It is an atomic bomb. It is a harnessing of the basic power of the universe. The force from which the sun draws its power has been loosed against those who brought war to the Far East. – President Truman, announcement on Hiroshima

Japan has a sea with no waves, where only narrow connections to the vast Pacific add salt and stop us calling it a lake. It’s an enchanting place, the distinctive shape of the islands a familiar romantic myth from much Japanese art. Rosemary and I spent much of last week travelling from Kansai along the north coast of the sea to Hiroshima and back. This picture is taken from a hillside temple at the fishing port of Tomo no Ura; it gives a good feel for the dramatic but cosy views across the sea in the sun. Even better was the Sete Ohashi bridge which we crossed on a day trip to Takamatsu. It was a dreadful foggy day, and all we could see from the train was white mist with peaks of the islands coming in and out of view. Only seeing the tops made them all the more mystical in shape.

It’s tricky to go to Hiroshima without visiting the peace park and museum there, if only to try and convince your brain that this thriving city really was wiped out less than 60 years ago. I spent several hours looking at models of the city before and after the first atom bomb strike, reading to what degree and at what range buildings were destroyed by the heat blast, and studying in too much detail how people were damaged both with immediate death, and long term radiation sickness in those who went to help the injured. Nevertheless, standing near ground zero in the peaceful sunlight, my senses were unable to believe what my mind knows it once looked like.

I’ve grown up with the existence of atomic bombs, and so hadn’t realised before just what a dramatic, surprising and omnipotent-seeming move their first deployment was. The research project which created the bomb was in secret, and the one test run had taken place only three weeks before, also in secret. For this was the phrase “shock and awe” really made. The Japanese did not know what it was, until they found completely exposed X-ray film in the sealed vault of a hospital. Terrifyingly this bomb is but a mere trifle compared to those with which we are armed today.

The politcally correct question to debate at this point is whether the US was justified in using it. This is besides the point – the functioning of the war machine of a country made its use inevitable. One argument goes that ending the war quickly and with less total loss of life was the motive, but I feel that was just a side issue. More important was to test this new device in real action, and to show the world just how strong the US had become. Would any functioning military, a structure by its very nature designed to kill, surprise, shock and awe, really have missed this opportunity? Was the Rape of Nanking by Japanese occupying forces a few years earlier, which needlessly tortured and killed perhaps the same number of civilians as the bomb, less or more evil for using only conventional technology?

The inevitability of the US using their new device does not justify the action but it does explain it. It shows that in order to stop such things happening again more extreme measures are needed than just protesting “they should never have used it!”. Measures that affect how all wars are fought, and the very motive force of all armies.

The bomb also had a useful geopolitical function, giving Japan to America rather than to Russia, who may have claimed it had the war continued. With those terrifying reds of the USSR and China so close by its defense served the US well during the cold war, and continues to do so. Sometimes as I walk past Starbucks in modern Japanese cities I think of Japan as simply a large US naval base, albeit one with the richest of artistic heritages for its very own.

The astonishingly varied coloured carp in this photo are at Ritsurin-koen in Takamatsu. Their patterns are gorgeously speckled, and I think Frimlin would have had the Rainbow Sharklings in Creatures 3 like that if we could only have provided the engine to do it. Ritsurin-koen is my favourite of the gardens that we’ve seen. All the trees are regimented just enough to make the views from the various higher vantage points stunning, out across lakes and bridges with the wild forested hillside as a canvas behind.

To me, one of the most visible differences walking round Japan compared to England is the types of tree. Even in a humdrum urban place with only international coffee shops nearby the trees still reveal that you’re somewhere oriental. My new favourite sort of tree (not that I had a favourite before!) is the Acer. They have soft-looking foliage with a freshly vital colour in spring. The splendid specimen in the photo below is at Hiroshima, only yards from the epicentre of the first use of nuclear weapons in aggression. So it can’t be more than 60 years old.

I’m now in Kyoto, ancient capital of Japan, and complete overload of temples. Unfortunately you don’t get to see much of the insides of the temples, just darkened views of distant painted screens and laquerware. The temples with active worshippers all require advanced reservations to visit, so no insights into Zen Buddhism. Instead, just as in Myanamar I acquired a taste for Theravadin Buddha statues from Phil, I’m acquiring a taste for Japanese gardens from Rosemary (my mum). The Japanese seem universally excellent at all art forms, and particularly at generating weird and unique new ones. The peculiar list includes tea ceremonies, all over body tattoos (for the yakuza mafia only), and handmade paper as well as more “normal” arts such as lacquerware, flower arranging and video games. Good gardens have been grown in Japan for centuries, and some are maintained to this day.

