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I got off the Spirited Away-esque train at an unmanned station named Mukaiyama. The sun was still up at 4PM, but barely, and I was the only one shivering on the platform in the northern Mainland Japan cold. Where the hell was I? My two months teaching in Japan weren’t lonely, I told myself. I was raring for a solo adventure. It had taken me eight hours to get close enough to the fabled Tohoku autumn foliage in this remote town and perhaps, if I made a wrong turn, I would end up in Chihiro and Haku’s fever-dream world of witches and dragons. There was an abundance of pine trees and my path was littered with wildflowers. When I finally found the farmhouse it was in the fading sunlight. It looked tired and like it was beautiful once. ‘Sorry,’ the owner apologized as he ushered me across creaky floorboards. The entertainment room smelled like dust and the television didn’t work. ‘It is the low tourist season.’ Darkly colored ceremonial masks lined the stairwell wall. ‘Please use everything in here.’ He bowed and left me at the top of the stairs. The masks watched me wordlessly. I was utterly alone. Even the animals were asleep as I wandered about the premises under the darkening sky. An old coin-operated machine in the empty farm shop was churning out my ice cream when a little girl dashed in. ‘Hello! What is your name?’ ‘Ka-na-mi,’ she enunciated carefully. I felt a jolt of joy. My broken Japanese had worked! ‘How old are you?’ She held up three shy fingers in response. ‘Good evening!’ It was Kanami’s mother trailing in with a boy in tow. ‘Welcome to our very old farm. You are Melody from Singapore staying one night?’ I nodded, struggling to keep up now. ‘Wow! We love the merlion.’ ‘How many merlions are there in Singapore?’ Hiroshi, Kanami’s elder brother, asked his mother. To his disappointment, I told him there was just one. Then I remembered the souvenir key rings I had brought with me everywhere, and dug them out from my bag. ‘Now you can have a merlion each.’ Kanami squealed and generously offered me her packet of chestnuts. Before they left, they made me promise to see them before school the next day, yelling goodbye again and again. The lights around the farm had come on by then. I never got to see Hiroshi and Kanami the next morning. But when the train was pulling into the station now bustling with students in uniform, I watched in disbelief as their father the farm owner ran across the unmanned station to pass me a hand-drawn letter, breathlessly explaining how his children had insisted that it reached me no matter what.