registered alien - Japan Blog

Autumn School Memories

9/16/2018

Monday, September 17, 2018.

Autumn school memories

Smell is such a strong memory cue. I remember the back to school smells of September and October. Warm days, cool nights as autumn advanced. We could almost smell the leaves changing color.

The new erasers for my pencil case smelled like candy. The smells of colored pencil shavings. I remember when I graduated from pencil to ball point pen in Grade 3. In the autumn days that were still warm, running around with my friends trying to catch grasshoppers on the John McCrae School playground. Going into the Snake Pit, the empty, overgrown lot adjacent to John McCrae, looking for garter snakes (you couldn't miss them, there were so many the ground was slithering). Riding my bicycle in the low-angle orange autumn light. The lazy days of summer were gone, but the days of autumn were still plenty carefree. That was elementary school. High school had its own memories. I remember a constant feeling of tension, pressure and worry - lots and lots of worry, about girls, thoughts about the future - university and career - concern over marks. Fear. There was a lot of fear in high school. I wouldn't describe high school as "carefree." Not much fun, either.

I spent my allowance on cream soda, root beer, Double Bubble, Graperoo and Black Cat bubble gum, Popeye Candy Cigarettes, Freezies, licorice cigars and pipes, and salt-and-vinegar Hostess potato chips. In my mind I still associate Grade 5 with the smell of Cream Soda. I can still remember the smells of these things individually plus the cool inside feeling of Bob Hefky's Edinburgh Convenience Store. I wish I had a picture of Hefky's.

I rode a standard bike, but I dreamed of the cool 3-speed bike with the banana seat and the monkey handlebars like some boys had that helped us imagine we were riding real motorcycles. I eventually got one second hand from the teenager across the street, Bill Ketchison. I bought it with my lawn cutting money.

In addition to all that, the teachers were troubling us with such oppressive things as homework. I remember when my homework for all subjects in elementary school was a daily quota of pages from each subject's workbook. I still have some of my early workbooks marked with the teacher's red pen swirls, or blue, silver and gold star stickers.

Last Man

8/30/2018

Imperial Rest House, Shinjuku Garden

Friday, August 31, 2018.

Last man

A Japanese English teacher asked me what I would do if there were no more people in the world but me - if I was the last human. Not just the last male, but the last person, period. I don’t know - go crazy with fear, I suppose. The question came from our conversation, but I forget exactly what we were talking about that led to it. Maybe we were discussing what I had done on the weekend and I expressed my dislike of crowds and crowded places. I don’t know.

Anyway, in order to get a grip on the question other corollary questions were immediately spawned.

Is this a zombie thing?

If I am alone, am I alone in Japan? Being alone in Japan means that I would be trapped here. Thoughts of traveling Asia or Africa, Europe or the Americas are disqualified. I wouldn’t be able to get off Honshu Island.

And, why am I alone? What happened to all the other people? Did they just “disappear,” quietly and harmlessly evaporating into thin air, or did they all die - by disease or violence - leaving me in the midst of a stinky health trap, waiting for decomposition to finish its course?

If I am alone, the last man, do I still get to enjoy electric power? Hot water? Air conditioning? A refrigerator? Gas?

Let’s assume - whether people died off, were suddenly killed, or else magically vanished - that buildings are still standing, and I have electric power. The world looks exactly as it does today, only there are no people. First, I would probably continue to live in my 3F apartment in the city. Do I need to stay in the same place, in the same neighbourhood of the same city? The familiarity might be comforting. Besides, all my stuff is here. I don’t particularly admire or yearn for luxury penthouse condominium apartments of luxury hotel suites. I need something that’s practical. I do admire the Shinjuku National Garden, a 54 ha (145 acre) public park since 1949. (New York City’s Central Park is 778-acres.) Before that it was an imperial garden in the heart of the city, and before that the land was the home of the feudal Lord Naito, a vassal of Shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa. It is well-wooded, centrally located, and quiet. The Old Imperial Rest House still stands in the park. It’s a modest, Western-style house about the size of a Canadian lakeside cottage. If the building is habitable I might like to live there.

