The dawn ferry to the island cuts through mist so thick it feels like passing through layers of time. Around me, elderly women balance baskets of vegetables on their laps, their hands weathered by decades of fishing and farming. No one speaks. The only sounds are the engine's low rumble and the cry of gulls following our wake.
I'm heading to Naoshima, but not for the art museums that fill the guidebooks. A fisherman I met yesterday told me about the western shore—"where the old people still live," he said, as if the rest of the island existed in a different dimension.
The bus drops me at a hamlet where houses lean into each other like old friends sharing secrets. An elderly man tends his garden, moving with the slow precision of someone who has all the time in the world. When I greet him in halting Japanese, his face creases into a smile.