The Fall Field Trip was so much fun.  We all met at Kyoto Station early in the morning on Thursday to bus to our first destination.  After about two hours of driving, we made a stop at this tiny little town called Bizen, I think.

This town is famous, or at least known by some, for its pottery.  Apparently they use a kind of clay that is only found around that town, and the techniques they use to fire this clay does result in some very beautiful pottery.  Unfortunately, that gives them the excuse to make it super expensive to buy.  I ended up buying a little hashioki, a chopstick stand, for 300 yen.

After a stop there, we headed to first actual destination, which was a town called Kurashiki.  Kurashiki has a beautiful old section of town, which we spent our time in.  We walked from the bus to a restaurant that was housed by a very old building.  We went up to the second floor where a meal was already set out for us and we started eating.  The meal was of a traditional Japanese style, which meant fish and seafood, some more stuff of the fish variety, some miso soup, rice, and there was probably some pickled vegetables.  It was very beautiful, and most of it was very good.

After lunch we were free to roam around Kurashiki until it was time to go.  Friends and I started wandering and made our way to an old toy museum.  It consisted of tons of different kinds of dolls and figurines and stuff, in addition to masks, a couple of kites, some tops, and other things of that variety.

After the toy museum, we headed over to a garden which was supposed to be very pretty, and on the way we found…a Totoro shop.  That’s right, a shop devoted almost entirely to Totoro, with a couple other things from other Miyazaki films.  As is the case with every piece of Totoro merchandise, all of it was exceedingly expensive, but I did end up buying a fantastic Totoro charm for my cell phone.

The garden was pretty, we walked around some more, got some shaved peach ice from a very nice man who gave us cookies as well, and I ended up checking out the shrine nearby, which surprised me, actually.  The shrine was up on a hill, so it had a bunch of steps you had to climb up, you know, that old anime trope.  The shrine itself had a main hall, which was pretty, as they always are, and the first thing I found cool was in a building off to the side.

This particular building had a great view over the city, but in the roof it had a kind of Chinese Zodiac clock, which had an arrow pointing at which year of the zodiac it currently was.  Past the left side of the main building were some sacred rocks, and a smaller shrine dedicated to…something, but right next to that shrine were a bunch of tiny figurines of cats and buddhas and stuff which were really cool.  On the other side of the main hall was a Noh stage, and acouple other smaller shrines, one of which looked to be devoted to foxes, the other Daruma dolls.  Finally, in front of the main hall was a basket filled with chestnuts or acorns, one of the two, which had been falling from trees around me on the way up to the shrine.  I was unsure of the reason for this collection basket of nuts, so I took a picture which I hope to show to a sensei and see if they know the reason for it.

After the shrine I had to hurry back to the bus because we had to make our way to our hotel for the night.  The hotel was a ways away, but it was a very nice, Japanese-style hotel.  We got up to our rooms and took our shoes off at the genkan (the Japanese style entrance-way where you take off your shoes then step up into the house), and walked into our room.  The floors were tatami and in the middle of the room was a low table with floor chairs around it.  What I mean by floor chairs are those things that sit on the floor but have backs so you can sit on the floor and sit back at the same time.  Right after we got there, a hotel attendant came in and made us some tea and we sat down and relaxed and talked.  It was some serious treatment.

We had time before dinner, so some of us went to the ofuro on the roof.  It was an open air ofuro, and our hotel looked out on a bridge and some islands and mountains and rivers and it was a rather stunning view, and it was made better by the ofuro.  After sunset we got out and joined some other AKPeople outside on the roof.  I didn’t want to dry my hair so I figured out how to wrap my hair up with a towel and went outside like that, much to the amusement of the women present.

Dinner was amazing.  Japanese hotels provide with your own Yukata that you can wear around the hotel so you can relax, so, wearing a yukata (which are awesome) and some pants underneath that (crossing your legs tends to expose your pelvis, so no pants equals a good clean view of your underwear), we all sat down to a Japanese style dinner.  The way Japanese style dinners work is that you start out with some plates of food that are already on your tray (I’m not talking school cafeteria trays, I’m talking lacquerware trays, nice stuff), and as you eat and finish different plates of food, waitresses come and remove the plates that are empty of food and put down more food.  It’s not an endless supply of food, but there are a staggering amount of courses.