I admire Japan’s Pacific coast of the Boso Peninsula, east of Tokyo. I’ve visited the seaside town of Katsuura twice, staying at the Mikazuki Hotel. I liked the heavily wooded, low hills and the proximity to the sea - the smell of the sea air and the sound of the crashing surf. I might like to re-visit there. Maybe over time, as I get used to my situation, I might slowly begin traveling around some more. To the question, “Which do you prefer, the mountains or the sea?” I habitually choose the sea. The sea represents freedom to me. The mountains represent mystery. Of course, if I’m the Last Man and there is an earthquake and tsunami while I’m visiting the sea I might find myself in a bit of trouble, but …

Second, every day I might go out on foraging patrols, scrounging up food and medicine from abandoned stores and homes. Maybe some clothes. Keep my apartment stocked. Having an ample supply of things nearby is convenient and advisable.

Third, I suppose I might ‘borrow’ a car to get around the city. I might have to. However, with no people to maintain the city, with Nature and animals reclaiming the land, encroaching on the remnants of human civilization, I would be increasingly wary about using tunnels and bridges, or poking around inside buildings, or going out at night. Without continual maintenance I suppose things might start falling apart faster than I expect. With electric power intact, I suppose I could continue to enjoy lights, appliances, hot water, air conditioning and gas at home, street lights at night, plus I could gas up vehicles at gas stations. If not, with no electric power, I would have to hand-pump fuel out of storage tanks. Would I need a weapon? As animals begin to reclaim the land, a weapon might be useful. And if it is a zombie thing ... well ... Large land animals in Japan include bears, deer, wild boar, monkeys, foxes and “tanuki” raccoon dogs. In this country, where would I get a weapon, anyway? The options are limited. This isn’t America where, if I break into a sporting goods store or a gun shop I can walk away with a semi-automatic assault rifle. Uh-uh.

Fourth, illness and injury would be a problem. I’d have to be careful about those.

Fifth, I would take over one or two other apartments in my building and use them as dedicated library space. The Imperial Rest House in Shinjuku Garden might be good for this. Using a borrowed car, I would visit Kinokuniya Bookstore in Shinjuku and Book town in Jimbocho and gather all those books I admire but have no space for. With no nagging wife to impede or veto acquisitions, and nothing on TV or the Internet to watch, books would be an occupation. I would look on collecting them as a kind of saving mission.

Sixth, I’d have to think about solid waste disposal. I guess I’d be generating garbage. With no garbagemen around to collect my trash I’d have to dispose of it somewhere, somehow by myself, and I’d have to start doing it pretty soon.

Seventh, maybe some gardening would be in order, especially if there is no electric power. I’d be growing some food for myself. Potatoes and tomatoes, corn, cucumbers and carrots. If electric power is intact I could keep raiding stores, but I couldn’t do that forever. In a few years I might have to think about clearing away unhindered vegetation from some places as part of practical, regular maintenance.

Hiroshima Reflections

8/30/2018

Thursday, August 30, 2018.

Hiroshima reflections

I recently visited Hiroshima for the first time. I wanted to go in July, before crowds descended on the city for the annual atomic bomb memorial anniversary. it is a beautiful city, and I would like to visit it again. Downtown is small enough to walk everywhere I wanted to go. Plus, the city is organized and primed to host international visitors. Multi-lingual tourist information is easily available, and in the Memorial Peace Park itself the park is well-wooded, signage is excellent, there re plenty of bench seats for resting and there are many public toilets available. No garbage receptacles, though.

I worry that overuse of the word "peace" renders its true meaning and motivation anodyne: the Peace Park, the Peace Museum, the Peace Fountain, the Peace Boulevard, the Peace Bell, the Peace Clock, the Peace Cenotaph with the Peace Pool and the Peace Flame, etc. After roaming around the city on my own for a couple of days I joined a tour for my last day, before returning to Tokyo. It was then, while listening to my Japanese guide, that overuse of the word "peace" began to aggravate me. Others in the tour group seemed not to appreciate that in 1945 there was a war going on. It was total war. It was a war that Japan started and that Japan waged in a notoriously heinous and criminal fashion. It was a war that Japan stubbornly refused to give up long after its cause was lost, preparing to sacrifice its own civilian population in a fight to the death against battle-hardened U.S. Marines. And it was a war in which Japan allied itself with Nazis! In the summer of 1945 there was still no end in sight, so I'm thankful the Americans used their new weapon to force the Japanese government along.

