writing – Humanposting

On a Train

The fog seems to blur my vision and my perception. Am I drunk? My mind is clouded with a fuzzy lethargy that pins me to the platform seat in a stupor.

The station is in the middle of two hills. They are desolate; blanketed in long grasses undulate softly in the mid-afternoon wind rolling through the valley, lending a shimmering effect to the silvery-green hillsides like passing waves. I don’t remember how I got here. I don’t think I am waiting for a train, and I don’t think I was ever on a train. There is a little shed with stone stairs in the distance on the hillside opposite me. It is run down, a sad shade of brown that blends into the swathes of greyness that shroud the sky, hills and my eyes.

The woman and the man are sat on the stairs, talking. She is beautiful. He is tall, with a strong five o’clock shadow that highlights his rugged jawline and his dark features. I cannot be sure who he might be. The remains of my attention are consumed, and I am distracted from the damp bench and the raging pain behind my eyes and in my temples.

Across the grasses, just as the station clock reminds me it’s 16:30, another man is making his way up the stone stairs. He seems preoccupied, and his gait is nervous and agitated. Among the folds of his white shirt and grey overcoat a gleam of brushed silver catches my gaze as he strides up the stairs two at a time. A shade of silver that seems to snarl angrily from his belt at my watering eyes, yet I feel noticeably calm and detached.

My vision starts to become increasingly foggy and the pain becomes more intense. My mouth is dry, and I seem to be sweating in the cold September air.

The man reaches the top of the stairs. The couple seem to have gone inside the shack, I cannot see them anymore. He pauses outside the splintering door, and enters brusquely. I cannot hear anything but my straying mind tells me they are having an argument. The grasses roll on in the wind, ruffling my hair and blowing open my jacket. Tears bleed from my eyes as I pass into darkness.

He is next to me. He smells of cigarettes. How did he get here? How long have we been sharing the same damp bench on the same isolated platform? The pain in my head sears and my delirium strangles me, his image becomes unclear and dissolved. He says something. His voice is alien and distorted, like a badly tuned radio.

I am on a train. I don’t know where it’s going. He is gone. My consciousness seems to be skipping parts of my day like a scratched record. The fire in my head and my eyes has reduced to a dull throbbing, and I am aware of rain trickling down the window like the tears rolling down my cheeks. Where am I going? Where is the man, the woman and her friend?

The train sails on through the lonely moor.

I cannot hear the rabble of the other passengers. The noise has been drowned out by the two gunshots that suffocate and cling to me like the heavy, dead weight of the gun in my belt. Tears stream uncontrollably from my eyes and blend into the tiny flecks of crimson on my white shirt and grey overcoat.

The fog in my eyes retreats, and fades into the background like the distant platform and the memory of my wife and her lover.

A Parisian space

The spaces around us manipulate our every interactions out in the world. The forces manipulating these spaces are invisible: designers and architects and city planners pulling invisible strings that spawn “one-way” and “please do not sit on the grass” signs in areas that you’d never think twice about. These strings would be of notable interests to anthropologists of the likes of Bruno Latour and Tim Ingold, both masters in theorising how people interact directly and indirectly with the material world around them.

But it is someone like Tim Ingold who can help bridge a gap between understanding one’s position in public and/or private spaces. I recently spent a week in Paris and the thought that constantly filled my mind was the difference in organisation of public space and places, and how people interacted with them compared to London. Ingold argues that one cannot understand space and landscape without moving through it – that is to say, experiencing it and living in it. This “insider’s view” is critical to understanding how landscape and space interact with and are affected by culture, and conversely, how culture affects them. Not having ever spent much time in Paris I was very much coming in with a newcomer’s eye. The differences I perceived between Paris and London relate more to public space rather than the private. Museums and street-side bistros were the focal points of my attention in regards to this topic.

It was Jean-Jacques Rousseau who made the connection first that structures of power are made to control the people, but someone like Michel Foucault more directly tackles the issue of architecture and institutionalised violence being agents in the domination of common people by the elite (Foucault, 1977). A Foucauldian analysis of institutionalised violence permeating through architecture is something that always resonates with me in London, places like Buckingham Palace and the Horse Guards (despite being inherently public/tourist areas) still represent a divide in power and separation of space between the common people and a residual force of autocratic monarchy. French history of course saw the monarchs’ heads roll back in 1789, and conversion of previous Royal estate like the Louvre into public museums marks for me one of the most significant remodelling of violent and oppressive spaces within a city. This kind of remodelling of public space is a more effective way of decolonising space whilst effectively retaining a cultural and architectural heritage. It speaks to the finesse and respect that the French cultural identity places upon artistic and aesthetic quality even whilst reconciliation this identity with a less violent and Foucauldian separation of space prior to a social revolution.

