Trip Blog Post/Part II

Dear neglected blog readers,

Are you still there? I would understand if you were not. Because, let's face it - I'm not in Japan anymore. I am back home. In Seattle. Doing much less than I would be doing if I were still at the forefront of time. However, as far as you readers know, I am still in Hiroshima, learning about World War II. So I've decided to fill you all in on the rest of my trip. Even though I'm no longer there. So... this blog post may be dated August 3rd, but please, let's pretend that it is not. Let's pretend that it's sometime before July 25th, and that I am still in Japan.

So, now I shall tell you all about the wonderful aspects of my trip to Osaka, Hiroshima, and Miyajima with Christine, Wendy, and Caitlin. First of all, there was a lot of wonderful food. In Osaka, there was takoyaki, which is amazing, even though you probably wouldn't expect me to like it. I told you about it in my last post, remember? Octopus balls? Yeah, that doesn't make it sound too great, does it? But look at the picture! That is pure delicious. They only have one bit of octopus in the middle, and and then they have all these little green spices and pink pickled somethings thrown in with the dough. (Can you tell I'm an expert on takoyaki? Once I made them with my family! That was certainly not on my trip to Osaka and Hiroshima, but here is a picture anyway, look just below these lines, because I made them and I feel proud... That is me and my host dad, with our chopsticks and the little takoyaki-making device set up over our hot plate.) In Osaka, we went to what we are pretty sure is a super famous takoyaki shop. We can tell because of the outside of the shop, and how elaborate it is, and because we are pretty sure we were in the place where our teacher told us to go. But then, since there are almost no street names in Japan, it was hard to be sure. Anyway, look at that awesome display hanging above the tiny little place where a single man made takoyaki all night long! Isn't it awesome? Those giant takoyaki? they spin. And the restaurant is so small there's barely room for a staircase leading up to the second floor, where you can sit and eat your takoyaki, if you want to. And we wanted to. Why? Well, because there are absolutely no public spaces in Japan. So if you want to sit down somewhere to eat food, you had better sit down at a restaurant. Because, chances are, you will not find a park. Not even one.

Please don't feel discouraged that there aren't many parks in Japan. Because they make up for it by having a lot of great restaurants. For instance here is an adorable little place we found with the help of the woman at our hostel. We came to this tiny, adorable place, instead of to a place called the "Okonomiyaki Village," which is famous, because we had already seen the village. And it was kind of weird and intimidating. It was four floors full of okonomiyaki restaurants, each floor packed with six or seven different establishments. So you would walk in and everyone would be shouting at you to pick them! Pick them! But how were we supposed to know which okonomiyaki restaurant to choose, when we barely even knew what okonomiyaki is anyway? So we left. (I'm getting to an explanation of okonomiyaki, don't worry!) So we told the woman we wanted to get okonomiyaki, and, after we explained we weren't excited by the prospect of the village (which was also overpriced, as far as I can tell, because it is clearly for tourists...) she sent us to this tiny little shop. It was dramatic at first, because, as you can see, it isn't very big, and they were full. So we just decided to walk over there and see whether we could wait at the restaurant. But when we arrived, everyone was just leaving (or leaving for us? Unclear!) so it all turned out very well. The man on the left, wearing a Hiroshima baseball team t-shirt, made us our okonomiyaki.

Now, these things have been compared to pancakes. And they have been compared to pizza. But in Hiroshima, I don't think either of those descriptions was very accurate. It was just okonomiyaki. Which means, "what you like, grilled." It has lots of cabbage in it (that's what you see grilling there.) and also an egg, usually, and then either udon or yakisoba noodles, depending on what you prefer. There's also okonomiyaki sauce, which is salty and brown and pretty thick. It's hidden in this picture, under a huge pile of green onions, because this is green onion okonomiyaki. But it's delicious, I'm telling you. We ate it our first night in Hiroshima. And then, because it was so delicious, we went back our second night in Hiroshima to have it again. The man in the Carp t-shirt (who was wearing another one the following day, just a different color) laughed at us. But we felt no shame! We were happy!

We found weirder foods in Osaka, when we detoured about an hour out of our way, got pretty lost, and then got back on track again, all to make it to Carrefour, which is basically the French Costco. Which they have in Japan. We went there to find granola, which we were all missing, and we sort of found some. But what we found in addition to that was much better, and pure Japanese. What takes the cake? Probably the Kit Kat bars. Not just any ordinary Kit Kat bar, mind you, but a special flavor. Vinegar. First, I found lemon vinegar. Of course we wanted to buy it. But so many? And if they were disgusting, what would we do with all that? (We were pretty sure they would be disgusting.) But lemon vinegar Kit Kat bars! How could we pass up the opportunity to buy that?! Well, there was only one way. And it was called Apple Vinegar Kit Kat bars. Not in a bag, just in a little box. Because in Japan, almost nothing comes in just one layer of packaging. So what would just be in a little plastic wrapper in the US was in a plastic wrapper and a box in Japan. Anyway, what's important is that we bought it. And on the train from Osaka to Kanazawa, about to be back in school mode, we tried it. And apple vinegar Kit Kat bars were kind of good! Who knew?! Certainly not us. We never saw them again in Japan. Or anyway, I didn't. I can't say for sure that no one else did either. But I never saw them again in Japan. But just that one time, they were pretty delicious. Other things we found at Carrefour are pictured at right. Secret Hi Chew, which didn't have a label on the packaging, so you had to guess what you were eating from a list on the back of the packaging, and star-shaped rice crackers, which had faces on the tiny individual plastic packaging, but not on the cracker itself, and Choco Pie, which are delicious and made in Korea, and bananas which you may have heard of before.