Of course, the A-bomb did not push Japan into surrender. Even after Hiroshima and Nagasaki the Japanese General Staff was prepared to push on. What decided the issue was the very real threat that the Soviets would parachute into Sapporo and take the northern island of Hokkaido. Surrender to the U.S. became the lease offensive of a list of evil options.

But I could be wrong.

Published in The Japan Times on Sunday, August 12, 2018 as "Too much focus placed on 'peace'."

I don’t like the title chosen by the newspaper for my August 12th letter, but choosing a title for the letter is the newspaper editorial staff’s job, not my job. The use of atomic weapons was a terrible thing, no denying. I am somewhat averse, but not completely averse to terrible things. Knowing how bad atomic weapons are, we may not legitimately judge the decisions, behaviors or values of the past by our contemporary values. We can do it, of course. We do it all the time. But doing so is illegitimate. It’s not legitimate history.

Even worse was the use of conventional weapons which killed more people and did more damage due to more extensive use. People are prone to let atomic/nuclear weaponry distract them from the evils of conventional weaponry - and they are prone wrongly to judge the past by our present values. In addition, Allied forces were/are not free of accusations of wartime atrocities. When I think of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki I DO NOT think of Japan as the victim of anything. Those wartime episodes do not change my evaluation of Japan as the aggressor and instigator. So, the Americans nuked them? Too bad. They reaped what they sowed.

I know that there were dissenting opinions in U.S. power circles about the new weapons' use. Some dissenting opinions were fair and some were ridiculous, but none of them were/are convincing. By the summer of 1945 the Imperial Navy and Air Force were fundamentally gone and the USAAF was bombing Japan at will and largely unopposed. It has reasonably been said that by the summer of 1945 Japan was in honestly in no shape to continue the war, but being in no shape to push on with a war does not disqualify a people, a nation, or a force from pushing on with it nevertheless. The Imperial Army was still deployed, still armed, still dangerous and still game for war. Japan was sending out peace feelers, and it might be said that the stubborn Anglo-American insistence on "unconditional" surrender was a problem that by itself artificially extended the conflict by fortifying the Axis will to resist.

The notion that the bomb could have/should have been detonated as a warning demonstration - out at sea, for example, or on a mountainside or a deserted island - is a recurring, resilient but silly and wrong idea because it so grossly underestimates the willingness of people to fight and die for what they believe, even if what they believe is demonstrably false. It always strikes me that people who make that suggestion understand nothing about human psychology.

I don't believe that Japan needed nuking to surrender. I think differently on the matter. It is well established that the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings did not, in fact, cause the government to accept the Anglo-American unconditional surrender terms. If that were true then the government wouldn’t have waited to surrender. It would have surrendered right away. Breaking their own non-engagement treaty with Japan, the Soviets declared war just after midnight on August 9, 1945, and their threat to the homeland was real. It was the final straw

Or not.

Bible Story

8/29/2018

Thursday, August 30, 2018.

Bible story

This is a true story from my cross-country train trip in Canada last March. I’ve taken this cross-country trip on Canada’s VIA Rail several times. I like sitting in the observation car and watching the scenery go by. But I don’t have to do that all day. I can do other things, like sit and read. This year I spent time in the forward activity car working on jigsaw puzzles. First, I did a 300-piece puzzle of cows in a meadow by myself. After that, I teamed up with a middle-aged American couple from Seattle, WA to complete a 1,000-piece puzzle of Canada’s Marine Lake. It was tough, but we did it in less than 48-hours. When we finished it, we worked together on the same 300-piece puzzle that I had already done by myself once. Truly puzzling behavior.

The forward activity car is used by passengers in Coach/Economy class. Coach passengers have access to an observation deck, tables for playing games, a canteen to buy their meals, etc. Sone train souvenirs are on display there and are for sale. There is a DVD machine for watching movies in the evening. And there is even a small library of books brought aboard by previous passengers and then left behind (presumably finished) when they departed. The Coach passengers do not have access to any other part of the train. As a First Class passenger I enjoy the run of the train, but Coach is limited to the forward section.