The bistro is an extremely Parisian setting. Sitting out on the street with a coffee and book or a beer and a cigarette is something that seem inherently Parisian to me and certainly is an association that a lot of people have with this city. Restaurants and bars in London at least are always hard to find and isolated from the main streets. Dingy, crowded stuffy bars are swapped out for open air bistros that spill out onto the pavements in an inherently more socialised and public experience for communal drinking and relaxing. The fact that one can sit in a French bistro and order a single coffee and thereafter spend as long as one wants seated outside with a book is testament to the inherently more social side to eating and drinking that exists in France. Spaces and places are not just green-screen-esque backdrops for sociocultural activity, but as Eric Hirsch (1995) argues, the relationship between culture and nature is more of a complicated symbiotic relationship constantly interacting with itself to reflect the actual experience of social aspects like sitting in a bar. Locked away inside and away from the public eye stigmatises and elevates the exclusivity of social gatherings, in contrast to being in plain sight of the public, also a means to extend a small social gathering to a larger public of passer-bys. The establishment of more public social spaces, like the bistro, is one of several reasons that I feel that anthropologically speaking Paris accommodates a much more open and inclusive social scene where there are little to no social borders between people, and one where the social “backdrop” works conceptually in unison with a sociocultural identity.

As Ingold argues, moving through a space is the best to understand how it functions in relation to the individual and their experience of the space around them as well as the experience of social interactions within public spaces. I had only known Paris to the extent of a few tourist places with my family many years ago, but rediscovering it with new eyes allows one to see through into the intricate mechanisms that makes this city feel so alive and so vibrant.

Foucault, M (1977) Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. London: Penguin

Hirsch, E. and O’Hanlon, M. (eds) (1995). The Anthropology of landscape: perspectives on place and space. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

INGOLD, T (2000). The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. London: Routledge.

The cowspiracy and its dietary solution

Recently a stalwart feature of logging into BBC News or the Guardian every morning on my phone revolves around anything from freak storms to intentional burning of acres and acres of cherished rainforest. We’re talking none other than climate change, global warming, or whatever you would like to call the situation of impending doom.

This isn’t hyperbolic of me, I haven’t been kept awake at night by monsters for a very long time but this is a monster that I think keeps many of us up at night in existential fear at the state of affairs. As the youth become more and more exposed to and engaged in the reality of the situation through social media and trailblazers (pun not intended) like Greta Thunberg, who galvanise the masses of the youth into actually caring about the environment ravaged by profit-driven governments and big corporations.

GCSE Geography is great. Learning about the greenhouse effect is great. It teaches the kids the bare minimum about how it is that every year seems to be the “hottest July ever”, but withholds the darkest shade to the capitalist machine that does nothing but take from the earth – the aptly named Cowspiracy.

Documentaries like Netflix’s Cowspiracy is propaganda in its purest form. It scares you, draws back the curtain, reels you in, engages you personally until you reach the same conclusion that I did: animal agriculture and the mass production of meat and dairy products is singlehandedly the most damaging business to our planet’s environment and climate, and there are people actively seeking to cover this fact up and protect this industry.

Even though I am aware that Cowspiracy is a propaganda piece, I respect it for working and happily accept that I fell for it. Which might not be such a bad thing. Kip Andersen’s frustrating and laboured journey to uncover the truth behind the massive power that the agriculture industry and lobbies hold over climate activists and climate organisations is well-constructed and lends itself well to the heavily guarded secrets that are the side effects of mass livestock farming. For example, the wastage of water growing beef especially is astounding – to produce one pound of beef (453.6g) takes 2,500 gallons (9,463.6 litres). All this waste leaving the animal agriculture industry responsible for 18% of global greenhouse gas emissions every year. The reality of raising animals for food on such a massive scale is completely unsustainable in terms of space and resources. Driving your car is insignificant in comparison to the methane-producing machine that churns out burger patties and milk every single day.

