www.nickhodge.com

Dear Japan

I think I really like you as a friend, but I am no longer in love.

It’s not you, it’s me. The love of the new, the unknown, the for­bid­den is gone.

It is not the great pub­lic trans­port, the very friendly and cour­teous people. The wall-to-wall shopping.

I am sure we can still be friends.

My third trip to Japan, even with the earth­quake and typhoon, was pleas­ant enough. I think how­ever that to know you bet­ter, I would have to move in with you and learn your lan­guage. At this stage in my life, it’s a com­mit­ment I can­not make. I am just too tired and grumpy for that.

My genes are call­ing me to fol­low my DNA back in time. Ger­many and Scot­land call.

This begs the ques­tion of why I trav­elled to Japan in the first place. Good ques­tion. I think I should have had a hol­i­day while I was not working.

You have shown me the future: it’s ver­tical and it’s mobile. Even the geek (otaku) side of Japan was inter­est­ing — but not enga­ging enough unless you like manga, gun­dam uni­verse and other slices of cul­ture I can­not explain.

Yours

Nick

Pic­ture: Dis­tant view of Typhoon clouds from Hotel Room

Typhoon num­ber 4 (offi­cial name) hit Okinawa, and skimmed the east­ern shores of Japan. Com­pletely miss­ing Tokyo, but stop­ping many ser­vices for a few minutes on Sunday. We were out in the worst of it in Harajuku on Sat­urday. Wind+Rain = Shop­ping in Japan. Every­one was out and about.

Then on Monday morn­ing at around 10:19am, a mag­nitude 6.8 earth­quake hit to the north of Tokyo. We were in the hotel room at the time, and Avril thought I was being funny rock­ing the bed. I thought she was mud­dling around pack­ing bags. Nope, it was an earth­quake. My greatest fear was that I was only in my jocks. Avril and Liam were con­cerned about our greater wel­fare. Within a minute or two, it was over, and we watched the after­math on TV.

Note: my mum reminded me that this was my second earth­quake. When I was 5, Nowra NSW had an earth­quake. I must admit I don’t remem­ber the earth­quake, but I do remem­ber our cat.

It seemed that Tokyo went onto its main busi­ness: shop­ping. So we joined in the crowds at Akihabara

Exits are numbered and are import­ant in the Tokyo sub­way sys­tem. A1-10, B1-12, C1-16. Yes, there are that many exits.

Thank­fully the organ­isers of Japan have nice maps vir­tu­ally every­where, and you should not get lost.

Ginza is the home to shop­ping in brand-name stores. Today we vis­ited the Sony, Nis­san, Canon and Apple stores.

After vis­it­ing Yodo­bashi, and the Sony store, I am of the belief that we get the crap­pi­est stuff in Aus­tralia. The Toshiba and Sony laptops in Japan are beau­ti­ful. In Aus­tralia, everything is grey and hor­rible. The above is a small PC with wire­less, bluetooth, TV and a whole bunch of things run­ning in Vista. Do Want! Oh, that’s right. Not in Australia.

Buy­ing food from pic­tures is one thing, but phar­ma­ceut­ical items? It’s a hoot — you are likely to get almost anything.

Paul Macart­ney play­ing in the Star­bucks, Ginza Matsuya-dori is put­ting every­one to sleep. (note: this Star­bucks in now 10 years old!). Why Star­bucks? You can taste the dis­tance between the cof­fee in Japan­ese cof­fee. Star­bucks is denser.

The new Canon store just a way down from the Star­bucks has excel­lent pho­tos, and dis­plays of their devices. Above is a paper model of Pir­ates. Excel­lent way of selling more print­ers, inks and paper.

And yes, before head­ing back to the hotel, I vis­ited teh Apple Store Ginza and refrained from pur­chas­ing any­thing. Might get one of them new Mac­Book Pros when I return to Aus­tralia if I can find a new owner for my old one. The store looks a little bare without the iPhone. Way more sales people than cus­tom­ers. Very non-Ginza.

Pic­ture: Yodo­bashi Cam­era, Shin­juku, Games Store. Play­sta­tion 3, Nin­tendo Wii.  Maybe some­thing Xbox360. If you look hard enough.

The nor­mal PC “bits” store in in the lower level (B1) of the main store. Here is abso­lutely any­thing and everything you will ever need for PC stuff:

Pic­ture: Image, on tree in Shinjuku

Pic­ture: Qual­ity mer­chand­ise from Japan

Pic­ture: I jump on a busy JR Yama­n­ote from Shin­juku to Tokyo Sta­tion. Goal: Imper­ial Palace Gardens

From note in the above pic­ture: “Shel­ter for People Who Can­not Go Back Home” That is, homeless

Pic­ture: Guard House (old, not new) at Imper­ial Palace. Note: the guards are not ninjas

Pic­ture: This was taken at the East­ern entrance to the Imper­ial Palace. I loitered around this area as there were many secur­ity guys with ear pieces look­ing nervous. More nervous with a sweaty anglo-saxon guy stand­ing around watch­ing (ie: me). They waved me on, just in case I was a white ter­ror­ist intent on doing some­thing evil. I was just inter­ested! Even­tu­ally, a car rushed past on this road and every­one returned to normal.

