Nothing Wins the Justice

Ah, so the trip is wrapping up, and soon we will have to say goodbye to these balmy shores.

But the action is just hotting up for you guys, so without further ado I present:

Day 14 - In which Liv gets his sekuseku UP!

So, this morning we got up slightly early (which is to say, around 10... Though the alarm was set much earlier). Given both of our idle natures, it is taking more and more extreme methods to wake ourselves up in the morning - more so in Ash's case, prompting me to wonder how he always gets to uni so early.

Our target for today was that bastion of old-world style, Himeji. Himeji castle is apparently the nicest remaining castle in Japan, and remains reasonably authentic - although technically it, too, has been rebuilt from the ground up. In this case, however, the rebuilding was done entirely with the same methods used to construct the original castle, and the interior wasn't replaced with a gift shop, but populated with weapon racks, etc., the way it used to be.

To keep me awake this morning, I bought myself a snack which claimed to get my sekuseku UP (which I presume means it's an aphrodisiac), and devoured this piecemeal throughout the day. I'm not sure what it did, really, but either it takes more than chocolate and a lot of malt to get my sekuseku UP, or I just naturally have a high sekuseku.

Getting to Himeji required yet another ride on the bullet train, something I rather enjoy, although we didn't actually have any food on us this time. I watched a bit of anime along the way, pausing only when we stopped at Kobe to look up, tap Ashnil on the shoulder, and say "Where's the beef?"

Himeji was a cat of a different stripe yet again: a mix of Kamakura's small-town charm and Kyoto's tourist-town glam, with wide avenues and plenty of bronze statues of naked girls young and old, intermixed with the occasional stand-out like a stubby, nude fat man playing the saxophone. We didn't much hurry to hit the attractions, however: instead, we had crepes!

After we were done with our crepes, well, we had more crepes; but once we were done with THAT, we walked the length of the boulevarde up to Himeji castle. The area was extremely picturesque. Beautiful imperial Japanese walls were everywhere, making the whole hillside itself into a castle, and the sakura had started blooming in earnest, carpeting our path with falling flowers.

All around the radiant sakura trees, hanami tarps and the occasional barbequeue were set up (so as to save people the trouble of bringing their own picnic gear, and to get in the way of my photos). Upon these, many families were enjoying a leisurely meal as they contemplated this symbol of their country, and the further symbol of Himeji castle, which was visible clearly above as a pure white shape against the sky.

We bought combined tickets to the castle and to a famous garden also within this city (Kokoen), but headed to the castle first. There were all sorts of levels to the main fortifications, with side-gates, wells upon wells, stables, a dedicated spot for ritual suicide, etc., but overall the outside of the place was pretty empty, save for the big huge space where people queued to get in.

Other than that, it was mostly just walls. Incidentally, they have some strange arrow-slits in the walls here: all shaped differently without an apparent structural reason, as if to determine through statistics later which holes had been the most effective.

When finally we got into the castle, we found that shoes had to be taken off when entering and put back on when leaving, which was a bit inconvenient (and smelly), but I suppose I shouldn't complain; it would've been a heck of a lot more inconvenient for the defending troops and invading armies, back in the day. Heck, there were probably cauldrons of boiling oil at all the shoe closets.

Inside, the castle was all low archways, low stairways, low ceilings and low-light. Dimly lit exhibits displayed some ancestral weaponry and the history of the castle, but everyone mostly just looked out the window at the pretty, flowering sakura and the lavish gardens just outside.

The concentric rooms got smaller as we went up, the ceilings got lower, and the tourists more crowded together (particularly near the windows allowing photographs of the outside). Here, there were a few hatches in the wall to teeny-tiny chambers where, apparrently, samurai could lie in wait for enemy soldiers. Personally, besides the fact that I think even someone who could actually fit in that room would have some trouble 'sallying forth', I don't think a couple of midgets in armour are likely to carry the day if the enemy is already pouring into the highest levels of your castle.

A couple of near-collisions with roof-beams later, I was ready to call this castle explored, and a stroll through the adjoining (oddly tropical) back exit & park area led us back to the entrance, leaving only the Kokoen gardens for us to visit and enjoy. Thus, after a brief pause to tend to the necessities, we began to wander about - exclaiming with delight over the sakura trees, the winding paths up the hill, the ponds full of Koi fish, the neatly tended grounds and hedges, the stones carved with big ol' mystical kanji, the rock garden, etc., taking a plethora of photoes as we walked, and watching families picnic amidst the trees and flowers.