Why more people don’t know about this? Lobby groups (in America at least) have kept a stranglehold on the information surrounding how damaging animal industry is, trying to keep a system that promotes the mass production and commodification of luxury foods like meat running so that they can fill their pockets while the environment crumbles. The availability of meat is insane, when you think that you can buy a coaster-flavoured puck of beef rammed between soggy buns for £4.99. The mass production is a problem. And to feed and water the 1,5 billion cattle alive today, vast forests are cleared to grow crops like soy, of which 70% of the global consumption of soy is claimed by livestock. A meat-centred diet is a commercial and capitalist fabrication to ensure that the industry can continue allowing animals and the environment to needlessly suffer when there are much better and healthier alternatives.

Going plant-based, or vegan, is the obvious and most eco-friendly solution. I found the resolve to make this change in the wake of watching Cowspiracy, and for a week and a half I got to grips with plant-based diets before coming to a realisation – going vegan is excellent, but it is also unsustainable and not accessible. I found myself constantly hungry, lacking in variety and most importantly, broke. Veganism is expensive. Veganism is limiting. It’s healthy for sure, but it is also repetitive. In my opinion going plant-based is not a viable solution to the problem given that there are 8 billion people on this planet, many of whom can’t afford soy meats and milk alternatives, or have even heard of them. I came to this conclusion regretfully as I embarked on this mission to change my habits with passion and determination. However, going vegetarian is a step in the right direction, and to be honest one finds oneself eating vegan most of the time anyways. Milk, butter, meat, fish are out. Vegetables are the new cool.

Veganism is the ideal that everyone should strive for, but for those who cannot go all the way going vegetarian is good enough. It’s about reducing, and managing what we eat and where it comes from. It is the most accessible and realistic expectation if we want to help solve the climate issue by tackling people’s unhealthy and un-environmentally friendly diets. Let meat and fish and other animal products stay as luxuries, as they should be, perhaps ensuring a better future for these animals as well as the environment.

http://www.cowspiracy.com/facts

http://theconversation.com/five-ways-the-meat-on-your-plate-is-killing-the-planet-76128#targetText=Livestock%20farming%20has%20a%20vast,produced%20greenhouse%20gas%20emissions%20worldwide.

広島: Bending Adversity (2)

city of 300,000

can we forget that silence?

in that stillness

the powerful appeal

of the white eye sockets of the wives and children who did not return home

that tore apart our hearts

can it be forgotten?!

Tōge Sankichi, 1951

It seems only logical to me that places such as Hiroshima, and Nagasaki, are designed to crush your soul in the face of indescribable cruelty and horror with the intention of getting their message across. I thought I knew this by now, and would be able to handle the Atom Bomb museum in Hiroshima, and yet again I found myself weeping before what I saw and learnt.

Hiroshima carries a far greater symbolic meaning in the Japanese psyche. Being the first location of an atom bomb being dropped on people, and with a far larger death toll (140,000 are thought to have died by the end of 1945), Hiroshima stands proudly today as a symbol of exactly what the Japanese way of life is about. Getting back on ones feet. Forgiving, but never forgetting. Rebuilding and reforming, with a mission and a purpose. The peace memorial with its simple grace represents not only the horrors of war and the sacrifice of thousands, but also as a worldwide flagship for peace and a gathering place for movements for the abolishing of nuclear weaponry. The museum is sobering, naturally, it does not hide the truth and is to the point. There are no frills here. Such a message has no time for frills.

It is also here that I learnt that the dropping of the bomb on the 6th of August 1945 also killed hundreds of non-Japanese; among the dead were also southeast asian exchange students, Korean and Chinese immigrants, and even American prisoners of war. The loss of the innocent in times is a result of the hideous nature of such indiscriminate mass murder. And while every day, innocent children, women and men still die every day in less fortunate places, the lessons still don’t seem to have sunk in. War seemed to be an adequate excuse for accidentally vaporising people who bravely bade their time in prisoner camps, only to die at the hands of the ones they serve alongside their enemies, and it still seems to be adequate today. It was all well and good to sentence Nazis to death in Nuremberg in the 50’s, but what is happily brushed under the carpet and excused by wartime circumstances is the unquestionable crime against humanity that is the birth of nuclear weapons.