9^th July: Liam and I take a rest-day after 4 days on the go. Avril goes out into the local Osaka shop­ping scene and cap­tures some pho­tos. The most inter­est­ing one has cookie mon­sters in blue and red!

10^th July: Up early, JR train from Osaka to Shin-Osaka to cap­ture a new N700 Shinkansen train to Tokyo. 9:00am at Osaka, 9:30am at Shin-Osaka, 10:30am Shinkansen via Kyoto, Yoko­hama etc. We’ve gone for Green-class which provides more room. Whilst we’ve paid for 3 seats, we get a set of 4 between us. Which is just as well, as we have a new com­pan­ion on our jour­ney: Mr Fast Bas­tard Bag:

Arriv­ing at Tokyo in the early after­noon, we weave our way out the large Tokyo JR Sta­tion the Maron­ou­chi Sub­way line. 7 stops later, we are at the Nishi-Shinjuku sta­tion. Nav­ig­at­ing the exits, we find our­self at the Hilton and we’re home for 9 or so days.

After a quick unpack, we go out into Shin­juku to the Yodo­bashi, and Tokyu Hands store.

Order­ing din­ner, we broke the intric­ate sys­tem by adding on desert. Oops.

Up at 6:00am to get ready for a long day. Osaka JR train to Osaka-shin. Catch the Shinkansen to Hiroshima via Shin-Kobe and other sta­tions that mix together. The Hodge’s almost broke the whole sys­tem by insert­ing our Suica cards into the wrong machines. Friendly JR staff kindly help us for gaijin out.

Just like the blur of the Shinkansen passing in the oppos­ite dir­ec­tion, with many many tun­nels. And also like yes­ter­day, all land us used. Fukuyama has a large cath­olic cathed­ral clearly vis­ible in the centre of the town.

Avril and Liam had fun feed­ing me unknown Japan­ese foods. They tasted awful. Do not want.

Off at Hiroshima, and a short walk to the Street Cars. Choice: Y600 for a day ticket or Y150 for each trip. A pic­ture of the rail­way sta­tion from August 1945 clearly demol­ished, over 1.2kms away from the hypo­centre brings you back to the real­ity why Hiroshima is now a city name every­one recognises.

The street car takes you on a short 20 minute ride into history.

The Atomic Dome is a silent, yet stark reminder of our his­tory. Our shared his­tory. Not a pleas­ant his­tory at all.

The build­ing, right next to the Aioi Bridge, is one of the only build­ings to sur­vive. The hypo­centre (the ground nearest the blast, the blast being only 580m from the ground). The ori­ginal iron girders are now inside in the Peace Museum. There is a slight twist against the force of the blast. Touch­ing items such as roof­ing tiles that have bubbled; bricks that have fused together: brings home the blast.

The city of Hiroshima has left the Atomic dome as a reminder to us all of the effects of the bomb. The whole area of the Peace Park was once a bust­ling part of the city centre. Now gone. Vari­ous peace organ­isa­tions pop­u­late the edges of the park, along with statues. These organ­isa­tions present the Japan­ese per­spect­ive on Amer­ican mil­it­ar­ism — and vastly dif­fer­ent to the sit­ting on the fence of the Peace Museum.

The museum shows how Hiroshima was the home of the 5^th Divi­sion (note: this divi­sion served in Java and Timor dur­ing WW2) and alter the HQ of the Second Gen­eral Army. The task­ing doc­u­ments from US Mil­it­ary com­mand do not men­tion the mil­it­ary nature of the target.

No mat­ter how man jus­ti­fies his hor­rific actions to other men: reli­gion, ideo­logy, per­ceived dif­fer­ences; the hor­rors of war are clearly on show at Hiroshima. It is neither shrine nor temple. It is a liv­ing reminder of what humans can do to oth­ers. No mat­ter the couch­ing in stra­tegic, polit­ical or tac­tical terms: war is most unwanted.

There are many clocks in the Peace Museum at stuck on 8:15am. The time that the bomb blast hit. Hiroshima remains staunchly anti-nuclear weapons to this day. And with clear justification.

