Chapter 6: CHAPTER SIX

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CHAPTER SIX

Gassing up at a one-pump gas station the next day I found the little village of Shirotori quite picturesque, tucked into the convergence of two of the river valley “pleats” from which the Hida Mountain Range takes its name. And thanked God I had found that minshuku in the pitch dark of that rainy nightmare.

It was a five star hotel compared to the first one I had stayed at, the eight tatami-mat room I had all to myself a Royal Suite, the dinner the motherly proprietress prepared for me in spite of the late hour delicious, the Japanese-style breakfast though not really my style quite filling. And the price even with the fifty percent surcharge for the single use of a room meant for at least four was less than twice as much when I would happily have paid more than five times that, considering how it had rescued me when I had all but given up and how refreshed I now felt. Even my enthusiasm and anticipation were returning.

“It took almost three and a half liters,” said the smiling attendant. “Bet you were running on reserve and pretty low at that. " When I nodded, the attendant chuckled. “Hey, you're real lucky you made it this far. You couldn't have gone more than ten kilometers farther without completely running out of gas and then you would have been in real trouble. The next place you can get gas is a good 40 kilometers from here.” Then he noticed the cub's Kyoto City license plate. “You came all the way up here on that little thing? "

"I sure did. It might be slow but it got me here, didn’t it?”

“Then you must've got caught in that storm yesterday. Now that one was a real bad storm.”

“It sure was.”

“Well, it looks like you're going to have nice weather today. I've been listening to the radio and the weather report is for sunny skies though that really doesn't mean much up here in the mountains. The weather can change up here without any warning and can be real different for every river valley hida pleat.”

“So I've learned. The hard way.”

“Haha, so where are you going?”

“Shirakawa.”

“Good choice. From here on the Shirakawa road is really nice and pretty. Not too much traffic either."

As I paid him I asked, “Is there a mechanic in this little village by any chance? My poor cub seems to have gotten some water in its engine or something.”

The attendant laughed again. “Hey, this is largest town in fifty kilometers. Two major highways come together here so of course we've got a mechanic. You see that shop up there where the road curves? That's the mechanic's. He’s a good one, too. Abe-san fixes all the cubs, tricycle minitrucks, four-wheel minitrucks, minicars, motorized farm equipment, you name it for all the people in this whole area. If it’s got a motor on it, Abe-san will fix it.”

As I putted off he gave me a friendly wave, “You be careful!”

The wizened mechanic gave my cub a few experimental kicks. “Not water. What little can get into them even during that heavy storm last night would get pumped out after a few kicks.” He took out a socket wrench, unscrewed something at the front end of the engine, pulled it out, held it up for me to see. “Here's your real problem. The rain just made it worse.”

I gulped when I saw the spark plug. Even I could tell that the cub was going to have problems with a spark plug that had a black glob of charred sludge covering the whole spark gap.

He screwed in a new plug. “Been long since you changed the oil?”

“Oil? What oil?”

Like a professor to his worst student, “The motor oil!”

“Uh, I haven't changed any oil since I bought it.”

The mechanic humphed his disapproval, put an oily pan under the engine, grabbed a regular wrench and unscrewed a bolt on the bottom of it. Out spluttered a stream of tar-like pitchblack molasses that filled the pan half-full. The mechanic shook his head as he tilted the cub to get all the rest of that filthy oil out of the engine.

“Much farther with the oil this dirty, you'd have messed up the engine so bad nobody could fix it.”

He screwed the drain bolt back in, unscrewed and pulled out a dipstick on the top of the engine and poured in bright new translucent brown oil. As I mounted the cub to leave, he pointed a finger at me. “Remember! Change the oil every one thousand kilometers and change the plug after five or six. These cubs can run forever but you got to take care of them right. You got that?”

“Yes, Sir!” I kicked the starter and the engine caught immediately. As I putted off he didn't say, You be careful.

As we putted out of Shirotori I pulled back on the throttle a bit to see how the cub would accelerate. Not a cough, not a wheeze, not a hiccup, just a steady purring putting. “Hey little buddy! You're running like you've been reborn!”

Be-Beep!

