This post was submitted by Jude

“No Room at the Inn”

My cousin James was mysteriously absent from Christmas Eve dinner this past December. We would learn that he had surprised his girlfriend with a cavalcade of packed suitcases and two tickets to Rome, where he would ultimately propose to her in a romantic little cranny of the Coliseum. I overheard Aunt Lucille telling my mother all about it, my mouth full of kielbasa and a half-empty glass of homemade krupnik in my hand. I thought about the previous Christmas I had spent in Japan with Guillermo, how we had proposed to each other at the foot of Mount Fuji, and how we never even told anyone about it.

Guillermo flew to Tokyo the day before Christmas Eve, which somehow gave us enough time to make the bullet train journey west to Nara, where I was living, to meet some of my doting neighbors and make the necessary preparations for a traditional Polish wiglia supper. It would be our very first Christmas on our own, a world away from our families twelve or thirteen hours behind us. After the new year came, and January neared its end, so did Guillermo’s visit. We’d spent most of the time darting around the country, going as far south as Hiroshima before making the trip back to Tokyo to say goodbye. But before we did, there was one pit stop we had to make, the place that had actually drawn me to Japan to begin with.

Aokigahara is a dense forest at the base of Mount Fuji, also known as “the Sea of Trees.” Some tourists go to see the rocky ice caverns found inside, but what drew me there was its eerie reputation as the forest so many people have entered to never be heard from again. After San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, it is the world’s most popular location for suicides. In the 19^th century, infirm and elderly relatives were brought there to die, a custom known as ubasute. This is what makes Aokigahara the most haunted location in Japan. I wrote a piece about it for a journalism class, completely unaware I’d be standing inside it just a year later.

But getting there was no easy feat. We missed our overnight bus to Tokyo, having misread the time printed on our tickets, and had to take a early morning train to Kyoto for another bus. This was the first time I’d seen snow in Japan, which fell lightly as we woke up and our train pulled into Kyoto Station. It was early evening by the time we reached Tokyo, so we looked for a place to eat and a hotel to spend the night. The only cheap accommodation in Tokyo’s Shinjuku neighborhood are the love hotels, where couples rent a room by the hour to have sex, and overnight rates are offered after ten o’clock. There is one notorious street called Dogenzaka, lined with windowless love hotels offering a place to “rest” or “stay.” With our luggage in hand, we began to look for the right one, passing by hookers asking if we were cold.

The first love hotel we entered looked more or less unassuming, but upon walking up to the front desk we found a light board with pictures of the different sexual scenarios on hand—the way you might see chicken rings and sliders lit up at White Castle. One room had a Hello Kitty theme, where countless depictions of Japan’s favorite feline were there to watch all the dirty sex acts you needed to rent a hotel room to perform. The room next to it was all black and red, with a round bed in the center and an X-shaped structure with straps for your arms and legs. The closet was decked out with bullwhips, riding crops, and what looked like some medieval mace. And perhaps the most unsettling was the room that looked like it would belong to a little girl: a lacy canopy bed, a rocking horse and some teddy bears lined up along the wall. The picture wasn’t lit, which meant that it was occupied. We stood there with our mouths agape, unaware we were being asked to leave. The man behind the window pointed to me, pointed to Guillermo, and made an X with his forearms. It seemed they drew the line at man-on-man action.

It was a similar story at the next two hotels. We thought we’d have a better shot with a woman at the front desk, but even she denied us. In one lobby, we could only see the hands of the person behind the counter. That didn’t stop whoever it was from waving their finger in our faces. But down a divergent alleyway, we finally found sanctuary. Guillermo and I pulled our bags down a rock path and over a bridge into the lobby, where a little decorative fountain was bubbling. The man inside chuckled to himself, but didn’t hesitate to pass a key into our weary hands.

The entire hotel was covered in a light layer of dust. A laundry bin filled with dirty linen was parked outside our room when we managed to find it. There was no crazy theme to it, unless the theme was “under-budgeted seventies porno”—just a grimy shag carpet and a television, the mattress on a raised dais surround by mirrors. From the bed you could look right into the bathroom, which was lined in a deteriorating black tile and had a deep square tub we were afraid to use. The vanity contained an assortment of shrink-wrapped toiletries, things a prostitute would always carry in her purse at all times. When we finally got in bed, we found a condom atop each pillow, where other hotels might place an artfully folded hand towel or an Andes mint. There was also one lost in the crack between the mattress and the wall. It was already used.

Before my cell phone alarm clock could wake us up, the crows had already begun their early morning shrieking outside our window. This gave us plenty of time to check out, and make our way through the empty streets to catch our bus to Mount Fuji. We had plenty of false alarms during the bus ride, but one thing I now know about the great Fuji-san is that there is no mistaking it when you do finally see it for the first time. We were dropped off in a tiny resort town at the fifth station of the mountain, which is the furthest you can go while the mountain is closed to visitors through winter. The haunted forest was just a quick jitney ride around a lake. We were the only ones to get off.

We stood alone at the mouth of the mysterious sea of trees. I felt snow crunch beneath me for the first time in Japan, as we made our way down a path to become enveloped by the green around us. The trees are so densely grouped together that the wind is blocked—and with a complete absence of wildlife, a startling silence pervades the place. For the number of people who enter the woods to end their lives, there are still those who simply get lost. There is a certain magnetism to the forest; it draws you further into it. There are several signs along the path, in Japanese and English, urging people to reconsider their actions, to turn around—“Please consult the police before you decide to die!” Every now and then, we’d see someone’s left-behind possessions, half-hidden in the mossy nooks of a random tree. When we’d had enough, we retraced our steps back out, back to the empty road to walk toward Fuji.

I don’t know how many people walk out of that forest, but getting out and seeing Fuji made me feel lucky to be alive, and to be there with someone I love so much. It was there we decided would be the perfect place to commit ourselves to one another—with only the mountain and its ghosts knowing about it until now.

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