As I was working on my puzzles I noticed one of the books left on a table. It was a Bible. It was a soft brown, imitation chocolate/caramel leather NIV Zondervan Bible. As I have an interest in Bibles I picked it up - it looked like it was neglected and discarded, like a passenger either deliberately left it there, or else forgot it - and had a look inside. Writing on the inside looked feminine and young, so I imagined a teenage girl or younger. Since Bibles are one of the things I collect I seriously thought of stealing it, but instead I let it rest where I found it. The owner might be a board and might return.

Then, as I was working on the 1,000-piece puzzle with the American couple from Seattle I overheard the conversation of a group of three or four train employees at a table at the opposite end of the car. Three Anglo men and one Francophone woman. Like any employees on a break they were talking relatively freely, sometimes saying things I might keep closer to my chest.

They were sitting at the same table as the Bible, and it bothered me because I kept wondering “When will they leave so I can steal that book?” I kept working on my jigsaw puzzle and kept listening. Eventually, the woman from Quebec picked up the Bible and spoke about it. I was shocked, Shocked!!, that she did not recognize it. She did not know what it was! She mentioned to the men, “It looks like a priest’s book.”

French Canadian French and English both sound like an unoiled Tommy gun, completely unlike classic Parisian French which sounds like a gentle stream softly trickling through a dense, quiet grove of deciduous trees.

Whatever one’s position is regarding religion, Christianity, the Bible, et. al., I felt embarrassment that knowledge, or even simple awareness of religion, Christianity, the Bible, God, et al. is now so diminished that there is anyone in society who at least does not recognize the Bible. The woman came from predominantly Catholic Quebec, and she was a native Francophone Quebecer. I could tell from her awful accent. (To my ear French Canadian French and English both sound like an unoiled Tommy gun, completely unlike classic Parisian French which sounds like a gentle stream softly trickling through a dense, quiet grove of deciduous trees.) I know that Quebec experienced the Quiet Revolution in the early 1960s, when Conservative Maurice Duplessis lost in provincial elections to Liberal Jean Lesage, and a quick process began that saw the Catholic Church lose is controlling dominance over all facets of Quebec life as the province shifted towards secularism in politics, education, welfare policy, and everything else. So when this Quebec woman didn’t even recognize what the Bible I thought the Quiet Revolution had been too successful, responsible for a generation of people too stupid even to recognize stuff.

In order for religion to be legitimate it must satisfy three things:

1) it must be voluntary;
2) it must be private
3) it must occupy one’s free time.

But in addition to that - again, regardless of one’s position on religion, Christianity, the Bible, God, etc. - I have a very broad definition of what I consider “public knowledge.” So not to even recognize the Bible is an abomination. Not from a religious perspective, just from the perspective of an intelligent human being in society. God does not want obedient automatons. God wants his children to be sincere, compassionate, loyal, to pursue lifelong education in order to search for answers, to be intelligent, independent and critically thinking. Intelligent most of all,Or not.

Emergency Broadcast

8/24/2018

Friday, August 24, 2018.

Emergency broadcast

Sometimes when we have heavy rain I write about hearing the flood warning sirens down the hill at the local river. This is a picture of the loudspeakers in my neighbourhood - the sort of thing that would be an air raid siren during WWII, or in the war movies I grew up with. Despite the Internet and online announcement systems and information platforms and iPhones in nearly everyone’s pocket or purse every neighbourhood in Japan has a public address system like this for emergencies. I sometimes see these loudspeakers atop tall poles and make a note of them, but I usually don’t notice them. They are part of the unsightly overhead clutter of the urban landscape (there's a lot of that) that I’ve grown used to. The emergency address system is tested regularly throughout Japan around 5:00 p.m. every day. In my neighbourhood what happens is that a recorded message is broadcast loudly telling children that it's time to go home. Other neighbourhoods might have different announcements. Whether children take the message and go home or not is not the point. The point is only to test the system every day.

I used to be annoyed, thinking it was stupidly over-indulgent to broadcast a message every day, "It's 5:00! Time for you to go home!" until I finally learned what it really was. Now, it’s another one of a growing list of Japanese things I enjoy (and enjoy explain to my family back home). During episodes of heavy rain, I enjoy listening for flood warnings so that I can scoot out and go have a look at the Kanda River down the hill. In my 29-years living in Tokyo the local river has only flooded once, and that was during a thunderstorm, not a typhoon.