The road here was fairly straight with no other traffic in sight so I decided to really give it a test and pulled the throttle all the way back. The cub leaped forward like a greyhound let free of its starting gate. Totally taken by surprise I grabbed the handlebars and watched the speedometer needle quickly spiral right up to the max 60 mark, but the cub still kept on accelerating the smooth putting now a rapidly increasing staccato.

“ Waahhooooo!!! Who’d have thought a new spark plug and an oil change would turn you into a real-life racer!”

Be-Beep!

We must have been doing a good 70 with the cub still accelerating when the feeling of going so fast on almost thin air made me chicken out and twist the throttle back in. When the needle spiraled back down to 50 I decided that was a safe enough speed to cruise onward.

The road stayed fairly flat for about ten kilometers letting me enjoy the sheer pleasure of putting along an almost deserted country road in sparkling mountain sunshine the scenery much like that of the roads John had taken me on though many more of the farmhouses here had roofs made of real thatch instead of brown metal imitations of one. When the road did begin to climb it wasn't anywhere near as steep as the one I had climbed up on the way to Shirotory and the cub was running so beautifully I rarely had to downshift into first until the last few kilometers as we neared the pass, several ski resorts on either side of the road some with their ski lifts still operating even though it was summer. For hikers I guessed.

Once over the pass and past a few more ski resorts it was just a long coast down into the next town of Makito where another highway merged with the one I was on and I saw the first gas station since I had left Shirotori. That friendly gas station attendant had been right. I would have been in even a lot of more trouble if I hadn't found that minshuku in all that inky gloom.

At the edge of the town a road sign read SHIRAKWA 25km. My anticipation began to build as I thought about what awaited me. Could it really be as great as John had promised?

Once beyond Makito I found myself putting through a fairly flat plain with a wide river flowing on the right. Suddenly a tour bus fumed by. Then another. Then another. They must have come up on that other highway. I BEEE-BEEEEEEPED! at all of them to give me more room but they just ignored me.

Oh God, don't tell me Shirakawa is going to turn out to be another horrid Sanzenin with all those tour buses and tourists and noise Noise NOISE!!!

But to my great relief after that group of three hustling tour buses had left me far behind I found the road almost to myself again and putted on through that long green plain, the river flowing through it getting wider and wider on my right until it became a narrow lake.

I spied a hawk gliding in circles about twenty meters above me, its beautiful wings spread wide as if in salute, it’s head twisting right and left in search of prey. The hawk kept circling above me for more than ten kilometers with me admiring its majestic soaring while keeping a good eye on the road ahead. It didn't leave me until we were approaching a low mountain range and the first of a series of tunnels. I watched it bank a 180 degree turn and soar back in the direction we had come from, leaving me feel I had lost a watchful traveling companion.

Driving through those tunnels was nerve-racking. I lost all sense of speed and had to keep my eyes glued to the speedometer. The few cars coming in the opposite direction almost made me deaf with their echoing honking, the wash of the pent-up wind they created as they whooshed by almost knocking me over. At the end of by far the longest one I caught sight of a hydroelectric plant. That must have created the wide reservoir river I was paralleling as beyond it the river shrunk back into almost a creek. It began widening again until I passed another smaller dam, shrink and widen again until I passed another dam, the walls of the mountains rising straight up on either side of the road hemming me in even tighter.

And a road sign read, SHIRAKAWA 5km.

Submitted: November 20, 2018

Romance romance japan gaijin travel-in-japan japan-1970s

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B Douglas Slack

Great travelogue, Ken. I had to chuckle at the disapproval of your mechanic. When I bought my little Vespa in the Azores, I'd been told the correct ratio of oil to gas in the two-cycle engine. But, what he'd told me was wrong. I kept fouling my spark plugs with sludge until another mechanic set me right. I'd been adding too much oil. The engine came alive (as yours did) once he fixed it up and gave me a little measuring cup for the oil.

Bill

Wed, November 21st, 2018 2:58pm

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The cub has a four-cycle engine, not two. So, as I hope the description makes clear, the mechanic was changing the oil in the engine, not the gas. With the oil as dirty as I hope I've described, the spark plug can still get pretty clogged.
My first 50cc motorcycle was a two-cycle. I hated it so much, I traded it in after only 3 weeks and got a four-cycle instead.

Ken

Wed, November 21st, 2018 6:10pm