Pain, Beauty, and Dirty Old Men on Bicycles

---

A NOTE: if you want to receive automatic notifications everytime I update this blog, either send me your email address (either by directly emailing me or by sending me a message on this blog) or you can do it yourself by clicking the subscribe button when you enter the blogs main page.

Well this is a long entry. If you're short on time, skip down to the part about matsuyama (dirty old man on bicycle), you will probably find that the most amusing.


've just returned from some travelling on my own around Japan for a few days. It turns out that I have still retained some memory of the language and writing from studying Japanese in high school for two years back in 1995. Yeah. Pretty amazing, I can say things like, its hot, its cold, im happy, im sad, thats cute, that pretty. i also undestand when people ask me where im from, and am i travelling alone. The Japanese are thus far the most friendly people I have met in my travels (not just on this trip). People have been very tolerant of my ignorance and so excited when I can say a few words. Also, the Japanese like to help you. Even to the point where their help is a hindrance. Its very sweet. At one point, I left my camera sitting on a bench outside in a public square (is anyone surprised?) . I realized it about 15 minutes later, but when i came back, it was gone. I asked around in a couple of shops to see if anyone had turned something in, and one shop women raced around to all these different stores to try to help me. Eventually we found out that someone had found the camera, and turned it in to the police. So she ran me over to the police station, where they helped me out with a minimum of hassle. No bribing or anything and i got the camera back entirely entact! I was amazed, although with all the times that I have lost my belongings, the world has proved to me that its not such a bad place, since almost every time my things have been returned to me (except that time i lost my cell phone in the back of a police car).


HIROSHIMA
So, on to the pain. The first stop on my trip was to the peace park and peace museum in Hiroshima, which, as I hope you all know, is where our (my) revered president Harry S. Truman dropped the world's first atomic bomb, thus plunging the planet into the "Nuclear Age." As I mentioned earlier, I made a trip to a museum glorifying Japan's military history that was right next to Yasukuni Jinja, Tokyo's controversial military shrine. The comparison between these two museums was very thought provoking. ( If you don't want to know about my political and philosophical feelings, skip on to the next section) . I have spent a fair amount of time debating on how I feel about the fact that the US dropped two nuclear bombs on civilian targets, and bringing about an end to WWII, and now I have a lot of new thoughts to worry about.

Basically, I believe that intentionally killing another human being (who doesnt want to die, thank you very much doctor assisted suicide legaility in Oregon!!) is pretty much always wrong, regardless of the context. There are not too many issues that I think are black and white, but killing is one of them. The only politically correct organization I have ever taken a part in was "students against the death penalty" way back at Wesleyan University (aka PCU). So I think that the morally correct action to take is the one that preserves the most human lives. I have debated about whether I want to include the most human lives _at the highest quality_ or not . The tricky things is that you cant always predict what will save the most human lives.

Now, according to the Hiroshima museum, Truman had several options regarding the atomic bomb:
- He could drop the bomb (s)
- He could have dropped the bomb(s) but warned Japan first so they could surrender or clear out the civilians.
- He could have allowed Russia to invade Japan. I did not realize that the day that we dropped the 2nd bomb on Nagasaki was either the day or the day after Russia declared war on Japan.
- He could have allowed the Japanese to surrender on more favorable terms that they would have accepted, which according to the museum, included an assurance that Japan would be able to keep its imperial dynasty "intact." I'm not quite sure what this means, but I believe that it may be related maintaining an emperor in Japan (which obviously they did) and maybe to the whole Hirohito renouncing his claim that he is descended from the gods?

Clearly Truman chose the bombs. I'm not sure why this couldnt have been announced ahead of time, especially for the second bomb, but Im open to ideas.

Allowing Russia (I guess USSR back then) to invade Japan was not something I had ever even heard about until this trip. That's a tough choice, because it may have preserved lives, but I'm not sure of the quality of lives that would have been preserved. After visiting several countries in Eastern Europe last summer that are rejoicing in recently freeing themselves from the communist empire, I have less than positive feelings about the effect of communism on a culture. Can't imagine Japan as morose, bleak, and colorless as some place like Zagreb clearly was.

It seems to me that maybe offering Japan a better surrender might have saved more lives. But maybe the wouldnt have surrendered. I remember reading somewhere that either the emperor or one of his top secretaries (secretary of war?) made a comment that hundreds of thousands of lives would need to be sacrificed. Also, after visiting the Yasukuni shrine, I'm not wholly convinced that a surrender on Japan's terms would have effectively curbed their aggressive military behavior.

