My wife and I planned to sleep in our van down by the beach. When writing it out, it sounds a bit dirty or “low class”, but it is actually a very comfortable way to travel. Whenever we would sleep in the van, we would lay down two (or three if feeling luxurious) futon mattresses in the back of the van, pack two coolers full of food and alcohol, two camping chairs, and a camping table. It was great fun to get to the beach with fresh food and a bottle of wine, watch the sunset, talk until it gets dark, and then sleep comfortably in the van to the sound of the ocean waves.

The plan was for this Golden Week. After much deliberation about the day (we both have various things we want to do and have to do in the Golden Week holidays), we decided on a day, and after packing the van with everything we needed, we set out for Kamogawa in the south of Chiba, near the bottom of the Boso Penninsula.

The weather turned out to be crap, and we went back and forth as to whether we actually wanted to sleep at the beach.

“It’s windy, it’s going to rain overnight, and there won’t be any clear skies. It really seems like the only reason we would stay overnight is because it was our plan and to stick to the plan, without taking into consideration if it’s a good idea or not.”

That made sense to my wife, and after going back and forth some more, my wife decided she wanted to go for a quick surf before we go home.

That was fine by me, I knew she was going to be surfing, and I had packed my laptop and a collection of Haruki Murakami short stories. I had decided that I wanted to write a bunch of stories about the Sobu Line, and that they would basically be complete ripoffs of Haruki Murakami stories. I can have my own style and whatever else later. For now I just want to write as much as I can, and get a feel for writing.

We parked at the beach, and my wife went to surf, and I got into the back of the van, with the trunk door open so that I could feel the breeze and look at the ocean as I read and wrote.

Before doing this, I was on my smart phone doing a quick check of Facebook, and someone had posted some video that looked like a woman was giving a blowjob, but was actually eating a chocolate bar. The crudeness of it piqued my interest for a few seconds, and in those few seconds an old man rode by on his bicycle, looking in the side van window as he did. Then in front of me (behind the van), he stopped his bicycle and started to stare at me. I irrationally panicked that he would start going off on me for looking at porn in public, but I couldn’t see that happening in Japan. He eventually crossed the street and sat on a public bench, beside another old man, and talked loudly in heavy dialect.

I put away my smart phone, and picked up the short story collection that I had brought. The story I started was a story about coincidences, or things seemingly being connected or similar. As I was reading it, the old man came back and stood right beside the open trunk, looking in at me. My first thought was indifference (I had already rationalized that he wasn’t going to run to the police, my wife and my work to tell them that I was looking at pornography on my phone), and I continued to read about Murakami being at concerts and record stores.

“America?”

‘He’s talking?’ was all I could muster to think.

“America?”

“Eh?”

“America?”

“No, not America.”

It looks like he had stared at me not because I was looking at what would have been considered porn, but because I was a foreigner. That had made him… perhaps excited? And he wanted to strike up a conversation.

“France?”

“No, not France.”

Perhaps it seems cold, but I honestly didn’t have any interest in telling him where I was from, and usually don’t in these situations.

However, after (what was for me) an awkward pause, I gave up.

“Canada.”

“Huh?”

“I’m from Canada.”

This seemed to have ended our conversation for the time being. I’m not sure if he was desperately trying to continue the conversation and just could not think of how to do it yet, or if he was super relaxed, and no other question came into his head.

Looking at him, he didn’t really look disheveled. He was properly dressed, as an old man would dress: a vest over a button shirt, and some sort of slacks that were in old-man colour. There was something white on his bottom lip that kind of grossed me out. It didn’t look like food or anything, but more like something sickly.

After about thirty seconds, my thoughts about his mouth were interrupted.

He said something, and I couldn’t understand it. His dialect was too strong (or so I tell myself).

“What?”

He repeats himself, not slower, or in more standard Japanese.

“Excuse me?”

The third time, I guessed that he was asking where I lived, which is honestly not one of the usual questions I get asked in these cases, but I had decided that that was what he was asking me.

