Reposted "the World According to Cosmos "(https://theworldaccordingtocosmos.com) SIgn-up! |
Japanese Travels https://wp.me/p7NAzO-2Ub Substack audio https://open.substack.com/pub/jakecosmosaller/p/japanese-trips?r=3i9lm&utm_campa... Subtack blog https://jakecosmosaller.substack.com/p/japanese-travels?r=3i9lm Subtack Podcast Substack Home - jake’s Newsletter Medium Japan Travels. Japanese Travels | by Jake Aller | Jun, 2024 | Medium Wattpad <iframe width="500" height="280" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="" src="https://embed.wattpad.com/story/371840110" ></iframe> Spotify Podcast https://open.spotify.com/episode/494CwMXqcjZutmEdVUUIwH Okinawa Travel Reflections I have been to Japan about 10 times over the years. My first visit was in 1979 when I spent the night at Narita before going to Korea the next day. I last visited in April of this year doing a tour of Fukuoka and Kyushu. I spent five weeks doing a TDY in Sapporo and spent a week in Okinawa before the covid shutdowns. I also visited Tokyo a couple of times ,traveled to Kamakura and Kyoto and Nara. I even climbed Mt. Fuji. When I was an undergraduate, I took courses in Japanese history and while in graduate school took courses in Japanese history, and business as part of my MA in Korean studies. I also taught Asian studies at the University of Maryland in 1991 in Korea. I even picked up a few words of basic Japanese during my travels. If you know Korean, you can learn Japanese pretty easily and vice versa. the grammar of the two languages are very similar and many vocabulary words are derived from Chinese characters. I can read about 500 characters. Many expats who have been in both Korea and Japan prefer one or the other. I definitely prefer Korea but i like Japan and plan on future trips there. Here then are some of my reflections on traveling in Japan. Kyushu I just came back from a trip to Kyushu Japan, a mostly rural part of Japan that I had never visited. I have been to Japan about eight times since 1979. I always contrast Japan with Korea where I now live part-time and with the U.S.. we are planning to come back next spring and spend a month in Japan -two weeks in Kyushu, one week in Tokyo, a few days in Kyoto/Nara and Hokkaido but might take another mini-tour hitting other parts of Japan. There is a good tour of Osaka/Kyoto and Nara we can do in September. Overall the tour was a b - good choices of things to do, good food, got to know a few of our fellow participants and my Korean is getting quite good enough that I can continue a conversation and have people mostly understand me and I understand most of what people say to me. Tuesday, April 17, 2024 Our first night we stayed in the Hilton in Fukuoka. I was a bit disappointed with the hotel. Just not up to what I might expect from a Hilton chain hotel. the breakfast was substandard. The TV did not work – everything was defaulting to Japanese and we could not figure it out. Wednesday, April 18, 2024 Our second night was better. Had a great breakfast Japanese style 5 stars one of the best I had so much better than the Hilton Including the plates which had several places to place your food good choice of coffee and tea but no decafe Looking forward to today ending with a sauna Beepo Hot Springs - privage sauna facilities one of the highlights of the trip. The hotspring hotel had private sauna facilities for several people. It was very nice. Morning Visit to Suspension Bridge, Mt. Kumho Observatory Tawara marshes The staff were very helpful spoke English and were friendly. Recommend staying in Beppu for a future trip. Saw the volcanic eruptions from a safe distance. The marsh lands are interesting. Lunch Better than yesterday. Spoke with a nice older couple and practiced my Korean which keeps getting better Mari Grasslands, Volcano Views Stopped off to see the Mari grassland and the reclining Buddha mountain in the background, saw cows and skydivers, and got good pictures. Felt better after getting my coffee out fix Stopped off at an ice cream shop and a rose garden. Hotel in Aso city We stayed at a hotel/ryokan. The rooms and overall ambiance was quite backward. On the plus side, it was filled with museum-quality art. The outdoor bathing area was a joke! Little more than a hot tub but without a jacuzzi and no place to wash up, no place to even store you clothes. Very substandard. We did not use it. Quite a contrast to the world-class facilities at the hotel in Beppu which we had stayed in the night before. That hotel featured private sauna rooms. Very relaxing. They gave us a nice dinner spread including for some reason horse sashimi! Earthquake We were woken up by an alert on my phone and an earthquake that shook everything up. Felt as far away as Busan in Korea. Here’s the info as of this morning A magnitude 6.6 earthquake, measuring a weak 6 on Japan's seismic intensity scale, struck off the west coast of shikoku island on wednesday night. There was no threat of a tsunami from the quake, which struck at 11:14 p.m., and initial reports suggested only minor injuries and damage. The quake measured a weak 6 — the third highest level — in the Ehime prefecture town of Aina and the Kochi prefecture city of Sukuma. Striking at a depth of 39 kilometers, its epicenter was in the bungo channel, a straight separating the islands of Kyushu and shikoku. Chief cabinet secretary Yoshimasa Hayashi, speaking at a news conference shortly after 1 a.m. Thursday, said several light injuries had been reported. Nhl reported minor damage in some areas, including broken water pipes, fallen streetlights, and a landslide on a national roadway. Thursday, April 19 Final day Today will do a Fukuoka city tour, looking