The Peace Museum, with its pur­pose­ful high­light­ing of the effects on chil­dren: show­ing the inno­cents in the war; height­ens the par­ent in all of us.  Whilst the tech­no­logy of the bomb is shown with a men­acing scale rep­lica of the bomb sit­ting over a part of the dis­play — all seem to dis­reg­ard it. The after-effects are rightly shown.

Another mov­ing place to visit is the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Hall. It has a down­ward spiralling walk­way into a room. This room has a 360degree pic­ture of Hiroshima, post bomb. How­ever, this picture’s dark/light is made from the names of 140,000 (vari­ous places in Hiroshima report 350,000) vic­tims. It is a power­ful display.

On our long return to the Shinkansen sta­tion, we pass through many malls and shops. Strangely, a Yel­low Sub­mar­ine store selling B29 mod­els sits dir­ectly under­neath the hypocentre.

We point at menus, get more strange food; and return to Osaka via Shinkansen and JR. Hotel at 9.15pm.

Hiroshima is no mod­ern shrine. It’s name is the shrine.

Up early, walk to JR Train: Osaka to Kyoto via Express Line. Cityl­ine Bus around to the middle of Kyoto sub­ur­bia. Express Line is faster as it seems to skip 2 stops out of 3. A Rapid, in com­par­ison, skips 1 out of 3. A local stops at every stop. The nuance between Rapid and Express means the dif­fer­ence of 30 minutes between Osaka and Kyoto.

Rush­ing through the country-side between Osaka and Kyoto, it is easy to miss the actual coun­try part. Yes, the moun­tains are all very verd­ant and green — the farms can be seen in the tri­angles between houses. Farm­ing is squeezed into the left overs of sub­ur­bia. All the spare space in Japan is used. Rice pad­dies, soc­cer fields on the flood plains of rivers; ver­tical car parks. All the space is wisely used.

Ima­gine a mod­ern city, wrapped around large plots of land con­veni­ently con­tain­ing shines, temples and gar­dens. Gone is the deep green of the coun­tryside: here it is orange. Lots of Orange. It is a shame that digital cam­eras miss the deep oranges and purples. There is lots of orange in Kyoto.

The bus sys­tem is per­fect for Kyoto’s sprawl. Only Y500 for a day pass is excel­lent value. The JR trip from Kyoto to Osaka was Y540, one way. This is a mere AU$10 for a day’s worth of travel, each. Enter from the rear, and exit (after pay­ing) from the front. A smart sys­tem that ensures an effi­cient flow of people through the bus, onto the street and into the money mak­ing temples. For the JR, we re-charged our Suica (stored value) cards from our last trip in 2005.

Japan, whilst exhib­its many fea­tures of the future; cash­less is not one of them in small stores and res­taur­ants. Thank­fully, the JR trains use these new stored value cards and the places where you can get money from your accounts seems to be greater.

Every temple/shine I’ve seen is sur­roun­ded by mech­an­isms for tak­ing money from the attendee. Whether for long life, good mar­riage, for ancest­ors — the temples/shrines take your money in mul­ti­pli­city of forms. At least this invest­ment res­ults in some of the world’s best vis­tas, and the raw earth and nature calm­ing sub­ur­bian nerves.

Our first shine/temple/garden/shopping trap was the Kiyom­izu (largest) etched into the moun­tain­side of Kyoto. We had Meiho, Yuka and Shiho escort us (for free!) around this large temple. They were using the exper­i­ence to learn English.

Pic­ture: some fat bas­tard look­ing for Charlotte.

In Lost in Trans­la­tion, Char­lotte (Scar­lett Johans­son) calls her mum still in the US and says “she went to a temple, and didn’t feel any­thing” I can under­stand why. Whilst the temples and shines are meant to evoke spir­itual feel­ing; the sheer num­ber of people and the shop­ping stalls dampen the spir­itual feel­ing some­what. A calmness does decend on you in the gar­dens. Sit­ting and watch­ing the Koi (think: carp) and turtles fight it out for illi­cit scraps of food thrown down into the water.

The second was the Heian. The gar­dens here are bril­liant. I think there is a scene from Lost in Trans­la­tion (Char­lotte cross­ing the pond) shot in this garden. The garden is situ­ation around a stark white and orange court­yard temple thing. Ven­tur­ing through the portal into the garden, you see a cooler, calmer world where the sounds of Kyoto traffic disappears.

The JR train return­ing to Osaka we passed Sun­tory Whisky dis­til­lery. Just like Lost in Translation.

Din­ner at a ran­dom place with some ran­dom Japan­ese food. “setto menu”. Buy­ing food late in the day from the depart­ment store res­ul­ted in dis­counts; although it was still a little expensive.

Tired legs, broken feet. Tomor­row is another day.

Goal today was to work out exactly where we are, and what is around. And more import­antly, how we are get­ting around.

