Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge

Night was falling, and I was lost on the streets of an unknown city, thousands of miles from a familiar face. No GPS, no phone, and all out of food and water. All I had was one critical bit of information.
My car was parked by a white and red radio tower.

If it hadn't been towed already.
I had left the night before. Following a long day of work at the bay-side Japanese aircraft factory, I had driven back to my apartment, changed out of my work clothes into some shorts and casual shirt, and packed a bag with a few essentials. My laptop (of course), a change of clothes (just in case), a couple rice balls and granola bars, a water bottle, and a printout of my reservation for a spot in a tour of the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge, the longest suspension bridge in the world. I had vague plans to drive to the vicinity of the bridge, spend the night at whatever hotel I happened on, and easily make it to the tour the next day. But, as I had no one with me, my primary plan was to play it by ear, and grasp whatever came to hand.

Preparations complete, I left the apartment at around 11 pm. I somehow managed to program my destination into the vehicle GPS, despite the interface being exclusively in Japanese, and from there it was easy. The initial leg was no different from my normal drive to work, and the kilometers sped by. The glare of the urban landscape gave way to mountains and darkness, punctuated by stretches of tunnel and bridges over unseen ravines.

After about an hour of driving, I noticed that my gas was getting low, so at the protests of the GPS, I hopped off the next exit expecting to see a gas station nearby. Contrary to my expectations, mountain wilderness greeted me. Still, a few small houses, corrugated steel siding and roofs illuminated by naked bulbs in the deep night, stood as reminders that even the wilderness of this land had been long inhabited. So I did what one always does in Japan, and followed the person in front of me until I happened on a convenience store. The attendant at the counter was a younger man, perhaps in his late teens or early twenties. His English was poor, but better than my Japanese. He assured me that, if I kept driving along the road I was on, past an intersection, I would come to a gas station on my right. It happened just as he had said, and within a few minutes I was on my way once again.

The GPS led me back to the expressway, but then had several bouts of either miscommunication or insanity once we entered Osaka. I felt like I was going around in circles, and finally got off the expressway and began picking my way onward along the surface streets. The GPS led me as well as it could, through winding neighborhood streets, over railway crossings, and under short bridges. I got back on a major road within a half hour, and started making real progress once more, but at 2 am I had enough, and pulled into the parking lot of the next convenience store that crossed my bleary path.

Besides being tired, I needed to pee. Inside was my first and only encounter with the Japanese squat potty.

The toilet won.

I walked with forced ease back to the car where I changed into my dry pants (hooray for planning!) and slept until 5am.  Then I got back on the road, keeping to the surface streets.


As dawn approached, I stopped at a McDonalds where I linked back up to the internet and had some breakfast. I slept another few hours and then continued on my way. Around eight in the morning, I finally made it close enough that I judged it would be an easy walk down to the bridge. Not knowing where to leave my car, I stopped at the next convenience store and parked right here in the corner by the street at a 7i.

Before leaving my vehicle, I reviewed the route. I would need to travel about 4 km by foot through an unfamiliar city, but that wasn't the hard part. Getting to the bridge was going to be easy, but getting back to my car was the trick. I hopped out and looked around, and saw that just behind store was a rather large red and white radio tower. Good enough for me! I set off.

The walk to the bridge was wonderful, as I wound my confused way through clustered neighborhoods, past high stone retaining walls, and along busy train tracks. I wondered at many things, shrines and tombs and odd staircases and shortcuts formalized over thousands of years into stone and cement. Through it all, very few people were about, and I wandered through a city petrified.

The heat and humidity slowed my progress, but I was able to refill my water at a small informal park along the way. As I sat and rested for a few minutes, I broke into a couple of the onigiri I brought. One of them was of the "bad kind", too salty, bitter, and horrible to enjoy. Normally I would down it anyway, but this time I excused myself as being on vacation and simply ate the rice and seaweed on the outside, discarding the brown stringy center. Mosquitoes swarmed in the shade. I moved on.

As I drew nearer to the foot of the bridge signs of life increased. A great mound of earth loomed in front of me, and I skirted its perimeter with unsatisfied curiosity. Crossing through the station (where I could have debarked if I had chosen to take the train instead of driving), between rows of potted pines, and over a short foot bridge, I arrived at the colossal foundations of the Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge.

I was over an hour early, to the discomfort of the receptionist, so I bought an ice-cream cone and wandered around the waterfront. A few people loitered here, fishing from the shore, or playing with their children on the grass. It was a holiday, but by no means crowded.

My treat exhausted, I returned to the visitor center lobby and browsed the internet for a bit. I assumed that someone would notify me when the tour was about to start, but a few minutes past the appointed time I went up to the counter and was politely informed that, if I hurried, I would just be able to catch them.

