typically got home at about 7.30 after a long night out. There was also a high school baseball ground next to my building, where the team would practice or have games on weekend mornings. I was therefore routinely roused by the metallic clink of hitters smacking the ball during batting practice, or by teenage players calling out during fielding drills. I liked to lie on my bed with the French window open, and feel the cooling wind blow in. 

           I worked as an English teacher in state schools. I guess most foreigners doing the same job around Japan wanted to live in Tokyo or Kyoto, but I had requested an assignment in Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s four big islands, as I’d read that the people were notably friendly and enjoyed drinking. The former statement was true, especially in relation to my later experiences in Tokyo. I once made a friend simply by standing outside 7-11. As for the part about drinking, that was also accurate. When my Japanese colleagues and I went on a trip to the frozen north, middle aged women were guzzling beers at 8.30 in the morning.

          In the summer it was hot and very humid. I would play football with my students during lunch breaks, after which I didn’t stop perspiring for at least half an hour. Female staff would fan me down before classes resumed, saying ‘Daijoubu?’ (Are you OK?), or set up the electric fan in front of me. I have a picture in which I’m shaking hands with a boy after lunch, my t-shirt soaked in sweat. Still, even though I was living in the hot south I never came across a cockroach or a spider of any size. Those treats would come later, when I moved to the crowded main island of Honshu. I did see the odd gecko, which liked to crawl along the wall outside my front door.

In the winter my apartment, which was large by Japanese standards, was bone-chillingly cold. There was no central heating, and for warmth I relied on an air-conditioning unit and a kotatsu. The latter is a low table with a heating device on the underside, along with a duvet which you hide your body beneath. The Japanese love kotatsu, perhaps because they are accustomed to sitting on the floor. For me, it was pretty uncomfortable, and my exposed head felt cold.

I loved some of the food I had in Kyushu. It was my introduction to spicy Korean fare such as bibimbap and yakiniku (barbecue). There were excellent fast food restaurants nearby like Mos Burger and a curry place called Coco Ichiban. Best of all, though, were the tonkatsu restaurants, where you got a cutlet of pork deep fried in breadcrumbs until it was kitsune-iro (fox colour), along with a bowl of rice and as much shredded cabbage as you could eat. The pork always came with a bowl of miso soup as well, but I never touched that. My other favourite food was yakitori, grilled skewers of meat, invariably accompanied by lots of beer. 

          I was unused to certain styles of Japanese cuisine in those days, however, and had a sticky episode when my colleagues took me out for a welcome dinner. It was a traditional meal, which involved us sitting on tatami mats beneath a low table while a lot of suspicious looking morsels were placed before us. After 5 minutes of sitting cross-legged, I was in agony. One of the last dishes was squid, which was alive just a few minutes prior to its appearance on the table. It was still twitching when they laid it out and I, as the guest of honour, was given the first taste. It was distinctly crunchy, and not at all pleasant.

          From Chikugo it took about thirty five minutes to reach the metropolis of Fukuoka. My Canadian friend and I frequented gaijin bars and clubs whose diverse clientele included American sailors from the base at Sasebo and young Japanese dressed like black rappers, who sought to mimic the speech of their idols as well as dressing like them. I used to drink Long Island Iced Tea poured from plastic jugs, which led to fearsome hangovers the next morning. The biggest problem was getting home, for the first express train used to leave at 6.57 in the morning. By that stage I could barely keep my eyes open, and I fell asleep several times. Once, I woke up just before Yatsushiro, which was about two hours beyond my stop!

         

          I never returned to Chikugo, although I spent more than two years in Japan in the years that followed. I suppose it has nothing to offer the visitor, even if it does now have a bullet train station! For me, though, it was a wonderful place to spend a year when I was twenty five. 

The Plaza de España, Seville

        The first sound that catches my ear is of castanets being shaken by a street vendor. Across the square someone is playing Unchained Melody on panpipes, a song which seems quite out of place in Seville. Then I notice the clip-clop of horses circumnavigating the central fountain. All this overlays the low hum of tourists chatting to one another.

        We are in the Plaza de España in Seville, one of the city’s less heralded sights. Indeed, I’m sure when I first visited eleven years ago it had been essentially forgotten. It is found beyond the old tobacco factory, at the end of an avenue of lovely orange and plane trees, where parakeets chirp to each other and policemen stand around stroking and feeding snacks to horses.

        It was built for the Ibero-Americana Exposition in the 1920s, and looks very striking. A long crescent of columns stretches between two towers. The red and yellow flag of Spain flies over the central building, and there’s a moat crossed by handsome single arch bridges whose balustrades are painted blue and white. You can rent a boat and row yourself along the water is you so desire.

        What I like most is the series of paintings that extends the length of the crescent. The predominant colours are blue and yellow, and the images are painted on tiles. Each shows some episode from Spanish history, such as Columbus departing for the New World from Huelva and explaining his plans to the King in Salamanca.

        Many of the paintings are dedicated to scenes from the reconquest of Spain by the Catholic Kings. They show the Christian army bivouacked below the dramatic cliffs of Cuenca, and the surrender of the Muslims in Granada and Málaga. It crossed my mind that in politically correct Britain these pictures might be controversial, arousing the ire of some too-easily offended busybody.

        We take our leave of the square to the sound of Strangers in the Night being played on panpipes.

The Bars of Seville

    Seville is one of my favourite cities in the world. I recently spent three nights there, and I could have stayed another week. There is something wonderfully languorous about Seville, no doubt due to the intense sun and enervating heat. The climate engulfs and eventually overwhelms you, so that you must partake of that ritual of the south, the siesta. If a sleep doesn’t appeal, the obvious alternative is to go to a bar. And there are a lot of bars. 