The famous atom bomb dome on the banks of the Motoyasu river in Hiroshima should stand forever as a painful reminder of what these weapons of mass destruction do to families, cities and nations until nuclear warfare is outlawed and removed from the surface of this planet. If Prometheus was banished to infinite suffering for stealing the secrets of fire, then perhaps a nuclear holocaust is what humanity deserves for trying to meddle with things that they shouldn’t.

A frail olive tree stands in the courtyard of the victim’s memorial, breaking its way through concrete towards the clouds with biblical determination.

The city of Hiroshima lives, just like Nagasaki, reborn and proud. Like every other Japanese city, the people of Hiroshima swamp the shopping streets, pile into pachinko parlours and crowd their local Okonomiyaki shops. This city lives for the future. I cheered myself up with a sushi lunch and followed it up by a trip to the Hiroshima Museum of Contemporary Art – hidden on a forestry hill in the east of the city, where signs literally banned some entrances due to very real danger of the local hornet population.

And on the topic of Okonomiyaki, dinner that night at home greeted me with a portable flat iron sitting on the dinner table – Okonomiyaki, homestyle. I’d eaten enough Okomiyaki in my life and watched enough youtube videos to really impress my host family with my pancake flipping skills, but of course i didn’t admit that.

This is a long post. But it’s an important one. It’s also important to never forget who the real war criminals are, and important to remember that those people will never face trial for their crimes against humanity, and the thousands of innocents who have died in Japan at the hands of these monstrosities will never know justice, only pain and sombre remembrance.

広島と姫路: A Tale of Two Cities

Hiroshima, Mon Amour – the feeling of romance and mystery perhaps wasn’t as strong as in Marguerite Duras’ film as a heavy sky heralded in my arrival to this city, although I avoided the summer rains just long enough to take a quick and wholesome look around the city. Also, someone shouted this blog out on the Oxlove Facebook page, so if you’re the kind poster and you’re reading this, this one’s for you.

I’ll preface this with a disclaimer that I am yet to see the more important and meaningful parts of the city. That is to say, the Atom Bomb museum, Peace Park and the famous Atom Bomb Dome still await me. I think Friday is the day for that. Anyways, yesterday, I got out of Hiroshima station and took a leisurely walk towards Shukkeien and the ruins of Hiroshima Castle. It was still dry, so the Shukkeien Garden was a pleasant if not slightly sweaty time. But in the long line of Japanese-style gardens, this one is also just as hard to fault or dislike.

Hiroshima Castle is described as a ruin on maps and on the internet, although what appeared before me was hardly a ruin. Sure, all the walls weren’t there, and some of the turrets were missing, but it’s easier for me to describe the castle in Kumamoto as a ruin compared to Hiroshima. The entireity of the main keep stood strong, imposing its five stories high above the rest of where the castle used to lie. Naturally it was all destroyed in the blast in 1945, but the reconstruction is so good that one could have thought it had been standing there forever. It’s at this moment that it started raining, and it seemed like a good idea to head back to the station before jumping on a train up to Kabe, where I have been warmly welcomed by the Yoshiokas, my host family until wednesday. My Japanese is really being put to the test now…

We ate, I showered, and went to bed, exhausted from finally being able to set myself down knowing that I didn’t have to move for a while now.

That didn’t last so long however, because at 10 this morning I hopped on a bullet train to Himeji – and and I’d like to sincerely thank whatever powers that be (God, Buddha, Shrek, or some nondescript deity who likes me) for letting the sun poke its shy head through the rainy season’s everlasting fog. I don’t think it would have been appropriate to see Himeji Castle, in six-story brilliant white glory in any other setting than in a blue sky. It doesn’t really need explanation. It’s huge, it’s beautiful, and I couldn’t help grinning like an idiot in awe at what I was witnessing and how lucky I was with the weather.

The accompanying Kōkoen garden was sublime. Probably the most beautiful I have seen. And I can comfortably say, I’ve been to a fair few. It’s crazy how much just a little bit of sunshine can make even small rocks or mossy lawns glow in an entirely mundane yet sublime beauty, one that Sōetsu Yanagi would have probably been infatuated with. I’m also reading his writing at the moment; The Beauty of Everyday Things. It seems appropriate given that I’m getting a lot of rain and am trying my damndest to appreciate things that I can see even if it pours from above.

It’s at this moment that it started raining like crazy, the moment I stepped out on to the platform at Himeji to go back to Hiroshima. It seems that I have made the most of my window of opportunity to experience real beauty, and that window seemed to have shut very abruptly and very timely on me. It seems that the one in charge of the weather thought I deserved a bit of relief.

