JAPAN

Perhaps one thing that I most regret about my experiences in Japan was that I never kept a travelogue. Never. When I lived there, I figured that I'd remember my best experiences, and the times I traveled there, I was just too damn lazy to write. (Damn, Karen, if you ever want to be a travel writer, you better get on the ball!). So this here is just an incoherent collection of memories.

Arriving in Japan for the first time was perhaps one of the the most exciting experiences of my life. As United Airlines flight 809 approached the spankin' new Kansai International Airport, there it was, Japan sprawled out right in front of me. Nothing can describe the excitement of studying a language and culture for years, and then seeing the land that you have studied right in front of you, knowing that soon you will have be a part of it.

And the excitement of speaking Japanese in Japan for the very first time was unmatched. I wasn't speaking Japanese to Sensei anymore. These people were really Japanese and living in Japan. I could not rely on the fact that they knew English. I could not make stupid grammar mistakes and expect to be understood. I needed to go out there and give it my all. My first Japanese in Japan: toire wa doko desuka?, where is the toilet? But it wasn't what I had said. It was that I had said something in Japanese, in Japan, and I was understood!

The ride from the airport to Hirakata-shi was a bit disappointing. I had a slightly romanticized vision of Japan: a green, hilly nation with dramatic contrests between the coast and the hills, each hill, each cliff having its own Shinto shrine. Instead I saw the endless industry of Sakai-shi, the ugliness of the massive concrete structures in Osaka, and the smog filled air. But reading the Kanji on the buildings prooved to be a challenge for me -- a good challenge.

Slowly I realized that I had until December to find my Japan. If I wanted to see the shrines and temples, I'd have to seek them out. If I wanted to hike along the dramatic coastline, I could find my way there. Japan was my new frontier for the next few months, and I pledged to take full advantage of it.

Ahhh...Tokyo the world's largest city. Some say that Tokyo sprawls from Yokohama into the Alps of Central Honshu.

Soon after my arrival in Japan, I decided that I needed to go to Tokyo. I needed to hear Tokyo-ben (Tokyo dialect, standard Japanese) spoken. I needed to see this city that is so written about, where the streets have no names, where the contrast of the sparkling Ginza and the backalleys somehow collide. A city where the population is packed into such a small area that the need to build upwards is absolutely necessary.

Lucky for me, I had good friends who lived in Tokyo. The Sango family invited me to stay with them. Masayo Sango promised to show me the sites of Tokyo.

I could hardly wait. I bought my shinkansen ticket and was ready to go. Going to Tokyo was exciting enough, but riding the famed Japanese bullet train made me ache with impatience and joyful apprehension. On the date of my departure, I woke up sick. I mean sick. Later I had found out that I somehow contracted food poisioning. But nothing was going to keep me from going to Tokyo. Needless to say, I saw the restroom of the Shinkansen more than I saw the scenery as we wizzed by. I was sick. Very sick.

As the train got nearer to Tokyo, I forced myself to keep from throwing up so that I could stay in my seat (by the a window) and watch. I had no idea when we actually entered Tokyo proper because it is true that the entire route from Kyoto (where I departed from) to Tokyo is urbanized. It was also too dark (or I was too sick) to see Mt. Fuji.

"Momonaku, Tokyo-eki..." the automated announcement said. I looked out the window. There was Tokyo, the capital of Japan, the city that was completely rebuilt after the war. The bullet train slowly came to a stop. I got out. Masayo was waiting for me. She greeted me and asked how I was doing. Sick. Quite ill. I was honest with her. Since she was so worried, she changed her plans of showing me Meiji-jingu that evening and took me back to her house. Good thing because I promptly threw up. more on Tokyo coming soon...

After my first trip to Hiroshima, I knew that I was impacted for life. The horrors of a nuclear holocaust angered me more than almost any other episode of human history. The strength that the victims showed was amazing. And seeing, over 50 years later, people who were still scarred for life due to that one day in August of 1945, touched me. I was moved to tears by the ones who were not lucky enough (or maybe, in the most horrific case scenerio, lucky to die) to survive, especially the children. As an American, I wanted to show my sympathy. I wanted to bridge any remaining gaps between Japanese and Americans. I wanted to make a difference.

