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Published: August 25th 2006
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So I made it safely to Rich's place in Japan. But I have to mention that my last act before leaving the US was to go watch Samuel L Jackson's tour de force, Snakes on a Plane with Micah (Mayer, not Jordan). We snuck in a bottle of rum and used it to mix with our gigantic movie sized plastic cup of cherry coke that was bigger than my head (fortunately we had a lot of rum). I cant really imagine a better way to spend my last night in the US. After much contemplation, I have decided there is only one word that can be used to describe this movie: awesome. Theres not really much else to say, except that if you go watch it, make sure to stay during the credits so that you can watch the accompanying music video, "Snakes on a Plane." It
really ties the whole thing together.
Anyway, Japan is cool too. My first night here, Rich and Junco took me to a Japanese restaurant. They didn't try to gross me out too much with the food, although we did eat "whale." Apparently whale is actually quite difficult to get, with all the international pressure to preserve endangered species, so when they say they are giving you whale, it is usually dolphin unless it is really expensive. So I ate dolphin. It was cooked kind of like chicken strips, all breaded and fried, except the meat was very dark. As some of you know, I do love my chicken strips, so I almost liked the dolphin strips, except I felt kind of weird eating such a cute animal. I kept thinking about how they make those cute little squealing noises and do tricks. And are smarter than us, according to Douglas Adams.
Spent the next day in Tokyo with Rich, which reminded　me quite a bit of New York, except people seemed happier and Asian. The most interesting thing we did was visit the military shrine Yasukuni Jinja, where several war criminals are enshrined (along with countless other soldiers). The
prime minister makes a yearly controversial visit to this shrine on the anniversary of Japans defeat in WWII, which other countries, such as South Korea and China, have complained about. Next to the shrine is a museum of Japans military history. It had a manned submarine missle, the underwater equivalent of the kamikaze plane. Creepy. It was fascinating to see why Japan entered WWII from another perspective, although the people who made this museum obviously have a very nationalistic bias. They basically claim that Roosevelt had it out for Japan, and gave this "resource poor nation" no other option but to enter the war. Not exactly what I had heard, but who knows what was correct. I have to say that after learning about the rest of Japans super aggressive, super proud military history from this museum, I feel like I have a better understanding (if not quite support) of why Truman felt like he had to drop the atomic bombs to stop the Japanese. Probably not quite what the museum people were hoping for.
Yesterday I went to one of Japans many former capitals, Kamakura. Kamakura has a huge amount of shrines and temples, and I went on
a 3 km hike that connected some of the less touristy ones. I especially like the ones I visited that were in caves. At one shrine, you are supposed to wash your money to bring you good fortune. Another one had an enormous buddha, and another one had this really cool gold statue of the goddess of compassion that I wasnt allowed to take pictures of, but I found very moving.
Well thats all for now. anne
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micah
non-member comment
huh?
why is the baby surrounded by forks?... and snakes on a plane is the most awesome-est movie ever made.