Tomorrow I have no plans really, although I have a couple of ideas: Either I go to Osaka, or I want to return to Nagasaki to see the things I missed. I’m currently leaning more towards Nagasaki though, I felt like that city really clicked with me, and besides, it doesn’t feel right to give such a large city as Osaka only one day. Maybe that will be for the next time I come to Japan. In any case, who knows what tomorrow will bring ? The least I hope for is dry weather.

鹿児島: Tears in Rain

Being caught in the tail end of a subtropical typhoon wasn’t previously on my bucket list, but I guess that it is now is considering that I have now checked it off. I previously might have mentioned, back in Fukuoka or Kumamoto, that I’d never seen so much rain as I did – my saturday in Kagoshima steals top place on my “rain list” with ease. It felt like it was raining upwards, in the humble words of Forrest Gump. It was that kind of rain where it is more worth getting a taxi to walk a 10 minute walk between station and hotel.

Speaking of hotels, saturday was a bit of a disaster (momentarily). I had left Kumamoto having made a reservation in a little place called Ibusuki, south of Kagoshima city, maybe what I thought was half an hour by train. I swapped out the flashy bullet train for the local, rickety yet endearing local train, but found an entire hour’s journey south on an extremely bumpy ride that I genuinely thought would make me see my breakfast again.

Ibusuki was, and is, no doubt a charming seaside resort. The nearby Ikeda Lake and the hot sand onsens on the beach are a source of local pride, but with a ominous looking horizon and the realisation that the beach resort was miserably empty, run down, and my hostel so unbearably sad that I didn’t have the heart to commit to it. I cancelled my reservation (for free, luckily) and scooted back on the long ride back to Kagoshima city – where the storm hit, and everything turned a sad shade of dark, dark grey.

I was now in Kagoshima station with a deflated morale and no place to stay, so I desperately checked into the cheapest hotel I could find. I spent the rest of the day shut in, and my evening actually allowed me outside into what I quickly realised was the throbbing and packed red light district on a saturday night. I had a great meal, bought some beers in the convenience store and watched Blade Runner (2049) until I couldn’t keep my eyes open. Also, I ate horse sashimi. Maybe I’ll get some hate for this, but to me this isn’t a big deal. The horse that suffered momentarily for a part of my dinner last night probably lived a life that was far longer and a hundred times more pleasant than any other livestock animal that is more regularly consumed in our countries. Also, it was delicious, so maybe I’ll be eating Findus lasagnas again soon.

I awoke to a dry morning. Humid and still recovering from being battered by a storm the night before, I found the courage and the motivation to get out into town. I started by going to the aquarium in the harbour. It was fantastic. Aquariums are always special places, but coming off my thoughts on animal cruelty and treatment of animals, the presence of a whale shark in the largest tank, along with some rather sad dolphins that I saw in their tiny “pen” on the way in is an issue that I don’t think escapes criticism.

Small fish, I can understand, because you can give them larger tanks for their size (relatively speaking), but a whale shark doesn’t belong in a tank swimming around endlessly in circles for children to bang the glass and for obnoxious parents to snap flash photos when the signs clearly say to not to. I’m pretty certain that I saw many fish and sea life in the aquarium that seemed blind in one if not two eyes. Bittersweet, and definitely not worth £12, but the magical quality of aquariums is still undeniably alluring.

An aquarium seemed appropriate for the kind of weather that was ongoing. If you’re never sure when it might start pouring again, being inside is best. However, it was looking pretty dry so I decided to hop on the ferry to Kagoshima bay’s crown jewel, Sakurajima – Japan’s most active volcano, and said to be an impressive sight. And it is, even when the peak is shrouded in clouds and smoke. I even got a small ray of sunshine on the island which brought a grateful smile to my tired and slightly hungover face. I walked through the lava formations through the forest, and decided it was time to head back just as it began to drizzle again.

It has been exhausting in these last few days. I never knew that weather could affect me on such a deep level, and yet it has tainted these last few days. But the benefit of this is that I know I’ll come back, if only just to snap the right pictures at the right times so I can crystallise these memories in a better place. I am excited to meet my host family tomorrow, but more so looking forward to have a place to put my bags down finally as I prepare for the last leg of this journey.