I was issued an audio device with an English translation of the material, and sat through the classroom portion with aplomb. This was followed by a tour of the museum, complete with many miniatures of the bridge and its various components in various stages of completion. I was struck with the intense effort which went into the design and construction of the bridge, and the relatively conventional design which had resulted from it.

Thuroughly prepared for the experience of the bridge itself, we set out. The walk to the monolithic foundation was short, and as we all crowded into the elevator, I quickly confirmed that I was the only gaijin in the group. We stepped out onto the maintenance level, and double-checked our hard-hats, and then out into the girders of the bridge itself.

As we walked to the nearest tower, I reflected on what kind of an experience it was to walk among these huge beams in such an airy framework. It reminded me of the clerestory of the cathedrals. It was full of light, and air, and far below the steady wash of the sea passed untroubled. We traversed a broad catwalk which ran the length of the bridge. The gentle arch and moist air caused the far side to pass below the girder's horizon and into the misty distance.

After an easy fifteen minute's walk, we reached the tower and went, in shifts, up to the top via two stages of maintenance elevator. The interior of the towers were a stark contrast in everything but material. More like a submarine than a cathedral, the cramped spaces, thick steel bulkheads, and unlabeled pipes all lent an air of claustrophobia. The elevator itself was as cramped as the subways in Tokyo, and on exiting the elevator we found ourselves in an even smaller space than before, the very pinnacle of the towers. A short staircase led up through a trap door and onto the highest connecting member between the pair of columns which supported the massive suspension cables.

The view was dazzling, both in the brightness of the noon sun on the water, and the spectacle of the sights, the shore of both islands stretching away into the marine layer. All too soon it was over, and we were ushered back into the bones of the bridge, the elevator, and finally the catwalk beneath the roadway once again. The shade and coolness of the girder walkway contrasted deliciously with the brilliant wind-swept summit we had just left behind. The group walked in near silence back to the elevator (via a brief stop in the gift shop), and from thence to the classroom for the distribution of complementary souvenirs and the return of our hardhats and safety vests.

And, with that, it was over. I was back on the pavement, with the prospect of a long walk ahead of me. I felt (with only the mildest of truth) that my original route was not quite ideal, that I had gone too far south before heading west, and resolved to attempt a better path on my return. I set off to the North, planning on surmounting the hills west of my car and descending easily at the end of the journey.

This is how I became lost.

As it turns out, my first path had been very nearly ideal, and this new "better" route was taking me far out of my way. If I had studied the maps better I would have known this. But I was playing everything by ear, and was led astray. "There is a path that seems right..."

The first problem was that I didn't know when to turn East. When I was hiking toward the ocean, I could not overshoot. But overshooting was a very real possibility moving inland. The main streets melted into each other, a long network of sun-bleached sidewalks beside busy roads. The main road runs fairly due North, and it was so easy to continue along it. No choices to make, simply walking in the afternoon light. Eventually I hit a T in the road, and began working my way East, at which point the second problem arose. I had a great deal of difficulty deciding if I needed to go further North, or perhaps I had gone too far already. And that became relevant as I also had difficulty traveling East, The roads constantly diverting either North or South.

And had I just crossed the highway? I was positive that I had parked South of the highway... I was out of water again... Better to go South just in case. My suspicions were confirmed as I crossed back over the freeway and continued South-East. The roads wound and twisted as I traveled down the steep slope. I may or may not have walked through someone's yard or down their driveway at some point. In any case, things started to look familiar again, and I spotted the radio tower.

From there it was only a few minutes walk to the car (which, despite sitting all day in the parking lot, had not been towed). I wanted to get back on the road, perhaps simply to prove to myself that I could. The driving commenced with no problems, and I stopped in at a McDonalds for a burger, a large soft-drink, and a milk-shake. From there the GPS guided me fairly straight back to the apartment in Nagoya (with, as expected, strange shenanigans in Osaka where I detoured through down-town for some reason).

On nearing Nagoya, one particular toll booth was quite crowded, with a long queue waiting in line. A few cars in front of me was a motorcyclist, who became (apparently against his will) engaged in some form of altercation with another car, at the climax of which one of the passengers got out and began approaching him threateningly. The motorcycle pulled out of line and drove off, and was not followed. I was not very much comforted by this turn of events.

And yet, I made it back as normal, the last leg mirroring my by-now-routine return from work every day. I had taken no photographs, and only one very short audio recording. All that I had to show for it was the memories, the certificate of participation, and a piece of the test cable in a small plastic box.

The end.