With my time in Japan swiftly running out, I embarked on a final trip before home. I took the moonlit overnight ferry from Hakata (photos here), and after a hazy night spent photographing the moon and failing to sleep on the tatami floor of a boat full of snoring fishermen, I got up to the sight of islands drifting past our bows. We were heading for the main city of the Gotoh archipelago, Fukue. I ate my crummy rice omelette in the faltering company of a 30year old woman, whose shy smile had brought me over to say hello. The usual questions ensued, but the usual answers did not follow. Learning that she lived on the tiny island of Naru, I enthusiastically dug for recommendations, tales of life on the islands and the beauty of its nature. But even before I arrived, I would be shown the downside of island life. She repeatedly referred to her illness, which had trapped her in her family home, and given her a brutally simple daily routine - wake up, get the boat to the main island and its hospital. Come home, sleep. Wake up, get the boat to the main island and its hospital. Come home, sleep. Wake up...
I asked her for her favourite thing in the islands.
"No. I hate the Gotoh islands. There is nature, but I want shopping centres, life, hospitals."
Not what I had been expecting. All the things I was so looking forward to seeing on the islands - the simple lifestyle, countryside, sea, quiet - were exactly the things that made her life so unbearable. Trapped in a beautiful prison.
By 9am, we arrived in the port, and my rather unhappy companion helped me find the information office before rushing to catch her bus to the hospital.
And so I got myself on a bus out across the island, and trundled past the green hills , rusting iron, and blue seas.
Blue. My strongest memory of Fukue is blue. It was everywhere.
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