Huis Ten Bosch and Ōmura Bay: The weird and the wonderful

It goes without saying that a name like Huis Ten Bosch doesn’t exactly scream Japanese. Although, given the Dutch’s historic presence in Nagasaki Prefecture, especially on their trading post of Dejima in Nagasaki, it seems to fit in bizarrely well on the shores of Ōmura Bay. A life-scale recreation of the Netherlands, the streets are lined with Amsterdam-esque buildings and churches and canals. It’s an oddity in any case.

This wasn’t really why I came here though, it’s easy enough for to see the real thing for itself, and a £50 entry ticket to a mock Dutch city theme park didn’t sound too appealing. My real quest was to go to the beach, to quote Mr Bean. And what better place to do it than here, in Ōmura Bay where the inland sea dotted with islands would give Thai resorts a run for their scenic money.

In Beppu, and in Nagasaki, and even in Fukuoka, I was disappointed to find that going to the beach doesn’t really seem like much of a thing here. All these locations are seaside, yet as I mentioned yesterday, the sea fronts are laden with concrete walls and car parks. I was greeted at Huis Ten Bosch station by the charming Michi, whose house I am staying in tonight. I have an adorable little Japanese-style room to myself. His house is a little outside of HTB, but he drove me and my rucksack to a small peninsula in the bay where there was a bathhouse, and lo and behold, a beach. An actual sand beach. Sure, it was enclosed, with safety buoys and an ugly sea wall, but there was sand and there was seawater. Don’t get me wrong, I like pools and hot springs, but at heart I’m an ocean kind of guy.

After a brief conversation with the workers, they let me come down onto the beach which they were “preparing” (???) in order so that I could have a swim. I was then left by Michi to my own devices. To clarify, to me beaches in Japan seem to be public but also not public ? They open only after the rainy season (which happens to end next week) only for summer. It’s a bit bizarre, and kind of defeats the purpose for me but it didn’t matter because the smell of salt water on my skin and in my hair was so refreshing and rewarding that all these questions floated away on the gentle swell. It’s not every day you get a beach to yourself.

The beach being officially “closed”, there was no shower. So, I trekked up the hill to the bathhouse to basically spend the rest of the evening soaking and eating and admiring the view of the bay from the outside bath. I had a pretty good late lunch too. With vending machines and even gambling machines, you could literally spend your entire day in the bathhouse and never have to leave.

I was relaxed, drowsy, sated and clean, and I walked back towards the local station that was between the bathhouse/beach and HTB. A walk along the sea where the sun set behind soft clouds and a misty horizon as the day’s heat started to dissipate. The evenings in this kind of weather are surreal and slightly magical with their hazy light.

I met up with Michi again after having grabbed a snack at the HTB Family Mart, in a weird spot outside the theme park where music was blaring for apparently only me, under the massive hotel that looked like it had been ripped straight out of Copenhagen. Weird, to say the least. I am going to relish this night’s sleep in my own room before I head out to Kumamoto tomorrow morning.

Goodnight.

別府: Steam City

My apologies for not posting a blog last night, I needed a bit of rest. It’s been moving extremely fast since the start, and coming to the hot spring town of Beppu seemed an appropriate place to let off some steam (pun intended).

Beppu lies on the northeastern coast of Kyūshu, in a shielded bay. I got here relatively late in the day yesterday from Nagasaki, but Beppu being a spa destination for Japanese tourists, I was in no mood to rush. Beppu’s springs are historically known for their mineral-rich waters, and the sick and ailing from all over Japan were known to come to this location to benefit from the healing properties of the water. It seems like this heritage lives on, as I spied a great many wheelchairs, zimmer frames and walking sticks on my way out of the station, all with the same hopeful gleam in their eyes.

Baggages dropped, I decided to go to the Kannawa Onsen (the centre of Beppu’s onsen activity and the most widely-known). It was a pretty long bus ride away, and I was surprised to find the streets completely empty. I wanted to visit the Jigoku Onsen, the “Five Hells”; water pools where boiling hot mineral water bubbles to the surface in a furious boil. I was annoyed, and disappointed, to find them closed… However, I did benefit from a free “foot onsen” that is common around this area. Steam literally pours from the ground here, and the bathhouses on every street corner are not shy to advertise that their baths are the best in all the onsen.

