(Japan: Tokyo, Nikko, Hakone, Takeyama, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara, Sapporo and Tokyo)
Good evening from Mokpo in Southern Korea.
Outside the local election campaign is raging with clowns on stilts and a line of twenty lime green dancers waving placards in a chorus choreographed to Beethoven's Ninth (and it doesn't LOOK like an ode to joy...), as the digitised candidate shouts from a huge screen on the back of a small truck.
The local industry is fish drying, so the town smells a bit like overly warm sardines bathed on dry urine. An internet cafe is somewhat more alluring than Mokpo nightlife, especially after the seven and a half hour slow train (with 50 station stops) from Busan today... and no buffet.
Oh yes, and North Korea has threatened all out war if South Korea broadcasts loudspeaker propaganda across the border. The locals seem somewhat relaxed about the whole thing, but there are uniforms everywhere, many of them are conscripted twenty-year-olds who serve two years in the army. More than a few fighter jets have been in the air during the day. The government has launched an anti smoking initiative today.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
But first: Japan.
If you want a travelogue, read Paul Theroux or Jan Morris who'll do it much better than I can. If you want recent history, read Richard Storry whose writings in my high school and university history studies first encouraged me to travel here. (Those of us of a certain age also cannot help but to reference Shintaro, "The Samurai" of school day afternoon TV watching, particularly when visiting traditional castles, temples and the old Edo Road: and there's been lots of that).
What follows is just some of the stuff that happens when you pick up your Japan Rail Pass and see what you can of Tokyo, Nikko, Hakone, Takeyama, Hiroshima, Kyoto, Nara, Sapporo and back to Tokyo.
Your initial welcome into Japan is to be fingerprinted and mug shot (at your jetlagged finest) before they let you in. It gets (slightly) better. Once at the luggage carousel, in this land of bullet train technology, self heating bentos (more of which, later), electrically heated and spraying toilet seats, and "grown up distinguish cigarette machines" (of which, more later) you are confronted by a lugubrious young man whose sole job it is to wear a sandwich board which tells you (in several languages) to only pick up your own luggage. He walks at a speed slower than the carousel.
A fast commuter train trip (the first of MANY) through the unlovely olive fawn, grey, mission brown and beige of Tokyo suburbia is brightened by a passing, authentic European windmill decorated with Netherlands flags. The Dutch bloke in the seat opposite became quite excited through his confused jetlag...
Morning coffee at Ueno station: there is no conversation. Twenty silent people; some texting on mobiles, some smoke (Just get used to it: they smoke! At least on railway stations smokers are restricted to the uncovered ends of platforms - with the train spotters.)
In a Japanese city, should you hear the sound of a lark or a cuckoo, then it is the pedestrian signal telling you to WALK. If you hear the sound of a crow, it is possibly a live bird (often in temple cemeteries, mixed in with the rattling of wooden memorial slats in the breeze...as if the spirits are communing...)
The swans in Ueno Park are large paddle boats. The temples and the war memorials to the Ueno battle that ended the Tokugawa Shogunate are real, as is the flame of peace from Hiroshima in the Toshugu shrine. The Shogun's family are buried just north of the park. I visited. Sundays in Ueno - along with the daily parades of bored adolescent groups to the various museums - are also the days when the place is full of (highly organised and very professional) buskers: particularly acrobats. There was a great jive group who set up speakers and hit the concrete, dancing frantically for a few minutes until a white gloved uniform moved them on because they were not part of the plan.
No matter where you go in Japan, there will be a blue uniform wearing white gloves to guide you in the correct way or direction. Obsequiousness does not lack firmness. At times this is taken to extremes: subway and tram staff seem to have been trained by Marcel Marceau as they go through elaborate body gestures to demonstrate that they HAVE checked the platform is clear, that they ARE moving ahead, that the track IS clear, and that the last butt HAS been jammed into the subway carriage door so the packed train can leave.
You can cycle to work in a full suit carrying a briefcase with one hand while texting with the other. Cyclists have right of way on footpaths.
The culture of bowing to one's superiors is everywhere and even applies to mobile phones. In the post office one woman was bowing extraordinarily low as she appeared to be apologising in great detail over the phone. Even at ATMs, while the machine is whirring away trying to find your funds in Australia, the image of the bank teller is bowing away, relentlessly over and over, until your funds arrive. Friday and Saturday night work party drinking games in restaurants with colleagues, while maintaining your correct place in the social order, is a skill I kind of admire but don't really want to develop.