The meal included fish, seafood, various forms of egg, rice, and pickled vegetables, so similar to lunch, but much bigger and fancier.  The sashimi was very good, as was some of the cooked fish and some of the other seafood, but some of the dishes were somewhat strange.  There’s a way of preparing egg which involves barely cooking it (or so it seemed) and putting it in some kind of clear liquid which is maybe a little sweet or a little salty, one of the two depending on if it’s breakfast or dinner.  At either rate, it’s a little strange, as were some of the other dishes.  I ended up eating most of what was put before me, but not everything.

After dinner I hung out with some people, went to a small taiko performance which was definitely aimed at people in their 60s and above (but it also had people performing in blacklight demon masks, so that was cool), and talked with some people some more.

The next morning was an early start (7:30) and was kicked off by a Japanese style breakfast.  Japanese style breakfasts consist of some of the same things as Japanese style dinners: cooked fish, some egg stuff, maybe a salad, miso soup and rice.  Some of it was unmanageable that early in the morning, but some of it was ok.

We departed around 9 and made our way to Hiroshima.  Hiroshima was an experience.  A group of friends and I decided to do the museum first so we could eat afterward and feel a bit better.  The museum was kind of what I was expecting, with a lot of information about Hiroshima’s history as a military city and its role in the second world war.  Then it segued into information about the dropping of the bomb and the decision making process of dropping the bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  All of this information was presented in an almost statistical fashion, with glimpses of semantics here and there.

The museum continued on to talk about recovery and issues with radiation poisoning, the after effects, rebuilding, and other efforts related to the hibakusha, the word for survivors of the bombing.  Then there was a section about nuclear weapons, their destructive capability and the importance of nuclear disarmament.  Despite the very logical form of presentation, it did make my throat and eyes kind of dry; it’s not that it was hard to read and absorb this info, it just had an impact on me.

Then came the second part of the museum, which was filled with relics from the bombing, like watches stopped at the exact time the bomb went off, plastic replicas of people with their skin melting off and their torsos burned, trying to walk among burning buildings.  There was a piece of a building with a shadow burned into it and a silhouette burned into it as well from the place where someone was sitting.  After a number of these relics I started moving more quickly through the museum because I couldn’t really absorb any more, not because I would have broken down, but because after a certain point the message is really driven home and you don’t need to see any more.

The museum ends with you emerging into a hallway with paintings by hibakusha and a view of the Hiroshima dome; a building in Hiroshima that was extremely close to the hypocenter of the blast, and yet whose frame managed to remain standing.

After the museum, we walked towards a part of HIroshima that is supposed to have a lot of Okonomiyaki places (Hiroshima is apparently famous for its version of Okonomiyaki).  We got some okonomiyaki and were all a bit more lively and happy when we were walking back through the shopping arcade toward the museum.  Why were we going back to the museum?  Because the last thing we did in Hiroshima was listen to a speech given by a hibakusha.

We were escorted to a room in the basement of the museum, and an old woman walked up to the front of the room with our Resident Director, who introduced her.  I can’t remember her name, I regret to say, but I remember what she looked like very well.  To all intents and purposes she looked more or less like any other person her age.  She was slightly bent over, but this is not out of the ordinary because some women and men of that age are bent at a permanent right angle after having worked in rice fields their entire life.  The first thing that stuck out to me was that she shook a little bit in her movements, and that her pink fingers were constantly partially clenched.

She has been giving these talks for a long time and has learned how to give her presentation in English, which is how we listened to it.  Listening to her story was very powerful, for obvious reasons.  She described how her family came to live in Hiroshima, where she was at the time of the blast (under 1.5 kilometers away from the hypocenter, everyone with 1 kilometer apparently died instantly; she was lucky), and her experience afterward.  It’s a miracle she survived as she was one of the ones whose skin had melted off partially.

Her story illustrated better than anything else the horror of the bombing, but it wasn’t just her story that made this experience so powerful.  After the talk, when we were saying our goodbyes, she had a smile on her face and was genuinely happy to have been able to talk to us and to see us.  She held no resentment towards Americans and seemed very happy to be have the opportunity to spread her message and talk to people.  It was seeing her so happy that really struck me.

