Hello all!

Last week was Golden Week, and I had nine days off, to rest and recuperate and think about things. Golden Week is actually a collection of different holidays that all occur in late April and early May. April 29 is Showa day, May 3 is Constitution Memorial Day, May 4 is Greenery Day and May 5 is kodomo no hi, or Children’s Day. Showa Day and Greenery Day are controversial, since they both honour the late Emperor Hirohito, whose name was changed to Showa when he died, and thus are seen by some to glorify Japan’s imperialist tendencies during Hirohito’s reign. The official purpose of the holiday, according to Wikipedia, is "to reflect on Japan's Shôwa period when recovery was made after turbulent days, and to think of the country's future." Children’s Day celebrates children, and used to be called Boys’ Day (There’s a Girl’s Day as well, on March 3; I got chocolates). Many people fly brilliantly coloured kites shaped like carp, a Japanese symbol of strength and energy. Some are twenty feet long, and can be seen rippling in the wind (moving almost like real fish) in the countryside outside Matsue. People can also buy tiny suits of samurai armour in specialty shops for their little boys (for an exorbitant price!). Children’s Day may also be part of an older festival that marks the beginning of summer and the rainy season here, equivalent to China’s Dragon Festival.

Sunday to Saturday, I stayed in Matsue. I slept in a little (I find it very hard to sleep late these days), rode my bicycle a lot, took pictures of interesting buildings and things in Matsue and generally took it easy. I went out to Argo and Kaya a couple of times, but Golden Week was pretty quiet in Matsue, so there weren’t a lot of people about. On Thursday and Friday, I got kind of depressed. Too much time on my hands, feeling kind of lonely. Many of the people I knew here were out of town, off to bigger cities like Osaka, Okayama and Hiroshima or gone to their hometowns. But I found some peaceful places to contemplate the sky, like the hedged lawns around the castle or the base of the statue in front of a small shrine. I also re-read Brenda Ueland’s great book, If You Want to Write, which is inspiring reading, and wrote a little more of my play, Red Queen/White Queen. I was delighted to find myself picking it up again without too much effort, and I had a couple of good ideas that I want to play with. I want to write at least a little each week. I realized over the holiday that I had lost sight of some of the goals I set for myself when I came to Japan, like writing every day, and working on becoming a better actor. At least my debt is coming slowly under control.

I bought some new clothes during Golden Week. At Tokyo Shoes Land, I bought a comfortable pair of sandals for fun and a lovely pair of cream-coloured pumps for work (I love them; they feel like grown-up shoes!). I also got a light-coloured blazer made of linen, I think, that has to be ironed every five minutes or so, but is very light and comfortable. I bought two summer skirts, including an all-white cotton skirt. What was I thinking? How quickly can I destroy a white skirt? Probably pretty fast. Anyway, I’m mostly decked out for summer now, and the crazy summer heat I’ve been warned to expect. The schools are air-conditioned, though, so I’ll be fine once I get to work.

So… I imagine some of you want to hear about Hiroshima.

After reading, I seriously recommend that you check out my pictures at:

dangerblenkhorn.spaces.live.com

On Sunday morning at 8am, Seiji picked me up. He was tired from working at Kaya until 3, poor guy. We set out, heading south on a gray, misty day. Despite the dull skies, the drive was beautiful. The roads wound and curved through valleys surrounded by low, tree-covered hills and mountains. Here and there among the other trees were darker stands of long, arrow-tall evergreen trees. Seiji called them sugi, a sort of cypress tree native to Japan, commonly used as a building material. There were also incredibly tall wisteria trees in bloom, so here and there among the greenery there would be a splash of vivid purple wisteria flowers. They made me think of the lilacs at home. The road often skirted or trailed alongside small, stony rivers and creeks. We passed flooded rice fields with neat lines of thin green rice shoots poking out of the water, and places where farmers in hip waders were still planting. They use machines that look like rotor-tillers to plant now. I wondered how they used to flood the fields before the days of modern agricultural technology, but Seiji couldn’t tell me. There were many large farmhouses with terracotta-coloured roof tiles and walls made of plaster and wood. Some looked almost like Tudor-style.

