Japan part 3

Hello Again

Firstly, I want to say that I am glad to see that people are reading this blog.   The page viewer on my blog showed 74 views in the 24 hours after I made the last post.  Surely, my parents didn't read it more than 5 times, which still leaves 69 views.....maybe I have a stalker.

Anyway, I thought I would write one more post from Japan before I leave  this evening.

We spent 4 nights in Kyoto after Takayama.  As I mentioned before, I was quite surprised at how different the city is to Tokyo.  It's much more laid back and as a result, seems like a more fun city.  You see more people in unusual and interesting outfits and far less traditional practices.  I spoke about the nice neat queues in Tokyo..... It's much more of a free for all in Kyoto.

Kyoto is known for it's temples, and I can understand why.  There seems to be thousands of them. Everywhere you look is another temple.  We visited a few, but we are not really temple people.  Honestly, we went mostly to so that we could say that we saw some culture....

Every temple we went to seemed to have 1000 school children visiting it on a field trip.  As two of the only white people at these sights, we stuck out like a sore thumb and a few times had groups of school children approach us to ask us questions for their english classes.  They would shyly approach us and politely ask if they could ask us some questions.  They would then ask where we were from, what our favorite Japanese food is, who our favorite singer is, etc., before taking pictures with us and writing down our answers in their books.  It was pretty cute.

When we were asked about our favorite singers, we couldn't come up with an answer that the kids knew.  Turns out we should have said "AKB48", an extremely popular Japanese girl group.  We first started seeing posters and pictures of AKB48 in Kyoto and now we are noticing them everywhere.  Literally everywhere.  Some of the bars/clubs in kyoto were AKB48 themed.... We saw AKB48 slot and pachinko machines and every other store has a AKB48 poster in its window.

It appeared to be a large group of 16-20 year old girls, in fairly slutty school girl costumes.  A google search informed us that it's a musical group of 64 members and they did $200 million in record sales last year! They obviously cant all perform on stage at once, so there is a nationwide vote to determine who gets to sing/perform on each day.  There is also a televised rock-paper-scissors completion each year to determine which girls perform.  Can you believe it? Only in Japan.

We saw the AKB pachinko machines while walking in the pontocho / Gion area of Kyoto.  We have seen tonnes of pachinko halls, but we finally went into one on Thursday evening.  It was absolute abuse on the senses; I've never experienced anything like it.  Firstly, the noise was unbearable.  Image a room full of 200 slot machines, all being played, all making those terrible siren noises.  Now, Imagine that instead of a digital slot machines, it's metal pinball like machines, which every minute are being fed with thousands of tiny metal balls.  Add a lack of air-conditioning in 30 degree heat, and the the fact that the cigarette smoke is so overwhelming that your eyes and nostrils burn, and you get the Japanese Pachinko experience.  I think my pachinko career is officially over before it started.

On a more serious note, we visited Hiroshima on Friday. It's about 2 hours by train from Kyoto.  It was a very interesting and worthwhile trip.  I was a bit surprised at how normal a city Hiroshima is.  I guess I wasn't really expecting it to be anything different than a regular city, but it was still a bit strange trying to grasp how normal everything was after what had happened.  If you didn't know any better, you would never know that the entire city was demolished.  It was completely normal; gardens, clean rivers, tall buildings, schools, children, malls, etc.

The peace park and museum, located at ground zero, were excellent.  When the bomb was dropped one domed building right under the epicenter somehow stayed standing.  After the bomb, the burnt out shell of this dome was literally the only thing standing within a 5km radius.  Today, the hollow dome still stands amongst all the rebuilt buildings and the park.

The museum was pretty moving.  The clothing and handbags and backpacks recovered from the victims were on display, along with numerous graphic pictures, stories, and other artifacts.  There was also background on why Hiroshima was chosen as the A-bomb target and copies of the "top secret" letters sent amongst US government officials.

I thought the most interesting part was that once the decision was made by the US to use the atomic bomb on Japan, 17 cities were identified as possible targets and a cease fire was ordered on these cities.  These cities were chosen based on importance to the japanese war efforts, port and rail infrastructure, factories, and damage already sustained.

As each of these 17 cities was eliminated as possible targets, the regular air raid bombing could resume.  But for the cities which were still eligible candidates for the atomic bomb, all other bombing raids were cancelled.  The Americans wanted the target to be as well preserved as possible so that the devastation caused by the bomb could be magnified.  There were even letters between US generals and politicians discussing how the target cities needed to be well preserved, and how they would be "disappointed" if the full capabilities of the bomb could not be displayed.  Hiroshima, a key port city, ended up as the first target due to it's relatively low level of damage, it's sprawling urban centre, and clear weather on the date of the bombing.  It was very difficult to think about, but also very impressive to see how the country and city rebounded.

We also did a half day trip to Nara while in Kyoto; a much lighter trip than the day in Hiroshima. We hired bikes and rode around the town. Once again there were a number of temples which we pretended to be interested in.  In reality, we were more interested in the hundreds of white tailed deer that live in the park.  They roam around freely, mooching around for food.  You can buy deer cookies and feed them.  I never thought I would be afraid of a deer, but I'll tell you, when you've got 10 aggressive deer surrounding you, all going for the one cookie you have in your hand, it's a bit overwhelming.  Lots of potential for an accidental bite, but still a good laugh.  We found it pretty funny how the deer knew where the food was - you could tell where the deer cookies were being sold, because there would be 10 sheepish looking deer hanging around the cart waiting for some sucker to come buy a stack.

After Kyoto we headed back to Tokyo for our last two days.  I wanted to do something weird while here, so in keeping with the animal theme, we went to a "cat cafe". Basically, it's a coffee shop, which also is home to 50+ cats.  You pay a small cover charge, wash your hands and then enjoy your drinks surrounded by a clowder of kitties.  You can buy chicken treats to feed to the cats, and when you do, they come running.  They were almost as bad as the deer.  The cafe had hundreds of cozy spots the cats could sleep in and it was all pretty cute.  Weird, but cute.  I think the most surprising part was how many people were there.  I was expecting it to be us and a few middle aged women, but the place was packed, mostly with couples (the girlfriend played with the cats while the  boyfriend read manga comics).

A few other notes....
- I had a deep fried egg in Kyoto.  It was pretty amazing
- a blood donation mobile clinic was set up outside of kyoto station.  There was a sign outside the van which (we think) said that you have to be at least 50kg (110lbs) to donate.  If that's the case, I bet they have a real blood shortage in Japan; that weight restriction would actually eliminate 2/3rds of the population
- there was a "typhoon" last night.  It was all over the news.  Everyone was freaking out and we were advised to stay inside.  From what we could tell, the winds barely reached 50k/h. And today it is gorgeous and sunny.

That's it.

さようなら. (^-^)/