Samurai House

Kanagawa Prefecture
In the Outskirts of Tokyo

Erected on a foothill, we stayed in a century old Samurai House. It has two-foot thick grass roof and sliding wooden windows pocked with small square openings covered in white paper. It has low beds and low tables, and on one corner, a sword.

At night we shared stories back home. "As an archipelago, the sea naturally separates the Filipino islanders." I told Sudarshan, one of the more colorful characters in this motley group. He is from Nepal and speaks a heavily accented English. "In time, things develop apart and distinct from one another like the languages we speak." I continued. As I came to know, a parallel situation is true of Nepal, which straddles the Himalayas. Though only a strip of land on a map, the tall mountains isolate groups of people from one another making it possible for multi-cultures to flourish including diverse spoken languages.

Ana joined us after hearing our mountain talk. She was particularly fond of pictures with mountain backgrounds, and when she clicked the Rice Terraces folder in my computer, she was totally blown away! Small wonder she is from Tallinn, the capital city of the Baltic state of Estonia. She said that except for humps and mounds here and there, her country is totally flat. In fact the whole area (eastern shores of the Baltic Sea) which includes the republics of Latvia and Lithunia, and the Russian enclave Kaliningrad are flat places. It is topographically the European equivalent of African prairies. I promised her that when she come to visit Philippines I’ll show her all our tall mountains, carved mountains, and mountains with hanging coffins! She was thrilled, and then gasped hearing the last one. 

It was already late and a chilling wind blew from the mountains. Somebody must have come in and didn’t close the door. I closed it while Ana put out the paper lanterns. Then I heard a loud noise. Somebody was snoring already – Sudarshan.
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guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru
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Darth Vader Cloud

Lake Duminagat

Mt Malindang

The community showed little surprise when we came, but they were welcoming just the same. In a low voice (as if someone was eavesdropping) they said something to us, which sounded more like a plea than a suggestion: To not be noisy up the crater….

It was a clear day and despite the pleasantly cool wind, the sun warmed our skins. As we approached the ridge (actually the crater ring), I broke a sweat. A narrow path snaked down the lake below surrounded by age-old trees. The lake looked like a mirror reflecting the white clouds. We came to a clearing by the edge of the lake to where a fallen branch was half submerged in the water, the rest of it was covered in moss. We found our individual rocks and sat. It was comforting. We started talking and the talking turned to laughing, and the laughing turned to laughing really loud until….the sun disappeared.

We looked up. A sliver of dark cloud clawed its way down towards the forest canopy just above the crater. We became quiet. For a while it hovered as if waiting to strike. Silence descended upon us. We were still. Unmoving like the rocks we sat on. We only stirred when the menacing dark cloud slowly dissipated in thin air. Then we gathered our things and left, gently, with only our eyes talking. It seemed that if we tripped on the tree roots and stumble, the lake will open up and swallow us alive.

We talked about this over and over back at base camp. At night under a starlit sky in the midst of the jungle, we gathered around a bonfire with some local people for a conversation so creepy it was difficult for us to crawl back inside our tents: “There are certain people. We don’t see them but we hear them. Talking, laughing, swimming in the crater-lake. Sometimes in the middle of the night we hear cars and trucks go up the crater. Engines scream as if stuck in mud. They pass by our houses. We hear their feet shuffle. They are there. In the direction of where the dogs look, and howl….”
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guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru guru
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