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Published: April 1st 2011
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I gradually became aware of the sun shining through the shoji (paper screen window) of my room. I checked my alarm clock and saw it was 10 o' clock. So much for a reasonably early start - I'd forgotten to set my alarm. Still I'd had an excellent night's sleep on my futon. I'm staying in a ryokan, so the room has a tatami mat floor and a futon to sleep on. It also has its own bathroom - a typical one for many Japanese hotels. It comes as one complete unit out of plastic, and fits in everything, including a short, deep bath that you can sit or shower in, inside an extremely small and efficient space. During the day you fold your futon into three, which makes the room feel spacious as a living room.
There's a note in the hotel guide in the room, saying that they had replaced the original wooden building with a steel-framed building because they were worried about the risk from earthquakes and fire in Japan. They might not be as pretty but you do feel secure in a steel-framed building. In all the news about the horrors of the tsunami and then
Daibutsu-den
Crawling through the hole in the column all the problems with Fukushima, it is still amazing that so few people lost their lives by damage to buildings through the earthquake which had a magnitude of 9.0. The houses we used to live in at Nakasugaya near Mito (about 100 km north of Tokyo) were new houses built with steel frames. We watched some of them being built. Once the foundations were put in, the steel frames and pannelling went up in no time. We've seen photos of the houses after the earthquake, the epicentre of which was only about 200 km away, with the only damage being a few slipped tiles.
My destination today was Nara, Japan's first capital from 710 to 784, situated about 40 km to the south of Kyoto. When I got there at around half past eleven, I was feeling quite peckish as I'd skipped breakfast. I found a very attractive café in the main street which had lunch deals. I can't remember any cafés at all much when we first went to live in Japan in 1994, and we used to sometimes resort to eating in McDonalds when we were out with the children. Now there are cafés almost everywhere apart
Kasuga Taisha Shrine
Enmusubi, to pray for good luck in love from in the rural areas. There are chains - Starbucks and some Japanese chains. There are also some lovely individual cafés, each with their own style. They often offer a big range of coffee beans for their coffee and have delicious cakes with delicate portions - about half the size of German ones. They very often do lunch deals with coffee included. Just as Asian cuisine and fusion cuisine have become very popular in Britain and Germany these last few years, so pasta and spaghetti appeal to women and younger people in particular in Japan. I had omuraisu (pronounced more like 'omurice'😉, which is a popular dish now, made up of a savoury rice mixture wrapped up in a thin layer of omelette. Together with an excellent cup of coffee it came to just over 850 yen, or around £6.30. You automatically get brought a glass of water in Japan, which is refilled by attentive staff. These lunch sets are so popular that you often see groups of women friends meeting, having a lunch set.
It was turning into a wonderful day. The chilly wind that there had been yesterday dropped and it became as warm as a perfect
English summer's day. There seemed some difference in opinion as to how warm it was - some Japanese people were still in winter coats, some Japanese ladies were carrying sun parasols (some older Japanese women protect themselves against going brown with parasols - I haven't seen any younger ones carry them). Two young lanky Dutch guys were wearing T-shirts and checked shorts.
The main historial sights of Nara are set in a park area, where there are scores of deer. We'd been to Nara before, Neil, I and our two younger children, in 1994. A big memory of that visit was of our children interacting with the deer. You can buy special senbei biscuits for them - the deer that is, not the children. There were lots of young families today, with the children having fun feeding the deer, though I saw one little tot terrified of them.
Another favourite activity for children in Nara is in Todai-ji Temple's Daibutsu-den (Hall of the Great Buddha), the largest wooden building in the world. Round the back of the Buddha is a large wooden column with a hole all the way through its base. I watched engrossed as children continuously formed a neat queue, and then squirmed through the hole, pausing as soon as their heads emerged, so that proud parents could take photos of them.
To the side of the Buddha there were some candle holders for candles, just like you see in Catholic churches. I couldn't remember coming across that before in a Buddhist temple in Japan. So I put my 100 yen in the little box, and lit a candle for the grandparents and for all those lost in the tsunami.
The sites seemed quieter than I can remember from our last visit here. Then there were large groups of Japanese school children in uniform, come to see their heritage. I only saw one large group of Japanese tourists, led by their guide with a flag, and one guided group of foreigners. Otherwise it was only individual tourists. There were some foreigners but not a lot. I heard one small group speaking some Slavic language, but otherwise, apart from the two Dutch guys in their shorts, I only heard English spoken. I know that the British and the German companies have cancelled their trips to Japan for the moment. The UK Foreign Office is advising against non-essential travel to north east Japan and Tokyo at the moment based on a combination of factors, which makes travel insurance policies invalid. Although there are no restrictions at all for the Kansai area, as tours always include Tokyo as well as Kyoto, they have had to be cancelled.
By the time I reached the other main site, the Kasuga Taisha Shrine, it was 4 o' clock, and apart from a few Japanese people, I had it all to myself. I wandered down the paths, lined thickly with stone lanterns, with the scent of the Japanese cedars. In one spot I came across two collections of what I think are called 'ema', wooden plaques which you can buy (thereby supporting the shrine), and write your prayers. These were different from any I'd seen before as they were in the shape of a heart, and bright pink, with messages written on all of them. They all had 'Enmusubi' written on them in Hiragana (Japanese script). Curious I have just googled this and apparently 'an "enmusubi" shrine is 'where people visit to pray for good luck on finding love'. The Japanese are always very practical and it's much prettier than graffiti in various places.
Back in Kyoto, I explored the station, built in 1997. I'd been here once before with our eldest daughter. The station is connected to the adjacent department store, Isetan, with an open area 11 stories high. You take a succession of elevators - six altogether - in the same direction to take you up the 11 stories. It's even more spectacular going down! At the top you connect through to the department store where on the top floor there are a huge variety of restuarants. This is common to almost all Japanese department stores. Over my soba (buckwheat noodles) meal I read the 'Japan Times', an English language newspaper published in Japan. The chief U.S. nuclear regulator, Gregory Jaczko, was quoted as saying that the data coming out of the plant at Fukushima shows that the safe distance there is approxixmately 20 miles.
The article which really catches my attention is about the survivors of the tsunami. Many of the coastal communities even prior to the tsunami had been experiencing the twin problems of aging populations and younger people leaving for the cities. Many of the survivors do not want to return. One survivor, Takahashi, said, 'The thoughts of another tsunami coming means I could never come back. The tsunami was a monster. I can't see how anyone would want to risk going through something like that again in their life.'
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