My last week or so in Japan was spent gloriously. I lazed in the sunshine and peace of the forested hills of Okayama, breathed in the enormity of Hiroshima, and finally found myself besotted with Japan's lesser-loved city of Osaka.
My roommate from Niseko, Polly, had been telling me all winter about her home away from home at the Arts and Crafts Village hiding high in the rural hills of Okayama. Always keen to explore new mountains and forests, I eagerly accepted an invitation to visit (actually may have just invited myself) and spent a lovely few days catching up with Poll-chan and experiencing rural Japanese life. Poll's host mum Toyomi-san is a force of artistic skill- her weaving room is a feast for the eyes of home-dyed and spun wools, with sewing patterns clipped to the walls and looms sitting in the sunlight just waiting for her skilled fingers to pluck and ply. The Arts and Crafts village is in an old primary school building- the kitchen gas fittings are old bunsen burner taps, the benches all run at about knee height (Japanese kids are small!), the ceilings high and the windows too. Poll has made her home in the cafe, and with a piano and guitar loitering in there I made it my home too. We explored the abandoned houses nearby (a sad fact of Japanese rural living- the younger generation are fleeing to the cities, and houses passing from parents to absent children quickly fall into disrepair), made home-made vegan tempura from pond weed, passed many an hour sitting in the intermittent sunshine and shade created by a sakura-heavy tree swaying in the wind, and just generally had a lovely, lovely time.
We tempered all this lovely, loveliness by a day trip to Hiroshima- a city everyone knows for the atomic bomb dropped on it to end World War II. To prepare ourselves for a hard afternoon we spent the morning on nearby Miyajima Island, famed for its huge torii gate sitting out in the bay. This also gave us a more real sense of the size of Hiroshima, so later when we were at the museum the extent of the destruction wrought by the bomb was slightly more comprehensible, and even more horrible. I still remember learning of Hiroshima as a girl, and being gob-smacked by the atrocities we commit against each other. The most moving part for me was the display of the origami cranes folded by Sadako- a true story of a young girl who develops leukaemia after the bombing, who hopes that folding a thousand paper cranes will grant her wish to get well. It doesn't, and this heart-breaking story inspired her classmates and children around the world to fold cranes as a memorial- to this day, thousands upon thousands of cranes are sent to the Peace Museum every year. Sadako's cranes were painstakingly tiny and perfect, often folded on the cellophane sweets are wrapped in when she had nothing else. Her statue and the display cases filled with cranes folded by others was both heartening and heart-breaking.
My departure from Japan was swiftly drawing near- Polly left me at the station to clamber onto a single car train to take me from the mountains of Okayama to a bus and on to Osaka. Osaka had gotten a pretty bad rap from most people I'd chatted to about it- lacking the history of Tokyo and Kyoto, it is just another city with nothing really to do. With this in mind I'd allowed myself only two days and a single night, and imagined that after that I'd be glad to pop on off back to Aus. How surprising then, that this was absolutely not the case.
I had a genuinely great time in Japan. The snow of Hokkaido and the bustle of backpacking afterwards was enriching and just plain fun. But I'll admit readily that I never felt my heart sit up and say- 'Hey! I could spent a while here... Pick me up later!' In my time in both Russia and China, my heart did sit up and say that- so ardently in fact, that I have left little parts of it loitering there and waiting to be recollected (you try ripping your soul away from somewhere once it has gone all limpet-mode on you). Japan is fun, and fine, and interesting, and cool, and the language also- but I never felt that ache of wanting to throw myself into the culture and country in any and all ways possible. Some of my best friends from my time there did have that feeling, and I observed them with envy as they waxed lyrical on Japanese culture and language and did-you-knows and isn't-it-amazings. Because I know that feeling- but I just didn't have it for Japan. Until, that is, Osaka. Oh Osaka. Raw, gritty, dirty, sprawling Osaka.
Osaka is certainly an Asian city. Seems like an obvious statement, but if you remember my sentiment in Tokyo you'll understand what I mean. Osaka is dirty, and smelly at times, and busy, and teeming with Stuff Happening. I arrived late on a Sunday afternoon, and with a vegan restaurant's address in hand I begun my general wanderings-in-the-direction-vaguely-well-sort-of to fill the hours before dinner. Bored quickly of a main road chocked with Louis Vuitton and Gucci, I cut off into the humming backstreets, with their graffitied vending machines (shock!) and their litter (horror!). One said street had thumping dance music from every shop, the bass vibrating through the pavement and infecting me with oh-maybe-I-could-find-a-nightclub-later-and-dance-dance-dance, before culminating in a square with a huge screen playing a Japanese DJ set and people dancing in the street. Fashion was edgy, the music was edgy, and in the sunset it all felt very surreal and darn cool. After dinner I found the famous food streets, with absolutely huge fake foods looming from the second stories of restaurants with queues upon queues outside, people everywhere, and the most amazing smells. (Also sometimes super not amazing smells. Vegan sensitivities strike again). I wandered along a canal flanked by huge neon signs, enjoying the flickering glow and the party barges rolling past (at comically glacial pace), found myself in an entire street of 'love hotels' (lushly themed rooms you can rent by the hour) and desperately didn't want to leave.
But alas! My time was up. A last visit to the famed Osaka Pokemon Centre (certainly one of my happy places. So. Many. Pikachu) and a last vegan cafe (the server was so excited I had lived in Melbourne, as he too had visited- and brought over his Myki card as proof) before the train journey out to the airport. Just before you reach the airport the train crosses a huge body of water- maybe a bay, or river, I'm not sure- but wow, it was breathtaking. And with the final rays of a setting sun glimmering across the flat flat water, a fitting sight to end my time in the land of the rising sun.
