On the third day, I checked out of the Heathfield B&B on the rainy morning. Since it was a weekday, Keighley Worth & Valley Railway was out of service. The mistress took me to the nearest bus stop on Rawdon Road and told me to wait there for the bus for Keighley.
While waiting for the bus, an old lady talked to me. She asked me where I was going. I answered that I was going to London. Another lady joined us, and they and I talked a bit until the bus was coming.
On the bus, I sit on the upper front seat, and the ladies stayed downstairs. Arriving at Keighley bus terminus, I got out of the bus. The train station was a bit distant from the terminus, so I didn’t know how to get there.
Then the lady who had talked to me first at the Rawdon Road bus stop found me standing there, and told me to follow her to the train station as she was just going for shopping near there. How kind of her! I was able to get to the Keighley train station with her help.
Breakfast served at Heathfield Bed & Breakfast was really British-style, with a fried egg, fried potatoes, and mushrooms, a fried tomato cut in half, two slices of bacon and two sausages as well as cereals, slices of bread, a glass of orange juice and a cup of tea. I have a good appetite for breakfast in England because when it’s breakfast time in England, it’s time to have dinner in Japan where it’s nine hours ahead.
Although it was a bit while ago, I made a private trip to the United Kingdom. It was not the British Hills, not an English village, not a British-style cottage in Tochigi Prefecture, not any other “fake Britain” in Japan. It was the real England, where I had wanted to visit before I died. I visited London and Haworth, West Yorkshire. Both of those places were introduced in Japanese manga, Emma, by Kaoru Mori, which was one of my favourite comics I’d ever read.
I visited Oizumi, Gumma Prefecture. Large factories and plants were invited to set up in this town, and mainly Japanese Brazilians were attracted there as factory workers. According to statistics, almost 6,000 people out of this town’s population of about 41,000 are from abroad.
Visiting England is one of the things I want to do in the future. I planned a trip there in the middle of September. I purchased air tickets to and from London and booked hotels there. To my sorrow, however, I was forced to cancel all of the reservations because of the hectic work I had for almost two years. The British Hills is one of its alternatives, but I get tired of it as I visited there many times. One day I heard that there was such a place in South Korea mocking English streets. That’s why I visited South Korea this month, though I didn’t understand Korean at all.
(English text follows after several Japanese paragraphs)
