Ito-san (remember him?) advised us that it was possible to get back to the mainland from Shikoku via the scooter/bicycle bridges spanning the islands between. We got shouted at. The highway for us then, and another chunk of change from our dwindling bank account.
Oyamazumi shrine on Omi island made for a mildly interesting stopping point. It features 80% of the military national treasures from the feudal era, including swords of almost 2m in length weighing in at 5kg! How anyone wielded those things in battle is beyond me.
We camped near Hiroshima, but that night I got a major case of the shivers. Wearing all the clothes I carried, wrapped in a sleeping bag with a hot pack on my spine I shivered the night away.
The whole of the next day and night I sweated through the sleeping bag, only crawling out to spray the drop toilets and drink the energy drinks and water Hozumi brought me.
Finally on the road to recovery another full day and night of rest and reading and we were back on the road.
My conclusion? If you eat 10 yen sushi, stick to one plate, not two. Don't spend a whole day cold and wet on a bike the same day and try to maintain basic standards of hygiene when camping. Still, that kind of thing is bound to happen sometimes during this kind of travel.
The atom bomb dome (Hiroshima Peace Memorial) is much as you'd expect. Surrounded by swarms of disinterested school-children and incongruous in the modern surroundings.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was similarly swarmed, and impressively impartial in it's delivery of the facts and history of the first ever atomic bomb use. Reading copies of documents and letters from the time, I realised I hadn't really been aware of just how defeated the Japanese already were at the time of the bomb's use, or of the political pressure to see a practical return on the money invested in developing it. The drawings by survivors had the biggest impact. It's not hard to imagine a 70-something year old without an artistic bone in his/her body putting to paper images that remain etched in memory 30-40 years on. Water was a recurring theme: Bodies in wells, people boiled in cisterns, charred 'corpses' still moving weakly towards the river, a woman begging for urine, nurses and soldiers regretting not having given water to the dying.
Itsukushima shrine was rather dull, and hardly deserving of it's 'top 3 views in Japan' status. Take a picture, move on. Most surpring was the ratio of large, old white tourists to Japanese. Despite being a popular site for domestic tourism we haven't seen Japanese outnumbered like that anywhere else so far.
We're now in Kyuushu, heading for Miyazaki and a reunion with an old Hakodate friend (hey Neil!). The nights are getting surprisingly cold, so it'll be good to sleep indoors for a change!
Oyamazumi shrine on Omi island made for a mildly interesting stopping point. It features 80% of the military national treasures from the feudal era, including swords of almost 2m in length weighing in at 5kg! How anyone wielded those things in battle is beyond me.
We camped near Hiroshima, but that night I got a major case of the shivers. Wearing all the clothes I carried, wrapped in a sleeping bag with a hot pack on my spine I shivered the night away.
The whole of the next day and night I sweated through the sleeping bag, only crawling out to spray the drop toilets and drink the energy drinks and water Hozumi brought me.
Finally on the road to recovery another full day and night of rest and reading and we were back on the road.
My conclusion? If you eat 10 yen sushi, stick to one plate, not two. Don't spend a whole day cold and wet on a bike the same day and try to maintain basic standards of hygiene when camping. Still, that kind of thing is bound to happen sometimes during this kind of travel.
The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was similarly swarmed, and impressively impartial in it's delivery of the facts and history of the first ever atomic bomb use. Reading copies of documents and letters from the time, I realised I hadn't really been aware of just how defeated the Japanese already were at the time of the bomb's use, or of the political pressure to see a practical return on the money invested in developing it. The drawings by survivors had the biggest impact. It's not hard to imagine a 70-something year old without an artistic bone in his/her body putting to paper images that remain etched in memory 30-40 years on. Water was a recurring theme: Bodies in wells, people boiled in cisterns, charred 'corpses' still moving weakly towards the river, a woman begging for urine, nurses and soldiers regretting not having given water to the dying.
We're now in Kyuushu, heading for Miyazaki and a reunion with an old Hakodate friend (hey Neil!). The nights are getting surprisingly cold, so it'll be good to sleep indoors for a change!
Posts
3 comments:
Those pics remind me of Hiroshima Mon Amour, which I watched recently (because one of the collections I'm studying for my thesis is somewhat disturbingly titled HIV, Mon Amour.)
Out of interest, do you have any idea what the reception of the film was like in Japan, and how it's seen now?
I've not seen nor heard of the film, so I've no idea, sorry!
Classic of French New Wave cinema, apparently, and suitably pretentious. Still, interesting as it was a French/Japanese co production, with only two main characters: a French woman and a Japanese man.
Post a Comment