Land of the Rising Sun

April 11^th, Day 78

Today we arrived in Kobe, Japan! I had the good fortune of having my parents here to spend the trip with me. The moment I walked off the ship I heard the voice of my mother which seemed to be calling to me from the heavens above… Or rather the third story catwalk of the customs processing building. A short while later which involved a really cool fingerprinting process where you stick each index finger on a little electronic pad and have a digital photo taken I had a joy filled reunion with my parents! The timing was ideal as ever since Vietnam and seeing several parents there I’ve been experiencing far more frequent bouts of homesickness. I was very excited to see them!

They had also managed to book a VERY nice hotel and our room was situated on the 25^th floor overlooking the city and the bordering mountains. Unfortunately we were just out of view of the ship but the vantage point was still spectacular. After dropping off my things at the hotel we decided to walk around Kobe and see if we could find anything of interest. This took the form of stumbling across what looked like a cable car line going up one of the nearby mountains. Though the people working at the ticket booth spoke hardly any English and the signs were in Japanese the pretty pictures accompanying them suggested the area at the top of the cable car might make for a pleasant start to our day. The ride up gave us even better view of the city and the bay than our hotel and also gave us a chance to capture Kobe, our hotel, and the Explorer in one shot!

At the top of the cable car there was a botanical garden as well as several fountains and cherry trees in blossom. It was a somewhat odd feeling to walk into a greenhouse that was filled with rainforest plants that seemed very similar if not the same as ones I had actually hiked through in their natural environment in Puerto Rico. Overall though it was a very relaxing start to our day.

After returning to the hotel to relax and catch my parents up with my adventures, we made our way to the Japan subway/rail network to begin our journey to Osaka. There, we would be meeting with an SAS alumni named John who had done a voyage in the late 90’s and was now living in Japan after graduating from CU Boulder.

I was very impressed with the public transportation network in Japan. It was extremely efficient, clean, and easy to navigate. The feeling extends to the city itself and I’m finally beginning to realize just how much of a difference there really is in the conditions of a first world country.

Upon arriving in Osaka we managed to find John and meet up with a few other members of our ship who attend CU or were from Colorado. John took us to an excellent Japanese restaurant for dinner that featured the legendary Kobe Beef. The restaurant was of the sit on mats on the floor around the table variety and at the center of the table was a rectangular depression in which there was a small grilling surface for the food they would be bringing us. Before long we were sharing the stories of Spring 08 while the delicious aroma of cooking steak filled the air. The beef deserves its reputation. It was some of the most tender and flavorful beef I’ve ever had the pleasure of eating! Although there were two other types of meat on the plate and so I tried a chunk of pink meat I thought was chicken but later discovered to be the stomach. The experience was rather like chewing a piece of solid fat and I determined that the one piece would be enough for the rest of the evening. The other meat was a safer looking red meat color and while still quite chewy was much more flavorful. As it turned out this meat was from the tongue of the cow. Fortunately the our waiters had kindly provided our table with several bottles of Asahi beer which eased the process of getting down the meat.

After completing our culinary journey through the various edible parts of the cow we began to head out of the restaurant. Just outside we ran into several Japanese businessmen who had arrived shortly before us and had been progressively growing louder throughout the evening as a train of fresh bottles of Asahi in and empty ones out continued. One gentleman in particular seemed like he had been riding that particular train for some time as he was now stumbling around the sidewalk in front of the restaurant with his arms out stretched happily shouting “Wooooshhhhhh!!! Woooooshhhhhh!” He was more than happy to pose for pictures with his new found American friends.

Our bellies full we decided that a few rounds of drinks might be in order and so now short a few members our caravan made its way to a little bar near the Osaka train station. Interestingly, the inside walls of the place were decorated with rows upon rows of American license plates! I thoroughly enjoyed my first day in Japan and can’t wait to go onto Hiroshima and Miyajima tomorrow!

April 12^th, Day 79

Our second day in Japan was a much more stirring and introspective day as we journeyed by train to see the Atomic bomb site at Hiroshima and the shrine at Miyajima. For most of the ride to Hiroshima we enjoyed the huge numbers of Cherry trees prevalent in Japan which fortunately for us will still in their blossoming stage of spring. It made the countryside quite beautiful and the splendid mountain backdrop reminded me somewhat of home and the Rocky Mountains. Arriving in Hiroshima, my parents and I ran into Heika, another student on our ship and discovered she also had been hoping to visit the A-bomb memorial and so we decided to go there together.

Hiroshima at first appears like any other city in Japan. There’s a smattering of skyscrapers, small shops, cherry trees, and people going about city business. Only one of the buildings is different. Standing in a small clearing, the steel ribbing of what was once a dome stands in start contrast with the sky. Weathered brick and concrete rises to support the dome with cracks visible in many places. Sections of the walls of the building lie in pieces at its base. Some of the steel girders are bent as though they were made of rubber. It was nearly directly overhead of this building that on the 6^th of August in 1945 the United States Air Force successfully detonated an atomic bomb. In an instant, thousands of lives flicked out of existence. The buildings and signs that Hiroshima had been a city were incinerated and flattened. A stubborn few structures by some fortunate happenstance remained standing amidst the destruction around them. One such building was the A-bomb dome we were now standing before. Their occupants were not so fortunate…

It was a very sobering experience to stand where such an action of immense destruction had occurred. After watching us take in our surroundings for a while an elderly Japanese man approached us. In impeccable English he approached us and told us that he was a High School teacher who incidentally had also been living in Hiroshima at the time of the bomb. He then produced a small tattered document about the size of a passport and explained that the Japanese government had issued it to him for being a citizen of Hiroshima that had survived the bombing. He explained how his parents and grandfather were killed not immediately following the explosion, but from complications arising from it in the next few weeks. He asked to take a picture with us which we gladly obliged. He also showed us a notebook he keeps of what country all of the people he talks to are from. The United States ranked at the top of his list.