Anyway, by the end i had to rush through the museum itself because it was getting to be a little too much for me. There were things like strange long curly black fingernails that grew weirdly after being exposed to radiation, chunks of skin that were all that remained of school children who had been forced to work outside to help the war, and therefore received the worst impact of the bomb, and spinal cords from kids that got leukemia due to a long term effect of the bomb. The thing that really made me cry was this little tricycle and helmet all scorched and broken. A small child was outside on the trike and was killed by the bomb. His father thought he was too young to be burried without a toy, so he burried the trike with his son, and only recently excavated it to put on display at the museum. So sad.






MIYAJIMA
Well, enough of that. After visiting the peace park and museum in Hiroshima, I stayed in a hostel and went hiking on the island of Miyajima the next day. This is supposed to be a very holy island, and in the old days could only be approached by boat. well i guess it is still only approached by boat (ferry), but you used to have to go up in a small boat and sail through a tori (a gate to a shinto shrine that is supposed to help purify you) that stand up in the water. I guess most of the actual shrine associated with the "floating tori" was destroyed recently in a typhoon, but the gate remained standing. The island as a whole is called the "#1 most beautiful spot in Japan." There are three sites ranked #1, #2, and #3 most beautiful sites in Japan, although it is unclear to me who exactly did the ranking. I had heard that this place was way overhyped, that the gate sucked unless you saw it during high tide, and that it was overrun with tourists. Maybe it was just my luck with timing, but I loved Miyajima, and I'm not particularly tolerant of tourists. Also made it for the high tide, but took better pictures of the gate at lower tide. I took a nice little hike up Mt Misen, a small mountain ( I would call it a hill) on the island. Kind of painful because my legs still hurt from Mt Fuji. But I loved wandering around the mountain. I kept running into deserted little shrines overrun with trees and small alter type things up tiny little paths in the middle of nowhere. It was very cool.






MATSUYAMA
After Miyajima, I took a ferry over to Shikoku, the most "different" of the four main islands in Japan. I felt very brave taking the ferry since its definitely not the traditional tourist thing. But Rich and Junco looked up all the info for me, and showed me the Kanji (picture symbols) for everything I needed to now, and it was just fine. The ferry went by lots of cool little islands and stuff instead of just the boring old open sea I am used to with ferries.

Matsuyama is known across Japan for "Dogo Onsen" a natural hot spring public bath. Public bath houses in Japan can be uncomfortable for some foreigners since you essentially go in completely naked in front of a whole bunch of Japanese people (same sex). However, after living in San Francisco for three years, I've had to get over the whole being naked in the dressing room/ gym/ spa thing. Actually, one of my very favorite things to do in SF was visit the Japanese style bath house there in Japan town. It was fun for me because the Japanese were all expecting me to be awkward about it and they were all suprised that I actually sought out an onsen. Actually one of my favorite experiences in Japan was visiting an Onsen outside of Tsukuba with Junco. These four little girls were totally fascinated by me and were staring at me with these big huge eyes. once they got over being shy they kind of talked to us for a little bit, and asked me where my grandmother lives and why wasn't I with my parents. They were quite adorable.

So Dogo Onsen was nice, and there was also a cool castle with this crazy chair lift ropeway thing to the top. There was also supposed to be a cool temple, but I didnt really get to check it out because on the way there, a toothless old man on a bicycle started to follow me around. I tried to pretend I didn't speak English (which he did, apparently) but that didn't work so well. He may have noticed the huge English tourist guide book in my hand. I tried to ditch him by going on a different path to the temple. but once i got there, he was there too on his little bike. Then I tried to walk up to an obscure place in the temple, but he popped up again on these stairs on a hillside. Finally, I ducked into a cave in the temple. Normally I've loved the cave temples, but this one was freaky. It had a particularly scary statue guarding the entrance, and I really thought he was going to come to life and attack me. Once I got past him, there were these weird flashing lights over a pool of water I could see going off at the end of the tunnel, sending creepy shadows everywhere. Then I thought I heard noises and I was worried it was the dirty old man on the bike, so I ran through the cave and came out the other side, hiked down some sketchy trail, and somehow miraculously ended back up at my hostel.

whew. cant believe i got through that.
well much love and kisses.

anne

---

Photos

Bridge and A-bomb Dome in Hiroshima
The bridge on the left was the intended target of the world's first atomic bomb. The dome on the left was directly underneath where the bomb actually exploded. Pretty good targeting, considering they had to do it manually.

Close up of Sadako
Sadako was about 10 when the bomb exploded in Hiroshima. She seemed healthy but then contracted leukemia a couple years later. She had heard that if you built 10000 paper cranes, your wish would be granted, so she tried to make them while ill. Now kids everywhere make these and put them in them in a children's memorial in the peace park.

world famous floating tori
personally, i thought it was as cool as it was hyped up to be

"beauty" in miyajima
according to the japanese, miyajima is the #1 most beautiful place in japan