Conductors bow to the carriage as they enter before checking tickets. Trolley dollies bow each time they enter or leave a train carriage with their wagon of bento, beer, coffee and snacky things. Even the bloody cleaners bow to you before offering empty plastic bags for rubbish. Local bus drivers wear microphones so everyone hears their personal welcome, their friendly advice and their personal thank you for every fare paid. The guard on the local train to Hakone stepped out to personally thank us for travelling on his train. Station assistants have radio microphones so they can announce and greet from wherever they are on the station. Paid nodders bow as you enter fancy department stores. As you pass through station barriers, you are effusively bowed to and thanked for travelling with JR. The scariest welcomes are from the newest and youngest employees who appear to need to prove their love of the company and its customers. (At least here in Korea only the machines say thanks when you insert your bus or subway ticket: Big Brother likes me).
Japanese salarymen do read manga comics in local trains: some of it pornographic. Japanese women and children have their own subway cars in peak hours to avoid crushing into dubious male commuters. You can sleep standing up in subway cars... but there is a trick to waking at the right station. On the large loop line around central Tokyo, every station has its own jingly little theme music which is played as soon as the train stops. Even if you are packed tighly into the other side of your carriage, you can "hear" your station. At Ebisu, commuters start their day with "The Third Man". At Takandanobaba, salary men and women leap into action with the Astro Boy theme, bounding out of the train to presumably fight for corporate justice. (I should have checked their shoes).
You really don't much hear music in stores or on the street. When you do, you tend to notice: like the clothing store in Hiroshima that was very fond of Split Enz, or the roti cafe in Hondori where they played "Afternoon Delight" and "Riders on the Storm" in amongst 70's black funk. If you like classical music, you are condemned to hear it regularly and tastelessly sampled before announcements on buses and trains... a different theme for every line, again presumably so that you can wake up and recognise where you are going and on what line...
One supermarket in Hiroshima played the Mickey Mouse Club theme on an endless loop. Snoopy and Disney characters are really popular in Japan - among adults.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the pleasures of travelling here is getting hold of one of the English language broadsheets to help solve what the TV news in Japanese might be saying (even though a couple of channels overdub the 7pm news in English if you can get the service). On one day last week: the Japanese PM has taken a bath over his failure to renegotiate US bases in Okinawa, 3 people were clawed to death by bears, cherry blossoms finally reached north Hokkaido (the start of spring: cherry blossoms are reported as they start blooming from south to north), how to respond to North Korea, and Stephen Smith bobbed up dubbed into Japanese (and made about as much sense) and this was before Peter Garrett dubbed on about whaling (possibly making more sense).
Around Ueno Park are scattered museums. The Japanese National Science Museum exit is past a life-sized blue whale. I have had my best experience of Rhodin's sculptures in Tokyo outdoor sites and with some of the park's homeless people. When it rains, the Ueno Park homeless move into the Keisei station subway and arrange themselves neatly, head to toe, in a single line down the middle of the subway - Japanese neat order taken to a logical extreme. In the park, between jobs, taxi drivers dust the outside of their cabs with feather dusters, and straighten the lace seat covers within. Ueno, near the hotel is great for food, technology and also has "Japanese School Girl Bar Open 4pm to 5am". Our tour group leader was not forthcoming about this last enterprise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
After battles about uniform in most schools, I cannot yet see our kids in the faux Prussian Officers' uniform worn by Japanese high school boys (high collar, gold buttons: single or double breasted) or the sailor suit look worn by high school girls (although many of them hitch up their skirts and unbutton their tops to portray the rather fetching slut-schoolgirl look, accented by thigh high black stockings.) Japanese female Goths are a bit of a mystery: long and fluffy brown haired frilly skirted looks with pierced lips, and carrying matching dolls.
I went looking for the Frank Lloyd Wright designed Imperial Hotel in Tokyo: no longer there. Had to be satisfied with the Frank Lloyd Wright designed wooden Nikko station building in northern Honshu instead (because Nikko did not get fire bombed). Often missing or rebuilt structures carry vague signposted references (in the passive voice) to "the last war"...
