Japan Part 1

Tokyo… city of lies, future, magic, transportation, and a series of unfortunate events.

Going into Japan I had many high expectations. Unfortunately, most of these would not be met.

First of all, Japan is the most ridiculously expensive place I have ever been, other than the US. Hannah, her roommate Kendra, Adrienne, and I had all decided to travel together, so we bought our bullet train passes at $300 a pop. And that was very worth the deal, as just to Hiroshima and back is $200, and though the regular trains are a lot cheaper, they take a lot longer, and so limit our already limited time. Also, they allowed us to use all Japan Rail trains in the cities, which saved us at least another 50 bucks. You are only allowed to buy the JR passes outside of the country, as they are solely for tourists, which I thought sucks a lot for the Japanese citizens.

It took us a long time to get off the ship that morning, as we all had to do face to face inspections, have our temperatures taken, be fingerprinted and photographed. Japan is not messing around.

Also, I am just going to say right away that Japan is at least twenty years ahead of us in every possible way. We are so far behind we may never catch up.

Once we had our group together we headed over to the bullet train to book a ticket to Hiroshima. This was easy enough, and we explored the train station for awhile, marveling at the beautiful sweets and many meaty, bready goodies. I was hungry and finally decided on a sort of bread dumpling, meat surrounded by sweet bread, about as big as a large muffin, along with a couple of other fried yummies. JAPANESE FOOD WAS AMAZING. Everything!!! Everywhere you looked, another cake shop, another pastry shop with breads of wonder encasing delicious meats. And it all cost so much, but it was so damn good!

We got on the bullet train and took our very comfortable seats. These trains go 230 miles an hour. NBD. Everything whizzed by outside.

We got to Hiroshima and headed to the Pace Park and museum by bus. As we walked towards the Peace Park, our eyes were immediately drawn to a three story high skeleton of a domed building that used to be. This is the one building that has been preserved and left just as it was after the dropping of the atom bomb on August 6, 1945 at 8:15 AM. It is eerie in its permanence. A moment frozen in time. Twisted steel, stairs leading up to a now nonexistent floor, bricks crumbling away, and finally your eye settles on the exoskeleton of the dome. The building used to be an important government building in Hiroshima, and now will stand forever as a reminder of the terrors of nuclear war.

We made our way through the beautiful peace park, people riding bikes, resting under cherry blossoms, sitting on benches. We entered into the museum, which was extremely well done as well as impartial. The first part detailed the history of Hiroshima, which I read through rather quickly as I knew the museum would be closing in a couple of hours and I wanted to be sure to get through everything. I read over why Hiroshima was ultimately chosen as the bombing site; because it was an important military center, though occupied mostly by citizens, and ultimately because the weather was perfect for bombing in Hiroshima on that day. A video detailed every minute of the bombing from the perspective of the actual American plane that dropped it, including the pilot’s words as he flew away from the mushroom cloud exploding behind him. Something along the lines of, “Target dropped, no enemy fire intercepted, plane returning to carrier.” Something about the straightforwardness of those words, the lack of emotion, the fact that at the instant he spoke those words, thousands of people had just been obliterated, stayed with me.

There were many models throughout the museum. Two of the most intense were the before and after models of Hiroshima in 1945, and then another model of Hiroshima today. Before, it was a beautiful city. One second after that bomb dropped, there was nothing. Nothing. I cannot grasp that something has the power to do that on this earth, and that we would actually use it as a weapon against other human beings. It was interesting as well to see the bits and pieces of architecture that remained standing, like the bridge over a body of water that was meant to be the epicenter of the bombing. And there stood the dome, looking exactly as it still does today, standing in solitude.

The last part of this room of the museum was dedicated to sharing Hiroshima’s mission to stop all nuclear weapon production, promote immediate disarmament, and never allow something like this to occur again. Every time a nuclear test is conducted by any country, the mayor of Hiroshima sends a letter of protest. Hundreds, maybe thousands, of these letters of protest were displayed on a wall. It amazed me that this was the attitude that Hiroshima chose to take. Of course I compared it to my own country, which I assume would take the path of revenge over repair any day. There was also a list of all of the countries with nuclear capabilities and who has the most. We are second only to Russia.

We always think of communist countries as dangerous, Middle Eastern countries. We don’t want them to have weapons, we put sanctions on them. But WE are the most dangerous country in the world. We are the most reckless, we are the only ones that have used the weapons, and we are the ones most likely to use them again. The United States is a frightening world power.

I finally entered the main building, which I hadn’t even known was there. This was dedicated to those that died in the bombing. I only had thirty minutes in this area, but those thirty minutes were beyond influential for me.

The first image that confronted my eyes was a wall that contained a lifesize model of three people, fires blazing behind them, skin literally melting off of their bones. What could that possibly feel like? To have your skin suddenly dripping away? The room was filled with items of the dead that their families found later on; the only remnants of their bodies. There were watches set to 8:15 AM for eternity… the exact time the bomb dropped. There were sandals, children’s charred clothing, school lunchboxes, school books. Many remnants were from the many innocent schoolchildren that died. The hardest things to see were the stories that accompanied the items… some of the items were found near the schoolyard by parents who knew their children were dead but were perhaps holding onto hope that they would find them alive, or at least be able to take their bodies home. Instead, they found these small items that hinted at the fate their children had succumb to.

Then I came across a class case containing human nails and skin. The caption read that it was donated by a young boy’s mother. He had somehow made it home after the blast, his skin hanging off of his body. He had tried to suck the puss out of his raw fingers because of his ravenous thirst. He died a few hours later, and his mother saved the skin and nails to show his father, who was at war.