We stopped at a farmers’ market for a rest and a coffee. Although the produce was different, the farmers’ market was exactly like a summer farm market at home. I asked Seiji a lot of questions about the produce. Baby bamboo is in season; the fresh, bud-shaped tip of a new bamboo plant is a little bigger than a melon and covered with a soft brown ‘fur’. The sliced and steamed bamboo tastes a little like artichoke. It’s very good!

As we got closer to Hiroshima, we passed through larger and larger towns and small cities. Despite Seiji’s concerns about the traffic, we were fortunate; we only got stuck once, for a very brief period, in a traffic jam in Kado, just outside Hiroshima. The drive took us almost four hours. I watched the city of Hiroshima expand around us. It is a large, beautiful, modern city, with wide, attractive boulevards lined with trees and light-coloured apartment buildings everywhere. I looked up as we passed a downtown park to see the dark, curved roof of Hiroshima Castle above the trees (Hiroshima Castle was, of course, rebuilt after the war; the interior is a modern museum. It’s bigger than my castle in Matsue, but not nearly as cool). On the street near our hotel, workmen were taking down and removing the tents from the previous week’s massive Flower Festival. It was quieter than we expected. After leaving our things at the hotel, we set out for Peace Memorial Park. When we came to a bridge to the park, we could see the A-Bomb Dome down the river to our right, and I wanted to go to it immediately. But Seiji had called Yoshi, a friend of his who has just moved back to Hiroshima from Matsue, and we waited for him near the bridge. Yoshi came to meet us pushing his oversized scooter. I’ve met him a couple of times before, and I like him. Yoshi is a tall, slim guy in his early thirties with a very frank, charming manner and disarming grin. His English is very good, and he has an impressive vocabulary. He’s kind of bumming around right now after selling his business in Matsue (a bar called the Hideout). Living with your parents after the age of thirty is almost a way of life in Japan.

We decided to go into the Peace Memorial Museum, but Yoshi passed and said he’d wait – he’d been too many times, he said. Afterwards, I could understand; the museum is powerfully moving and painful. There were many people there, including a lot of foreigners. After an introduction to the history of Hiroshima before the war, model panoramas giving a bird’s-eye view of the city before and after the bombing, and a history and scientific description of the development and function of the atomic bomb, the museum gets intensely personal. Passing photographs of the mushroom cloud taken from shrines and army bases near Hiroshima, we passed into a hushed room with another model of the city. A large red ball hung above the model, indicating the detonation point of the A-bomb just above the ground in the busy centre of Hiroshima. And just to our right, frozen in piles of rubble and lit in red (suggesting the fires that had ignited all over the city, as structures of wood not totally destroyed by the blast flashed into flames), were three wax figures – two women and a child. Their hair was scorched and puffy, their clothes were burnt and torn revealing similarly burnt and torn flesh, and they all held their arms before them like zombies, because their arms, which they had thrown up to protect themselves, were melted and burned, the skin hanging off in tatters. Passing these, we went into rooms filled with personal belongings and pieces of clothing, each with a story attached. The most terrible were of the young schoolchildren, who had been working on a wartime demolition project in downtown Hiroshima to create fire lanes for the city. Collections of tattered school uniforms, burnt lunchboxes, ruined spectacles and bookbags were all that remained. There was also a rusted tricycle and helmet belonging to a little boy who had been playing in the street at 8:15am when the bomb went off. The boy crawled home and died in his father’s arms, and the father buried him with his favourite toys in the backyard. In the 1980’s, the man had his son reburied in a graveyard and donated the tricycle and helmet to the museum. I also saw a piece of stonework with a shadow burned onto it, where a person had been sitting on the steps of a bank (A woman claimed that it was probably her mother’s shadow). Hiroshima was damned by the fact that it had many military installations, no POW camps, and by the fine, clear skies of August 6^th. 140,000 people died, either of the explosion or of radiation sickness in the months after (I won’t even describe those rooms, but it was bad; a black, ashy rain full of radiation fell on Hiroshima in the days after the explosion, killing many more people who would otherwise have lived and leaving its trail on white walls). The part of the museum I found the most horrible, affecting and personal were the drawings and paintings by survivors of all ages, showing their experiences: people in the river fleeing the fires, bodies of schoolchildren stacked like cordwood, naked people with skin in tatters wandering the city, people trapped in burning houses with no way to escape… Desperate, indelible images invoking terrible memories.

