Japanland

It's always interesting to visit the site of a momentous world evet - we'd already seen the site of the World Trade Centre in New York. That pales into insignificance alongside this event though.

As far as I can gather, unlike the war in Europe the war in Japan was uneccesary and was (like World War I) really a result of a lot of millitary building and sabre-rattling on all sides. By the time the war in Europe had finished, the war in Japan was not going well as far as the Japanese were concerned and as a result, on July 26th, 1945 the USA, UK and China presented Japan with the Potsdam Declaration which called for Japan to surrender. It stated that "The alternative for Japan is prompt and utter destruction.". Japan rejected the declaration - the thought is, though, that they were prepared to surrender; they just wanted to maintain their emperor. The Allies weren't happy with that so on Monday August 6th, 1945, the atomic bomb "little boy" was dropped on the city of Hiroshima from the US-piloted aircrafth "Enola Gay" (named after the pilot's mother). A few days later another bomb was dropped on the city of Nagasaki. The Hiroshima bombing was the first time an atomic bomb had been used in active warfare. Thankfully, the Nagasaki bombing remains the last.

The death toll varies from some 100,000 to 100,500 people - you can imagine that it's difficult to know for sure when a whole city and its records were wiped out. It's reckoned that about 70 000 died instantly. It's difficult to comprehend such numbers but you get some idea when you realise that every little tile in the memorial monument represents one life lost in the bombing.

We're lucky that there's very little photos and videos of it - you can imagine that if it happened today the BBC and other broadcasters would have teams down there pretty quick despite the risks, and footage of the "ghosts" wandering round the city would be broadcast for all to see. There is some footage which we saw after our tour round the museum. It's horrible and uncomfortable, especially for someone from a country associated with making the decision to drop the bomb. The museum itself is really very good. It starts with descriptions of what Hiroshima was like prior to the bombing, before taking you through the "Manhattan Project" - the name given to the research and development work behind the bomb - and there's many photographs from the meetings of the various allied leaders involved. It's odd to see Churchill in this context - in the UK he's always held up as a great hero of the 20th century but here, he's one of the bad guys. After the Manhattan project it shows how the bombing itself was carried out. It's funny how as a result Japan has become the ultimate peace nation - much of the rest of the museum is actually a protest on nuclear weapons and the countries that still have them (including a big map with a nuclear warhead on Scotland) and set them off from time to time just to make sure you know that they've got them. In fact, in the museum there's a clock which has a readout of how long it is since the Hiroshima bomb was dropped and also, how long it was since the last nuclear weapons test. The second number was just less that 150 days when we were there. The last bit of the museum is the most harrowing as there you see what limited visual evidence there is of the bombing after-effects. I won't go into it.

There was one particularly interesting thing for me mind. My grandfather on my mother's side (John Hutton) was in Malaysia right at the end of the war looking after Japanese prisoners who'd been captured by the British. The museum talked about the Japanese invasion of Malaysia (which was British occupied at the time) so those would have been the guys that my grandfather would have met. He really liked them - in fact, on one occasion he was to take them to an area of the jungle where they were to be working. He didn't know where it was but was told that the Japanese guys did so they would take him there. Of course, they ended up leading him on a merry dance around the jungle in order to avoid working. Naoko-san told us about how it's thought that the bombing was uneccesarry as Japan was ready to surrender and it brought back memories of my Grandfather telling me the same thing. He thought that it was wrong and I have to say, I agree. No one deserves that.

Anyhow, it was time to leave the bombing behind and see what else the Hiroshima area had to offer. There's actually a huge amount more to see and do other than the bomb-related sites and Naoko-san has been putting together a tourist-aimed leaflet to try and encourage people to do more in Hiroshima. That afternoon we went to Miyajima which is an island very close to Hiroshima. It's the site of some fantastic temples and shrines, including a torii gate in the sea and a temple which is built into the sea such that it looks like it's floating when the tide is in. There was also plenty of food to try including eels and oysters (cooked an raw), all of which Naoko-san made sure that we tried. There was also deer which would eat your map or JR pass if you weren't careful! We also started to get an impression of how Japanese food is strongly regionalised - every area has it's on particular foods and in particular, sweets. Miyajima is the home of a kind of maple-shaped biscuit which we saw in all the shops.