What’s interesting about gardens? There’s a tension between letting the plants grow in a natural way, and controlling how they grow. At one end of the scale, every gardener does a bit of pruning. Otherwise you don’t have a garden you have a wild forest. On the other hand, the Japanese often carefully manipulate every trunk and branch to be exactly how they like – leaning trees over lakes at previously impossible angles, thinning foliage to create a view past the lower trunks, or creating precise geometrical shapes. This must require years of dedication and care, and a serene sort of patience not so much required when making computer games.

The garden designers do other interesting things, such as incorporate distant hills or buildings into the aesthetics of the garden, or creating viewpoints such that as you stroll new vistas are revealed and hidden round each corner. Then there are Zen gardens, which are quite fun and quite satisfying. These tend to incorporate patterns made out of stones, such as gravel raked in beautiful contours, so the occasional rock looks like it was dropped into a pool of pebbles and the waves frozen.

I’ve spent the last few days touristing, and have now met up with a new travelling companion, my mum. We’re journeying round Japan together for four weeks. I’ve added a couple of pictures to the last few posts, and here are a few more. The photo to the left is of a Buddhist graveyard on Koyasan mountain. People are interred here to await the return of Maitreya, the Buddha of the future, buried in poll position next to one of his mates. The grave stones were different from a Christian cemetery with more curves, spheres and posts. But the feel of the place was still the same, a purpose to respect and mourn the dead.

Himeji Castle is also artistically completely different to a European castle, but in function and technology much the same. As you can see from the picture it looks a lot cosier than medieval Britain, although this impression is partly because the wooden floors and plaster facades have been preserved. The roofs and walls have more beautiful curves and intricate tiling, and the overall shape of the building is more grand and inviting than harsh and brute. However, just the same vicious traps lie within, including holes for pouring boiling oil on invaders, and special wooden egresses for arrows.

Yesterday I went to Nara, site of numerous Buddhist and Shinto temples, but in particular to see one called Todai-Ji which I’d read about two weeks ago in a book on Mahayana Buddhism. Housed inside the largest wooden building in the world is a statue of Vairocana, the cosmic Buddha. I like the original theoretical Buddhism which Buddha taught, but by the time it got as far as Japan it became a bit wild. Vairocana is infinitely vast and free, showering all multiverses with his pure tranquil light, entering all atoms in all lands. There are brass lotus leaves there with pictures of him and his retinue of advanced Bodhisattvas, whom he eminates in order to teach his doctrine, and seven of the universes. If mankind could make this up in only fourteen hundred years (from Buddha’s time around 700 BCE, to when the monastry was built around 700 CE), it no longer surprises me how complex Hinduism and Judaism are.

Nowdays the monastry is a total tourist attraction. I didn’t feel like there were any monks or any genuine worshippers there as I did in many similar places in Myanmar. You can give a donation and then write your wish on a wooden board which gets pinned up. In return for your generosity, some plea is no doubt made to Vairocana to arrange for your wish to be granted. How a form of worship could be more totally against the whole point of Buddhist philosophy is hard for me to imagine. But it’s not really surprising, as without some means of earning money it would never spread. The truthful sects naturally died out.

In the late afternoon I wondered round Nara for a while, and found myself in suburban streets. These were very pleasant, with a few excellent wooden houses, and everything ordered with not a spec out of place. I was in return culture shock, which I’ve been told you get when you return to Europe after a long trip away in developing countries. Nara felt like it could easily be somewhere where I grew up, it all felt familiar, despite the people being ethnically Asian, with an alien language and shops that sold slightly different brands of consumer goods. The only real foreigness is the Japanese shape of the trees.

The main thing is that everything is quiet. There are no people hanging out in the streets or in front of their houses. In shops the whole family isn’t lurking nearby, instead just one sufficient shop keeper. Peoples time isn’t used (wasted?) in that way. Everyone is either at work, or out shopping, or quietly in their home. It was almost a shock whenever I saw somebody actually doing something, like cycling past me, or carrying out some repairs to their building. Memories of the nasty cloying feeling of suburban loneliness came back to me. I longed to be in a hurtling modern city, or to be at a bustling, poverty-stricken market. Or to escape it all and hide in one of the houses with an internet connection and the comfort of electronic strangers.