Pic­ture: Can Has 8-bit Text! Shinkansen timetable

First stop: JR sta­tion to pur­chase tick­ets. Even­tu­ally lin­ing up in the cor­rect queue, we spent about AU$1200 on cari­ous Shinkansen (bullet/fast train) both to Hiroshima for Sunday, and going into Tokyo for Tues­day next week. Kyoto is a short 30 minute train ride north-ish tomorrow.

Yodo­bashi Cam­era. My nemesis on pre­vi­ous trips; this trip is no dif­fer­ent. Pur­chased a new Canon IXY 1000 10 mega­pixel cam­era and handed the old Canon down. This will be my 4^th IXY cam­era, and they are real workhorses.

Now Yodo­bashi cam­era. Think of a depart­ment store, but with elec­tron­ics galore. Every brand, soft­ware, hard­ware, whit­e­goods, obscure accessor­ies: the list goes on. In a ver­tical store 7 stor­ies high. Now non-geeks, before your brain explodsed, there is are two floors of fash­ion and another 2 floors of food.

Pic­ture: many, many isles of geek gad­getry. There are 6 floors above this full of geek stuff.

Osaka is miss­ing the vend­ing machines of Tokyo. In Tokyo, they exist every­where. In Osaka, the only vend­ing machines are for cigarettes.

TV is Japan is as weird as por­trayed on Aus­tralia TV. Con­sid­er­ing the range, and HD qual­ity of TV’s as demon­strated in Yodo­bashi, I won­der what Japan­ese people watch.

Not happy just to watch TV at home, there are now phones that have TV and all the other phone stuff. The TV isn’t beamed over the net­work: there is a little antenna:

Liam wit­nessed some anim­ated under­pants at 2pm, and the morn­ing show has its own Karl. Happy whales in cata­logs, and less Eng­lish signs than you find in Tokyo.

Up at 6:00am, arrive at air­port at 8:30am and through checkin, cus­toms and immig­ra­tion. Our checked in bag­gage weighs 31kg; and other carry on is 25kg.  Includ­ing assor­ted liquids under 100ml.

OK, what’s the deal with put­ting your 100ml liquids into a plastic bag. The secur­ity guys at Sydney Inter­na­tional grabbed some poor Chinese student’s fish oil tab­lets and poured them into a plastic bag. Then handed him the plastic bag and the empty con­tainer. The poor bemused stu­dent just walked away. Still can­not work out why the bag­gie was required.

The exchange rate with Japan Yen is highly favour­able for this trip: Travelex at the air­port is 94.4 Yen to 1 AU. If you are a NZ’er, time to come to AU as the exchange rate is 1:1. Quick pur­chases at the air­port included a new Lonely Planet City Guide for Tokyo.

Through Gate 31 onto the Jet­Star Air­bus A330-202 into our Star­class seats. Yes, Star­class. Paid the extra and the unex­pec­ted res­ult was 5 seats over 3 of us. Star­class to Osaka Kan­sai was 50% full. Half of the Eco­nomy seats were pop­u­lated with about 2000 Japan­ese school girls.

Sleep­ing over PNG, watch­ing vari­ous movies on the small, self-contained “digi-E-Players”. Jet­Star gets a solid 7 out of 10. –1 for food, –1 for lack of movie selec­tion and –1 for the old, slighlty smelly Air­bus. Looks dis­tinctly like a Qantas hand-me-down.

Land­ing took all the Kan­sai ter­minal build­ings. Yes, we landed at one end of the ter­minal at a couple of hun­dred kms/hr and slowed down and taxi’d into the other end of the ter­minal. It’s that big. Our arrival gate, gate 6, was sponsored by Panasonic.

Liam meets Samjung at Immig­ra­tion con­trol. Same school and year as Liam, but from Korea. Arrived in Osaka on a Qantas flight yet was 10 people ahead of us in the immig­ra­tion line. Their fam­ily plans is to go to Uni­ver­sal Stu­dios in Osaka.

We’re through immig­ra­tion, col­lec­ted the 31kg behemoth bag and onto the Lim­ousine bus to Osaka CBD within 10 minutes. Osaka is 25degC and rather humid, fully expected.

A 50 minute ride through the Kan­sai night look­ing at love hotels, pachinko bars, canals, heavy indus­trial works and finally Osaka.

Lemon fla­voured beer? Liam explores the min­i­bar which has lemon gel. The dun­nies are very mod­ern with their heated clean­ing jets (DO WANT) and more knobs and dials than a Rus­sian spacesta­tion.  Gel drinks. Toi­lets. Wow.

The future is ver­tical people. Ver­tical. Everything is vertical.

I love arriv­ing into new places at night. The morn­ing always surprises.