(Sydney - Tokyo - Kiso Valley - Osaka - Kagoshima - Yakushima - Kumamoto - Matsuyama - Hakata - Tokyo - Gangneung, South Korea)
Good evening everyone. I'm now in Gangneung which is a moderately unprepossessing city on the north east coast of South Korea. There's always a bit of a "low" day on any trip, and a thoroughly wet day in a coastal town in Korea is a tad discouraging when all of the "sights" involve long outdoor walks. Spending part of the day handwashing or emailing starts to look VERY good! I did get to see the North Korean submarine which got grounded here in the 1960's when it was trying to land and collect spies. Prior to landing here on Sunday (and going through a compulsory radiation check) I'd been in Japan for three weeks. What follows is some of that... in exceedingly tragic times for Japan, but when they are openly appreciative of visitors. I guess what I've set out to do here is to share some sense of what it was like to be in the country as a non-Japanese speaking traveller. I read two contrasting history books on modern Japan as I travelled, and tried to work out what the fairly bizarre Japanese media were saying was going on. When I could get hold of one of the two English language newspapers (only in big cities) I could make limited sense of the strange, strange world of Japanese television and politics. Read on if you wish. (But please, not all at once.) Delete it as self indulgence if you wish... (Most writing - that isn't the daily transactional rubbish we all have to do - IS self indulgent after all) And... thanks to people who have kept in touch: yes, even about those work issues. ——————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————
Wednesday morning: 13th April.
3.55am: Sydney Airport.
And it`s closed.
About 15 people wait at the entrance, some in sleeping bags and some for QF21 which was supposed to be nearing Tokyo by now, but had been "delayed" til a 6.05am departure this morning.
Various airport workers arrive through the secure entrance, Etihad hostesses sharing air kisses; passengers sharing bloodshot eyes and stifled yawns.
At 4.10 they let us in. We obediently queue in our taped lanes while the airport staff do the eyes-averted-you-can-wait-til-we`re ready routine before the auto smiles are switched on and baggage is checked. The place is eerily quiet... until 4.40 when the muzak comes on with violins to drown out the clipped footsteps and squeaky rolling luggage on polished floors.
Immigration don`t open until after 5am. That way they can commence the day with a bright new and long queue which will get even longer as the day wears on. Good plan. Works well.
One of the cookie shops is open offering triple strength coffee called `Kick My Arse Strong Hard Blend.` This may jilt me awake after a shortened night of fitful sleep in the overpriced and surly Airport Motor Inn. Changed flight times are so that QANTAS doesn't leave air crew on the ground in Tokyo overnight and at risk of a potential nuclear radiation threat. The DEFAT website tells me that travels south and west of Tokyo should be fine, it`s just flying in and out of the country that will take me "into the zone".
The News：A quick check of the NHK website on my way to the departure lounge finds that radiation levels have risen markedly at Fukishima nuclear plant overnight. This could turn out to be a great trip, or a really dumb life choice.
There are about 70 passengers in the departure lounge to fill a 400 seat Jumbo Jet. Most are returning Japanese tour groups, with a smattering of contracted English language teachers travelling to commence their jobs, and a few of us who had committed to trips which are away from the disaster affected areas. Everyone in Economy has been booked an aisle seat. Each one of us has 3 to 4 seats on which to spread out for a long sleep to Hong Kong.
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At Hong Kong, we are not a routine flight: just stopping for a crew change, really.
We are parked a loooong way from the terminal. The whole plane load of passengers files down the steps and into one airport bus. We have to `deplane for security reasons` and are bussed and escalatored to the nether regions of the terminal. We are all labelled with large red QANTAS triangle stickers for easy identification by security staff. There are Cathay Lime Green lounges and grey carpets, grey faces and grey laptop charging points. There are no shops or services; even the toilets are closed for cleaning. We are "kept in". After 20 minutes of nothing much happening under the watchful gaze of three security staff and two Cathay Pacific attendants who insist we all show red QANTAS stickers (to avoid escape??? to ???) we are then `invited` back onto the bus for the long drive out to clamber up the stairs to the plane, and on to Tokyo Narita.
