Fresh off the Boat

After hitting temples and wandering the shopping streets of Matsuyama, I was ready to take my last ferry across to Hiroshima.  Usually being a resident foreigner works against you - we can't get the #-day JR rails passes, for example - but when I got to the port I was pleasantly surprised to get my ferry ticket to Hiroshima for almost half the price.  I cringed when she flipped my passport to the back where my visa was, but she gave me the foreign price anyway, and pretty soon I was sitting in comfort looking out over the open sea.  Of all the forms of transport I've used during this trip, I think the ferry was my favorite, leisurely floating over the water, up on the deck where you can feel the wind, or seated inside on a couch at a table.  This time, I worked most of the journey in my sketchbook.

I hopped my first streetcar right after getting off the boat.  This is a big thing in Hiroshima - they have all sorts of old streetcars, which they buy off other cities.  It's kind of like a moving museum.  I was glad I got on at the first stop; by the time I hopped off it was so crowded I had to body check a few people to get off, and I was right next to the door.

I scanned the area close to my AirBnB for restaurants while I was on the ferry, and found a Turkish place, at which I arrived perfectly in time for dinner.  Probably I'm a heathen for not looking for a good Japanese restaurant.  Hiroshima is famous for their okonomiyaki, and I made sure to eat some the following evening before getting on the Willer Bus back to Tokyo.  But I love Turkish food and I owe a lot to the Turkish community in Japan, since they're sort of the reason I have a job, so I ate at Karsiyaka.

After stuffing my face with iskander kebab and hummus (I stopped short of the baklava...barely...) I started walking to my AirBnB, just on the other side of the Peace Park.  I passed an Animate along the way, making a note to come back and check to see if they had any good swag.*  I was feeling giddy - I had one more day of vacation, we'd just been paid - when I came to the river and found myself facing the Atomic Bomb Dome.  I was steps away from ground zero.

The building before me reminded me of the old, crumbling churches you sometimes see in paintings, complete with a churchyard full of tombstones: the rubble from the blast serving as an additional reminder.  One of the things I love about anime is the way it offers us an alternative reality - not just an escape, but a different set of possibilities.  In Naruto - which I reference fairly often but it is just that good - the evil ninjas set out to create a weapon so bad that it will force everyone to make nice (nevermind all of the people they have to kill along the way).  Naruto - who has literally lost everything - manages to come out of his rage and talks to their leader, and convinces him that causing more pain won't bring peace, but rather will just continue a longstanding cycle of revenge and hate.  It's a pivotal moment in the series.

The real world might be a better place if anime was a religion.  Probably a creepier place, too, but although there are at least a couple of things about Japan that drive me crazy, the creep factor is actually negligible.  I feel far less skeezed out by the otaku in Akiba than by the gaijin in Roppongi...but maybe that's because they're my kind of people...

The next morning I got up and went to Miyajima - the temple group with the floating torii.  One of the things I read reminded me to be sure and check the tide table, but ain't nobody got time for 'dat - another typhoon was headed that way, so as soon as I got up I headed out.  I didn't beat the rain, but I hoped it might scare off the tourists.  It didn't, but I think it might have put a dent in them when it started raining in earnest.  Unfortunately, the day before the sole started to separate from the upper on my only pair of kicks, so my enjoyment of the shrine with fewer temples war marred by even squishier feet than at the beginning of the week.

(For the record, I am still wearing those shoes half the time.  It sucks, but they're the only Chucks I've got right now, and I'm too busy - read: distracted - to buy new ones.  I very nearly ordered the Hoozuki No Reitetsu sneakers I found on pre-order at Animate after I got back, but they won't really help me now, not to mention I can paint my own for cheaper and I'll like them much better...)

I sat on the...porch?  Dock???...of the shrine for a while under the eaves of a pavilion painting the torii and watching the tide roll in.  With it came the scent of the sea, the saltiness of things living under the water.  It gave me shelter from raindrops, but when it began to rain in earnest the flood of water creeping along the plank toward the sea pushed me off.  I got up and explored the rest of the area, watching the creepy deer and purchasing a couple more ema for my collection.  And then I went back into Hiroshima. After a week of constant motion, I was pretty much done.  I parked in Starbucks for a while to type, went after that okonomiyaki I was told I had to try (meh.  I liked Osaka's better...), and tried to stay out of the rain while waiting for the Willer Bus to take me back to Shinjuku.  I don't feel like I really did Hiroshima justice, but I think that's okay.  I think it just means I'll have to come back, and I'm totally okay with that.

*I seem to do that with every one I pass.  It's ironic, because Akiba is a straight shot up the Keihin Tohoku line, but I'm my mother's daughter after all, and I can't tell you how many times she dragged us through random Wal*Marts we passed on vacation...

North Question, South Answer

There is a Korean proverb I learned when I was living there my first year: tong mun, seo dap.  The literal translation is, "East question, west answer," and it means that the answer is unrelated to the question.  Looking back, a lot of times I think this describes the relationship between North and South Korea.  Nobody gets it.  Damned if the American media does - I don't.  And what the hell am I going to write that will add anything meaningful to the conversation?  If I were still in Korea, teaching my students about the purposes of writing, the primary purpose of my blogging would be to "entertain," with "inform" serving as a secondary goal.  And most of the entertaining I do comes from gratuitous swearing and the occasional lewd joke.  And as my mother will gladly tell you, North Korea is most certainly not entertaining (unless you are scrolling through Kim Jong-Il Looking at Things), especially when your daughter is working in their backyard. 

Well, I'm not sure what I'm going to write, but I feel like the time has come, especially since I'm doing this ghost posting thing for when I'm in Tibet, and it just so happens that Korea is in the news again.  Government officials are meeting.  The factory in Kaesong (that's in the DMZ) may reopen.  Who knows?  Geumgangsan tours might even resume.