One thing worried us, however: namely, we had paid for a ticket, and no-one had asked us for one yet. After peering confusedly at the map, I stopped to ask the guy in the castle ticket booth, to which he replied (with a quick, boggle-eyed look between us and the gardens we had been exploring): "This not Kokoen. This parking lot. Kokoen that way!"

It turns out, the castle and grounds (including said parking lot) formed the center of the ancient castle complex, to be sure, but the greater part of Himeji - all the way to the station, in fact - had once been a part of that same complex, as attested by the various beautiful bits and pieces and sections of wall that decorated the city throughout. Kokoen was indeed the castle garden, but that did not place it anywhere near the castle proper: it was in fact a fairly lengthy walk away to reach.

When we did reach it, however, we were certainly not disappointed. Truly, it was a far grander sight even than the castle parking lot: Kokoen was truly beautiful, as you will undoubtedly see for yourselves if any of my pictures of the place turn out decently. It was a large place, divided into a number of smaller gardens, each of which had its own style, layout and specific vegetation. Moreover, they each contained some lovely traditional buildings, a whole bunch of Koi fish... the works, really, with nothing left out (except perhaps one of those big raked Zen Rock Gardens... but that would kinda have been a waste of space around here).

The only downside was that given the cold conditions, the place was a bit less blooming than it might have been: there were a lot of plants that simply weren't going to open up until things warmed up, etc., and I can only assume the garden's a whole lot nicer when the climate isn't doing this whole long-winter thing. Does the groundhog have to see his shadow, or what? I'm not really sure, but let's hope he does/doesn't before I come here next. Come to think of it, there actually weren't many bonsai trees about, either: I've seen very few in my whole tour of Japan, in fact. But then, I didn't much miss them either: the regular-size trees here are just as well-tended as any bonsai, and look plenty nice on their own.

Today was wrapped up with the biggest, fanciest meal we've (or, at least, I've) ever had in Japan. The trip was into its last stages, so I figured it was time to live it up. I had a sashimi platter that (apparently) was sufficient to feed 2-3 people, and a fried-pork-over-rice thingy with Miso and sides, to boot. Ash ordered the same, although a miscommunication with sales staff resulted in them delivering his meal to me, and treating it as though we had only ordered the one.

This, of course, formed the basis for the experiment which I mentioned on Day 13. You see, Ash and I were both well aware that his food had been served to me, but Ash hadn't yet mentioned it to the waitresses. Although I would typically have stepped in to clear it all up at this point, I decided not to for once, just to see how long he would wait before he talked to them.

What actually happened was that he sat there and he watched me eat, insisting that he would at least wait the time it might take them to cook a second one, before deciding they had mixed up the order for sure. All the while, I was telling him just to ask, to make sure, but he would have none of it. And so, he sat, and he watched me eat (and boy, did I eat).

As time passed, his rationalisations for not talking to the waitresses became more and more elaborate. Eventually, though, even Ash could see that there was no food coming for him and the order needed to be restated... so he asked me to do it (it being an uncomfortable/unusual situation and all). In the name of science, though by this point some time had passed and I was feeling a bit evil what with the hunger in Ash's eyes (we hadn't eaten much at all that day), I told him to ask them himself.

Instead, we waited. He tried to guilt me into talking to the waitresses on his behalf, while I waited for him to do it himself (and told him the correct lines in Japanese with which to do so, even though I was quite sure he already knew them).

Eventually, enough time had passed for me to decide to relent slightly. I said: "OK, I'll talk to them. Wave one over, would you?" (See what I did there? ) He looked briefly relieved, then realised he would still be required to communicate with the girls briefly, if only by a momentary gesture.

Time passed. Ash did not wave. Eventually the gnawing hunger and having to watch me eat (and, well, that big a sashimi platter takes time...) began to get to him, but rather than wave at the ladies he instead began to mutter vile swearwords about me. He managed to look angry, emaciated, victimized, constipated and on the verge of tears all at once. A few more minutes, we could've shot a UNICEF commercial. I couldn't believe it.

It was here that I decided to end the experiment, lest the Ethics Committee shut me down. It was pretty clear that Ash would rather starve than wave to the waitresses... even the ugly, older one. I ordered him his food, apologised to the ladies (and to Ashnil) for the whole situation, and filed this entire episode under 'strange but true'.