The museum is dedicated to peace, and there are exhibits showing letters from the mayors of Hiroshima protesting every single atomic testing since the war (a dismayingly large number of them, I’m afraid), pictures of peace festivals and protests and gifts to Hiroshima from all over the world. But I left the museum feeling drained and tired.

Seiji said there is some controversy around the museum right now. With the present curator of the museum stepping down soon, the rumour is the next curator may be an American. I’ll be interested in seeing if that is true, and what the reaction will be…

It was raining, so we went back to the hotel and met with Yoshi again. It was late afternoon and time for lunch, so we went in search of Hiroshima’s downhome specialty, okonomiyaki. I’ve mentioned this dish before, but Hiroshima has its own style. We found a place that that been recommended to us; just like a nondescript diner, with booths near the door and stools at the counter. The day before, during the Flower Festival, Yoshi told us, there had been a one-hour wait to get into this place. We placed our orders and watched the cook making and flipping okonomiyaki on his grill. Okonomiyaki is like a very thick omelette crammed with all sorts of ingredients, like onions, bacon or pork and cabbage. Hiroshima-style includes ramen-like noodles. I asked for extra cheese and shrimp. Yoshi ordered double cheese; he loves cheese. Our orders came to the table; they were huge, and had a sweetish, spicy brown sauce drizzled over them. Condiments included cayenne pepper and mayonnaise, and we washed them down with a beer. It was great.

After eating, we wandered through the very crowded shopping district, which had a roof over it. It was raining more heavily now, a real downpour. We walked down to the river again, to see the A-Bomb Dome. We passed a little shrine with a winged statue, representing peace, I think. There were colourful rings like leis draped around her, but I didn’t get close enough to see what they were. The heavy rain seemed appropriate as we looked up at the Dome. It is the remains of the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, which was about 500 feet from the hypocentre of the bomb. It has been left as it was, as a memorial of the explosion. It is a sad place, like a tomb. Apparently it is also decaying rapidly these days, and may not last much longer.

Yoshi put on his rain gear and left us there. He must have had a miserable ride home on his scooter. Seiji and I gave up on visiting Hiroshima Castle and took cover in an underground shopping mall, where we found an imported goods store. I bought crackers and cookies, and Seiji looked as lost as I must look in a Japanese grocery store. We grabbed a coffee and headed back to the hotel, where I took a short nap while Seiji called another friend, Kazu, to make plans for dinner.

We met Kazu and his girlfriend, Mari (I think), in the lobby. Kazu looked very hip-hop; I think he’s a musician in his free time. And Mari is a Filipino who has lived in Japan for a year and a half. She works in a factory, as a manager. We went to Molly Malone’s, an Irish pub in the shopping district. I think my companions were taken aback to discover almost everyone in the pub was foreign, except for our waitress and one woman at the bar. We settled in and ordered fish and chips and Guinness. It’s a pretty good likeness of an Irish bar – dark wood panelling, high counter, lots of decorative beer barrels, Irish barman. It’s not like some places I’ve seen in Japan that claim to be foreign but aren’t (the American Diner in Matsue, for example, has a completely Japanese menu; I dare you to try to order a burger and fries there). The conversation was hard; Kazu spoke almost no English, and Mari spoke some but seemed very shy and tired. I was tired, too, so found it difficult to practice my Japanese. The fish and chips weren’t great, and I had eaten a lot of okonomiyaki earlier, so I couldn’t finish them. Seiji and I talked for a long time after Kaza and Mari left. On the way back to the hotel, we stopped in at a tiny izakaya, and had a light snack. Seiji talked to the bartender and got some great suggestions for sightseeing and restaurants for the next day, while I practiced my listening skills. Finally, we went back to the hotel and conked out.

The next day, we checked out of the hotel after eating a continental breakfast of miso soup and onigiri (rice balls, usually wrapped in seaweed, with various fillings-delicious and healthy) with green tea (for Seiji) and coffee (for me). We collected the car from storage (since space is at a premium in Japanese cities, the cars go into underground parking – you drive into a car elevator and leave your car there, and someone takes it and parks it for you deep underground, then sends it back up the elevator when you need it, like a giant dumbwaiter – forgetting something in the back seat is a definite no-no!). It was a bright, warm, sunny day – perfect for sightseeing.