I had my first taste of North Korea in fall of 2004, less than four months after I'd moved there.  The DMZ tour is one thing you must not miss if you're in Seoul.  This is one of those times when you want to live by the mandate, "Don't be a dumbass."  When they bring you to the middle of the Joint-Security Area (or JSA, which is a fantastic movie if you get the chance to watch it), the American officers escorting you (if you are on the USO's tour) warn you not to point at the North Koreans.  Not to make faces at the North Koreans.  Don't do anything to provoke them in any way, because they have orders to shoot you if they feel it is warranted.  Straddling no-man's land is a blue building in which talks used to happen in the good old days, when Kim, Jr. played the carrot-and-stick game like a boss.  Inside this building you can cross over and actually be on the North Korean side.  The South Korean soldiers are constantly at attention, holding a tae-kwon-do ready pose.  The air is thick with tension.

You get to see other things besides the JSA on the tour, though.  The bridge of no return is one of them.  According to our guide, this was the route that families took to switch sides as the war was finally coming to an end, and once you crossed over, there was no looking back.  Reunification is always held up as an ideal, is mentioned from time to time, but as time passes, I think it becomes less and less likely.  Not only would it cripple the South's economy to be rejoined with the North, but the rising generation does not have the emotional ties to the North that their parents and grandparents had; they are simply not as invested in the idea.

And since Kim, Jr's death in 2011, the atmosphere has taken a turn for the worse.  Projects like the railway to link the two countries seem hopelessly naive.  I was on the bus from Incheon into Seoul the first time I realized Kim Jong-Il had died; the tv was flashing his picture, a lot of Korean, and dates.  There wasn't a huge celebration or anything, but there was a slight feeling of hope.

For sure he was not the best neighbor, but the South never took his posturing as seriously as America did.  In the summer of 2006 the North launched its first missile test during the time that I was there.  The following weekend, Bronte, Curly Sue, and I visited - with only a little trepidation on the part of our Dark Lord and Master, and no trepidation at all from my mother, as I put this under the heading, "Things My Mom Will Needlessly Worry Over if She Knows About Before They Happen" - Geumgangsan, the "diamond mountain" where Hyundai Asan had established a tourist area (read: paid a crapload of money to Kim, Jr's government so Koreans from the South could visit).  Partly this was because the mountain has cultural significance to both sides of the peninsula - it has its own proverb, Geumgangsan do ku gyeong, or "Even Diamond Mountain should be seen after eating."  Partly it came from the philanthropic notion that family reunions could be held here, although I'm not sure that they ever were.

As with the DMZ, Geumgangsan came with warnings.  Do not so much as take your camera out of your bag while crossing the border.  There are North Korean soldiers stationed every - what, 100 meters? - to watch the convoy of tourist buses as you pass impoverished villages.  They don't want photos of children playing in the dirt, or the farmers working the fields by hand just as their great-grandparents did being published.  If they see a camera, they will stop the convoy and search the bus, to make sure no such pictures get taken.  We were told not to speak Korean.  At all.  Partly this is so non-native speakers don't cause a linguistic clusterfudge...Korean is a hierarchical language, and you can insult someone by not saying "-yo" when you're supposed to, or saying it when you're not.  We were told not to speak either Kims' names, since there was no way for the North Koreans surrounding us to know what the context was, since we were dutifully not speaking Korean.  Finally, we were instructed to give the military installment we came near at one point a wide berth.  Two years after our trip, the seriousness of this rule was made clear when a South Korean woman was shot after entering the military area.  Supposedly she was warned to stop and go back before she was killed; who knows if that is the truth, as a request for a joint inquiry by the South was denied.  Regardless, please see mandate #1: Don't.  Be.  A Dumbass!

Once you are at the resort, you're allowed to take all the photos you like.  Provided you don't give your camera to a friend, which is what I did...these last four are actually Curly Sue's photos, taken on my camera, while Bronte and I were exploring at a more sedate pace...aka, visiting the bathhouse.  Hitting the jjimjjilbang continues to be one of my favorite things to do in Korea, and the North is no different.  The Oncheonjang hot spring's waters are piped into the baths, which are sparkling clean.  Did it cure all my ills?  Well, no - I was 26 and as fit as I've ever been back then, and I didn't have a whole lot of ills to speak of.  It sure did feel good, though.  There was also a performance by the Moranbong Acrobatic Troupe,  and let me tell you, if anyone can do these things like the Chinese, it's their North Korean neighbors.  That night we went to a North Korean restaurant for dinner.  In Shanghai, I always liked to laugh at the so-called North Korean restaurants.  Just because you've got waitresses in hanbok serving bibimbap doesn't mean you're North Korean.  However, I have a feeling the restaurant IN Geumgangsan was a little more authentic.  We were served wild boar on a grill.  The skin of the meat still had bristles on it.  Curly Sue and Bronte I think both refused to eat it.  I tried some, and it tasted gamey, but was otherwise good.

One last thought I just remembered - our makeshift passport.  Curly Sue here is modeling the neckwear we were to have on at all times.  Rather than stamping our passports when we went through at immigration, we had identification cards that were stamped in lieu of it.  I was never entirely clear on why that was - possibly to save us some grief coming back into our home countries - but we had to present it on arrival and departure, and woe unto the person who lost it or got it wet.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned before, tours to Geumgangsan have been defunct for several years.  If you're really interested in visiting North Korea, try checking out Time Travel Turtle's blog.  And with that, I must go finish packing - it is creeping up on one in the morning and I fly out in about nine hours.  See you soon with tales from the roof of the world.