My hotel was a bona fide businessman hotel close to the Hiroshima main train station, run by a disturbingly old couple, who spent most of their time fighting with each other. Now, when I made the reservation online earlier, the website promised that the hotel would have an internet connection for its customers, but when I asked about it from the old lady, she simply pointed at the ancient fax machine on the counter.
Fantastic, off the grid for two days, however was I going to pull through...
In Asia – and particularly in Japan – I have witnessed many old people with what I'd like to call a collapsed spine (who knows, could even be the official term). They are tiny old things, bent over to the shape of the letter 'U', making them seem like shaky wind-up dolls, muttering their way around the undergrowth of the urban jungle, scavenging for who knows what to have escaped death for so long.
The old lady running the salaryman hotel I was to stay in, she had a habit of constantly apologizing for everything, bowing down each time, making it seem like her head was constantly positioned right below her ass, making me hope that she had enough fibers in her diet. It was a tough job getting past her and into the elevator, as I felt like I should answer for each of her apologies and bows like a good boy that I am. When I finally got to the 5th floor, where my room was, I noticed that she must have been the only person taking care of things, as everything in the place was tip-top below my waist level, which was probably about the limit of her reach, and above that... well, looking on top of an air conditioning unit, I found a mummy of... something. Decided to not be too curious, while I'd be staying in that place.
Also, being a businessman hotel, the place was full of ashtrays in every conceivable location, except for the ofuro room, and even there, peeking through the window next to the large bath tub, I could see the ground littered with cigarette butts. How is it that the people in this country manage to live so long? Everyone lies their age?
Right.
Hiroshima.
One would expect a city that was nuked to stay nuked, not to come back for seconds.
But Hiroshima is a right tough bastard of a city.
After it was leveled in August 6, 1945, they said that not even grass would grow there for the next 75 years or so. And still they started rebuilding the place immediately! It was only later that they realized that all the green stuff actually made a pretty quick recovery throughout the area.
What would they have done, if it hadn't?
Tough bastards, like I said.
Due to a slight case of having being blown to teeny-weeny pieces 64 years ago the current city is rather modern compared to most other places I've seen in Japan. Buildings look nicer, streets are more organized, everything is cleaner. I could list quite a few places in Finland that could use a similar treatment.
I wandered around the city, until I found myself at the Hiroshima Castle site. It's a free-for-all park now, about 1km from the ground zero, with several ruins of old buildings and some suspicious-looking trees that carry the sign “A-Bombed Tree” together with the distance to the blast. The bark of those trees tends to be a tad scarred on one side. They re-built the castle, too, but I wasn't too interested in it apart from snapping a couple of photos. Seen plenty of them in Japan already. In fact, I've seen one in every single city I've visited so far.
Walking towards the ground zero, I found some more nuked trees, a stadium, a fancy shopping mall and... the A-Bomb Dome, the symbol of the whole mess, standing almost directly below the point where the bomb was detonated. It, and some other ferroconcrete buildings close by had managed to keep their unvaporized parts standing, partially due to having been right below the blast and therefore having avoided some of the shock wave. The Dome is now – yet another – Unesco World Heritage site, and the locals are making sure that it keeps its looks, all the way down to the bricks and other construction material spread around it, when most of the building collapsed into a semi-molten heap.
There's a free wi-fi available in the memorial park, by the way, the signs informing about it also mentioning that one shouldn't really sleep in the park.Why the fuck would anyone want to?
There are memorials aplenty around the dome. I checked them out, keeping an eye on the rain clouds above, and headed for the two museums in the park. Interesting, educational places, not holding back on the grimy details – indeed, often re-enacting them to the detail with wax dolls – and cheap, too. One was free to enter (for some reason it was almost empty. I suppose the backbaggers I saw swarming the park around weren't exactly the cultural types) and the other (more gory one, packed with people) cost only 40 cents. Funny thing was that in both these places – again – no one had anything against people taking photos. Digging it.
A watch, stopped at the time of the explosion, quarter past eight in the morning.
A tricycle and a helmet. The tricycle belonged to a kid, who was riding it at the time of the explosion. Badly burned, the child died shortly after, and the father buried the tricycle together with the corpse in his backyard(IIRC). Dug up later, it was placed in the museum together with a sign telling the story.
Glass jars, molten into a kind of honeycomb.
Origami cranes. Fold 1000 of them and it is said that your wish will come true. The girl who made these, Sadako Sasaki, didn't get hers though, as she died in 1955 from leukemia at the age of 12, having been only a mile away from the explosion, when it occurred.
In the evening I met with Ryoko, a local whom I had already met in Kyoto. She took me to try some of the local cuisines and get drunk. Really, you can't find the best foods in these foreign places without some inside help. I shall be forever grateful to her. :) (I think I actually prefer Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki to Osaka-style, it was really lovely.)
Day 2, I hopped on the train and went to visit an island called Miyajima, one of the must-see historical temples in the area and in the whole of Japan.
Coming to see the place, one should really time one's arrival correctly. During the high water the red temple and the huge torii gate in front of it stand completely in water, making it a very beautiful sight indeed, with the green mountains towering in the background. During the low water the place is just a low building complex hugging the wet sand of the beach. You can actually see the correct time by checking the rivers in Hiroshima, as during the low tide they are reduced to tiny little streams, leaving the many boats in them lying on the bottom like shipwrecks.
I arrived to Miyajima, when the waterline was just receding. The temple was already clear of water with only the torii gate still submerged. It was a pretty place though, and I finally bought me a tanuki statue. :) I think it will be very happy indeed, when I place it into my living room's liquor cabinet back home.
The torii gate in the beginning.
Half an hour later.
From the temple.
And later still, as I was on the ferry, heading back to the mainland.
As the water receded, many interesting things were revealed, like different types of crabs, sea shells and jelly-fish.
Tanuki with a cigarette in his mouth. :)
Also, deer, again. This time there weren't any deer cakes to be given, but the animals didn't mind, if nothing else, they seemed even more aggressive than the ones in Nara. I was eating a deep-fried fish stick with bacon wrapped around it (a type of kushiyaki), and one of the beasts was relentlessly trying to take it from me, rubbing its antlers to my kidneys, whenever I dared to turn away from it, much to the amusement of the other tourists.
Found a beautiful garden in a tea room in Miyajima. Almost makes me wish I had a backyard to rape into something similar.
In the evening I – once again – met with Ryoko, got fed and got drunk. Good times.
But then.
Time to head back to the other side of the equator and see if the winter had arrived there yet.
Took the 7am shinkansen back to Osaka and had no choice but to sit in the single smoking car of the train. Businessmen surrounded me, there was a constant statue of smoke rising from the other side of every single seat in front of me. Thinking of it still makes me cough... In Osaka I headed directly to the airport and had barely enough time to complete the suddenly very complicated check-in procedures. People are really panicking over the damn Mexican influenza. On TV in Japan, most of the news were about it. I actually came to Japan and passed through the Auckland airport on the same day that the influenza arrived there, landing several people in quarantine. One day later, and my slight cough would probably have caused some ripples in the customs.
A good, memorable trip.
So long and thanks for all the sushi.
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