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So it's welcome back to the country where they fingerprint you and take mug shots of passengers on arrival in case you are a terrorist (the only crime I'll be committing is against the Japanese language). The nation where some pharmacies sell cigarettes (if there isn`t a large machine on the corner to sell your brand), where there is one vending machine for every 220 Japanese citizens, and they ALL WORK and they ALL give change, the national disease is stomach cancer, and where the sound of a cuckoo in urban areas is merely the WALK signal telling pedestrians to get a move on... and it`s welcome to a country with 25,000 people recently missing or dead, a nuclear catastrophe on top of earthquakes and the tsunami. Narita is depressing and warm as lighting and air conditioning are reduced to save power. Throughout Tokyo this is the case. In the subways many lights have been removed, many escalators are turned off to save power. Railway notice boards announce "suspension to Shinkansen service due to earthquake" in the way that Sydney's CityRail would notify a ten minute delay, or weekend trackwork. There is no air conditioning in subways and local trains and trams (and most are very stuffy with fixed and closed windows), baseball matches are played during weekday afternoons as part of national strategies to save power, collection boxes and choruses of teamed collectors loudly encourage donations to assist the homeless survivors, and where the country`s unique heated and squirting electric toilet seats all appear to be plugged in and working just fine.
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The news: radiation rises have been measured in the ocean off the Fukishima power plant. Fish and agriculture products close to the nuclear plant are withdrawn from sale. During the news bulletin they film a currently occurring earthquake at level 4 which is happening at Iwaki, north of Tokyo... then continue the bulletin after announcing another tsunami warning, then withdrawing the announcement. The government has asked today that, due to the emergency, that the annual cherry blossom parties now should not go ahead as there should not be levity at a time of mourning. Letters of condolence are taped up in the hotel lifts and there are paid advertisements from nations in The Japan Times.
Overhead in Tokyo, the Self defence Forces helicopters fly to and from the north east. Japan's armed forces have a newly high approval rating because of their ongoing outstanding recovery work from the disasters.
At 7.45 on Thursday I`m woken by a 90 second earth tremor.
The weather report in The Japan Times now includes radiation readings: low for Tokyo.
I spend one day in the darkened and subdued capital sorting out money and bookings, then head out...
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My travel agents show they have not lost their sense of humour by accommodating me on a mountain top Kiso Valley golf resort, 5km from settlements or transport. Snow on the roadside: brisk wind, one glimpse of mountain view before fog and drizzle set in.
Taxi drivers very happy. .. especially the man who kept stopping on the hairpin bends to describe in rapturous Japanese what the view would be like if I could see it.
The meals, including breakfast, are of many small and exquisite courses of local foods. Breakfast is taken while at the next table a team of golfing blokes is having their first beer of the day following their first nine holes.
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The news: Remote controlled robots are being brought in to Fukushima power plants to be used in areas of high radiation. Evacuees living in school classrooms have been asked to move into school halls or gyms so that classes can start. Grateful evacuees were filmed cleaning classrooms and building cardboard walls in halls to mark out family areas. The TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Company) President emerged from hospital for stress related illnesses and publicly apologised.
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Travel and shopping mean constantly being exposed to Japanese popular tastes in classical music or recent pop as Muzak background or as loud jangly jingles in commuter stations so that crowd crushed passengers who can't see a station sign can at least "hear" their stop. Meanwhile on the platforms of Osaka, commuters stand in three lines before each marked doorway on their platforms supervised by crowd controllers in white gloves, waiting to assist them into the next packed train.
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Osaka is Party Town. The lights and air conditioning are on with a vengeance. Collection boxes for disaster victims are on counters but the distressed and depressed urgency of Tokyo is missing. Milling crowds around Osaka station on Sunday are so large that security guards control every pedestrian crossing and use orange witches' hats and loud hailers to (very politely) to enforce walking lanes. There is a huge Ferris wheel next to the huge shopping malls which are the station.