As a lone traveller, various people try their Engish (or not) on the stranger. A favourite moment on the Tokyo subway was when an old bloke (shorter than me) noticed the surgery scar on my wrist. He was pretty excited by this and proceeded to roll up sleeves/pants to share all of his scars with me. Sadly, I had an urgent temple to visit at the next stop and was unable to continue the conversation.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The Self Heating Bento:
So you are about to board several trains to get you from Takeyama to Hiroshima. (The Shinkansen bullet trains and fast connections between long distance trains of 12 minutes are guaranteed: it's breathtakingly efficient but turns a long journey into a series of rushed commutes and transfers up and down many stairs). So, in amongst all this, would you like a hot lunch? Good. For about 14 dollars you can buy a self heating bento (boxed lunch). When the hungers strike at 230kph, just PULL THE STRING and wait 6 minutes... Steam rises suddenly and the base becomes very HOTTT. Slide off the cardboard cover, and your several course meal is warmed through, thanks to the magic of quicklime. YUM!
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Whatever you need to buy, there will be a (NEVER vandalised) vending machine to provide you with drinks cold, drinks HOT, reading material, frozen meals heated and served by the machine, photographs, alcohol and, sadly, cigarettes.
If you are an under age smoker, beware of the "Grown Up Distinguish Cigarette Machine".
Instructions:
1. First push the gray button
2. Please look at small round mirror and stay still face.
3. If you permissive, put in cash and choose the item.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sake and green tea flavoured ice cream are definitely acquired tastes. Wasabe flavoured ice cream will NEVER be an acquired taste.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Hello Kitty" is everywhere. I just don't get him/her/it. Even the Hard Rock Cafe in Tokyo was running a Hello Kitty promotion. Hello Kitty was even in giant models at the Hakone hot springs, where the sulphur has turned the real local white cats into an interesting yellow colour. Needless to say there has been a wealth of lovely cat souvenirs on offer for friends or colleagues who are into cats. If this is you, be afraid. Be very afraid!
The street stray cats in Kyoto wake and fight - LOUDLY - at 4.45 EVERY morning.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some wisdom from our Intrepid tour leader (as far as Kyoto):
"A woman is not a lady unless she eats up her last grain of rice" (a saying that developed in the lean final years of "the last war").
"People from the north look like foxes and people from the south look more like raccoons". (I found this hard to believe until I travelled up north to Sapporo... She's right. They also have a lot of signs in Russian in that part of the tourist world).
"Japanese women love sumo wrestlers because they are such cuddly bears with no ounce of fat on them." The last Sumo national champion, a Mongolian, has just left the sport for behaviour befitting a rugby league player.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A helpful friend suggested that I walk into a Japanese seafood restaurant and order: "Watashi wa kujura niku o tabe tai shite kudasai koko de watashi wa kujura niku o taberu koto ga dekiru oshiete kudasai?"
I didn't, but there was whale meat on the English menu in a restaurant in Hiroshima Hondori (for scientific research????) at $7 for entree and $10 for main course (possibly with test tubes and petre dishes cooked over a bunsen burner??? - sorry, it was raw.).
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you trust the food pictures (as I did to my cost in Sapporo when skewered meat turned into cooked gizzards of various types: I worked out the tripe, and the liver - but not sure from what beast, but ate the others anyway to no lasting ill effect), then the coin in the slot workers' cafes might be for you: choose a picture, place coins in slot, pick up ticket, self effacing waiter/ress will deliver to you. If there are no pictures, guess the Japanese script: I worked out that two pairs of legs separated by a smiley thing was possibly pork. The pork katsu was goood.
And: miso soup, which is some kind of packaged joke at home is WONDERFUL when cooked and served fresh.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Some favourite museum moments:
- the poster in the Edo museum from the 1920's asking drivers to learn to drive to the left
- the flag from the Berlin Olympics which nominated Tokyo to host the 1940 Olympic Games,
- after days of vague or non existent references to World War II in various museums, the Tokyo Edo museum quietly displays the document of surrender without warning and without much context: it comes as a shock in amongst the detailed local city history. Some allied representatives appear to have signed in the wrong place.