Naoko-san bid us farewell back at the station where we caught the Shinkansen heading further south and west towards Kyushu, an island off the tip of Japan but connected by bridges. There we were met by Tsuru's brother-in-law Kiyoshi-san who is a chemistry professor at the university of Kyushu. He's the sort of guy you would describe as "one of nature's gentlemen". He took us out for dinner where we had the local dish which was a kind of noodle soup with various bits and pieces in it. Really good and warming in the cold weather. We headed to the University the next day walking from his apartment through fields where rice was grown (although not at the moment as it was winter) and polytunnels with strawberries (the strawberries in Japan are the best we've tasted). The plan was for me to give a research talk to some of the students - I'd managed to get hold of some of my talks from my dad who has my laptop and I'd pieced together a talk on the train the day before. The problem was that the licence for Powerpoint on our wee laptop had timed out some time ago so I'd had to use OpenOffice which is a bit of a minefield, and when I pulled it back into Powerpoint it had destroyed most of my slides. The only solution was to find a computer with Powerpoint - Kiyoshi kindly found one for us but it was an Apple-Mac (I'm a hardcore PC guy) and was in Japanese. However, after a bit of thrashing away and Google-translating I managed to get it together and gave my talk after lunch. We were a wee bit late so when we arrived all the students were already there and waiting with their notebooks in front of them (it seemed so strange to have students actually all there and waiting and on time for a lecture!). When I talk I always keep an eye on my audience and judge how well it's going by their expressions. I'm not used to Japanese facial expressions though so it was a lot more difficult that usual but I was reassured by the fact that they asked insightful, intelligent questions at the end. It was a relief! I really enjoyed it as it had been a while since I'd had the chance to talk a bit of science. Afterwards, Charlotte and I chilled out in the University library watching some ethno-musicology videos. We tried to find a UK-related one but to no avail so we watched some from the other Asian countries we were due to visit. We also visited the office of Andy Robertson who is an academic originally from Bath who now lives and works in Japan. We bombarded him with questions about his impressions of Japan and what it's like to live in as a foreigner. It was really interesting to hear his point of view and he came up with the perfect description for us: "It's like a giant Japanese theme-park - Japanland!", spot on.

That evening, Kiyoshi-san had a new experience in store for us - the famous "Onsen", Japanese hot springs. We'd both heard of them but had no idea what to expect or how to behave given all the complex Japanese social rules. The male and female baths are segregated so Charlottte had the particularly scary task of going in by herself. I was lucky and had Kiyoshi-san to follow and copy. The most surprising thing is that everyone is completely naked and carries nothing other than a small towel which is sometimes put over important parts when in the sauna but seems to serve little to no purpose. There's loads of different baths which have different minerals and different temperatures, but before your bath you went into one of the little open booths which have a shower, shampoo, soap and a wee stool for you to sit on. It was a very relaxing expeirence and very liberating not to have to worry about washing yourself underneath your swimsuit. I always hate the towel-covering type tricks you seem to be expected to do in UK changing rooms and was great to be in an environment where no-body really cares. It was particularly interesting to see children (of both sexes) as well - I would imagine in the UK that people would get very twitchy about that. I thought it was really healthy as it means that these kids will be entirely familiar with what real bodies look like - unlike the UK kids who watch porn to get that kind of eductation and get some pretty odd ideas as a result.

Dinner afterwards was a tray with loads of different bowls and plates with all sorts of things incuding tempura (battered and deep fried stuff) and sushimi (raw fish) all of which was fab. The funny bit was that to get your meal you first paid for a ticket from a vending machine which you then handed over to the staff who would bring you your meal.

We had a second day with Kiyoshi-san who originally planned to take us to make pots (at the suggestion of his daughter Mari-san). We all decided that that wasn't such a good idea as we'd never be able to carry them with us on the rest of our journey, but Andy the Bath academic had suggested that we visit Dazaifu - another place with loads of temples. It turned out to be a fab idea. One of the temples in particular had a zen garden with loads of standing stones and the gravel raked into patterns which was a great place to hange out in. We also visited the exhibition of Van Gough paintings which was resident in Dazaifu at the time. It was fascinating and the first time I'd been at an art exhibition of quite such a famous artist. Charlotte actually knew a lot about painting techniques as a result of her artist modelling career so was able to fill me in on some of the finer points. Really interesting, which neither of us had experienced in a museum or gallery before - the place was completely packed. You could hardly move, let alone see the paintings. It let for a really exciting atmosphere.

By chance, we ran into a friend of Kiyoshi-san's at the exhibition who joined us for a particularly healthy Japanese lunch and then green tea and the local sweet delecacy - a kind of rice cake with sweet red bean paste. We followed him back to the city where he was going to buy some art equipment as he's an amateur artist, so we got the chance to see all the paints and papers used for calligraphy. We stopped at the supermarket on the way back and took in some more of the crazy foods on offer before Kiyoshi-san made us a fantastic meal of sashimi and his own noodle-broth.

It was back on the Shinkansen to Horyuji (well, Oji actually) where we were to meet Yu-san and Mari-san again. But before we caught the train we were able to take in a Japanese fish market and some of the sites and sounds of Fukuoka - the big city on Kyushu.

This brings me to some of the odd things you notice in Japan as it was in Fukuoka that we were crossing the street when we heard an electronic beepy version of "Coming Thro' the Rye" somewhere in the distance. It turned out to be the noise that the pedestrian crossing makes so that blind people know when to cross - wierd. There's a load of other wierd things mind...

• The shower toilet that washes you
  
• You shower BEFORE getting in the bath
  
• Everything has a theme tune, be it trains, crossings or buses
  
• There's fish for sale EVERYWHERE
  
• The bakeries are surprisingly good
  
• Everything's so small and pretty
  
• There's vending machines everwhere which can vend you just about anything
  
• It's common to buy a ticket from a vending machine in order to get a meal or a bath
  
• Many of the signs have amusing and cute cartoons detailling what the sign says
  
• All the restaurants have plastic food outside so you know what your meal will look like
  
• There's loads of amusement arcades with a massive variety of slot machines
  
• A lot of the trains have a "ladies carriage"
  
• Loads of people wear surgeon's face masks
  
• The onsen (hot springs) place may throw you out if you have a tattoo
  
• The onsen places have relaxation rooms with big comfy sofas, TVs and video games!