We drove to Shukkeien Garden, in the north part of downtown Hiroshima. Shukkeien Garden is a small but beautiful garden, first begun in 1620 as a gift to the feudal lord (daimyo) of Hiroshima from his chief retainer, a master of the tea ceremony. The name means “shrunken-scenery”, and the garden consists of many different scenic views and little teahouses. There are many little footpaths circling throughout the garden, so it is a delight to explore. I was particularly tickled by the many, many turtles basking on the south side of every island in the pond. Two came over to check us out and see if we had any food, their serious, ugly little faces jutting from the water as they swam lazily across the pond. What do turtles eat, anyway? Bugs? They were very cute, in a prehistoric kind of way.

We crossed the steep stone bridge in the centre of the garden, explored the spot on a hill where a small shrine had once stood (all that remained were curved stone steps and a flat hilltop, but it had a beautiful view of the pond). On the far side of the garden, near the river (or rather, one of the many rivers) was a memorial stone carved deeply with indecipherable kanji, dedicated to the victims of the atom bomb. I had a closer look at the wreaths I had mistaken for leis the day before. They were small origami paper cranes strung on thread, hundreds of them in many colours. Origami cranes have become a symbol of the A-bomb victims and the hope for peace ever since a little girl named Sadako developed leukaemia after being exposed to the atomic bomb. Hoping to live, she set a goal to fold a thousand paper cranes, but died before she finished her task. The story goes that her friends finished folding the cranes, and they were buried with her. But now the Children’s Peace Memorial and this place (and probably many others) are draped with bright strings of paper cranes representing a prayer for peace.

Seiji and I stopped in one of the teahouses on the water and watched a gardener at work in his boat, scooping leaves and debris from the water. We wandered further, past a stand of bamboo trees and through small gardens with neatly labelled trees. We found a photograph showing the devastation of the park after the bombing, when it was completely levelled. The sign said many of the wounded came to the park and died here (explaining the memorial stone, where many of them were buried). I thought it was poetic, and said something profound about the Japanese, that they chose to come to a garden in their misery, but Seiji pointed out pragmatically that the injured probably came because they were desperate for water. He’s probably right. Sigh.

A rumour went around after the bombing that no vegetation would grow in Hiroshima for over seventy years, but in the autumn after the bombing the first greenery reappeared, even from charred and blackened tree stumps. I think it gave the survivors a lot of hope. Hiroshima now is really inspiring; it’s a beautiful, energetic city, with almost no sign of the destruction it suffered over sixty years ago. As we drove out of the city, I could see the old, traditionally constructed shrines, with sloping roofs and lots of greenery, standing side by side with immense office buildings.

We headed south late in the morning, taking the freeway to the Miyajima Island Ferry Terminal. Miyajima Island, a mountainous, forested island within sight of downtown Hiroshima, is home to the venerated Itsukushima Shrine, a UNESCO World Heritage Site. A little history: Itsukushima Shrine was first built in 593, and rebuilt again in its present form in 1168. It was partially destroyed in a typhoon a few years ago, but has since been rebuilt. The island of Miyajima has been worshipped as a divine island since ancient times.

We parked the car and ate at a restaurant called Ueno, a beautiful place with fanciful sculptures in front and a modern, Arts and Crafts inspired design. Ueno really only has one thing on the menu – the anago-meishi, or conger eel on rice. It came with a selection of pickles and miso soup. I was reminded a little of Wilensky’s in Montreal, although the atmosphere was completely different, because Wilensky’s has a similarly brief menu (It serves “the special”, and “the special with Swiss”). The anago-meishi was really good. Then we wandered backed to the ferry terminal and caught the ferry to Miyajima Island around noon. To the left, we could see Hiroshima, hazy in the distance, and to the right the high hills of Miyajima. Surrounding us were beds of farmed oysters, a local specialty. It took about fifteen minutes to make the crossing and we stepped out of the terminal into a street lined with trees and low wooden gift shops – kind of like a tropical Banff, complete with wildlife. Everywhere we looked, there were small deer – lying in the sun, mooching for food, sleeping, wandering about on delicate little hooves. I must have seen dozens of deer that day. Honestly though, although they were charming, I thought the turtles were cuter.