- avoiding the Tokyo Banana and "Michael Jackson: the official lifetime collection only at Tokyo Tower" where the lift drops you off at the 4th floor, forcing you to front wondrous retail opportunities as you search for a way back to the subway station.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
NOT favourite museum moments:
I felt I had to go to Yakasuni Shrine, which is where the war dead from the last 100+ years are buried, whether families wanted them to be there or not. These include A Class war criminals. There was a bit of a sumo tournament going on down the back behind the shrine. I was prepared for a certain Nationalist view to pervade the museum, and it did: Japan as victim, Japan as not treated equally or respectfully by western powers, Japan as reclaimer of Asia from the west for co-prosperity, and so on. The English translations seem to fade in and out or to go missing at the most intersting times, like the Kamikaze section... One of the sadder displays was of bride dolls sent by some families to the parents of dead Kamikaze pilots, to symbolise the wives they would never have.
No mention of comfort women though, and the orders given (belatedly) to ensure good behaviour of Japanese troops in Nanjing are on display (without context)... No mention of forced labour or of treatment of POWs...
At the entrance to the museum is a restored steam locomotive from the Thai-Burma Railway which was presented "due to the generous donations by the officers who worked on the railway"...
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
One museum in Japan which pulls no punches is the Atom Bomb Museum in Hiroshima. It is open about the role of Hiroshima in the exploitation and colonisation of Asia by Japan, it is graphic about living conditions in the city during the war and about the Japanese role in Nanjing, it is open about Korean (and other) slave labour, comfort women and the mistreatment of POWs. All of this is to provide context for the politics, strategies and impact of the dropping of the bomb. At the time, the Japanese government was expecting firebombing of Hiroshima and had conscripted school students from all over the city to clear firebreaks by demolishing buildings. At 8.15 in the morning, many more school children were therefore directly exposed to the explosion. By the time visitors reach the galleries about the immediate, short and long term effects of the bomb it's a very hard series of displays to face. The peace park itself was worth a full day (some of which was to enjoy the sunlight and to recover from the museum).
On the following morning Keijiro Matsushima spoke to our small group for over an hour, just retelling his experiences on the day of the bombing as a boy of 16. It was a matter of fact delivery about chance and personal experiences: he was on the side of the tech school classroom away from the flash and the blast, after realising he could not help his friends and others "as a selfish 16 year old" he had left the city to find his mother who was working on a farm about 2 hours away. This probably saved his life, however he described the longer term effects of radiation poisoning and the impacts long after the bomb: for example, his wife's family (in an arranged marriage) had cautioned her not to marry him due to long term genetic effects, and the range of ongoing health problems experienced by bomb victims.
He said that the Japanese wartime media had announced that "a new weapon had been used on Hiroshima and that there had been "some losses". When surrender was announced, and the population was told by the Americans that they (Japanese people) were the ones with the power, not the Emperor, "it was a 180 degree turn, that some have still not managed".
He retired as a middle school principal, and talked at length about the power of education following the wartime propaganda. When he provided copies of his notes and poetry, I realised that in several schools I have taught some of his work.
Sometimes the most powerful messages are delivered in the most diffident and self effacing way.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Over the last three weeks I have seen many, many, many tired and drawn and energetic teachers with hordes of Japanese school groups on organised excursions. Kyoto in particular seems to be infested with secondary school groups but nothing prepared me for the following day in Nara which was swarming with gazillions of elementary school 6 to 11 year olds in grouped coloured caps and matching T shirts who were having the best time in temples and food halls and terrorising the tame deer which wander the parks of Nara. And the lone foreign traveller was a target for the bit of the worksheet which said: go up to a foreigner, tell him/her that your English language teacher wants him/her to answer a few questions in English and mark on a map where they are from.
I was well interviewed, ran out of koala pins so a few sad-eyed kids only got a Lithgow HS business card. Sorry. Best I could do.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
So,
Next it's on to Korea where the railway website says "Korail wants to be a beautiful bridge and not just some iron made transportation."
I'll let you know.
Sadly, in order to get to the plane from Japan, I had to drag myself away from my favourite Japanese soap opera which was playing in the departure lounge: "WIFE PROSECUTOR KYOTO" ... just as the feisty leading woman had proven the wise old patronising boss was wrong because she used empathy to get the truth out of a witness that he had merely badgered. The other female actors could barely speak thrugh botox and lip gloss, and now I'll never know if the witness really did the deed.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
And lastly, a grumpy old man moment: dim museum labels are a bitch to read when you wear bifocals.
Hope all is well where you are (and I soon will be, in most cases)
Cheers,
Andrew.