One night, a few weeks after I had returned from Hiroshima, I had an idea. Sourrounding the Childrens' Memorial are millions of origami cranes which symbolize peace. Maybe, just maybe, with the help of my friends, I could make 1,000 paper cranes (1,000 is a significant number because Sadako, a girl who died of leukemia due to the bomb, tried to make 1,000 cranes, believing that she would get well. She only got to about 650 before she died.) to place by the memorial and to give to the people of Hiroshima. Big problem number one: origami is not my forte. I couldn't make a crane for the life of me. But, with a lot of patience, and heaps of help from my art major friend Maria, I learned to make an origami crane. My initial ones were quite deformed. Some had two heads, or no head at all! There were a lot of steps that I, quite honestly, sucked at. But, I didn't give up. Crane making became my hobby.

Soon after I begun my project, I set a date to go to Hiroshima. Being a busy woman, I knew that 1,000 cranes would be impossible to make. So I employed my friends both in Japan and back home. I sent an e-mail to everyone I knew, begging them to send me cranes. I received 5 from my friend Kristin. My two best friends in Japan, Heather and Maria, were happy to help me. And as I continued to make cranes, I noticed my progress. No longer did i have cranes with tow heads, no beaks, and uneven wings. My cranes got better and better. And I became more and more motivated.

The night before I left for Hiroshima, I just couldn't make any more. My hands felt like they were ready to fall off. I had paper cuts everywhere. I sadly gazed at my bag o' cranes. Definitly NOT 1,000. I became angry with my friends and family back home. Didn't they realize how importat this was to me? Couldn't they have just sent me a few cranes each? I had to stop. I felt cranky and weak. Plus, I had to be at Hirakata-shi eki (the nearest train station) at 6am in order to be on the Shinkansen from Osaka by 7am. Reluctantly, I did a final crane count. 372. Not even halfway to my goal of 1,000. I thought, how abiut a nice even 400? So I continued to work. At midnight I needed to crash. I counted the additional cranes. Damn! I only had 387! So yet again, I lowered my goal to 390. I made 3 more cranes, had Maria take pictures of me and the cranes, and crashed.

The next morning, I felt new. I didn't even grumble when my alarm went off before the sun came up. And I managed to have a decent (as decent as my Japanese can be at 5:45am) conversation with the cab driver who took me to the station. I was going back to Hiroshima and NOTHING could piss me off. I felt like Santy Clause with my big clear garbage bag of cranes.

At Shin-Osaka (Osaka's shinkansen depot) I danced on the platform waiting for my train to come.

On the train I slept, only to be awoken by "momonaku Hiroshima eki" I excitedly collected my bags and watched the train pull into Hiroshima station.

I boarded a tram bound for the Peace Park and the Genbaku Doomu (A-Bomb dome). On the tram, I talked to an elderly woman who had such a strong Hiroshima accent, I had to listen extra carefully. She asked what I was doing, and I (in my lameass Japanese) explained that I was delivering 390 cranes to the Children's Memorial. A certain sense of gratitude appeared on her face. It felt good.

I walked through the park somberly. Hiroshima evokes that. I had my cranes in one hand, my backpack on my back, and my camera around my neck. Approaching the Children's Memorial, I wondered if there was something I should say. I am NOT a religious person, so therefore I didn't know if I should be saying something to any god, or to Buddha.

I carefully took the sack o' cranes out of the shopping bag I had stuffed them in. Then, I found a perfect spot to place them on. I put them down. They looked so amazing with the millions of other cranes. Not really knowing what to say, I muttered "wasurenai" -- I won't forget. I stared at my cranes and took a few pictures of my cranes among the others. Everything was so beautiful. I walked away teary eyed, not because I didn't have 1,000 cranes, but because I knew that I did something small to make a difference. I will never forget my visits to Hiroshima. And I will be actively involved in trying to put an end to all nuclear weapons. We don't need another Hiroshima or another Nagasaki.

Please note: My thoughts about Hiroshima were taken directly from a travel journal that I kept while I was there.

For a LOT more about Japan, be sure to check out my April 2001 travel journal (warning: sometimes takes a while to load. for plain text, click here.)

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