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Note on a complimentary hotel toothbrush package: "Thank you for using me. It is my pleasure to serve you. I hope to be used by you again".
(Only in Japan)
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The further south you travel in Japan, the less English there is on signs or in the hospitality industry. The only English spoken on the gut-unsettling 3 hour boat trip to Yakushima was the TV showing American baseball (additional commentary in Japanese: Orioles v Mariners if you are at all interested). My hotel on the island refused to check me in "until the English speaking staff arrive at 4 o'clock". The small town of Anbo was moderately interesting in the drizzle for 2 hours, and I booked a trip around the cedar forests and world heritage sites on the following day. The trip was great. Both the guide and I spent most of the day with our noses in phrase books working out what the commentary meant and what to say to each other, with the driver prompting.
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Sign in Yasukugiland forest: "DO NOT SMOKE WHILE WALKING... by direction of the Forestry Agency".
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The island hotel was a "resort" so meals were again many small courses: cooked in a pot on the table for the first night, cook it yourself on the table on the second night (and go fishing for it on the third night?). The local delicacy is flying fish, which always arrived - cooked or otherwise - with one wing akimbo and one eye staring ruefully out from the plate...
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The news: Combined schools have been formed in the disaster areas and are holding official start of term ceremonies, depleted in numbers of students and teachers. Teams of counsellors in place.
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Kagoshima's specialist dish is raw horsemeat sashimi which I did not sample. I did wallow for two days in the history of the Satsuma Clan and their role in Japanese modernisation (including an attempted revolt against the emperor they had "restored"). Finding Kagoshima station to get the local train over the mountain switchbacks and spirals to Kumamoto was easy. There is a large Ferris wheel on TOP of the station shopping mall. Travelling on the Bullet Train is a novel but really quite bland experience (also sleep inducing) with much of the (mostly vapid industrial or suburban) scenery obscured by sound barriers or tunnels. Local trains are much more fun, and "marketed" as tourist trips to keep the lines paying. The mountain trains in Kyushu and Shikoku are spectacular and encourage MANY photographers who tended to outnumber the hikers and the locals.
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The news: Australia's PM is the first foreign leader to be invited to Japan since the disaster (glimpses only of consort: Timbo). She visits the Emperor (and Timbo gets the Empress) and an evacuation centre to meet the victims and hand out stuffed toys to children. Smiling faces on distressed and bereaved children.
The TEPCO President publicly apologised to a group of evacuees who were less than impressed with what had happened to them because of living close to a TEPCO nuclear power plant.
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Donating to the disaster victims at Kumamoto station (or why it is better to quietly mail donations or put them in restaurant Red Cross boxes):
The collectors are in a pack/hollering chorus of 15 in matching lurid green sweatshirts. The are loud, I mean really LOUD. They can be heard echoing throughout the tiled corridors and food areas of the station. On my way out of the travel centre I dropped a note into the collection box. They became louder: REALLY LOUDER ... chorusing their thanks to me and bowing LOUDLY as the station turned its head. I heard them all the way out to the first tram I could find into town.
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Mount Aso: an active volcano west of Kumamoto on another local mountain train which would itself be a tourist trip in another country. After an extended winding bus ride up towards the clouds, and a ropeway ride to the rim of the crater, the view awaiting us was a huge and out of control school excursion with teachers sounding increasingly hysterical through loud hailers in a high and sulphuric wind. I got out of their way, saw what view there was, and got the ropeway back. Ropeway service was then "Suspended Due To Fog" so the pushing and milling 16 year olds and their stoic teachers would have a 3km walk back down to their coaches.
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I thought about some of those students in the following day at the Jogoku Hells: boiling thermal pools and mud where 15th century Christian martyrs were publicly boiled to death in Japan's own version of an inquisition.
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Sign at the edge of the Mt Aso volcano crater: NO SMOKING
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The news: Schools in and around the northeastern disaster area are dealing with outbreaks of bullying of students from the 20km exclusion zone around the Fukushima nuclear reactors. The bullies say they are harassing them "because we don't want to catch radiation".