I think this particular hibakusha, I can’t speak about others, but this particular one is a great example of so many aspects of our species.  Her pain is a product of the terrible things that humans can do to each other and our ignorance as to our capabilities of hurting others, but she is also a testament, I believe, to the astounding resilience that we’re capable of.  Despite everything she went through, she is able to forgive what happened, is able to live on and do something that makes her happy.  I feel like you so rarely get to meet someone who has endured as much as these hibakusha have, and the fact that some of them are capable of forgiveness and are able to live happily is truly amazing.

After we said goodbye to the hibakusha we got on the bus and headed to Miyajima, where we would be staying for the night and for the rest of our field trip.  We got off the bus after a short ride and took a ferry over to Miyajima, which is an island.  Miyajima is famous for the torii that is out in the water.  As we rode over we could see the torii illuminated in the dark and it was quite picturesque.  When we arrived on the island we took a large van to the hotel where we would be staying.

Shortly after arriving and receiving similar treatment (tea and such), it was time for dinner.  Dinner was very similar in character to the previous night’s dinner and I ate less than I had the previous meals (you get tired of seafood and fish pretty quickly.  After dinner I went to the ofuro.  This hotel also had an open-air ofuro, but it was not of the roof, it was just in a tiny courtyard, and the courtyard was split in half: one half was the men’s ofuro, the other was the women’s.  The wall in between the two halves was very intricately interwoven planks of wood or bamboo so you couldn’t see to the other side.  Instead of living out that stupid anime trope of trying to peek at the girls (some AKP women were bathing the same time as us), I put on my best old spice man accent and said “Hello ladies.  This is the old spice man wishing you a happy time in Japan.  I’ve got to go now; I have to massage the president’s feet.”  It’s the best thing I could think up on the spot.

After the ofuro I hung out with some friends and played a silly game until one of the residents of the room I was in got sleepy.  I went back to my room and got ready to sleep, and eventually did.  By the way, I had some weird-ass dreams during the trip.  I can’t remember all the details, but they were very intricate and the fact that I remembered them so well the morning after was strange.

The next morning wasn’t as early, and was another Japanese breakfast (ugh).  I ate maybe half of the food in front of me, not being able to manage a bunch of stuff on my tray, and excused myself.  It was raining most of the morning, so I set out, accompanied by only one other friend, and went to itsukushima shrine.  Itsukushima shrine is a shrine that was built on the water, so at high tide the water comes up to the floor.  We went right before high tide, and considering that it was also raining at the time, I got some really good pictures.  It’s a very beautiful shrine, mostly because of the whole “built in the water” aspect.  One really cool thing about the shrine is that the water got so high that it started coming up between the floor boards and started flooding the shrine.  The important part of the shrine are built high enough that water can’t get to them and damage anything important, so it was just really cool to see the water start to come up between the floorboards.

We left just as the flooding got too intense.  We checked out a temple next to Itsukushima, then I went to the shopping arcade in town.  After roaming a bit I found another shrine on a hill with some steps that looked deadly, because they were wet and there was no guardrail.  The shrine had a great view of the city though.  I met up with more friends for lunch and we headed back to the hotel around 1.

From the hotel we were driven to a place where we made our own Manjyuu.  Miyajima is also famous for its Mamiji Manjyuu (I think that’s what it’s called)  which is a kind of cake like substance shaped like a maple leaf with various things inside like red-bean paste or chocolate or other things.  It was lots of fun making our own, since we got to grease the mold, pour in the batter, put in the anko (red-bean paste), close it, slide the thing over the fire, cook it, etc.  It was lots of fun, and we also made chocolate manjyuu which are soooo goooood when they’re fresh and gooey and agh.  It was a lot of fun, pretty cheap, and delicious.

That concluded our adventures, and after making our manjyuu we got on the ferry back, got on the bus on the other side and headed back to Kyoto, with stops for the bathroom and food.

I had a lot of fun: we got to see a lot of cool stuff, got to be tourists, got to eat some good food, got to think, had many silly times with friends, and I got some of them hooked on the Dresden Files >:3  Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to catch up on some things, then pass out.

~Shimon