Hiroshima

7/29/2018

Monday, July 30, 2018.

Hiroshima visit

I visited the city of Hiroshima in western Japan from Wednesday, July 25-Friday, July 27, 2018, 684 km west of Tokyo. It was good timing because I enjoyed hot sunny weather while I was there and on the last day the weather forecast was predicting Typhoon 12 hitting the region and engulfing western Japan in strong rain and wind for the second time in the last month by late Saturday. It was my first visit there. I arranged everything through a travel agency in Tokyo because that was comfortable and convenient for me. I hate it when acquaintances boast about how they do everything themselves online with this app or that app and how they found bargains, bargains, bargains! Life is not a scheme.

Hiroshima is famous (or infamous) as the first target ever to suffer an atomic bomb detonation. That makes it a big tourist draw, a center for the international anti-nuclear movement and global pacifism. The city is organized and primed to host legions of international visitors. But Hiroshima is also an administrative center, and has been since the feudal era, because it sits at the junction of three transportation routes: river, sea and land roads. That made it a good location in feudal times as well as modern. During the Second World War the city boasted about 420,000 people, about half of whom had been evacuated to avoid bombing by August 1945. After the war it took until the mid-1950s to regain its wartime size. Today it is home to over 1.1 million people. It is still a major transportation point east-west, it is still the provincial capital, it is still a center of culture and education as it was before the war, and now it boasts a professional baseball team, the Hiroshima Carp and soccer team, Sanfrecce Hiroshima (Italian for “Three Arrows”). It is the largest city in the Chugoku region of western Japan.

When I arrived by bullet train at Hiroshima Station the first thing I noticed in station gift shops was Hiroshima Carp livery and accessories. (A souvenir shop in Japan features food and drink from the region - cakes, cookies, crackers, fruits, etc., more than mere toys, T-shirts and postcards. When Japanese buy souvenirs, “omiage,” they are buying something special from the region to take back to their friends and family to enjoy by eating.)

Getting there from my Tokyo home was unspeakably stressful. Unspeakable!! The bullet train departed from Tokyo Station at 7:10 a.m. Getting to Tokyo is about a 35-minute ride on the Marunouchi Subway Line from my apartment. My local station is a mere 8-minute walk away. Simple, right? But wait … when I left home at 5:30 a.m. it was already about 29°C outside, heading towards 36°C. That means by the time I reached my local subway station my clothes were already sweat through like a towel after a swim. I felt sick. I felt I would have diarrhea. I felt I would have to get off the train along the way, find a toilet, and risk missing my departure. (I reached Tokyo Station and immediately headed towards the loo. Fortunately, due to my familiarity with the station I already know where to find them.) I feared I was forgetting something at hone (I did - three things). I had a lot of fear. I feared my trip was in vain. I kept wondering, “What am I doing? What am I going to do there?” As the bullet train advanced westward I fretted more and more my decision to take a short holiday alone. Shin-Yokohama. Nagoya. Kyoto. Shin-Osaka. Shin-Kobe. Okayama. Fukuyama. Hiroshima. Of course, I had a plan. I had thought about the trip for weeks before departing. First thing, Tourist Office inside Hiroshima Station. Okay, check. Second thing, take a taxi to my hotel. Check. Once I was nested in my room at the Hotel Sunroute (comparable to a Holiday Inn) I felt a lot better.

A feature of Hiroshima is that it mostly lies south of Hiroshima Station on a river delta. During WWII and before this was even more true: the city occupied the river delta, period. I believe one reason for that dates from the feudal period when the castle was built (1590s) as a regional administrative hub. Hiroshima Station today lies northeast of the castle, and northeast is considered an unlucky direction in Japan. People were hesitant to settle in that district. To counter the unluckiness of it, the mountain slopes north of the station feature more than one large temple complex.

Today, because of how large the city has grown it has unavoidably developed north of the station. But it is still overwhelmingly focused on the south side of the station. That’s where most things are that people want to see and do. That’s how the bus and streetcar (“hiroden”) infrastructure is laid out. South of Hiroshima Station the streets tend to follow a convenient grid pattern, unlike Tokyo.