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The township of Obama in Kyushu has a city hall in front of which is a lifesize dummy of the Barak himself, hand in suit pocket, waving to passing buses in front of the US flag.
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ANZAC Day in Nagasaki: with low key and subdued memorials to atomic bomb victims. Directly under the detonation was a prison full of Korean and Chinese prisoners, as well as the major hospital and medical training school. One of the (many) ironies of the attack is that Nagasaki has been the centre of developing relations between Japan and the rest of the world for centuries, and the centre for the growth of Christianity (with 26 crucifixions on a hill above the city to discourage Christianity in the 16th century). The preservation (or rebuilding to original plans) of foreign settlement buildings, including the original Portuguese/Dutch island port and Chinese temples throughout the city is impressive, as are the many signs which comment dispassionately that something was lost "during the atomic bombing"... The city is not large: about the area of Newcastle, perhaps, with a spectacular harbour and hills, and the remains of wartime steel and ship building industries still evident... and all easly navigable on very cute and noisy little 1950’s green and yellow trams. One of the preserved trams is from Sendai, in the earthquake/tsunami zone. It was put into service to collect donations for disaster victims.
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As with Hiroshima, Nagasaki is THE high school excursion for many students. The "braver" schools give their kids a tram pass for the day with worksheets, map and a list of sites. (You do have to admire the tolerance of the average Nagasaki tram driver...). "Nicer" schools in better uniforms appear to split their students into groups of four, then attach them to a red coated taxi driver (who has a camera to record events) for the day. I was staying in Chinatown and found myself approached by a red coated taxi driver because his students had to interview an English speaking tourist, and there weren't many around. So, the six of us had a pleasant question/answer session on the bridge into Chinatown, and we had our photo taken. I thanked them and they laughed and pointed behind me: 4 more groups of Himeji high School students and taxi drivers had lined up to wait their turn. This was probably my only real extended conversation in English during three weeks in Japan. I then avoided the Chinatown entrance to the hotel.
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The TV news on 26th April showed town meetings where mayors and residents previously living within 20km of the Fukushima power plant were told by government officials that they would not be allowed to return home. They may be given limited time to collect belongings. Parts of this area were not affected by earthquake and floods and are becoming a "no mans land" with wandering dogs and hungry farm livestock. Some nursing homes and hospitals in the area are still populated and (just) functioning. Hospitals on the edge of this area are going broke as they are not allowed to admit patients, and income depends on admissions. The TEPCO President -again-publicly apologised and indicated he would probably resign in August. It will take until at least December to bring the damaged nuclear plants under control in a phased "cool down".
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Outside of Nagasaki station is the plan for a new station ready for when the bullet trains arrive. It will include a large Ferris wheel. Across the main street is a small red and white floodlit building: CRAMMING SCHOOL... which is intense private coaching for students whose parents fear will not make the cut to get into and excellent (state) school or university. Even on weekends you can see students in uniform heading off to "cram school".
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One of the highest selling soft drinks in Japan is sweet and milk-based and called CALPIS (pronounced Cow Piss: close to the actual taste...)
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Onomichi is a coastal town with many, many temples on pathways which wind above the suburban sprawl along a stunning view of the Inland Sea.
My day there was one of several national holidays in Golden Week: SHOWA Day: designed for the Japanese people to pause and reflect on the achievements and the problems for the nation during the reign of Emperor Hirohito. The town arcade was decked out in national symbols: neat, ordered lines of Japanese flags on shopfronts, and a large, life sized model of Astro Boy.
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The nodding and bowing trolley girls on every Japanese train were surely manufactured by Mattel? (Except the one trolley bloke in the Kiso Valley train who was probably modelled on Fred Flintstone.)
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The news: Even though food sent to market from near the disaster area has been labelled as safe, it is being boycotted in markets. Trucks from the disaster area are being given new number plates for fear (by others) that the trucks carry radiation. Villagers, previously told they may be able to move together as a when evacuated to maintain longstanding communities are now being told this is unlikely. There is also no available land for evacuated livestock.
