An Escapade in Japan -- Part 3

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Peace Park, Miyajima Island, Hiroshima
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For 20th Feb, I find the following entries in my notes:
1) Get JR Pass validated at the Airport itself.
a) Take Haruka Express to Shin-Osaka station.
b) Travel to Hiroshima on a Hikari train
c) For Hikari train time table use Hyperdia:
d) Luggage can be kept in a coin locker on the Hiroshima station (600Yen) as the check-in time at the hotel is after 4:00 PM (May be we can walk to the hotel and keep the luggage in the lobby)
Sightseeing:
2) Visit Peace Park in the morning
3) Miyajima
SEE THE SUNSET AT MIYAJIMA
Check the time of high tide before going. Sunset+high-tide will be the ideal combination.
4) Try to time your visit with a high tide to experience the shrine and torii floating over water.
5) Itsukushima Shrine is one of only a few shrines that charge a small entrance fee. It closes its doors during the night.
6) Ferries run from Miyajima to Miyajimaguchi till MIDNIGHT
7) The Last Local from Miyajimaguchi to Hiroshima is at 23:54

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My planning for this day was 100% perfect and everything went smoothly according to the plan, except for one thing - The sunset at Miyajima was at 5:30 PM and the high tide was at 7:00 PM.

Moreover, I should have written “Sunset+high-tide+Clear skies” will be the ideal combination.

It was a cloudy day but when we went to Miyajima, miraculously, the sky had cleared and we could take wonderful photos even though we missed the high tide.

Of course much more went into my planning than just the bare outline that I have given above. There were things like screen-shots of the timings of Haruka Express that we were to take, the timings of JR office at Kansai Airport, maps of Hiroshima, area-map of our hotel, route of the tram etc. There are a thousand and one mundane things that have to be taken care of if you are travelling on your own.

There was a bit of confusion when we got our 7-day JR-Pass validated at the airport in the morning. We had asked the clerk to validate the pass from 20 Feb. 2009, but when he stamped our passes, we found the stamped date as “21-2-20”. We thought that he had not understood our instructions because none of the Japanese people, even educated office-goers, know English well. They do not need to know English since they have even University education in Japanese. In many ways, they are a totally self-sufficient people.

Anyway, we again told the clerk that we wanted to travel to Hiroshima to 20th Feb and so the pass should be stamped as 20-2-09 as per the British system or as 2-20-09 as per the American system.

He informed us that the date was stamped correctly as per the Japanese system because 21 was the current Japanese year and it did not refer to the day of the month.

I found this quite curious and later found a bit about the Japanese calendar. Other curious people may refer to the following link.
http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e2272.html

(Curiosity might be fatal to cats but it does not seem to be doing any harm to the humans.)

Armed with our JR-Pass, we were on our way to Hiroshima. Fortunately, at least the station-names, time-tables, announcements etc. are in English as well as Japanese, so travel is quite easy.

As soon as we stepped out of the Hiroshima station we saw our hotel’s building sporting the letters ‘Toyoko-Inn.com’. Those letters were to act like a beacon to us in the labyrinths of Tokyo later.

We walked to the hotel, checked in our luggage and took the tram to the Peace Park.

It is a beautiful park today with an Eternal Flame burning and a stone Arch as a memorial to the 200,000 people, who died as a result of the first Atomic bomb in WW2.

Many people are crazy about being ‘first’ in something or the other, but I do not think those 200,000 wanted to be the First Casualty of the First Atomic bomb.

More than the Peace Park with its skeletal Dome, the Museum is what hits you and brings the enormity of the human tragedy home to you. The pictures and the exhibits are pathetic. In fact, I tried to avoid looking at some of the pictures in order to save myself the heart-ache.

However, the Peace Park is a symbol of the life-cycle of birth-growth-death-rebirth. If the weeping willows, totally bereft of leaves, lining the canal, looked as though they were mourning the 200,000 needless deaths, the flowering Plum tree symbolized the hope and a New Beginning, a characteristic of the city and people of Hiroshima, who have now rebuilt their city from the ashes.

In our Japan trip we found the Japanese people to be very polite, nice to strangers and urbane. How come they are such fierce soldiers?

I have read about their attack on Pearl Harbor and I have also read Pearl Buck’s novels on the background of Japanese invasion of China and the atrocities perpetrated by them and now I was visualizing USA’s heinous act of bombing civilian targets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki and I could not understand the American brutality towards Japanese either.

How do normal, sensible people turn into fiends when there is a war? This is a paradox that I have never been able to understand.

Sobered by the thoughts of Death and Destruction, we boarded the tram for Miyajimaguchi.

We had a real good lunch of Japanese noodles with prawns and veggies at the Miyajima ferry terminal.

By the time we reached Miyajima, the clouds had cleared and the sun was dipping towards the western hills, gilding the ocean-waves that lapped the famous Floating Torii. A red pagoda peeped out of the greenery and the low-built, orange-and-white Itsukushima Shrine behind the Torii on a background of misty, green hills compelled a sense of devotion to the Gods.

Miyajima is one of the most scenic sights in Japan. Words cannot do justice to its beauty but the photos might.

High tide was slowly coming in when we left Miyajima but the sun had set and the night too was creeping in. We wanted to be back in our warm hotel because Miyajima was getting much colder than we had anticipated. Even with all the winter paraphernalia, like monkey-cap, scarf and gloves, I was shivering.

Avinash has taken beautiful photos of Miyajima but his photos cannot compare with the ones that I have taken of him. The Itsukushima shrine’s blessings seem to have enhanced my photographic skill and it has acquired a new dimension and an insight that brings out even the innermost personalities of a subject to the fore, which are not visible to the naked eye.

The new technique that I have developed for taking this sort of photos consists of holding the camera in one gloved hand (a mitten would be better.) while holding on to your monkey-cap with the other in the windy weather; facing the camera in an approximate direction of the subject and pressing the button hard with an arthritic finger, taking care to shake the camera just a little while you are taking the shot. You should not be wearing your spectacles while taking the photos.

The results are miraculous.

For example, in one photo, Avinash looks like A.R. Rehman from one angle and like Johny Lever from another angle and if you just tilt the photo a bit, you can see Anupam Kher’s bald pate in it.

I keep telling Avinash that I have brought the hidden talents in him out into the photo. Somewhere deep in his personality, he must be having a love of music, a sense of humor and some acting talent. My transcendental photography alone could have found these talents and brought them to the fore.

Some people are so unreasonable. Avi said he wanted his photos to look like himself and NOT like A.R. Rehman or Johny Lever.

He is not pleased, which makes me wonder about the ‘sense of humor’ part in him.

He won’t even allow me to post those photos on the Net, and so, the world is going to be deprived of the work of a great artist.

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