We continued on to the Peace Memorial Park and museum where there are exhibits about the war, the development of, and the decision process to drop the bomb. Then there are the exhibits about the effects of the bombing: people’s skin partially melting and hanging from their bodies. Intense heat melding together glass bottles, ceramic tiles, and concrete. Singed clothing and burnt flesh miles from the epicenter of the bomb It certainly makes all the more convincing the plea that nuclear weapons never again be used against humanity anywhere.

The museum also explained how the current governor of Hiroshima sends a letter following every atomic test to the leader of the country that conducted it, admonishing them and again pleading that as the first city to be subjected to a nuclear bombing that horror not happen to any other groups of people. Unfotunately letters are still being written with the last one only having been in 2006 to Kim Jung Il.

After paying our respects we boarded ferryboat to cross to the island of Miayajima. There, aside from a large population of incredibly tame deer that will take food from your hands and are apparently known to eat a passport or railway pass from time to time, there stands a magnificent red arch-like structure on the banks of the island. This shrine has stood upon the island for hundreds of years and seemed to have an aura of mystique and intrigue about it. There were also droves of blossoming cherry trees as well as a temple making for a lovely way to end the day.

April 13^th, Day 80

For our third day in Japan we caught one of the lightning quick Shinkansen trains to Tokyo for the day and the better part of the evening. Walking out of the train station I was actually a bit surprised to find Tokyo not quite as huge or overwhelming as I had expected. Perhaps having seen so many large cities and capitals in these past few months has made me accustomed to large cities and they no longer have the capacity to overwhelm me.

Our first stop was the grounds of the Imperial Palace. Situated in an enormous park planted with interesting looking pine trees the palace was surrounded by a moat and features a spectacularly beautiful stone bridge to cross it. Unfortunately we could not go into the Imperial Palace and had to be contented by merely taking pictures of it from across the moat.

From there we headed to the Sony building, where Sony puts on four floors of display of its newest innovations. I was impressed with how thin computers are becoming as they had several newer models of desktop class PCs that were only marginally thicker than a laptop. HD video cameras seem to be all the rage now and there were several impressive displays of those. There were even digital cameras with a smile detector which automatically takes a picture when a sufficiently sincere flashing of one’s pearly whites has been detected. The folks at Sony also seemed to be quite excited about a thing called Rolly. It’s a small robot like thing about the size of a tennis ball though more oval shaped. It plays music and dances and twirls around to its tunes when placed on a hard flat surface. Interesting to have if you need something to throw money at I guess, but I can’t see them becoming the next iPod. In true SAS fashion we randomly ran into Garrett and another voyager from our ship in the building. Just outside was one of the most interesting intersections I’ve ever seen. I believe there were no less than 10 crosswalks for that intersection, including diagonal ones that allowed you to cross from corner to corner instead of waiting for the traditional L maneuver.

From there we made our way to the Toyota building to see their autoshow. Our guidebook promised 75 models of vehicles from race cars to concept cars. To get to the Toyota building we walked along the trendy Sunshine 60 pedestrian mall. This was apparently the hot place for younger people to hang out as the demographics of the crowd quickly shifted away from businessmen in suits and ties to young adults in fashionable jeans and brand name merchandise. There were tons of inviting looking restaurants and I wished that we had more time to stop. Though the autoshow was entertaining I was somewhat disappointed in the fact that the concept cars were not nearly as cool or outrageous looking as I had been hoping and there was only two sports cars on display. I did however get to challenge my dad to a video game race with a driving simulator they had set up. I also caught a glimpse of the amazing trumpet playing robot Aibo, though unfortunately he had been powered down for the evening and may as well have been a prop from a science fiction movie. Amazingly these few activities took the entire day and we soon found ourselves back on the train to Kobe

April 14^th, Day 81

Our last day in Japan was yet another frantically paced day of sight seeing as we squeezed in trips to Himeji and Kyoto.

Himeji was one of the more spectacular sites I experienced in Japan. The castle grounds are absolutely stunning particularly with the massive groups of cherry trees in bloom. The castle is also known as the White Egret castle and appeared in the Last Samurai. The castle was built upon a hill from which you can see miles in every direction and was designed with an elaborate maze to reach the keep as a defensive measure. At every point on the walk up to the keep there are notches cut in the walls for archers and there are several thick gates that would have needed to have been breached. However these defenses were never tested as the castle was never attacked in this way. The castle itself is built upon a mound of stones. The lord of the castle didn’t have enough stone to build it himself and appealed to the villagers to assist in its construction. Legend has it that one old woman donated her only milling stone to the construction and after news of her generosity spread, stones began pouring in from all corners of the land. We were able to climb up to the top floor of the castle which provided a spectacular view and was a good place to ponder the centuries past.

For the afternoon we again used the wonderful Japanese rail network to get to Kyoto. Unfortunately we arrived too late to take the river rafting trip we had intended to do and the afternoon Geisha show was sold out so we decided to just wander around the city. While it was pleasant and we did see an enormous Buddhist temple I did not find Kyoto to be particularly remarkable. There were several quiet streets and we took a very nice walk alongside the riverbank but I don’t feel like I had quite the same experience with Kyoto as some of the rest of the ship. I did however enjoy the Kyoto train station as it was a huge mirrored building that was ultra modern and interesting to look at. From Kyoto I took my parents back to the ship for a quick tour and we had a last dinner of Kobe Beef at a restaurant with a great view of the night time city. A short while later I bid my parents farewell and boarded the ship. I would definitely like to return to Japan one day when I have more time to explore and it will definitely be remembered as one of my favorite ports of our voyage!