As I have tediously alluded to before (8.10.15) one of my ichiban sukina programs on NHK is Document 72 Hours, in which a film crew choose a location and sit it out for three days, interviewing whoever comes along. Most of these interviews are just fragments but sometimes, the encounter will go longer and deeper. I have rarely emerged from one of these 25 minute programs without feeling changed in some way.

Today's 72 Hours was set at the most northerly point in Japan in the depths of winter. Cape Soya lies at the very tip of Hokkaido and faces across from Sakhalin Island, a Russian territory. In summer it is probably a booming little tourist town, but in December it is nearly deserted, except for a small band of mostly bikers who annually journey to this frigid spot to see in the new year.

So this was a little window into how strangers can form shoals of friendship in adverse conditions (camping in tents, no less) for reasons that many of them found hard to articulate. "I read about it in a textbook" one young man said. "I came here on a whim" said another. "I'm running away from my family and job" added yet another young man. All seemed to be searching for something that had eluded them in their work-a-day lives, and coming to this remote spot was part of that seeking journey. I think it is this sense of yearning, but not being exactly sure what for, or why, that most challenges me. Maybe I yearn for the unknowable, the unreachable, or maybe just for Japan.

Though it could also be the


cotton-wool sky dear
and a moon that's chasing through it
and me, so missing you



The monument at Cape Soya in better weather.