There were also pictures of burn victims, their bodies looking like the outside of a marshmallow when it catches on fire. Everything was so gruesome and hard to take, but it was important to see it, important to know that this is real, this happened, almost all of the people that were injured or died were civilians, and my country is responsible. The country I take pride in did this. My country dropped the world’s first nuclear weapon… and we did it twice. What a frightening nation we are.

After we left the museum, I needed a good thirty minutes to decompress. It was very disturbing, to say the least.

We explored the rest of the Peace Park, including the Children’s Memorial. People leave hundreds and thousands of colorful origami paper cranes at this sight, in memory of Sadako, a Japanese girl who got leukemia at age 12 from exposure to radiation from the atom bomb, though she lived outside of the area of the blasts. She spent her time in the hospital making paper cranes, as there is a Japanese myth that if you make 1000 paper cranes, you can make one wish and it will come true. Her wish was to live. She only managed to make 644 before she died.

There was a Japanese old man there who introduced himself to me as Sunflower. He had a magnificent camera and was taking pictures that looked like professional portraits. He took a couple of us.

The sun set over the cherry blossoms and paper cranes, and I looked around me at all of the people lounging around in the park, riding bicycles, drinking wine, eating food, laughing. This was once a place of devastation. People died on this very spot. Whatever buildings used to stand here were blown away in an instant. And yet… the people prevailed.

Japan really presented me with the idea of solidarity, and pride in your country.

Before catching the bullet train back to Kobe, we stopped in a mall to explore and eat some food. The fashions are crazy, just like every picture you’ve ever seen. And with an expensive price tag to match. Hey, I can buy clothes for that much in the US, I’m not gonna buy them here. There was this one necklace with lensless purple Ray-bans hanging off it like bling that I really really wanted though.

We went downstairs and explored the supermarket, which was crazy, trying to find some normal snacks. I ended up buying jelly balls, delicious, and lots of pocky and koala bears. Yum.

Then we sat down at a place to eat and had okinamiyaki, or a Japanese pancake for slang. But it’s not a pancake. It’s a plate full of DELICIOUS, including egg, chicken, calamari, sauce, onion, cheese, just everything delicious. Like a big fat Japanese omelet. So so good. Okinamiyaki is my favorite word to say now.

That night Hannah and Adrienne and I got dolled up and headed to a bar everyone was going to because, like many smart bars do, they set up a deal for SAS kids. It was $15 to get in with an open bar. The place was small, and there were two locals in it and about 75 SASers. GOOD night, let me tell you. Open bar + SAS kids = Belligerence.

The next morning was one of the funniest mornings I have had the entire voyage. We were all still drunk, except for Kendra. Needless to say, it was hilarious. Kendra was our mom. We called her mommy. We would have been lost without her. It took until noon for the booze to seep out of our systems. We were late for our train to Kyoto, so we booked another one and got some more food. Always food.

The train ride was rather quick and I watched everything fly by outside.

We got there and hit our first obstacle… we had no idea where to go. Our trusty guidebook was pretty damn useless when it came down to it, and it really hampered our time in Japan. We finally picked that we would head to the botanical gardens. We took a bus there, and then wasted a lot of time finding a suitable place to grab food for a good half hour.

Finally we went into the gardens, and they were really beautiful. All of the Japanese people are out and about to celebrate cherry blossom season. They all come, sit underneath the trees, and eat and get drunk. What a grand festival. There were so many beautiful babies… I took lots of creeper pics of them. Many people were sleeping under the shade. The weather was downright HOT on this day and I sweat a good amount. Winter?

After the gardens we headed over to the Golden Temple by bus. This was beautiful as well, a temple of pure gold sitting on a lake. We tossed our spare yen into this bucket to try to gain luck. Kendra almost made it.

After we explored the area we headed to a public bath house for a very… unique Japanese experience. I am very proud of all of us for going through with it, because it took a lot of guts and overcoming awkwardness to strip down to our skivvies and enter a bath house with a bunch of naked Japanese women. And the towels they gave us, which we had to rent, were slightly bigger than face washcloths. Awesome.

We got into the locker room and Hannah was FREAKING out. So was I really, but slowly we all took off our clothes, laughing and giggling the whole way. The Japanese women either thought we were amusing or obnoxious. They handed us these buckets, motioning something and speaking in Japanese. We took them, but who knows what they said.

We at least knew some etiquette for bath time. You are supposed to wash your entire body before. We sat down on these stools in front of individual shower and awkwardly figured out how to work the showerheads, then rinsed off. Just picture it… the four of us, naked, crouched on stools, washing off, laughing our heads off, while Japanese women look on.

Finally we were ready to go in the actual bath. We stepped into one area and a woman immediately began to try and tell us something. Unfortunately, once again, we don’t speak Japanese. She keeps motioning towards the wall, so Adrienne puts her hand up to it, then tells me to. I do, and get a nice little electric shock. Ouch! So I still have no idea why there were electric bubbles coming out of the wall, but I think perhaps the woman was telling us, watch out for this, this area is for your feet only. But who knows really. She could have been trying to make us touch it just for kicks. Who knows.

So we chilled in the scalding hot spa for awhile, then when we couldn’t take it anymore, we got out and sat in the outside area. The water here was warm but not hot, and the ceiling was open to the outside air. It felt great. We all sat on ledges with our feet in the water… talking… naked. For like thirty minutes.

It was crazy and not something I would do every weekend or something, but it was a cultural and freeing experience. We all got dressed and headed back to catch our evening train to Tokyo.


TO BE CONTINUED.......