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Thursday, Jan 8, 2009
This worked to Takano's advantage when he set out to realize his dream. He began pitching the project around 1989, and eventually found his efforts dovetailing with a government program designed to rain development cash on disadvantaged areas. Apparently, a UFO museum and a landing pad are just what your average Japanese bureaucrat wants to see in a public works project. Cosmo Isle, which opened in July 1996, ended up costing 52 billion of the taxpayer's yen -- a little shy of $50 million.
Takano's pet idea was not the only supernatural scheme afoot in the Noto area. In the nearby town of Oshimizu, farmer Hiroshi Koshino was already guiding tourists to a spot on his property that, he insists, is the burial place of Moses. You can commemorate your visit with a souvenir jar of Moses pomegranate jam, and maybe a Hello Kitty pencil case.
Traditions of weirdness notwithstanding, not all the Hakui City locals were farsighted enough to recognize the benefits of Takano's state-of-the-art tourist attraction. When pressed, Takano reluctantly admits that anonymous opponents spread unspecified "ugly rumors" about him and his team during the planning and construction of Cosmo Isle. Now, though, local support is as evident as the giant saucer that sits above the UFO Pachinko Parlor on the road into town. Cosmo Isle has put Hakui City on the map.
UFO sightings are pretty common in Hakui City these days. We drive past plenty of shops and businesses sporting alien-derived names and a big, bubble-domed ship perched atop a stolid-looking building that I take to be a hotel. Kaori informs me it's probably a clinic.
Armed with a little hand-drawn map, we head down a few deserted side streets until we find a modest little corner shack with a smiling cartoon alien flying across a bright orange sky. It's not the museum. Fifty-two billion yen may not get you Alex Rodriguez, but the exchange rate isn't that drastic yet. No, this is the home of UFO Ramen. Takano tipped us off about this restaurant, which serves the popular noodles-and-broth dish that has gradually become Japan's favorite light meal. Back home in Vancouver, British Columbia, ramen is considered Japanese fare. But tell that to the natives here and they're shocked -- to the Japanese, ramen is definitely alien food. It came from China.
Chef Satoru Kawara is a wiry, balding little bantam whose father started the restaurant 50 years ago. It wasn't UFO Ramen back then, of course -- Cosmo Isle, which gave rise to so many other opportunistic UFO-themed businesses, has been around for only five years. Through Kaori, I ask Satoru when he changed the little diner's name. When the answer finally winds its way back, I assume there's been a mistranslation. But there's no mistake. Satoru tells us that UFO Ramen has been so called for 15 years. And now I begin to discover why Cosmo Isle's location on the Noto Peninsula was not merely a matter of government caprice.
Long before Johsen Takano conceived the edifice that would cement its otherworldly reputation, Hakui City was already UFO Town. Satoru produces a leaflet telling of Keta Taisha, an ancient shrine located about 10 minutes away, where a 1,200-year-old manuscript speaks of fiery flying objects heading slowly across the sky from east to west -- "souhachibon." A souhachi is a Buddhist altarpiece that resembles a cymbal or a straw hat; bon means tray or platter. An accompanying illustration of a strange being is thought by many to represent an alien visitor. (Even the Moses connection is otherworldly -- Hiroshi Koshino cites a 1930s-era book claiming that the biblical prophet was conveyed to his patch of farmland on a "heavenly floating ship.")
In another long-established local tradition, generations of Noto parents have warned their children (as Kaori and I were warned) not to stay out too late for fear that "nabe huri" -- roughly, flying pots -- would descend and carry them away. Satoru renamed his restaurant after hearing many friends speak of UFO sightings. Although he had not seen a UFO himself at the time, Satoru claims he has since seen two. "One February I saw one in the sky. It raced up quickly," he tells Kaori. "I cried out to my wife, but it disappeared."
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