Japan: America's Best Ally?

On happenstance, the perfect Japanese town, and why Japan appeals to the U.S.

(I’ve written eleven prior posts about Japan: From Tokyo to Takasaki, A retreat to Niigata, A pointless little Japan story, From Akashina to Fuji, Walking Fuji, Playgrounds and manhole covers, From Fukuoka to Nagasaki, Burnout in Japan, Walking Hokkaido, In praise of Japanese small, Walking Kumamoto)

Part of the reason I walk is to maximize happenstance, and on this trip that paid off in spades, because I found the city of Satsumasendai in Kyushu.

Walking means you can’t fast forward through anything, including the dull middle sections, and on paper that’s what Satsumasendai appears to be. Another bland industrial town between long tunnels on the Fukuoka to Kagoshima Shinkansen, this one spread out in a flood plain near the mouth of the Sendai River.

It reminded me of hundreds of Japanese towns I’ve passed through as I walked into it: an initial band of small rice fields and detached homes, followed by boxy malls along a busy roadway, and then a downtown with pedestrian malls, apartment buildings, and a few flat, shadeless parks. Then all that repeated backwards as you exit. It was only notable for a distinct sour smell, which I knew from my childhood meant it had to have a paper plant in it.

This town immediately felt different to me, though, not in any obvious way. It had a charm that I couldn’t, and still can’t, exactly pin down or explain. I was smitten by Satsumasendai from the second I walked into it, a fascination that kept growing for the twenty hours I was in it, so much so that when I left to spend four days in the bigger and fancier Kagoshima I cut that trip short to return for two more days in Satsumasendai.

I liked everything about my time in Satsumasendai.

I liked the small sushi restaurant in the bottom floor of a home, with the waitress wife, sushi-chef husband, and grandfather who must have been close to a hundred, who between doing odd jobs (sweeping the floor, caring for plants, clearing tables) kept a steady stream of commentary on whatever was playing on the TV. That included that evening a report of the prior day’s meeting between Trump and their prime minister, Sanae Takaichi, a meeting where Trump made a joke about Pearl Harbor, which had brought a great deal of scolding on U.S. social media about being offensive, but here brought a round of exaggerated thumbs ups directed at me from both the grandfather and a drunk customer in the corner, who shouted, “I love Trump. He’s strong. America good. You love Trump?”