There is nothing reassuring about hearing the voice of a flight attendant announcing that, because of adverse weather conditions, the plane may have to return to its point of origin. The craft had begun to feel like it was traveling blind through the storm, the gray press of cloud and vapor at the window a devil's broth of opacity, the turbulence like passing over a washboard, or being pelted by hailstones.
It felt like a small miracle when the aircraft, heaving its way out of the hostile air, landed with a thump and a skid on the drenched tarmac at Noto Satoyama Airport. Boarding the limousine bus for Wajima, the noisy drama still being performed in the skies is downgraded to a mediocre mix of squalls and sleet.
The Noto Peninsula, jutting into the Sea of Japan like a serrated fishing hook in the north of Ishikawa Prefecture, feels like a self-contained zone. The region is easily overlooked. Many of the finest writers on the Japanese landscape — Matsuo Basho, Alan Booth, Lesley Downer, even that dedicated itinerant Fumiko Hayashi — skipped or skirted the peninsula.