One thing's for sure, though: I suppose I can't blame him for the whole girls-thing on day 12 after this. There's clearly some kind of mental block here I cannot even begin to understand.

This is what happens when you tell small children that an all-powerful and murderous God is watching them masturbate.

Powerful stuff.

Day 15 - In which Liv soaks up some rads

Today I had my first good hot dog in Japan. It had this awesome mustard, meat that seemed to have come from an animal, and it even came with potato salad. Overall, it was the Japanese concept of a hot dog breakfast done the way God intended (if, indeed, it forms a part of his deific mandate to oversee hot-dog preparation - which the McHottuDogu serves as strong theological evidence against).

We took the bullet train again today, but it was our first time in the so-called 'silence car', wherein noise of any kind is politely discouraged, announcements are not made except in an emergency, and sales staff do not apologise eight times and thank you sixteen times whenever you buy a pack of nuts. For whatever reason, however, our silence car today had it's announcements turned on, so it wasn't really that silent. I guess they just gave up on silence when some woman insisted on bringing a baby on board. Babies, notoriously, do little to adhere to the demands of polite signs that ask you repeatedly to stay quiet... unless you stuff these in their mouth.

The magic speedy-train today took us to Hiroshima, and I've got to say: it looks a lot better than the last pic I saw of it. They've really turned that hellish gray radioactive wasteland around.

The first thing that strikes you about Hiroshima is how, um, absolutely normal it looks. I mean, I'm not sure quite what I expected, but this place looked much like all the other Japanese cities we'd already seen. No two of these are really alike, however, and if I were to make some comparison, I would say that it felt like the Melbourne of Japan. There were more nice, open spaces, the city felt nicely planned out, the buildings looked modern and well designed, with lovely clean waterways and brightly coloured parks. The people were friendly, the young folk were hip, and - to complete the analogy - this city, too, loved its trams.

At the center of the city lay its chief tourist attractions, namely Peace Park and Hiroshima castle. Japan must have a castle factory somewhere that makes these and ships then out by train, so we didn't really care to see yet another big ol' castle that was exactly the same as the others: we'd seen the best one already, so it was time to get to some new stuff. Peace Park fit the bill rather nicely.

To pick up my line of thought from earlier, the second thing you notice about the city is the fact, when you do see signs of nuclear devastation, that you probably look a lot like an American tourist. Ash was probably pretty glad he looks like an Indian (of the non-American variety), and I tried to say "Crikey" more than usual while wishing that I'd brought a cork hat. At the northeastern tip of Peace Park, you see, lay the Atomic Bomb Dome: the preserved remains of a prominent Hiroshima building which took the full force of the atomic blast (and kept on standing). Quite obviously, it looks like something out of a post-apocalyptic movie - with the key difference being that a whole lot of real people died in the city-sized apocalypse here. This fact is far more poignant in the face of the reality than can be conveyed by a million Kurt Russels.

Peace park itself was beautiful, without a trace of sadness about it, really. Even if you know the story behind the Peace statue covered with colourful paper cranes, the fact is that it's all quite lovely and full of hope. It is beneath Peace Park, however, that the melancholy lies: here, subdued lighting, mosaics and fountains tell the story of the first atomic bomb attack in history, and collections remain of personal effects, clocks stopped at 8:15, written accounts from survivors, and over 261,000 names and photoes of the dead. Keeping in mind that the city's government offices and records were all flattened and burnt to ash, meaning that most of the dead could never be identified, this is a lot of names and photos.

For added impact, this listing even tries to note down where each person was, and what they were doing, when the bombing took their lives... But of course, the true horror comes from the tales of the survivors - presented in English as well, for our benefit. These survivors were few of them actually within the city when the bomb hit: rather, they were many of them aid workers and volunteers... survivors in the sense that - unlike many of their fellows - although they entered the city to provide relief to the wounded, they did not themselves then die of radiation (although they all suffered health problems which will last for the rest of their lives).

Oddly, perhaps to spare the children, all of the images presented are the amateurish scribbles of the survivors themselves, in place of the actual photographic record. These display the shambling, burnt, naked zombies that the population of Hiroshima had become, overwhelming the almost nonexistant medical care facilities still available (ill-stocked emergency rooms set up in crumbling schools), dying by the hundreds begging for water, and being cremated in shallow graves dug under the twisted remains of elementary school playgrounds.