There are amazing gambling alleys near here (Minami area of Osaka) with countless ball bearings which get shovelled into machines that bounce them round and spit them out again at their own whim. In the morning there were queues outside, the addicts reading comics waiting for it to open so they can get their fix. Another place people were betting at machines in groups round a real, physical electro-magnetic horse race (see picture). Others had chosen a curious automatic roulette-like wheel, or something else a bit like a lottery machine.

I spotted an interesting hybrid of a collectable card game and a football video game. The machine had a flat table where you place the cards for your team members, putting them in defence, midfield and so on. Some electriconic wizardry then detected who each card was, and the player appeared in the computer game. The marketing genius of this is breathtaking.

As I wondered round these gaming alleys, to my surprise I found something that I had to have a go on. There were two typing arcade machines, one of which was Typing of the Dead which I’d played at work a few times. Basically there’s a keyboard, and monsters appear on the screen with words next to them. You type the word in as quick as you can and the monster gets shot with each key stroke and dies. I had a go on the second of the machines, which often featured moving vehicles that you were on the back of so the words would shake about and go in and out of view. I can type very fast, and was disappointed that no audience gathered round me like they would at Creature Labs. All the words are in Japanese, but luckily they print them in roman alphabet letters as well as hiragana. That is until stage eight, which rather unfairly involved a strange scene with cryptic go-go dancers. The words would appear asterisked out, with characters appearing at random so you had to guess what it was before it was completely formed. The unfairness? No romanji. I sat there aghast, shouted out loud “that’s unfair!”, peering at the unfathomable hiragana, pounding the keyboard at random as the ballerinas pirouhetted round and obliterated me with their curious gunfire.

The young professionals staying in the capsule hotel have other sorts of entertainment in the area. At first I was quite excited by the signs for the 24 hour DVD viewing place, with individual private rooms. Cool, I can catch up on exactly the movies I want to see that I’ve missed. Upon closer inspection though they turned out to be not serving that kind of film…

Wow! I’m in a slightly different sort of internet cafe, and not just because it is ten times more expensive than in China. It’s called Kinko’s and is more of a 24 hour business services centre, with photocopiers, binders and large volume printers. The computer I’m on is a Mac, which makes a nice change even though I don’t know the keyboard shortcuts. No new fangled OS X stuff alas, just OS 9. There’s a scanner and about four different sorts of zip/superdrives plugged into it, plus a choice of printers colour or black and white. Your’re even provided with a Merriam Webster thesaurus and a dictionary; yes, physical ones made out of paper. There’s nobody else here using the computers – obviously no Japanese person would be seen dead in such a place. Why bother, when you have a DoCoMo mobile phone with all its services? Give it a few years and there’ll be no public internet access at all and you’ll have to add buying a laptop to the considerable expense of Japanese travel.

Last night I stayed in a capsule hotel (picture shows the block with the glass elevators on whose seventh floor it was housed). A much pleasanter (wow, it’s much pleasanter checking the spelling of pleasanter with a real dictionary, rather than opening up another Window and withstanding the hideous adverts of dictionary.com) experience than I could have imagined. You get a cuboid space which was exactly as long as me, high enough to sit up in and wider than a single bed. It is sealed at one end with a bamboo blind – you can’t lock up your cubical, it is really just a fully enclosed dormitory bed. There’s a TV where I watched the pictures of Saddam’s statue being torn down in Baghdad and tried to understand the full geopolitical implications from snatches of English.

The best bit is that you’re not trapped in your cubical, there are communcal spaces with vending machines (as well as food and drink, everything from t-shirts to an auto-electric massage chair) and arcade games, as well as washing facilities and lockers. Japanese hotels courteously provide you with a night-gown to wear, and all through the night young businessmen were wondering in and out, smoking and watching martial arts movies on the communal TV. It’s a male only place, which makes sense given its intimacy.

Suits are all the rage here, there are numerous magazines entierly dedicated to them. I feel distinctly unstylish, with even people in rougher casual clothes wearing a suit jacket as part of their carefully selected apparel, so they look ruffled and feisty. For once I am completely hidden, camouflaged. Nobody notices me. It’s not exciting to see a white peson, especially when you’re richer than him anyway. It makes me realise how much rough travelling in poor countries is a colonial experience. It’s partly fun because you are the exotic, it makes you feel important for everyone to be surprised and pleased to see you. You tell yourself that you like it because people are friendlier, they have more of a sense of community. But really you like it because you’re rich, you can buy whatever you like or stay as long as you like without having to worry about it.