forward to it and returning home. We stayed in an old-fashioned ryokan but they had a nice dinner spread and great artwork – took lots of pictures while I was in the lobby waiting for the all-clear. Aso City is a very provincial town, rural Japan at its best and worst. Another shocking thing is the lack of translation software. It seems to me that would be widely used particularly in the tourist industry, but you would be wrong. In some ways, Japan is very backward and insular looking. It is run by old men who are out of touch with how the world is changing. And they are just emerging from the decades of deflation, the lost years as they put it, where everyone including the US which also has its backwardness jumped forward while Japan slept. Tokyo v Seoul Tokyo, like seoul, is a sprawling city, hard to get a real feel for it. Seoul is in some ways a prettier city with the mountains and the river but Tokyo has its charms too. I stayed there several times. My favorite neighborhood is Roppongi which is near the us embassy and is close to an old us army base. The neighborhood started out as an army vile, when the us pulled out of central Tokyo, the neighborhood became Tokyo’s international quarter. A similar phenomenon is occurring in seoul as Itaewon moves from being an army vil to an international district after the us army pulled out of central seoul Getting around is pretty easy. The subway is a bit confusing but one gets used to it. Hokkaido Sapporo I spent five weeks there in 2003 doing a TDY. It was a great trip and I enjoyed the city. Everything is connected via tunnels underground next to the excellent subway system so one does not have to get exposed to the cold that much. It snows there from September to May. I was there in late March and it snowed every day. I found an expat bar in town and hung out there and got to know some locals. I also found a sake place near my hotel and tried different sake every night. The hotel had a choice of Japanese or American breakfast –I chose the Japanese option and enjoyed Japanese breakfast every day for five weeks. Kamakura I went there by train for a day trip from Tokyo and had a great time touring the impressive temple complex. Kyoto-Nara Went there with my friend and enjoyed it. We stopped off at a Shinto shrine which features a giant penis statue. It is a fertility temple. There is another one nearby that features giant vaginas. Mt fuji I climbed it. In august. It was snowing at the top. But i can say i made it. Okinawa Here are the poems i wrote from my trip to Okinawa along with some photos Okinawa poems: Okinawa war thoughts Okinawa beckons me Ghosts of Okinawa Asian linguistic confusion Okinawa aquarium thoughts Okinawa West Coast Highway Okinawa war thoughts these dark moods follow me Asi tour Okinawa where the last battles of World War 11 were fought thousands died in the first and last outpost of the American East Asian empire Okinawa beckons me Okinawa Japan kept calling to me in a dream Notifying me always in the background where my memories always waiting for me beckons me everywhere i go cosmic reflections of past lives Never seen before seems lost in time Maybe just the spirits Of the dead everywhere I see ghosts Okinawa street scene walking the streets of fabled Naha Okinawa a lifetime dream someday I would visit i am surrounded by ghosts of the past and Japanese beauties all around me tempting me with their sweet smiles No wonder so many soldiers brought back Japanese wives ghosts of Okinawa ghosts of Okinawa touring the battlefields of Okinawa where so many young men gave up their life so many years ago i see the ghosts all around me feel their spirits floating through the air Kilroy was here there and everywhere whoever that was John Dean wannabes Elvis wannabes and so many other wannabes I see the ghosts of the fallen heroes all around me Asian Street Signs Everywhere in Asia you see strange variations of English Japlish,Konglish,Singlish the street signs in Okinawa are all in Chinese, Japanese, English and Koreans the bus and train announcements as well hard to get lost even when you want to but the random encounters with English words puts a smile on my face as i drink my “boss coffee” wondering who the “boss” is and why is smoking a pipe? And many years ago i saw on a menu at the old Gimpo airport baked Rick and in Korean grocery stores one can find corn flights i look forward to many more years of linguistic confusion as I travel about Asia Visit to Okinawa aquarium whenever I visit an aquarium, zoo or Wildlife park I am reminded of a prison the prison is filled with animals who amuse us. I am sure that the animals hate us humans who are watching them do their animal thing but looking into their eyes the eyes of the sea turtles swimming back and forth in their prison cell in the Okinawa aquarium filled with hatred for the humans who had imprisoned them and hunt their kind and don’t get me started on the dolphins and killer whales who preform acrobatic feats for their daily meals and the sharks the king of the ocean killers they too if they could they surely would escape their prison cell screaming death to all humans as they flee back into the ocean’s depths Okinawa West Coast road Riding down the West Coast road of Okinawa echoes of other beach roads fill my head with memories i am reminded of Hawaii and driving along the Oregon coast East Coast beach towns as well and Barbados and the Caribbean islands all the roads are lined with tourist resorts beach views and restaurants all very similar yet different and as the beach towns fade away behind us on the bus my memories of all the other beach towns i have visited fade away into my memory hole. |