Member-only story
A Ghost Story
Drifting between two worlds in a shuttered hotel
When I lived in Shimabara, I often went for drives to kill time. I had a little hatchback, and there wasn’t much else to do except read and sometimes go out for drinks. Driving was good for clearing my head, recovering from hangovers, listening to music, and sometimes, thinking.
The roads that bordered the Shimabara peninsula were old, as were the neighborhoods built along and around them. Though newer buildings dotted more popular areas and construction was occasionally present in the town center, by and large the buildings reflected what was left: the old, the aging, the abandoned, and the dilapidated.
On my drives, I often passed a small ryokan hotel overlooking the sea, some 20 minutes from the town center. It was called Akari, and at some time in the past it must have been a place for hot spring baths and relaxation. Now, however, its walls were peeling, the roof was ragged, and through the broken, weathered glass I saw that most of what was inside was gone, save for a few tables and chairs.
When I saw this ryokan, I found myself thinking of a writer sitting on a tatami floor in a hotel-readied yukata, looking over a handwritten manuscript with a cigarette dangling from his mouth and a beer on the small table by his bed.