Meanwhile three children have died after eating raw beef sashimi at a chain of barbecue restaurants. (!) Apparently beef for raw consumption and that for cooking have different hygiene rules and should be prepared separately... No-one has quite reached the explanation and apology stage yet. One of the three restaurants has been shut down.
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The sign on the gate of Matsuyama Junior High School:
LET ONLY THE
EAGER
THOUGHTFUL
REVERENT
ENTER HERE
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On a wet day in Japan, you could try to make sense of the many TV panel/discussion shows (where videos or "dares" are played with inserts of the panel's faces reacting) which infest nightly viewing. At least three of them featured a large and feisty drag queen who was the earthy voice of "reason" to the younger, sillier and prettier panel members. S/he has since reappeared in Tokyo on what seem to be disaster appeal posters.
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News on NHK is more straightforward for visitors as, with the correct remote button, you can get the news bulletin concurrently interpreted into English. Having Julia Gillard dubbed into Japanese then reinterpreted into Americanish English was bizarre, but easier on the ears than the real thing. At other times I would watch the daily reports on the disaster areas and the Fukishima nuclear plant, guess what was happening (usually helped by diagrams held up and explained by wise middle aged male news readers to younger, prettier and "dumber"(!) female news presenters) then hope to find an English language Daily Yomiuri newspaper on the following day to see if I had understood anything, really.
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On a three week JR pass you see many, many, many station name boards. The favourite is BINGO AKASAKA... which sounds like something out of PG Wodehouse...
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Amongst the food options, when the day has been long and the energy to negotiate another menu in Japanese is flagging, are coin-in-the-slot restaurants.
Step 1: admire the tasty plastic models of dishes in the window
Step 2: walk in to the machine at the doorway and insert, say, 1000 yen
Step 3: press the buttons with pictures of the "food" you admired in the window (including beer)
Step 4: tickets for your meal and the exact change is spat out of the machine
Step 5: find a seat, hand tickets to wait person, and within 10 minutes, your exact meal appears, with warm napkin and iced water.
(No words need to be spoken: Japanese cafes are populated by otherwise silent single persons at counters slurping their noodles.)
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Packaging on a very ordinary convenience store egg sandwich: "We send you the lovely flavour of the wind in the meadows. A surprising deliciousness which you'll never forget."
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Vending machines - usually selling hot and cold drinks, ice creams and even reheated-on-the-spot-frozen foods - are everywhere. Three "left fielders" were machines which sold face masks, batteries and paperback books.
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The news: The clean up of the disaster area (not including the radiation area) will cost 40 Trillion Yen. Government plans a mini budget as the PM is attacked by the opposition and factions in his own party about the disaster management and the lack of funding reaching victims. (Unlike Australia, insurance companies have not rated a mention...). Victims sorting through their damaged houses are placing themselves at extreme risk from clouds of loose asbestos dust.
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I visited Hakata: not really sure why except that I have been in three schools that have hosted students from Hakata for short or extended visits. It's just another sprawling Japanese city at the end of a Shinkansen line. However, half an hour out of town is Daizaifu: and a Shrine to learning (very impressive and also infested with high school excursions) and the Kyushu National Museum. This is brilliant in tracing local archaeological history, but also paralleling it to the history of Thailand: unrelated countries who transformed through similar stages but also similar stages in religion and designs. We "read" Japanese history with European eyes (very much encouraged, for example, by how Nagasaki positions itself as an historical town). This museum restructures understanding fairly explicitly.
Kyushu seems also to be a tad like Queensland. What is "Japan" in the names of companies or imagery is "Kyushu" down in that part of the country: usually tied to Sakura red symbols and images.
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The news: high tides are flooding areas of the Iwaki region because the earthquake not only moved the land 18cm to the west, but lowered it by 18cm.
Okawa Elementary School holds a memorial service for its 70% of missing students and 70% of staff.
School playgrounds within 30km of Fukushima power plant are having the top 5 to 7 cm of soil and gravel removed from playgrounds, playing fields and pitches. No outdoor sport is allowed in many areas.
