“Travel is the restless lover who leaves his scent, and not his number.”

                                                Brian McIntyre

***

They were a scrappy few days, those last days in Matsuyama.

The long weekend made it tough to find a hotel room. Having found one, I proceeded to leave my hiking sticks in it, on departure.

Matsuyama was annoying me that weekend. I discovered Google Maps’ café listings fall apart on a bank holiday; most are shut though Larry & Sergey are the last to know it.

When eventually I found a nice place for a hot beverage, my enchanting conversation with an elderly gentleman was cut short by a prior appointment in his schedule. I felt faintly robbed of his stories.

But then again, I too was out of sorts.

During those days, I would say my goodbyes to Lex. It was for him that I had returned.

***

‘If an ideal job came up in Japan’, he had said as we drove, ‘would you take it and live here permanently?’

I took his question as an inconsequential thought experiment. We had found an easy companionship over some weeks as I walked, explored and walked back my Shikoku pilgrimage plans..

Living in Japan and committed to his career here, Lex had a stoic tenderness which affected me greatly. There was much that he wanted, yet would not claim.

‘I might come for a perfect six-month project’, I had answered, casually. ‘But long-term, Ireland’s home.’

Only on the train to Imabari did I piece together the import of that response.

After it, his mood had quietly shifted. His hands began to perspire at the steering wheel.

‘I’m not hot at all’, I said, touching his burning forehead.

Measured in the half-pence of tiny interactions, Lex receded across that weekend. Though I hardly knew it until it was done.

There is joy and sadness in all journeying. I do not resent it, but nor do I deny it.

Travel is the restless lover who leaves his scent, and not his number.

***

If Matsuyama was scrappy, Imabari was scary.

I had just missed those damned hiking sticks. In the moment of deciding to return to retrieve them, a tectonic event occurred.

The earth shook.

At 6:01pm, the suspended lights in my 14th floor hotel room began to pendulum-swing. The motion lasted five seconds.

Earthquakes, it appears, communicate first through the stomach, and only then the brain. I felt immediately queasy before, by process of deduction, figuring out what was up.

Rushing to the window, the pedestrians below appeared not so concerned. Nor could I see any change in traffic flow. Was this a structural event in my hotel?

Three minutes later, the Japanese Meteorological Agency tweeted a 5.7 magnitude earthquake in Kyushu, 100km west.

I was in Imabari’s tallest building and had experienced seismic amplification; the hotel was swaying on its pins.

***

The next day I returned to Matsuyama once again.

On a whim, I went to the place I had met that nice old gentleman with the good conversation.

To my great surprise, he was there – sitting in the same seat.

‘You came back!’, he said.

Taka beamed as though I were a risen Messiah. Sitting in beside him, he poured out all he had wanted to say, before our previous chat had been disrupted.

At 78 years of age, two health calamities had visited him this year.

First, lymphoma arrived. His description of its effects was detailed, aided by a working life spent teaching English to Japanese medical students. After seven chemo sessions and the loss of ten kilos in one month, he then suffered a heart attack.

‘I was ready to relinquish my life’, he said.  But somehow, to his own great surprise, he had pulled through.

‘But now is the evening of life’ he continued, without signals of regret. The sun blasted in the front of the café, but did not penetrate to our perch.

‘One, three, five years? But not more’.

My response was clichéd yet sincere.

‘We’re both alive now’.

I congratulated him on his fortitude to get to the other side of such setbacks.

Fortitude is, I have come to believe, a quality more beautiful than beauty, wit, or even wisdom. The summoning of strength in times of weakness is an act of quiet heroism.

**

We talked for a long time in that café, Taka and I. We exchanged travel stories of yore, and agreed that their sweetest blessing was the remembrance of youth itself.

***

In 1968, aged 20, Taka had travelled alone to Mexico. That was an extraordinary year in university politics around the world. Students across Asia joined in the uproar taking place in Paris and on American campuses, and most Tokyo institutions were closed in protest.

And so it was that Taka rocked up in the capital during the summer of Mexico City’s Olympics.

He took to selling 5 yen coins to superstitious Mexicans in exchange for tickets to his favourite events. The purchasers wore the famous Japanese coins with a hole as a good luck charm. Those coins certainly brought Taka luck.

Restless for adventure, he caught road and rail transport down to Lima and beyond that to Santiago, with a plan of traversing the continent to Buenos Aires.

But alas, grand larceny intervened.

Asleep on a train, Taka had $800 cash stolen from him – a trip-destroying sum, of course.

Ever inventive, he knocked on the Japanese Ambassador’s door in Santiago to share his tales of financial woe. But the officials thought it was a problem for his parents, not the Japanese state.

Rather than admit all to Mum and Dad, he found a job. Taka became a wandering student for hire – cleaning floors in Santiago, and somehow finding a job in La Paz too. It had become his own private magical mystery tour, motivated by poverty.

***

As he recounted his travel travails, there was a glint in Taka’s eyes. I shared his happiness, and loved hearing his tales. We both smiled for my camera.

In shaking hands, we also knew we would not meet each other again, though each of us now carried the other’s story.

This too was how I began to think of Lex; and the thought replaced my dis-ease with gratitude.

I had now returned twice to Matsuyama; and each time for a man whose beauty shook me to the core.