My first experience of a bar in Seville was not auspicious. The establishment in question, Bar Europa, was rather empty when my uncle and I wandered in on a February evening and ordered a couple of sherries. We were at the counter and I grabbed a stool, an action which seemed to upset a local man nearby, so I offered it to him. He had a weird and agitated manner, and didn’t seem mollified by my gesture. The bar staff appeared determined to ignore this nuisance, and after quickly finishing our drinks we left. Afterwards, I suggested to my uncle that the guy was looking for a fight, although he was of the opinion that he was trying to make a move on me!

          That incident, which occurred many years ago, came back to me during my recent stay. My travelling companion and I visited a bar in the touristy Santa Cruz neighbourhood one evening. It was busy with locals and foreigners and so loud that we had to stand outside in order to have a conversation. We were nursing a manzanilla and a white wine and enjoying the lovely evening weather, when a very drunk man put his sherry down on our table. He said ‘Skol!’ and raised his glass vaguely in our direction. I assumed he was Scandinavian on account of this greeting, but my friend rightly marked him as a Spaniard.

          The man raised his glass a couple more times, as if acknowledging an invisible drinking buddy. I think we were both filled with a sense of foreboding that he would, inevitably, try to draw us into a conversation. And so it panned out. My cousin gamely made an effort to respond to his questions, but it was gibberish. At one point we figured out that he was attempting to ask us what we wanted to drink, but he was determined to ask it perfectly, and fumbled around on his mobile for a couple of minutes before he found the translation. When I told him I lived in Scotland his glazed eyes lit up and he said ‘whisky!’ He shambled uneasily towards the bar to buy one for me, but the bar staff sent him packing. Soon after, we took our leave. I’m sure the drunk Spaniard has no recollection of ever meeting us.

          Still, I think such inebriates are a rarity in Seville. I have never seen anyone I would describe as drunk in my favourite bar, Hijos de E. Morales, which is found on Calle Garcia de Vinuesa, not far from the cathedral. Perhaps it’s to do with the measurements. If you ask for a beer you get a caña, which is about 200ml in size, and the many varieties of sherry (fino, manzanilla, oloroso, palo cortado and so on) are served in small glasses.

          Morales is small and has only a few tables, but most customers prefer to stand. Like the place in the Barrio Santa Cruz, it attracts a mixed clientele of young and older Spaniards, as well as tourists. You can order local specialities like garbanzas con espinacas (chickpeas and spinach) and eat them while standing beside the wooden counter. Gruff and ageing barmen look you firmly in the eye and bark out ‘dime’ or ‘digame’ (‘tell me’) before taking your order. When they give you your change they slap the coins down on the counter and slide them towards you. It’s loud, indeed another of those bars where you may have to take your drinks outside if you wish to hear what your friend is saying, but the patrons are good-humoured.

Still, we could not entirely escape the cliché of the British tourist, for on two occasions we finished the night in an Irish pub, drinking enormous glasses of whisky. There was football on big screens and sunburnt British women drinking rosé, and we could almost have felt at home. But stopping on one of the bridges that crosses the Guadalquivir river on the way to our hotel, we turned round and looked back at the old centre of Seville, where we saw the awe-inspiring bulk of the Cathedral and the majestic Giralda tower lit up against the night sky.

         

Ecija

          The courtyard is bathed in brilliant sunshine and the brown and white bell tower looms above me. There’s a man sweeping the floor and I tell him I want to climb to the top. He leads me into the chapel, where the light is muted, and I catch a glimpse of a huge and splendid gold altar. The caretaker takes me to a glass table where images of Christ can be purchased. I just give him a 2 euro ‘donation’ for the privilege of ascending the 115 steps.

        I quickly reach the level of the bells, which are discoloured from the passage of hundreds of years. It occurs to me that a deafening din might break out at any moment, so I check my watch: it’s 10.15. I figure I have another fifteen minutes before I need to worry about my eardrums being blasted out. Through the arches I see low hills in three directions and a vast open plain to the north.

We came to Ecija from the west, from Seville, over a flat and dry landscape where little grows, except the hardy olive tree. The only notable settlement between the two is the striking hilltop town of Carmona. After an hour or so Ecija came into view, its famous towers standing out above the whitewashed buildings.

They call Ecija the sartenilla (frying pan) of Andalusia. The English writer Laurie Lee described it as ‘a lake of sun, a reservoir of heat’. On the early May afternoon that we arrived the temperature was in the high twenties, and it was startlingly bright.

There is a soporific character to the place. We arrived during the siesta and felt exhausted enough to have a lie down ourselves. Then we ventured into the main square, the Plaza de España, and didn’t even make it all the way across before stopping in a café. We stayed for an hour and a half, drinking coke and beer and watching children run around while their mothers sat in the shade and gossiped.

The next morning, in the tower, it is cool, for a light breeze blows through the gaps, and the landing is in the shade. The main sound is the chirruping of birds calling to one another, although I hear the occasional human voice from the narrow streets. From far away, the faint hum of traffic is audible, but is mostly drowned out by the lyrical songs of the birds.

From my vantage point above the church of San Juan Bautista I see brown and orange towers all around. I had heard these edifices were decaying, but they look spruce and magnificent. Best of all is the tower above Santa Maria church, a majestic and ornate spire that recalls the Giralda in Seville.

        A single bell tolls from some unseen church, marking the half hour, followed a few seconds later by another single chime. Then the nearby narrow tower above the church of San Gil erupts in noise, the sound wonderfully resonant at this height. I stay another fifteen minutes, my solitude uninterrupted by another soul.

        As I leave the courtyard I notice the caretaker staring at me and it occurs to me that perhaps Ecija receives few tourists. Maybe the energy-sapping heat puts them off. It's worth it, though, just for that view from the tower.