Seiji hurried me toward the shrine because he wanted to see the torii while the tide was high. The torii are massive Shinto gates in the water in front of the shrine. I think they are intended for the gods to enter. They are very impressive. Shinto shrines are very colourful. I’ve seen many red torii at shrine entrances. Here, the colours of choice for Itsukushima Shrine are orange and white. We rinsed our hands and mouths at the pool near the shrine entrance and paid the fee to the novices at the gate to enter. Itsukushima Shrine is built over the water, and we looked into sandy tidal pools as we walked the open corridors of the shrine. And at the centre, in a shaded room, we encountered a Shinto wedding in progress; a fairly rare thing at Itsukushima, I think. A camera crew was recording the wedding, and tourists like us had gathered around to watch. The bride wore white and had a large white hood on; she was very beautiful. The wedding party wore black, and the groom wore a black tunic emblazoned with his family’s crest, black and white striped hakama (loose, wide pants), and a ceremonial katana at his belt. Priests were playing drums. The occasion seemed very solemn. We couldn’t see very clearly and my attention was drawn to a stage in the sunshine, facing the gates in the water and flanked by large statues of mythological beasts with many tails. We went to look, but a novice shooed us away and began to remove the ropes and barriers that had been set up. Clearly an event of some sort was going to happen, so we decided to linger a while. The wedding ended behind us and after a moment the wedding party took seats on benches facing the stage. A pair of priests laid woven mats along the boardwalk and others took their place in an alcove with drums and pipes. And with a sudden shock I saw, seated behind them, THE DANCER. I would have sworn he wasn’t there before. He was seated in an attitude of meditation while the others prepared. I pointed him out to Seiji, who was similarly astounded. A large group of tourists had gathered with us. As we settled, the dancer took his place at the edge of the mat laid out for his entrance while a priest adjusted his train. He was gorgeously attired. He wore an undertunic of orange silk emblazoned with gold discs, with a long train and very full sleeves. He wore an embroidered hood also patterned in gold and orange, and a mask was tied on over it with a tasselled orange silk cord. The mask appeared to be made of bronze, topped with the image of a long-necked bird; the face was gaunt, almost skull-like, and resembled a Tuskan Raider (the Star Wars fans out there know what I’m talking about…). He wore a heavily-embroidered, multi-coloured surcoat and full trousers. He wore white split-toed socks and traditional zori (sandals).on his feet. He carried a short, dull-pointed dagger in his right hand. The pipes and drums began to play and he made a slow formal entrance to the stage. Once on the stage, he did a twenty-minute dance of ritual movements (apparently heavily influenced by Noh theatre, which is very stylised and slow). It was hypnotic and beautiful, and I didn’t understand a minute of it. Seiji guessed it was intended to bless the wedding couple, but when I pressed him for more information, he said he had never seen this kind of dance, called a mie (my-ee) before, although he had heard of it. He said we were very lucky to have seen it. The dancer must have been suffering under the intense afternoon sun, but he showed no sign. I was thrilled.

After it had ended and the dancer had departed, we walked past the Noh theatre which is part of the shrine. Unlike the rest of the shrine, which is brightly painted, the Noh theatre is of unpainted silver-gray wood, except for the painted backdrop of a stylised pine tree. It stands in the water facing the walkway, which must be where the audience stands. It has a long walkway to it from stage right, called the hanamichi, or “flower way”, for actors’ entrances. I was very curious about it, so I lingered for a while looking at it.

We left the shrine and went exploring. Seiji wanted to go to the 5-stories Buddhist pagoda, so we looked for it and climbed through the streets. The market streets had white canvas awnings on ropes shading the streets, so it was nice and cool there. We climbed the stairs to look a the pagoda and the shrine beside it (The Shinto and Buddhist traditions coexist quite peaceably in Japan, unlike some religions in other parts of the world that I could mention). Senjokaku Shrine, meaning the Hall of a Thousand Tatami Mats, is a huge, pillared hall open on all sides to the air. Construction began in 1587, but it was never finished. It is now dedicated to the soul of the daimyo Toyotomi Hideyoshi, who was famous for unifying Japan in the sixteenth century. We walked the peaceful halls and looked out from the verandah over the tiled roofs of the shrine’s many buildings.