I returned back towards where my hostel was. The Takegawara bathhouse might not be the most luxurious bathhouse in town, but it is certainly one of those with the most charm, and also the most highly recommended in Beppu. Although before, I wanted to catch the sunset on the seaside – and I did. It was beautiful, and the bay was as slick as oil, but the stern seafront with its seawalls and lack of beaches was slightly disheartening. It strikes me now that the reasons for this are the constant threat of tsunamis from the deep sea, hence Beppu’s concrete seafront.

Back to Takegawara, I’d forgotten just how hot onsen are. Scorchingly hot, and a completely different sensation to anything else, being almost completely submerged. I was used to saunas, and in my mind these were not so different – I lasted 10 minutes at most, and was in the water at 3 separate intervals broken up by splashings of cold water and a spinning head. However, it seemed that this was the trend for all the local visitors too: arrive, wash, get in the water, get out, rinse, leave. I admit the bone-deep feeling of relaxation post-onsen is unparalleled… And for a mere 100 Yen, who can say no ?

My body as limp as a drunkard’s, I found myself eating dinner first in a small Izakaya (like a pub) followed by a sushi bar, where I was bought drinks and some sushi by some nice guys at the bar… my sleep was indescribable.

My plan the next say was to rent a bike at Beppu’s Giant store, get on a local train and cycle the Kunisaki peninsula and discover the temples and shrines lost in the deep volcanic forests. I found the store to be closed only on Tuesdays, and I was very irritated. A sad McDonald’s later (comfort food), I plucked up the courage to get on a different train to Usuki, the site of the Usuki Sekibutsu – stone-carved Buddhas. I picked up a bike for free at the station, so in sum, my day wasn’t that much of a failure after all.

A sweaty bike ride through the old samurai town of Usuki later, a small museum and hillside greets me. The restored, and preserved, Buddhas sit proudly and mysteriously overlooking the countryside. Said to have been carved in the late Heian Period (794-1185), these stone Buddhas are the only ones in Japan to be bestowed the title of National Treasure. It was moving, and I would have stayed provided that I wasn’t dying for a shower and a glass of water.

My bike and I floated back towards Usuki on the breeze in the late afternoon glow. Back in Beppu, a different bathhouse awaited me, of which’s temperature was considerably more manageable. My supermarket dinner was sat happily in the fridge, and I sit here now, belly full, and the satisfaction of knowing not to have entirely wasted these two days.

A city where steam billows from the streets and hot water seeps from cracks in the rocks; one where people know the meaning of calm. A sleepy, seaside city that in my mind only has the place of rest and recuperation – Beppu, until next time.

Expect blogs every day from now.

長崎: Bending Adversity

“If the radiance of a thousand suns

Were to burst at once into the sky

That would be like the splendour of the Mighty One…

I am become Death,

The destroyer of worlds.”

As Robert Oppenheimer quoted the Bhagavad Gita upon witnessing the first successful test of the world’s first atomic bomb on July 15th 1945, little did he know how true those ancient and earth-shattering words would ring come August of the same year. And it is these words, and Oppenheimer’s sad realisation at his monstrous creation, that have been with me today as I walked the streets of Nagasaki. A sobering and humbling afternoon to put it simply.

The train ride from Hakata did not prepare me for what I was about to experience. The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki are casually swept over in history class at school, always presented as the final victory and grand finale of the theatre of the Second World War. The reality is much different. The Nagasaki Atomic Bomb museum (原爆資料館) is only a couple of charming streetcar stops away from the station where my hostel is located, and the elegant and to-the-point museum is poignant and brutally blunt. It would have been impossible for me to have been in Kyūshu without coming face to face with the suffering and loss that was experienced here in Nagasaki. I wept for the 75,000 that were vaporised instantly in front of the testimonies of the survivors.

Testimonies of children who buried their mothers, husbands who buried their wives, and sisters who buried their brothers. The inhumanity of such an attack is unspeakable. I can only give credit to the museum for rightfully bringing me (and others) to tears over this act, not to mention over the thousands more who died in the years afterwards.

But it is the resilience of Nagasaki, and of the Japanese people in general, that struck me the most. The will to carry on, to never give up, something that I picked up on vaguely many years ago in David Pilling’s Bending Adversity (read it, it’s incredible). The beautiful peace park that follows the museum, and the sombre memorial to the dead along with the preserved hypocenter (ground zero) along a beautiful little canal, is testament to how much this city is committed to preventing conflict and to moving on upwards from disaster. It’s heartwarming to walk these lively and upbeat streets today knowing that underneath them lay a nuclear wasteland of suffering only 73 years ago. I anticipate to find very much the same thing when I get to Hiroshima in a week.

