But once the travels without Nishida-san began, I was the one who had to connect you to the land and to the sea. I learned that the border between the two was where you preferred to travel, the villages that clung to a sea cliff or clustered around a protected bay or, better still, on the islands that barely rose from the Sea of Japan and appeared to sink back into it at dusk. You said the shoreline was what a traveler to an island touches first, and what the traveler touches last. Sacred, you named it.

I tried my best, Yakumo.

In Matsue, I knew the shop owners, the bathhouse attendants, the peddlers, the purveyors of foodstuffs, or I knew of someone who did. The destinations that Nishida-san had chosen were all in neighboring Hoki Province. He had intended to travel with you to the villages along its coast and then eastward and inland toward Lake Togo. I knew no one in Hoki Province, Yakumo.

Early in the journey, you and I had arrived at an inn, spacious and lively with prosperous, merrymaking guests. The innkeeper greeted us, and after a cursory look around, you greeted him with a lone English word. Then in Herun-san’s language, you said “Hell!” shaking your head. “Hell!” you repeated, but this time directed toward me. You went out to the awaiting jinrikisha, leaving me to apologize to the innkeeper for your offense.

After a long, silent ride to another inn—a very small one run by an ancient-looking husband and wife, who gasped when she saw your face—you explained with the assistance of the Dictionary, a constant traveling companion but a poor stand-in for Nishida-san, that “Hell!” in both languages meant that the first inn was too smoky, too loud, and the men drinking there were all too Tani-no-oto from their new wealth, and if you had wanted that, you would have stayed in Matsue and gone to the merchant Orihara’s.

I did not err again, Yakumo.

For the duration of the journey, I made certain to ask the jinrikisha men, before I hired them, whether they knew of inns at the intended destinations that were built long ago, very clean, provided excellent food, and yet had the fewest number of guests. “Haunted ones?” they joked with me.

At the seaside village of Hamamura, we were lodging at a small inn that met with all of your requirements, plus another that you said was somewhat elusive but was best described by the English word “cozy.” How the body feels when you drink a cup of hot tea on a very cold night, I remember, was your definition. We had timed our arrival in Hamamura for the Obon, as Nishida-san had thought that its Bon-odori, the annual dance to welcome back the spirits of the ancestors, would intrigue you. He had heard that the dance was different from village to village along the Hoki coast. What Nishida-san had not anticipated was that the people of Hamamura and the nearby villages did not want a foreigner to frighten their ancestors upon their yearly return. The villagers refused to perform their Bon-odori in front of you, Yakumo. The innkeeper, her face wrinkled as a dried, salted plum, was the one who informed me. Once the people of Hamamura had made up their minds, the other villages followed suit, dispatching representatives to the inn to warn the innkeeper not to send the foreigner and his rashamen their way.