After walking for a while in the woods listening to gurgling streams, walking through the town (I took pictures of the architecture that captured my fancy) and enjoying the smells of the market (They make a famous sweet in Miyijima called mumeji manji, or “maple cake”, a soft cake shaped like maple leaves filled with a choice of chocolate, cream or bean paste – really good, especially warm from the oven! I bought some to take to work for my co-workers), we walked to the aquarium. After watching a variety of fish in the huge tank facing the entrance swimming in circles, including a massive, bulbous-eyed fish that I nicknamed “Big Ugly”, we studied the smaller tanks. I was mildly perturbed to note that, along with the name, habits and habitat of the types of fish, the signs also pointed out how tasty each was. I stopped making jokes about it after I pointed at the jellyfish and said, “I bet that doesn’t taste very good”, and Seiji said, “No, I didn’t like it”. Not to self – all marine life is fair game in Japan. There were sea turtles, octopi, water snakes, eels, flounders, giant crabs and things I can’t even describe. Then we came to the white dolphins, and I fell in love. The object of my affection was playing ball by herself, but as soon as we sat by the glass she came over to flirt (the others were standoffish by comparison, but Neko had personality to spare). She pressed her forehead against the glass and looked at us with bright intelligent eyes, then pressed her beak against the glass for a kiss, which I obligingly gave. She was beautiful and charming, and stayed with us until her dinnertime, when fish began to rain into the water from above. We saw a short seal show and watched the penguins getting fed, then watched otters sliding with great joy all over their pen, but Neko really made it all worth while. I said good-bye to her again before leaving.

The tide was out and the sun was beginning to set as we made our way back to the ferry terminal, so we walked out across the sandy beach, thick with shells crunching underfoot, to the torii exposed on the seabed. Many other had walked out too. The pillars were covered in barnacles (“We eat these, too,” Seiji said), and where the orange paint had cracked, people had stuffed coins for luck (the 5-yen coin is supposed to be the luckiest). It was a gorgeous time of day. We dodged hungry deer as we waited for the ferry and I ate my mumeji manj i- yum!

Then began the long drive home. We were both exhausted, so we took many little breaks, stopping at convenience stores for rice balls and green tea. One place we stopped so Seiji could have a rest and listened to a deafening chorus of spring peepers cheeping in the fields. I hadn’t actually practiced much Japanese on our trip, so we practiced as we drove (Seiji has the patience of a saint, I think). When Seiji dropped me off, I fell deeply asleep, exhausted. And that was the whirlwind tour of Hiroshima and environs.

That was a week ago. Work this week was mostly good. I had my first interview on Friday, and it went really well, even though the prospective student, Kaori, was very low-level. I will be teaching her private lessons starting this week. I’ve been making a serious effort to talk more slowly, and it has been working. I only had one class I wasn’t satisfied with, but that class depressed the hell out of me. I felt like I failed those students. Mayumi-sensei is pressing me to analyse my students’ strengths and weaknesses as I teach, because soon we have to counsel all of them and recommend self-study materials to improve such things as grammar, fluency, vocabulary, speaking, pronunciation and listening (it’s basically up-selling, but I don’t feel too bad about it because I’ve seen that the self-study materials are actually effective – students do improve faster when they’re using them). Mayumi-sensei also wants me to be stricter about mistakes, and I know I’ve been pretty soft, so I’m going to try harder. The students want me to be tough on them anyway; that’s why they’re at AEON. In feedback I’ve received from students, the thing they really want more of is pronunciation correction.

I stayed in at night this week, except for Friday, when I went to Kaya for Nihonglish. I had a lot of fun. Lots of people I knew were there, and it was nice to see them. I’m planning to throw a party in June, now that I know some people. Should be fun!

Today was sunny, but windy. The wind seems to pick up a lot of force as it blows across the lake. It was a relaxing day, although I’ve spent much longer on this letter than I intended. My laundry is gusting about on the balcony, and my apartment is fairly clean. The weekend is much too short though; I don’t feel ready to go back to work tomorrow!

Thanks to Sally and Chris for sending me my magazine and thanks Sam for the shirt, Wolfville newsletter, magazine and Archie comic. They both arrived today. Yay! Something to read!

Everyone have a good week. I’m thinking of you all.

Love,

Sarah