Not long ago, in the Miraikan, the Terminator exhibit had made us squirm with its high-tech, large as life war machines. The Terminator had seemed to us like rather a horrible futuristic weapon of war a couple of days ago - but after seeing this museum, it seems pretty childish to worry about one metal dude with a gun, in comparison. If I had a choice between one of those coming to kill me, or an assault by flesh-searing heat, the air itself, an invisible shockwave and even the ambient light... I'll take my chances with the big guy.

Sarah Connor's quote about children flying apart like dry paper was chilling... but in reality, the children stagger home as half-blind, naked black husks before they die, or are discovered still alive amidst piles of naked corpses, drinking the precious water out of a destroyed toilet; they turn and seem to recognize their parents, but their face is a ruined horror incapable of expression, and their paper-dry skin sloughs off at the merest touch... These stories and more we were told: people imprinted forever with scars in the shape of a window from merely the light that came off of the inescapable blast... I also learned some new things here, also, such as that the atomic bomb was dropped directly on a large public hospital, and that the Allied forces did not pull out after reducing most of the city to dust, but continued to bomb the survivors.

Sitting here now on a bullet train surrounded by smiling, playful Japanese children and their loving mothers as I remind myself (by typing this) of all the horror-stories I so recently read, it already feels a bit surreal. Stories of an entire elementary school class and their teacher lying dead outside the broken water reservoir they had managed to crawl to; of another teacher dragging in two students and refusing to let medical staff touch him until the children had been treated; these stories of doomed courage in the face of hell itself give these events a real face, but require a certain link to the present, such as actually being in that place, to give the words a meaning and reality that poorly-written high-school textbooks cannot. When you're actually here, in the place, amongst the people, you consider and appreciate the events of the past more directly. Killing even one of these babies that surround me seems like a high price to pay for anything... so how about killing 260,000+ helpless civilians just to make a point about your now-overwhelming offensive capability? I see the point behind taking journalists to war a bit more clearly, what with all this: decision-makers, generals, and the public all need more than just the facts to weigh decisions... and if you never have to face the awful truth of what you've done or what you're planning to do on a human level, it's easy to rationalise just about anything.

I have no Americans anywhere near my family tree, but even I feel oddly guilty after seeing all this - as if I were somehow implicated. I guess Australia's TV just makes all of us feel like we are just Americans with funny accents and big knives, deep down. Then again, as an Australian, I'm no less implicated in this Allied attack than I have ever been in the whole Stolen Generations business, and the school system tells me I'm supposed to feel guilty about that... so maybe this is the same sort of thing.

Sure, the Japanese were some bad dudes, back in the day: they attacked us with bonsai submarines and tried to kill Hugh Jackman... but it seems like a less murderous display of the atomic bomb's power could still have removed them from the war. What were they going to do, say "You wouldn't DARE drop the next one on a populated city!"...?

Be that as it may, I don't really know how to fold a paper crane, and I didn't feel like whatever I could write in the guestbook would really contribute anything, so I decided to just go - and to leave this place behind lest my entry for today be entirely too depressing.

To put some miles between us and the Atomic Bomb Dome, we jumped on a ship and rode the waves out of town.

Beautiful buildings and shrines surrounded us on the crystal-clear waters of Hiroshima's harbour - which, incidentally, is miraculous in how much cleaner it is than Sydney harbour, all things considered. A fresh breeze was up, the mountains in the distance were craggy, mysterious and inviting, there was a somewhat Sashimi-esque smell in the air, and ocean birds squawked as they flew after the boat, matching pace.

We were allowed to stand out on deck and take pictures for a while, until we got out to sea, gunned the engines and set sail for Miyajima - one of Japan's three most scenic locations.

I'm not sure what the others are, but this one made me want to go see those ones too. See, Miyajima is the Japan that holidayers dream of: a large, wooded island full of traditional style housing, modern accoutrements, friendly, polite people, noodles, shrines, nature walks, pagodas, cable-cars and what-have-you. It was airy and full of statues and nice buildings, but had a very Asian vibe to it, Shinto fortunes tied willy-nilly to the trees, all sorts of crazy food and drink to sample, and friendly deer in the streets. If I come back to Japan with Bog, we'll go to Tokyo. If I go with my parents, we'll see Miyajima.