This is just a more clearer aspect of what is going on anyway, even when you’re not travelling. When you actually go to a developing country and buy things then it is quite clear that they are cheap. However, in the West you are all the time buying and importing things from less wealthy places. And those things are just as cheap. And I constantly ask myself, why are they? What sort of inefficient market it is where the same work is worth more or less based on the geographical location of where it is done?

I’ve finally given up, and bought a plane ticket to Japan. I’m flying from Kunming to Osaka on Wednesday. Some reasons for this action motivated by fear:

1. The Chinese government is protesting too much about how safe China is from SARS. I object to this propaganda, when it is not based on sound detail of the health situation across the country. Every other country with SARS cases at least appears to have announced them in public as soon as it knows about them, and described what measures it is taking to prevent the disease from spreading. China has been covering it up for months, is still covering up the full situation, and is only even talking about it now because of international pressure.
2. Friday’s China Daily mentions in passing that all the cases in 四川 province (Sichuan, Four Rivers) have been cured. Umm, what cases in 四川 province? These haven’t been mentioned until now, and I’ve been reading enough information sources. 四川 is where I was heading next. I’ve guessed for a long time that there must be other cases in the Chinese provinces, it can’t have spread to over 15 other countries in the world, but only to 2 or 3 provinces in China. This is definitive proof, if you needed it, that they are hiding information.
3. I’m not afraid of travelling in a country which has SARS cases. Indeed, there are 14 suspected cases in Japan. However, I want to have confidence that the government is taking action to prevent spread throughout the population. And I want to know which areas are particularly dangerous, so I can avoid them. The Chinese government is not providing this information.
4. A key irrational reason that all this has bothered me more than others is that I’ve been ill for about a week. It’s basically a cold that has gone to my chest and hasn’t gone away. But this has meant that I’ve had nothing much to do except read too much about SARS on the internet. When you’re not well everything seems worse, especially fear of diseases whose symptoms are different but not a million miles away from what you are suffering.
5. I could take a rational decision that it is probably safe, that travelling on buses over Tibetan mountain passes or being in a country that is target of North Korean aggression is much more danegrous. However the irrational fears would still stop me enjoying myself. If I’m spending all my time on trains and at tourist sites with people from all over the country, I’m going to be thinking about SARS rather than living in the now.

I’ve wanted to go to Japan for a long while, but hadn’t planned to arrive for another month or two. So I’m busily reading websites to find out what to do and where to stay in Osaka. Suggestions and tips welcome!

On the first Friday afternoon I was in Kunming, I finished my last class and looked out the window at the alluring mountains on the edge of town. So I hopped on an appropriate looking bus, and went to the end of the line to see what was there.

As you get further out of town, things become that much rougher and less developed. Distinctive kerbed pavements vanish away, replaced by rougher road edges. I got off the bus as near as I could get to the mountain, and explored the local area to see if I could get up for a view. People’s expressions were much bleaker. In town you’re largely ignored; here you are ignored but it is clear and unsurprising that people are a bit suspicious of you.

The landscape was very dramatic, as it include all types. There were agricultural fields and mountains, but also blocks of flats, one or two grand office buildings, and nearby industrial sites. The growing crops were particularly striking in contrast to the otherwise very urban landscape. The local area had different sort of shops than in town. It was back to the rough street markets that you find in SE Asia, and small shops opening onto the road with very limited supplies. But people looked less content, less receptive, there was more tension in the air. Some dogs barked to guard their land.

I walked up a hill, and people were helpful, showing me where there was a toilet outside a local community centre, and selling me an ice cream. I wondered up into a compound around several blocks of flats, and could imagine knowing someone who lived there. It looked a pretty reasonable place to be. I got stuck, and had to backtrack back to the main road and go up a different hill where there were fantastic views over the city (see photo). A couple of children outside a house watched me as I went past, “younger brother, there’s a strange man!” one of them said in Chinese, cheerfully.

While I’ve been in Kunming, I’ve been doing a bit of touristing at the weekends. The great thing is that most of the other people visiting attractions are Chinese. Unlike in SE Asia, the Chinese are both wealthy enough and keen enough to be domestic tourists. And, well, they don’t quite do it the same way as Europeans.

