I left my umbrella in Hiroshima [written 9th May 2009]

[I'm writing this in Auckland from notes I made in my diary]

I'm sat in Kyoto station, it's 9pm and I'm about to get the Shinkensen to Hiroshima. I was planning on getting the day started a little earlier and heading out sooner, but I was up late drinking and in a Karaoke room until 5am. At this point I'd just like to say the following:

If anyone tells you how 'fun' private karaoke is 'after a few drinks', ask this: 'can you ever truly be drunk enough to endure being locked in a room with a load of tone deaf drunk people you've met that evening who are working their way through terrible U2 medleys with flashing neon and cheap tasting Sake?'. They might say 'just wait until it's your turn'. This is true. Once it's your turn out comes this rather surprising sensation. It's like you've gone past embarrassment or caring - you're locked in a room with people you'll never meet again and only they can hear you. Now you can pretend you sound as cool as the guy from Kings of Leon [even though you're from the Midlands] and that your sex is indeed 'on fire' even though you don't really understand what that means. 'Yeah, I love Karaoke! Yeah!'. Then it's the turn of the balled guy from Tasmania to unflinchingly murder a song you once held dear but can never hear again without seeing his shiny balled head.

Anyway, what that was leading to was that I had a latish start today.The past two days in Kyoto have been lovely and I enjoyed my time in Kyoto very much. Most of it was taking up chasing after various temples and shrines and it was hard to chose. Staying in a hostel is great for getting tips and ideas but not so great for early nights and early rising. That said, I think I saw as much as I comfortably could.

Kyoto certainly had a very different vibe to Tokyo. One Canadian girl I met said that Tokyo was 'exhuasting' and it's a very apt word. Imagine the furious chaos of any huge city [such as London] and add to that all the stress and energy expended by not speaking the language. All simple things are made harder. I'm reminded of a similar experience my sister told me about in Hong Kong where she had to mime wiping her arse in order to get some toilet roll. Gestures can only go so far and some simply don't work. Shake your hands as if to say 'it doesn't matter, forget it' and you'll get a baffled and concerned look in return. If you've done something wrong, such as wear the wrong pair of sandals into the toilet [there are designated sandals for different areas of scrupulously the clean hostels] then you get someone crossing their forearms in your face in a giant X like you've got the plague [which is pretty much how we were treated when we arrived in Japan owing to HNFU2 virus....saying that, the Auzzies had heat cameras to see who had a temperature - or who'd wet themselves].

Anyway.

While in Kyoto the average person will speak less English than in Tokyo, it's much less Bonkers [with a capital B] though challenging to travel in a different way.

The Golden temple was lovely - as was the tallest Pagoda in Japan, the Tuji Pagoda [Dave recommended I go here and see the family of terrapin. I couldn't find them but I did get my finger sucked by a carp. Make of that what you will].

So I find myself bound for Hiroshima. It's weird heading to Hiroshima. It's a place EVERYONE has heard of, but for one unfathomably horrific reason. Like Vietnam [or perhaps Hastings....] it is a place where the name is scarred with associations with conflict more than the current day goings-on.

I came to Hiroshima out of a kind of respect - like you would the house of Anne Frank. While visiting Anne Frank's house is a difficult experience - she represented just one life, which told a similar story to hundreds of others. The story of Hiroshima is the total destruction of an entire city in an instant. So I wasn't really sure how to 'do' Hiroshima. I was also interested in Hiroshima's more distant history. It was once the capitol, far superior to Tokyo. It became the centre for military operations as they grew out of its enormous castle.

When I started my day there, I decided to have a leisurely day. It was beautiful sunshine - the hottest day yet - and for the first time I left my umbrella and took a hat. You can certainly tell it's further south than Tokyo.

I wondered around the huge peace memorial park. This park is pretty much occupies where all the wooden houses and buildings were that were flattened. I hadn't had any breakfast so I got an icecream and visited the Atomic Dome. This is the only building in Hiroshima which stands as a reminder of the Atomic bomb [like coventry cathedral]. The A-bomb exploded 600 metres almost directly above the dome of the building [which was designed by a Czech architect] and the domed roof of the building was left almost intact
as a result. The building was voted to be kept as a reminder and serves as a visual focal point for the peace memorial park.

I went to the museum there and asked for a free English tour. The tour guide was called Himiyiko - who apologised in advance [in perfect English] for his poor English. At the start of the tour he was sweating heavily and I commented on what a hot day it was, so he didn't feel awkward about sweating. He said 'I not sweating because I am hot - I sweat because I am nervous about my English'. He was literally mopping the sweat form his brow as he was so nervous. He was a really nice guy. He was a volunteer at weekends and works for Mazda during the week as an Engineer. 'Do you enjoy the work for Mazda?' I asked - 'It hard' he said 'especially at the moment with the economy'. I learned a little about his family. His father died when he was 6 so he didn't really know him that well. His mother was still alive, and on the day of the Hiroshima bombing had travelled to the city to help and to search for her old teachers.

He was very interested in what I thought about nuclear disarmament - and I was honest with him. I said that I thought the UK spent far too much on our missiles and that the English were very un-optimistic about disarmament. It's happened, it's going to happen - it's almost an inevitability. Even though Obama has spoken for disarmament, it's practically impossible to rid the world of nuclear weapons and there was nothing anyone could really do on an individual level.

He considered this and we moved onto other exhibits about horrific human experience. He then showed me an exhibition about the Hiroshima International Mayors' convention. It's basically where all the mayors of major cities world-wide are invited to come to Hiroshima and discuss disarmament. He told a story of how the museum had paid for an exhibition to tour around the USA in schools and museums. It visited one high school in Chicago which subsequently prompted the students to write to their mayor - [who had previously declined to invitation to the convention] and demanded he attend. This he did.

'So', said Himiyiko, 'we can do something - our power is small, not nothing - and we must use it'. I could do nothing but agree. However, I shortly learned that in Japanese schools they spend less than 2 hours in a year studying WW2. 'They're too busy studying other things' he said. We both agreed that learning history was important - but he argued Japan was a forward looking country.

So there is an interesting split in Japanese culture, which is exemplified in Hiroshima. On the one hand is a desire to understand and learn about the past and spread the message of peace. On the other hand is a hyper-modern Japan, unstoppable in it's innovation - inseparably part of the commercial world and more dependant on fossil fuel imports than any other country [and all that that implies]. Most shockingly the current government went against the constitution to send troops to Iraq and is currently discussing quite what to do with a potentially Nuclear North Korea.

In the wake of this it's hard to see how one city can make a difference. It's tempting to say there's no point - but of course there is. When we parted he made me promise I'd tell my friends and family about the message of Hiroshima - which I guess this what I'm doing [sat typing up at 4am in Auckland]

I wasn't sure what to expect from the museum. It's hard to summarise the place. It's fair to say that a dark concrete building about nuclear war doesn't instantly appeal on a sunny day - but I was glad I made the effort to go. It seemed to have a mood of not simply optimism and determinism but the centre of an almost militant peace movement [which seems contradictory].

After the museum I sat in the sun and spotted some English speakers....more Canadians! [7 in all]. They had all just been to the museum too. We drank some beers in the park and pondered.