And that is the story of food on our trip around Japan. Stay tuned for tales of the Miyajima gate, spoiled deer, and other adventures outside of Kanazawa in Trip Blog Post/Part III, coming soon.

Trip Blog Post/Serious

My faithful blog readers,

It's finally time to tell you about my trip away from Kanazawa! When was this trip, you ask? Last weekend? Two weeks ago? Well, really... it was in June... I'm sorry! This has been a long time coming! But here we go.

Now, June 25th, a Thursday, was our first of two three-hour final exams. It was very long. But don't worry, because just an hour or so after it was over, I had boarded a bus to Osaka, and I was very happy. Wendy, Caitlin and I rode a double-decker bus for five hours to get there. What is convenient about Japanese buses (although I've never really ridden any in other countries to compare... not for 5 hours anyway) is that they stop every few hours to let you stretch and go to the bathroom. So we were really fine.

And then we were in Osaka! The second biggest city in Japan! And... there was very little to do! We met up with Christine at our hostel, and set out for the "hip" area of Osaka, which we knew how to get to thanks to one of our teachers. There, at about 8:ooPM, we ate takoyaki for dinner. Takoyaki, as you may or may not know, are made of octopus and a flour-y dough. They are about the size of golfballs, and they are delicious! I will take you to eat them in New York, New York friends. Seattle friends, please come visit me!

So we ate takoyaki, and we set out to search for dessert. We searched. And we searched. But everything was CLOSED. At about 9PM on a Thursday night! Why?!? Some big city... We left Osaka, sort of disappointed, Friday morning, and rode the train to Hiroshima.

Hiroshima is, of course, famous for having been destroyed. So this is where my normally light and cheery blog has no choice but to get a bit darker for a post or so.

Hiroshima was beautiful while I was there - no sign, of course, of the 60-year-old history. But of course we went first to the Peace Park, so the invisible damage was on all of our minds. It was sad, to look at the one ruined building preserved in the park, but mostly it was inspiring to finally see the statue of Sadako Sasaki, with her thousands of paper cranes folded all over the world, and the eternal flame dedicated to the dead. You don't turn a nuclear bombing into something positive, but the park calls for peace, adn I didn't feel guilt, but hope, at the determination to look to the future following the travesty of the bomb.

But then we went to the museum.

We went to the free exhibit in the basement first, sort of arbitrarily. It was a single bright, museum-style room, with a large free-standing sign in its center, announcing that the exhibit was a collection of pictures drawn by people who had experienced the bomb, but made many decades later. The museum, this plaque told me, has hundreds of these pictures, voluntarily sent by survivors. Every month, the museum chooses a new theme, and displays 30 or so pictures that fit that theme.

In June, the theme was labor groups - during World War II, labor was at such a premium that middle- and high-schoolers were removed from school to do manual labor. The artists whose drawings were shown in June were all working in Hiroshima when the bomb fell.

Every picture was worse than the last. I passed around the room, feeling like I might faint. I have read about Hiroshima - facts, dates. Pictures of that famous mushroom cloud are barely meaningful anymore. But these were not pictures of the nuclear bomb. These were drawings - memories of the bomb hitting people.

I am having trouble allowing myself to remember the pictures, and their two-to-three sentence descriptions. These people, who drew and described melting skin, naked, charred, bloated children drowning in rivers in which they sought relief, and the bright rain of radiation falling down on their heads, these people were the survivors. These were the ones who had experienced such a small percentage of the damage that they lived to 60 and 70 years old. These were the experiences of the lucky. And all of their pictures were of students, still wearing school uniforms, 12 and 13 and living through a nuclear bomb with not an adult in sight. Not the typical coming of age.

How does one know something like this? How do you remember this and act normally? How do you forget it? I can't figure it out. It is too late for blame - the people who made the decision are long out of power, and I do not expect that it can ever be made again. The survivors are dwindling - this is truly fading into the past.

But I am learning its true horror for the first time - what am I to do with my new information?

I don't really know. But I guess it's always better to know than not to know. Right? Maybe? I don't know! So there we are. I know some things. I don't know other things. I guess I'll just keep thinking.