The Peace Memorial Park was practically directly across the street. I could see the iconic Atomic Bomb Dome from my room window. After settling in I got myself in order and went out for a full afternoon in the park. I arrived with a bus tour plan for the third and last day. I only had to plan my time for the first two days, Wednesday and Thursday. I did it. It turned out okay. Was my stress and worry in vain?

On my first day I noticed something very quickly. Unlike Tokyo, I never saw any police in Hiroshima. Tokyo is lousy with police. Police are everywhere. Patrol cars are easily visible on the streets, police on bicycle patrol, police manning neighbourhood police boxes (“koban”). But in Hiroshima I never saw any police. I didn’t see any pet dogs, either. Not one. No one out walking a pooch. Tokyo is lousy with pet dogs. I saw a lot of streetcars. I saw a lot of student groups, including in my hotel. Because they are on an official school outing they are in uniform and are wearing name tags. The ones in my hotel were junior high schoolers. Often when I spoke Japanese I was not understood. That might be just because my Japanese is so bad. But since I knew what I was saying and how to say it I wondered if, 1) the listeners were just confused by hearing a foreigner speak reasonable Japanese; or, 2) maybe I speak with a Tokyo/Kanto accent. If I do, I can’t hear it. I am unable to hear Japanese regional dialects, although I know there are several.

I wouldn’t mind revisiting Hiroshima. But in the mean time I have a list of other places in Japan I want to visit.

Bullet Train Tokyo-to-Hiroshima

Tokyo Station
Shimbashi
Shin-Yokohama
Nagoya
Kyoto
Shin-Osaka
Shin-Kobe
Okayama
Fukuyama
Hiroshima Station

Hiroshima Memorial Cenotaph

7/26/2018

Friday, July 27, 2016.

Hiroshima Memorial Cenotaph

The Memorial Cenotaph was one of the first memorial monuments built on an open field on August 6, 1952.

Hiroshima Streetcars

7/26/2018

Thursday, July 26, 2018.

Hiroshima Streetcars

"Hiroden" = the electric streetcars in Hiroshima operated by the Hiroshima Electric Railway Co., or the “Hiroshima Dentetsu Kabushiki-gaisha”. Some streetcars are ultra-modern, but others are deliberately, nostalgically old.

Hiroshima Ground Zero

7/26/2018

Thursday, July 26, 2018.

Hiroshima Ground Zero

It took some back-and-forth walking and looking around, but I finally located the street marker indicating the atomic bomb's hypocenter, the epicenter, Ground Zero. The street is a normal street - businesses, apartments - about 100 meters east of the Atomic Bomb Dome. The Americans did not target the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall. They targeted the T-shaped Aioi Bridge just meters to the west, because it’s shape was easily recognisable from the air. Without realizing it at first, I crossed that bridge several times going here and there. There are a lot of bridges, because the bulk of Hiroshima occupies silt islands in the Ota River and its branches, south of Hiroshima Station. The bomb detonated about 600 meters above the city. The surrounding low mountains create a kind of bowl shape to conveniently contain and focus the shock wave.

There was only one other group of foreigners who appeared to be looking for the site as well - a French family. I found the marker and was taking pictures and I noticed the family about 20 off to my right at a corner looking lost. But when they saw me taking pictures and appearing to be taking pictures with deliberation, they scurried right over to me and did the same.

A-bomb Dome

7/26/2018

Thursday, July 26, 2018.

A-bomb Dome

The A-Bomb Dome (formerly the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall) in the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park looks just like it does on TV. Small. Dwarfed by surrounding modern buildings, but elegant in its ruined condition. I just loving looking at it, trying to feel something appropriate.

The Peace Park is re-planted with trees and well wooded; it has plenty of bench seating and well-marked public toilets; it has lots of multi-lingual signage; there is no dearth of garbage bins. The park is about 20 acres with dozens (a bus tour guide told me sixty) of monuments in it, not one or two big monuments., so you can stroll around in relative quiet, to the chirruping of cicadas in the trees. But it lacks a sense of solemnity that I was expecting. I was expecting it to feel like the inside of a European gothic cathedral. The word "peace" is slapped on everything like a repeating song chorus.

The four major features of the Peace Park are the Peace Memorial Museum (underwhelming), the Peace Bell, the Cenotaph plus Peace Pool and Peace Flame, and then beyond it in the distance, framed by the Cenotaph and the trees is the A-Bomb Dome.