The first weekend I went to 大观 park (Daguan, Great View) which is on the edge of a lake just outside town. Local people rave about it. It was a decidedly clinical place, very formal and unnatural. Square is the best description. Nothing was left even slightly untamed to nature, with lots of walkways across parts of the lake, carefully controlled and cropped trees and grass. There was no flow in the outline of anything, except the old pagodas – all the new buildings selling snacks or providing toilets had sharp corners and flat roofs. Nevertheless it was pleasantly charming walking round it, with lots of happy Chinese folk mainly flying kites in the large but carefully demarked kite flying area.

I quickly took the boat along the lake to where you can catch a cable car up into the 西山 (Xi Shan, West Mountains). Outside the cable car station there was one restaurant which charged me an exhorbitant amount for some not very good fried rice. I’m told that Chinese tourists like to spend a lot on their dinner, I can only guess because doing so makes them feel they must have had a better time. The view from the cable car, and from the top of the mountains was spectactular, down across the lake and the city. You could see all the skyscrapers and maybe just believe that 4 million people live here.

There are are some Taoist shrines called 龙门 (Longmen, Dragon’s Gate) in the mountains, carved out of the very rock face itself. A devoted monk started work at the end of the 18th century chipping away with a hammer and chisel. Most amazingly, inside the shrines there are sculptures of deities also chipped out of the same rock in one seamless piece. An old man was collecting used plastic water bottles and persisted in talking to me despite our lack of a common language. He pointed a long way off into the distance, and as far as I could tell he was trying to say that he sold them for recycling in Vietnam.

The weekend after I went to 石林 (Shilin, Stone Forest) on a small bus with a Chinese tour party. It’s quite a long journey, and on the way there we stopped off at a Place That Sold Jade. I’d got slightly used to these pointless extra visits in Vietnam; they reduce the price of the tour, but are ultimately annoying. This one was as big as a medium sized supermarket, with a dense scattering of people all Chinese. It was also most tacky, the jade objects presented in cheaply made glass cabinets, their lids not fitting and their metal frames dented. These cabinets rested on tacky plinths with pink edging and faux-cork paint. Although the ceilings were high, the lighting was from garish energy efficient bulbs and a chandalier from a low-class casino, so it was still a bit claustrophobic. People seemed content. The jade bracelets, rings, pendants and teapots must have been quite cheap.

We arrived at Shilin which is literally a forest of rocky protrusions as high as blocks of flats. Somehow despite its natural beauty the landscaping made it like a theme park, and if you’d told me the rocks had been put here by the tourism department I would have believed you. The Chinese tourists were hilarious. They would cluster in groups spending hours taking photographs of each other with the stone monoliths as a background. So being a good self-refrential European, I took photos of them taking photos. In the picture on the left you can see them all on top of a two metre high wall. They loved this and would stand on the edge having their snaps taken. Because of the sudden drop there would be no other tourists in the viewfinder, just the stone forest behind.

It was very atmospheric exploring the forest. The path was truly three dimensional, twisting and turning, climbing up high to a limestone peak, and tunneling down under itself into the dungeon-like depths. The Chinese tourists were always in large groups, never alone or in pairs. This meant that at one moment you would be all alone, imagining yourself a primal caveman awed by nature. Then suddenly, turn a corner, and there’d be twenty tourists all laughing at a small gap in the rock which (most of them) could just squeeze their neck through; their head and body going through larger gaps just above and below.

There was even a man texting in Chinese. I daren’t think how this works. The obvious way would be to key in 拼音 (Pinyin, literally “Spell Sound”, the phonetic Chinese using the Latin alphabet), which first of all would involve typing the words in the tedious text way that we all have to, then choosing from a menu of which character you want for that sound (there are many characters with the same sound). Alternatively, perhaps they choose from 3,000 common characters by pressing one of the numbers repeatedly up to three hundred times.

I’m only just getting used to how people universally have decent clothes, compared to Vietnam where I came from last. They are well repaired, clean, and essentially western in style. The women even all wear trousers, and I wonder if they always did, or if fashion travels eastwards too. Everyone is washed and well kept, no roughness here. All the degraded stuff is on the outskirts of Kunming, where faces are grim, and you’re not meant to go…

The bus back dropped us off in a remote part of suburban Kunming inside the grounds of a hospital, at a health-care and massage place no doubt also financially affiliated to the tour. I left, and tried to ask a shopkeeper 我在哪里 (wo zai nali, “where am I?!”) in broken Chinese, showing him my map. It made no sense at all to him, because instead of 在 I used the wrong verb 是 (shi, which also means “to be”, but as an exact identity rather than being at a location). I ended up gesticulating frustratedly, until eventually he guessed what I wanted and told me which bus to take home.