to west and back again

The bus was crowded, but having the utmost rear seat, the recline was almost fully horizontal, bedlike and comfortable, as was the girl ahead ahead of me, headrest nearly in my lap, more at ease than one on a bus should be allowed; politely, asking, excuse me, a little low? With my legs assured, I set forth forcibly to rest, if not sleep, the eleven hour journey to my first, and furthest westerly destination, Hiroshima, the terrible and tragic, once flattest city, of excessive-use-of-force infamy.
I awoke at seven am, in time to watch the city come in, and observe the bus depot, ordinary and nondescript. My backpack, tent attached, contained enough clothes for half a warm day and I hoped, a full cold night, bundled around two flashlights, brand new, and nearly one thousand pages of reading material in the case that I end up in a hospital or police station with little to do. Estimating the pack at somewhere between two and three hundred kilos, I immediately hid it in a coinlocker located nearby, convenient, though later recognized to be the opposite side of further progress, and camera and map in hand, set out to discover a chilling history and eventually to meet accidentally two asian christians nosing into my prayers, though agreeing upon certain ideals vis-a-vis unstated homonyms.
The city of Hiroshima at first glance, having missed the welcome sign, is like another flower among many, blooming together and bustling about supporting a colony of bees; however it is, and is in fact not like this at all: it is one of two only places in the world, in history, to have been destroyed, nay what happens to wood in this instances, vaporized? by an atomic bomb, dropped by that nation, in-god, dropped from a great height, from the Enola-Gay, August 6th 1945, at 8:15am. There remains, in eternal reminder, the so-called A-bomb dome, what was a large domed building of various functions, what is now a skeletal remnant, silent and ponderous. From most angles, my view penetrates the structure and awestruck dumbfounded sad or passerbylocals can be seen across the way, through the bones, like looking into the space of a lost tooth--shouldn't there be something there? I wonder. To the east, there in the sky, the bomb burst, high enough over that the blast didn't force the heavy structure to the ground, but suffused it's soft contents like an xray. The surrounding area was even less lucky, as so much then was made of wood, a material that burns easily under the fantastic violence of nuclear fission.
Possibly over one hundred thirty thousand casualties, sixty thousand dead, many in an instant shorter in duration than a struck match igniting to a still flame. Many more slowly perished struggling with radiation and injury...
--Excuse me.
I'm peering through the memorial arch, aligned with the dome and the flame. I close my eyes, thinking, and he queries about my prayers. We chat a while, and I'm read a passage of scripture vaguely about the end of war and coming perfection if all would simply believe. I tell him it's a nice dream (hope/expectation). Perfection (theory/ideal) is nil, the chaotic ambiguity of existence must be confronted, not prayed away, though it helps; we don't need bombs, we don't, but we don't need a utopia (end/beginning) either. I don't know what we need.

With visions of bombs and dust dancing in my bedraggled mind, I walked north, skirting the baseball stadium and voracious buses, between galleries and buidlings, eventually coming upon a man, holding a long pole of bamboo, stirring the southern moat of what still stands as Hiroshima-jo, the castle. The grounds are beautiful and green, flourishing buzzing with life and wayward wandering locals and tourists enjoying the tiered shade of the typically shaped castle. From the top, the city is circumnavigated in view, and quite lovely, though there seen as always, protrudes the top bulge of the ventilated dome previously described, sombre and small among the modern flourishes of an ordinary twenty-first century city in Japan. I took the stairs, returning to just above-sea level groud floor, and wandered around for photo ops and the nearest tram station. Had it been clear, I may have seen Miyajima, my next destination, from the top of the Castle, but it was humid and the air dense, though cool. I found a tram car, windows open, humming along the road, devouring commuters. I rode the tram for an hour to the south where I hopped out and immediately boarded a ferry.
I've read that the inland sea between and urging out from Honshu and Shikoku to be of tremendous beauty, Aegean beauty, and indeed it is, I would imagine, on a day with fewer clouds. Though the object of my visit to the island, aside from it's quiet charm and too-friendly, let's say spoiled, deer, was the shrine, jutting from the hightide bay, itsukushima.
I've read that the view of the shrine, ripple reflecting the gentle sea, framing distant mountains and shore, is one of three "best views" in Japan. I've always thought "views" to be an odd way to consider nature, be it a mountain, waterfall, or rather natural looking shrines--but there is an ancient desire in many cultures, is there not, to frame, to control, or least to stand out of reach, hand on little brothers head swinginig madly, impotent, to be safe? To complete this aside, I suspect there to be few places in the world with quite the relationship to nature as is found in Japan, though culture is powerfully produced and shaped by the land, how many cultures have grown up on a mountainous island, tiny and volcanic at the apex of multiple fault lines, regularly hammered by Typhoons, and well, tsunami is a Japanese word, is it not? The view. The view was indeed beautiful and for over and hour, I sat, with sake, sipping while the sun dipped, and the scene slowly dimmed.
Thinking the first day of my trip over, looking for a camp, my phone rang. One of my students in Kuba, down the line twenty minutes. You must come visit my mothers house, she says, and agreeing, I hurriedly catch the last ferry and arrive just in time for dinner: sayuri and tako sashimi, hijiki, fried chicken, pickles, miso soup, something and some other more, and beer. We chat, and sit, the mother, cheerful and full of energy despite, I am told, fifty years ago having suffered nuclear afteraffects, offers more food and a powerful kind of presence, the word genki suffices more than English words I can offer; genki, meaning literally something like root-feeling (I think), strength, robust, stout, happy, healthy, as such I've always thought of it more with regard to a Samurai than a Shibuya girl. I'm tired, and I'm offered a futon and a room to sleep in.

The first day of my trip around western Japan had finished, though Hiroshima was the travelling impulse, the rest comes along varied and amusing, worthwhile: 8.5 days on the cheap wander in Japan. And for lack of time, some highlights and photos:

Shikoku: visiting old friends and for the first time, surfing in the Ocean, the great pacific Ocean.
Shinkansen: another first, taking the shinkansen, and not only, but as the song went, I took the bullet train to Osaka and fulfilled a life-long dream.
Osaka: enjoyed a variety of okonmiyaki though with veg, and wandered around the city gaining a new appreciation for Tokyo.
Horyuji (1): walking through the nighttime town avoiding scary cemetaries to camp outside the temple grounds and awake to the sounds of bells and tour groups.
Horyuji (2): the temple, though mostly the museum, the home of beautiful buddhist art and statuary.
Nara: todaiji and the massive buddha; massive.

Tokyo: back home with renwed like of the city, though it's worn off by now. haha. Need another trip.