William Tomochi （砥用) might be considered a “town” were it not in perpetual peril of sliding down the hill into Midori Kawa, which knives through as a river does impatient with better places to go. Tomochi embodies that kind of feeling akin to when you’ve tilted your chair back to the point where you’re going to fall backwards but somehow don’t and retain that position for a thousand years. Tomochi is more of a thing of the mind than it is an address. There is, to say, no “there” there, a land in which the concept of “flat” remains completely foreign, more of a concept than a location. My wife’s maternal side hails from Yabe, a basin offering bounteous agricultural opportunities, and Yabe people have long looked down on her paternal side’s Tomochi people, both literally and figuratively (and Yabe people have long learned to figurate everything). Tomochi is, though, a hidden treasure, harboring many stone bridges and trailheads of paths heading out to Kyushu hinterlands more hinterlandish than itself. Buses headed out that way depart from Kotsu Center. Spring, when the trees are blossoming, is a nice time to visit. (My wife’s mother was said to have remarked every time she saw the “aka bus” heading out of town how lonely she was for her homeland.)　http://misato.town/footpath.html?id=6perpetuall