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Bus and tram drivers do so with white gloves, large purses and open microphones worn as a head set. Each passenger is publicly welcomed and publicly thanked when they pay their fare as they get off. Welcomes and warnings are also broadcast through exterior loudspeakers. If you have trouble using the cash machine or paying, the whole vehicle hears the driver's patient and polite help and explanation. In Kumamoto this was taken to a whole new level by one tram driver who gave a continuous running commentary as well. This was in addition to the automated stop announcements by some Tokyo Rose whose breathy automated voice covers the whole of Japan, and random paid advertising jingles which launch themselves at passengers through the loudspeaker systems with no warning. The tram is a noisy wooden floored model from the 1950s which groans and grinds and rumbles as well. So... this troubador of the tram give a constant and apparently humorous running commentary of the peak hour traffic, the naughty cars in his way, the traffic signals and many other things beyond my limited comprehension. As I paid my fare he (publicly) thanked me in perfect Oxford English and wished me a pleasant visit. Nice.
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The news: Japan plans to build 14 more nuclear reactors by 2030 to add to the present 55. (However this story ran a distant second to the royal wedding in London.) This was the day before the 25th anniversary of the Chernobyl disaster. At the time of Chernobyl the Japanese government had told the population that such an accident could not happen here as Chernobyl was due to "human error"...
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Returning to Tokyo from Osaka is not without concerns. After the bright lights of Osaka, Tokyo appears much quieter, subdued, bunkered down. There are many, many "Don't Give up Japan" posters on billboards but especially on businesses with the Red Cross collection boxes. At Tokyo station, passengers were being farewelled and photographed in front of large rainbow posters saying "Stand Up For Japan".
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In Shinjuku, along with "schoolgirl bars" and "soap-sud bars" there are bars advertising "relaxation with models". What does this mean?
Condomania, an interesting local store, is also promoting "Stand up for Japan" posters.
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After travelling to Japan last year, this trip for me was about tying up loose ends and seeing and experiencing the Japan I had read about as a kid, studied in high school and university and taught as history to to moderately bored/polite adolescents for years. The transport also fascinates: how can you get such a diverse range of designs for something as basic as a steel box on 8 wheels for transporting people: Japan pushes this to extremes.
One of the first images I remember of Japan was in the "Round the World Program" books which my parents bought in weekly editions at the newsagent. You may remember them: they came in black and white with colour plates that you stuck into the right pages as (if) you read them. This image is of the 13th century bronze Buddha at Kamakura, south of Tokyo and Yokohama. For some reason it has always stayed in my mind. Possibly it was up on the wall of some classroom when I was at school. (So few posters were, but I do remember a bad print of The Laughing Cavalier...) On my last day in Japan I travelled to Kamakura to conclude the trip. It was raining a thin, discouraging drizzle so there were few crowds. About 5 people were there when I wandered in, and we just stood back and enjoyed: not a word was spoken. No-one offered or demanded that photos should be taken. We stood, away from computerised and automated and amplified and student-excursioned Japan and just enjoyed....
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The news: The Japanese government has identified nuclear power plants near Nagoya near Mt Fuji in central Honshu which pose a similar risk to those at Fukushima should a similar disaster strike. They have requested their shutdown. They need to be "made safe". This will create further industrial and economic dislocation. The power company (a different one) may choose to comply.
There are still mild earth tremors in Tokyo and larger aftershocks further north.
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Signs at the departure gate at Narita Airport:
"APPRECIATION" the word we want to tell you most ... from Narita International Airport on behalf of Japan. After we overcome these difficulties MORE MAGNIFICENT EXPERIENCES OF JAPAN await you on your next visit."
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At the check-in counter the JAL lady ordered me to "Have a nice fright".
I did.
I dozed...and they woke me very abruptly in the departure lounge to make sure I did get onto the plane.
On arrival in Busan Airport we were all put through a radiation check. I'm clear: seems I was shaken but not stirred in Japan.