My roommate from Niseko, Polly, had been telling me all winter about her home away from home at the Arts and Crafts Village hiding high in the rural hills of Okayama. Always keen to explore new mountains and forests, I eagerly accepted an invitation to visit (actually may have just invited myself) and spent a lovely few days catching up with Poll-chan and experiencing rural Japanese life. Poll's host mum Toyomi-san is a force of artistic skill- her weaving room is a feast for the eyes of home-dyed and spun wools, with sewing patterns clipped to the walls and looms sitting in the sunlight just waiting for her skilled fingers to pluck and ply. The Arts and Crafts village is in an old primary school building- the kitchen gas fittings are old bunsen burner taps, the benches all run at about knee height (Japanese kids are small!), the ceilings high and the windows too. Poll has made her home in the cafe, and with a piano and guitar loitering in there I made it my home too. We explored the abandoned houses nearby (a sad fact of Japanese rural living- the younger generation are fleeing to the cities, and houses passing from parents to absent children quickly fall into disrepair), made home-made vegan tempura from pond weed, passed many an hour sitting in the intermittent sunshine and shade created by a sakura-heavy tree swaying in the wind, and just generally had a lovely, lovely time.
We tempered all this lovely, loveliness by a day trip to Hiroshima- a city everyone knows for the atomic bomb dropped on it to end World War II. To prepare ourselves for a hard afternoon we spent the morning on nearby Miyajima Island, famed for its huge torii gate sitting out in the bay. This also gave us a more real sense of the size of Hiroshima, so later when we were at the museum the extent of the destruction wrought by the bomb was slightly more comprehensible, and even more horrible. I still remember learning of Hiroshima as a girl, and being gob-smacked by the atrocities we commit against each other. The most moving part for me was the display of the origami cranes folded by Sadako- a true story of a young girl who develops leukaemia after the bombing, who hopes that folding a thousand paper cranes will grant her wish to get well. It doesn't, and this heart-breaking story inspired her classmates and children around the world to fold cranes as a memorial- to this day, thousands upon thousands of cranes are sent to the Peace Museum every year. Sadako's cranes were painstakingly tiny and perfect, often folded on the cellophane sweets are wrapped in when she had nothing else. Her statue and the display cases filled with cranes folded by others was both heartening and heart-breaking.
My departure from Japan was swiftly drawing near- Polly left me at the station to clamber onto a single car train to take me from the mountains of Okayama to a bus and on to Osaka. Osaka had gotten a pretty bad rap from most people I'd chatted to about it- lacking the history of Tokyo and Kyoto, it is just another city with nothing really to do. With this in mind I'd allowed myself only two days and a single night, and imagined that after that I'd be glad to pop on off back to Aus. How surprising then, that this was absolutely not the case.
I had a genuinely great time in Japan. The snow of Hokkaido and the bustle of backpacking afterwards was enriching and just plain fun. But I'll admit readily that I never felt my heart sit up and say- 'Hey! I could spent a while here... Pick me up later!' In my time in both Russia and China, my heart did sit up and say that- so ardently in fact, that I have left little parts of it loitering there and waiting to be recollected (you try ripping your soul away from somewhere once it has gone all limpet-mode on you). Japan is fun, and fine, and interesting, and cool, and the language also- but I never felt that ache of wanting to throw myself into the culture and country in any and all ways possible. Some of my best friends from my time there did have that feeling, and I observed them with envy as they waxed lyrical on Japanese culture and language and did-you-knows and isn't-it-amazings. Because I know that feeling- but I just didn't have it for Japan. Until, that is, Osaka. Oh Osaka. Raw, gritty, dirty, sprawling Osaka.
Osaka is certainly an Asian city. Seems like an obvious statement, but if you remember my sentiment in Tokyo you'll understand what I mean. Osaka is dirty, and smelly at times, and busy, and teeming with Stuff Happening. I arrived late on a Sunday afternoon, and with a vegan restaurant's address in hand I begun my general wanderings-in-the-direction-vaguely-well-sort-of to fill the hours before dinner. Bored quickly of a main road chocked with Louis Vuitton and Gucci, I cut off into the humming backstreets, with their graffitied vending machines (shock!) and their litter (horror!). One said street had thumping dance music from every shop, the bass vibrating through the pavement and infecting me with oh-maybe-I-could-find-a-nightclub-later-and-dance-dance-dance, before culminating in a square with a huge screen playing a Japanese DJ set and people dancing in the street. Fashion was edgy, the music was edgy, and in the sunset it all felt very surreal and darn cool. After dinner I found the famous food streets, with absolutely huge fake foods looming from the second stories of restaurants with queues upon queues outside, people everywhere, and the most amazing smells. (Also sometimes super not amazing smells. Vegan sensitivities strike again). I wandered along a canal flanked by huge neon signs, enjoying the flickering glow and the party barges rolling past (at comically glacial pace), found myself in an entire street of 'love hotels' (lushly themed rooms you can rent by the hour) and desperately didn't want to leave.
But alas! My time was up. A last visit to the famed Osaka Pokemon Centre (certainly one of my happy places. So. Many. Pikachu) and a last vegan cafe (the server was so excited I had lived in Melbourne, as he too had visited- and brought over his Myki card as proof) before the train journey out to the airport. Just before you reach the airport the train crosses a huge body of water- maybe a bay, or river, I'm not sure- but wow, it was breathtaking. And with the final rays of a setting sun glimmering across the flat flat water, a fitting sight to end my time in the land of the rising sun.
