Teacher Getting Hit By Culture: They Call It Nippon, You Call It Japan!

Hey everyone,

School has literally abduct my life the last few weeks. You all remember back to your old life as a student. The end of the year is a busy time. The last few weeks can be orders of magnitude more busy for a teacher. Alright though, this entry is not so you can hear me complain. This entry to tell you about my trip a few months back to Japan.

For spring break, 3 of us teachers wanted to try out arguably the world's best sushi at a tiny restaurant in the Tokyo subway station called Sukiyabashi Jiro. The owner is an 80 some odd year old master of the culinary arts named Jiro Ono. Jiro's was the first sushi restaurant to earn 3 Michelin stars and has held those 3 stars ever since. We saw a documentary on his restaurant and wanted desperately to go. Unfortunately, getting a reservation was very difficult to achieve and we didn't manage to get because some big shot by the name Barack Obama decided to visit Japan exactly when we were and try out Jiro's restaurant as well. Who does he think he is?

Regardless, we were headed to Japan anyways, as there was still plenty of amazing sights to be seen. It was one of those locales that I had actually been to before but this fact didn't dull my excitement for the trip at all. Our itinerary included: Tokyo, Kyoto, and Hiroshima.

Hiroshima was the first stop and if you've heard of this quiet city, it's because of a not so quiet global headline from World War 2. Hiroshima was the first city to have the atomic bomb dropped on it. 70 some odd years later, there was no evidence of the devastation that happened during the war. I thought Hiroshima was a beautiful city, without the urban chaos that people often associate with Japan's urban hubs like Tokyo, Kyoto, and Osaka. Visiting the Peace Park, site of the atomic bomb detonation was a very surreal experience. Being there made me feel the same way I felt being at the Killing Fields in Cambodia. The gravity of a place where there was so much suffering and death really does permeate all the way through you. There were some emotionally-heavy stories coming out from visiting the museum. Nothing I can write here can convey the stories and emotions of standing over the hypocentre of the blast, know the countless lives cut short. The Japanese might have stood in opposition to the Allied forces during the war, but what happened here transcends the simple nature of Allied vs. Axis forces. "We" may have won the war, but after being in Hiroshima, at the Killing Fields, and at Pearl Harbour (a long time ago when my family visited Hawaii), I know now that there are no winners in wars, there is suffering and irreconcilable loss whenever and wherever wars exist.

In Hiroshima, we also did check out a Japanese water surrounded shrine on a small island called Miyojima. Unfortunately, it was low tide so the water didn't come all the way into give the shrine that immersive feel.

Despite being in Tokyo for 2 days, we didn't truly spend much of it in the downtown areas of Tokyo. The 5 of us that went, most been to Japan before and wanted instead to go check out a mountainous area north of Tokyo called Nikko. Nikko had a bit of Banff feel to it but it was really neat to see the shrines up in very rural areas. It was also just BARELY far north enough to catch the last glimpse of the famous Japanese spring cherry blossoms. They were indeed a beautiful shade of pink and makes me wonder what they would have looked like in full bloom. In the little time we were in Tokyo itself, we went to mope outside Jiro's restaurant, went to Shibuya district and saw the insane 5 way pedestrian crossing, and headed down to the Tsukiji Fish Market. We were organized enough to give out to a few more

Our final stop was historical Kyoto were we made stops at the Golden Pavilion and the 10,000 gates of the Inari shrine and a few others. We also had time to stop for a traditional Japanese tea ceremony which was serene and very relaxing. During the night, we went hunting of geishas (Japanese girls in traditional Japanese kimonos with powdered white faces) in the Gion district of Kyoto, a place they were known to frequent. We saw a few of the secretive Japanese girls but it was too dark to take pictures of any of the geishas.

Alright, one final update from the end of the year activities still to come within the next few days. In the meantime, enjoy the pictures from Japan!

Hiroshima

The Peace Park by night.

Destruction and rebirth

If you've read or know about the children's book called Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes, then you'll get this. The Japanese believed that if a child were to make a wish after making a thousand paper cranes, their wish would come true. Sadako wished to overcome her radiation sickness and started making the paper cranes. Sadly, she never did complete her project and these paper cranes at the Peace Park Children's Monument are a testament to the hopes of young people to live and grow up in a world without nuclear weapons.