“Chiba City. I live in Chiba City.”

He mumbled something, and went away. After a few seconds of digesting that I had just undergone human contact, I got back to my short story. Murakami’s gay friend was turning down a proposition from a married woman who had just bought sexy Italian underwear. I go back onto my smart phone, look at things that don’t look like women giving blowjobs, stare outside, stare at the ceiling of the van, and eventually get back into reading about Murakami’s gay friend.

While I do this and forget about the old man altogether, he decided to come back. First, he looks at me from a far, and then he stands right beside the trunk door of the van, not speaking.

It is not that I felt vulnerable per se, but a man standing right by the open trunk door from where I feel the breeze is something very hard to ignore. It is something that demands a reaction, be it something friendly and social, or something angry and hostile.

Eventually he spoke again:

“Are you married?” he asked as he looks at my wedding ring.

“Yes, I’m married.”

“Are you married to a Canadian?”

“No, I’m married to a Japanese woman.”

This usually gets a big reaction from people, but it didn’t from him. That would pleasantly surprise me if I didn’t want him to go away. He stopped talking, so I decided to ignore him and get on with my book. Murakami’s friend had just dialed up his sister he hadn’t talked to in ten years or so.

Then, any comfort zone that was still there was broken.

As he reaches in the van to touch my stomach (which is showing as my shirt rode up when I lay down), he said to me, “Wow, your stomach is quite hairy isn’t it?” with a smile.

I muttered an, “uhhh… yeah”, briskly adjusting my shirt, now feeling violated, weirded out, and basically wishing for him to go away. He sensed the change in atmosphere, and I think he sensed that he had basically lost. By this time I had completely imagined the man as a lonely old man. Perhaps his wife had died, perhaps his wife couldn’t stand him. Perhaps his children and grandchildren also couldn’t stand him. Perhaps he could sometimes talk to people on the beach, but he was so shit at communication, that no one wanted to talk to him. Or perhaps it wasn’t his shittiness at communication, but just that everyone was busy leading their own lives, not wanting their hairy stomachs touched.

None of this mattered, because I just didn’t want to talk to him, and nothing was going to change my mind to want to humour him with monosyllabic answers anymore. He left again.

I didn’t really want to find out what Murakami’s friend and friend’s sister were going to talk about anymore. I just didn’t want to have to deal with the old man. I put the book away, closed the trunk door, locked the van and went for walk along the ocean.

I got back to thinking about how moods can change so quickly. How one person can just say one thing, and then suddenly everything changed. I remembered a female friend of mine a few nights before told me in a LINE conversation that she is doing pole dancing classes to get in shape. My initial reaction to this was that it sounded sexy, and so I said so. The rapid LINE conversation had suddenly halted when I did so, and I wondered if at that time I had changed the atmosphere. After 10 minutes waiting for her to reply, I mentioned how I maybe shouldn’t have used the word sexy, but that admittance of consciously thinking about it also sounded weird. I eventually gave up and our conversation had ended.

I think about such things too much, but while walking on the beach I compared my own actions to my friend (commenting on her sexy pole dancing), and the old man’s actions to me, and thought about how vulnerable and lonely one can easily feel.

As I walked back to the van, I decided to walk right beside the ocean on the beach. My wife saw me from her surfboard and waved at me, and I waved back. I thought about watching her for a little bit, but the waves weren’t very good, and I thought I would grow impatient waiting for her to ride a wave, so I went back right away.

Back at the van, I once again opened up the trunk door, lay in the back (I am unsure if my stomach was showing or not), and finished reading the story. Not to spoil it, but the sister had breast cancer. So did the woman who wore the expensive sexy Italian underwear. After finishing the story, I looked up to see my wife coming back from surfing, looking cold in her wetsuit. After she had successfully changed, and warmed herself up with the hot water tank she brought, I said, “An old man touched my stomach while you were gone.”

She laughed and said, “In the van?”