In the departure hall
of Busan ferry terminal, a Japanese mother & son duo were sitting
behind us, also waiting for the ferry to Fukuoka. The (adult) son was
concentrated on his iPad, but the mother admired, over our shoulders,
the animal figures printed on each page of the Finnish passport. So
we ended up exchanging a few words.
Once on the ferry, it
turned out that we shared a cabin with the duo (and an elderly Korean
couple – a Korean 2nd class cabin has a tatami floor and
10 fold-away matresses). Once we had chosen our matresses and made
ourselves at home, we all went our own ways. An hour had hardly
passed – and the ferry was still in the harbour – when the mother
of the Japanese duo found Elina wandering aimlessly along the
corridors. She gently took her by the hand, and led to the lounge
space in the ferry's bow,
sat her down in the table where the son was already seated, and
offered a can of Asahi. Few minutes later she appeared at the door of
our cabin, where I was battling with the updated version of iTunes,
which would not agree to recognize our iPods. “Beer?”, she asked,
and waived invitingly at me. I couldn't find a trustworthy reason to
refuse, so I set the laptop aside and followed her. Soon we all had
cans of Asahi in front of us - “Kampai”, and we were tangled in a
disjointed but merry conversation about this and that.
As
if this generosity hadn't been enough, first thing in the morning,
the lady offered us sweets with a sleepy bear on the label. This bear,
Kumamon, was the mascot of Kumamoto prefecture quite in the middle of
Kuyshu island, but had become a nationwide favourite. So, our first
breakfast of the day consisted of
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| orange-flavoured Kumamon candy |
Later the duo asked if
we had any plans for breakfast, but we didn't really get what the
question implied. We left the ferry together (they had already
promised to drive us to the Hakata bus terminal), but at the border
control we lost sight of them. Oh well, we thought, perhaps they
indeed were a couple of good-will fairies who vanish after having fulfilled their mission, leaving behind a tinkling
cloud of stardust and the smell of musk and pine trees. But once we
got through the immigration formalities, there they were, flesh and
blood, anticipating us on a bench in the arrivalshall. How they had escaped our eye, remains a mystery. But
what's more, they had a bag of breakfast ready for us. It contained:
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|
Perplexed (and
grateful!) we took the bag, and got in the car. On the way we still
stopped by a buddhist temple in central
Fukuoka. It included aso a huge wooden buddha statue (impressive, not
photographable), and some kind of installation of heaven and hell
that we were too early to visit. Finally the duo brought us to the
bus terminal, where we warmly greeted them farewell, and went inside
to eat our breakfast.
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