The will to carry on. That is what I have managed to summarise Nagasaki, Japan’s historical cultural front to the world and a beacon of hope and strength in the south of a once war-ridden country, in one short day. An impression that genuinely made me appreciate sitting in front of my kaisendon on the quayside tonight.

I pray (using the term loosely) that my generation, my brothers’ generations and those to come never have to experience the horrors of war that I have seen today. I will leave this city tomorrow more grateful for my life and grateful to be living in security than I was before I stepped off the train this morning.

I implore you all – those who are reading this – to go tonight to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb museum’s English site and read for yourselves what you weren’t taught in GCSE history.

“What passing bells for these who die as cattle?
Only the monstrous anger of the guns.
Only the stuttering rifle’s rapid rattle
Can patter out their hasty orisons.
No mockeries now for them; no prayers, nor bells,
Nor any voice of mourning save the choirs,
The shrill demented choirs of wailing shells,
And bugles calling for them from sad shires.
What candles may be held to speed them all?
Not in the hands of boys, but in their eyes,
Shall shine the holy glimmers of goodbyes.
The pallor of girls’ brows shall be their pall,
Their flowers the tenderness of patient minds,
And each, slow dusk a drawing down of blinds.”

Wilfred Owen, The War Poems (1917)

大濠公園

Another incredible day has passed, and yet I have only been in Asia for a week, let alone in Japan for 2 days. It feels like I’ve been here forever but I have seen so little. A relatively quiet day to say the least, I spent it walking around the port and fish market areas, and ending it in one of my new favourite parks in the world; Ōhori Park. And I also wasted about 1,500 Yen on a new battery and film for my camera to see if it might fix the problem. It didn’t. My irritation is indescribable and my wallet hates me.

As I mentioned, I sweatily furrowed around the local Bic Camera superstore in Tenjin in search of a 3V battery, which is notoriously hard to find. I exit the store, relieved, thinking my issues to be over only to find that the insufferable beeping of my camera is still there and the lens refuses to come out of the body. New film changed nothing either.

Sadness aside, My mission was to get to the fish market. I had read that you aren’t exactly allowed inside the actual market apart from on only 1 day of each month, but obviously I hadn’t checked so I just went anyway. Naturally, I got lost. Or to be more specific, I was too intimated by the security guards at the entry to the market so I just carried on nonchalantly. As if a tall white European boy could ever look inconspicuous whilst randomly strolling through Nagahama… This actually took me on a nice detour to the port, where I attracted several strange looks from a woman walking out of her house and an old man on a bike who cycled past me. The Seven-Eleven’s wifi allowed me to then rack up the courage to walk back to the market with actual directions, where I found the restaurant I was looking for, and what followed was perhaps the best kaisendon I’d ever have in my life.

For a mere 1,080 yen (£7.56). I’d not had sea urchin in many, many years, and it is just one of the most incredible flavours on this good earth. Not to mention the generous assortment of tuna, yellowtail amberjack and baby squid. 10/10. Market food is the greatest, freshest, cheapest way to experience proper Japanese seafood.

After picking up a bag of chips and an ice-cold Asahi, I made my way down to what is undoubtedly the most magnificent spot in all Fukuoka; Ōhori Park and the Fukuoka castle ruins. Also preceded by a tiny little Japanese garden sandwiched between the ruins and Ōhori Park. I have never seen so many dragonflies in one place at one time.

Ōhori Park is a large lake. It has a couple of islands that stretch across the middle of it, joined together by bridges, so the very middle of the lake makes for a very relaxing afternoon spot to sit in the shade surrounded by turtles, ducks, and a healthy serving of middle-aged joggers. It makes sense that this is one of the most photogenic places in this city. Crystal-clear blue waters under a blue sky on a hot July day is a recipe for any perfect picture, but on top of that a perfect place to lie down and catch a quiet breath from the ever-moving Japanese city life.

Tonight, I think I shall go out. I want to go out in town at night, and see what it’s like to live this city after hours. I might even swing by the park again later – it’s not like I’m about to catch a cold by being outside anyways.