Flowers and vegetables are planted in highway medians. Onions and cabbages reach the front steps of country houses. “We don’t have much land, but what we have is well used,” Abyss-san says. The intense heat is exhausting, and winding up the steep mountain with opened windows, the breeze grows cooler with each mile. Abyss-san’s mountain house is spare and traditional—tatami rooms with sliding doors between, and a small kitchen down one step. No indoor plumbing except one faucet in the kitchen—just a “long drop” as Nikki calls it, an outhouse—no heated toilet, no bath, no air conditioner. The night is cool. Mist spews out from between towering cedar trees. The house is a comfortable mess stacked with Abyss-san’s unsold drums and boxes of donated goods for refugees that he has not yet delivered. Quietly, he goes to work in the kitchen, making a hearty soup of lentils, cabbage, and carrots on the one-burner gas flame. We each drink a beer. I go for a walk up the road. Beyond his house there are no neighbors.