We mostly just wandered, since there was plenty here to see (and a deer ate our guidemap). Well, not really, but I saw one eat somebody else's... and it may as well have eaten ours because that way someone might at least have gotten some use out of it. The way it was drawn, with a cartoon style and a misleading perspective, it was pretty much impossible to follow.

Walking around Miyajima was a nice sort of sightseeing exercise: we got to see an abundance of fancy landmarks, since there were ornate gates leading everywhere, statues aplenty, etc. There were great views of their chief shrine, which is built upon the water (as is the big red God-gate thing that is the symbol of this town), and of the pagoda, etc., as well as a lot of colorful side-streets full of market stalls and touristy bullshit (like plush deer).

Overall, however, this too was pretty lacking in bean varieties - and the streets seemed designed to funnel us for optimal tourist money draining by various means. Since we'd pretty much had it with touristy crap by this stage of our trip, we ate a nice local meal, chatted for a while with a Canadian couple, explored the non-tourist streets until we figured out that this was mostly going to be us looking at people's clothes-lines while cars tried to hit us, and finally struck out into the wilderness for some hiking.

Oddly, there were more deer in town than we ever saw in the deer park and on the hiking trail, but this is probably because the park is tiny and the hiking trail is really long, kinda treacherous, and not nearly as rich in nutritious, plasticky tourist-maps. I think one of these deer, faced with an actual mountain forest like the one we did our nature-walking through, would probably fall and break its neck.

I'm lucky the tourist map was incredibly misleading as to distances, or Ash would never have agreed to go hiking. I enjoyed the trip greatly, and stopped at every lookout to take pictures. Ash, however, lagged ever further behind, and soon lost interest in photographing the amazing bird's eye views of the entire island altogether. He looked like he was dying, poor guy, and given the lack of handrails I was half-afeared the mountain would claim it's first victim.

Since whatever rate I walked, he refused to match it, I resorted to playing Marco Polo at a distance to ensure he was still alive. This was initially quite worrying since apparently he'd never heard of this game before, and I was about to turn back to pull him out of a crevasse when my last "Marco" was replied to with a "What the fuck are you talking about?!"

The hiking trail kept on going and going, eventually leading us all the way to the other end of the island. The distance from the nature-walk exit to the docks, despite the appearance on our map of it being about the same distance as that between the docks and the big sea gate (about 5 minutes' walk), turned out to be about three kilometers. And so, finding ourselves in the middle of what looked like an abandoned tourist resort, surrounded by rusty courtesy buses that weren't running, fortified ourselves with some bizarre Japanese drinks from the vending machines (which are always working and just around the corner, apparently even in the middle of nowhere), and started our trek back.

About 2 kilometers from the docks, however, we got sick of walking, I caught the attention of a local ute-driver by randomly bowing in his direction as he drove past, he stopped and made some indecipherable motions, to which I replied by jumping in the back of his truck (to Ashnil's horror), and as soon as Ash had realised he could either follow me or walk, he clambered in and we caught the fast-train back into town. Literally, in this case, since the dude didn't so much worry about curbing his speed: he hooned down the tunnels and around the corners as if we weren't even there, and given the camera equipment we were carrying, it was a bit of work to hold on now and then.

It was a wild ride, and one we were doubly grateful for when we realised just how winding, lengthy and uphill that two kilometers would have been. The ute deposited us right back at the JR ferry station, where we discovered that our infinite rail travel card actually allowed us to ride some of the local ferries for free as well, such as the ten-minute ferry that crossed the channel here, and that led right to a JR station from whence we could likewise travel for free, this time to Hiroshima (where the bullet trains scamper and frolick in their multitudes to take us back to Osaka). Overall, it couldn't have gone better if we'd planned it. The ferries here are pretty spacious, and can also ferry a great many cars. That's luxury.

Between all these various conveyances, we were back in Osaka eating noodles before we knew it. We headed to bed pretty early, since tomorrow was another big day.

Ranneko: Liv, I would just like to say that your experiment was both hilarious and sadly lacking rigor. I think you are going to have to arrange to duplicate this experiment back home, to see if it was just the language barrier.

GrubLord: You bring the girls, I'll bring the twisted Fijians.

GrubLord: Day 15 is up. Two more to go!

teh_saq: I woüŀd've ŧhoüghŧ ŧhe pürpose of ŧhe Péruvian fluté bands was obvious...keepîng ŧhe gîanŧ hamsŧers awaÿ.

GrubLord: I am suddenly enlightened!

Amardor: Me want go Japan now super fun happy time.