Of Things Past and Present

Well, my rail pass has finished, so no more extensive rail trips. The last two I did was going back to near Beppu, to see a valley with 4 groups of 1000 year old stone Buddhas, and a quick trip to Sasebo which turned out to be a complete waste of time.

The trip to Beppu was really good. It was on a really old desiel train called the Yufuin no Mori, which was a tourist trip designed to go to Yufuin and Beppu. I then caught a local train to Usuki, and once there tried to work out how to get to the Buddha statues. There was no tourist information office, and only a few brochures. I found one with a picture on it of where I wanted to go and asked the JR train station bloke when the next bus was, he said 4:30pm. Considering it was 3:15pm, I wasn't too keen on waiting. As I started to calculate the cost of catching a taxi, walking and just plain giving up a Japanese man and his wife walked up to me and asked if I needed help. It's really weird here how that happens. Anyway, the JR man gave me correct, but not helpful information. The JR bus came at 4:30pm, there was a local bus that arrived at 3:45pm to go to the statues, that dropped me off at the front of the place. These busses had no English signs, numbers or anything. I essentially had to wait for 3:45pm and, in my poor Japanese, ask if he wasing going to the place in the picture.

Thankfully, he was.

The place was really good. Someone, obviously with a lot more time then I could possible imagine decided that they'd take this cliff face, and with a chisel remove all the bits of rock that didn't seem to match their idea of the image of Buddha. And not content with doing it once, slices out a whole host of retainers, other Buddhas and bits and pieces. Four times, in different places around the mountain. Although I'm getting a little Buddha'd out now, I felt that I was lucky to see them. Although being a major tourist attraction, lots of other people got to seem them too.

I made my way back to Beppu to meet my friend there. She'd recently heard that her ex-husband, had got ingaged to his new girlfriend in the US. So her life had not taken a good turn. I don't think she got to use the word reconciliation. We had a few beers and talked about it. She's got some work now, which is good. Some of which was in a Japanese style bar, the sort of place that scares me. I always wondered how those places make money. They fit about 8 people, and there may be several hundred of them in a small area, so competition is fairly feirce.

After getting the bill, I now know how they survive.

They carge like a wounded bull. Two bottles of beer and some snack food cost me the equivalent of AU$40. What I was paying for was the company of the women behind the bar, which I really, really didn't understand, didn't need and didn't want. These are the places middle-aged men go to be comforted, sing some Karaoke and drown their sorrows.

As I said, they scare me.

I missed the train I wanted to get back to Fukuoka, and so I waited for the last one I could catch. Which meant I ended up, half way home at midnight. Most trains stop at midnight. I managed to get the last train back, which for JR was supprising running 20 minutes late. At 1:30am I managed to crawl back to my hotel. So much for trying to get the 8:15am the next morning.

So, yesterday I went to Sasebo. Enough said.

Had some beers with my English friend again, so I seem to keep bumping into her at the oddest places. I'm pretty sure with only a few days to go, and with her going to Shimonoseki (where the International Whaling Commission have been having a fun time the past week,) it's not likely we'll see each other. I've made lots of friends on this trip. Met lots of people, and had lots of fun. Although the final chapter hasn't been written, (and my never get written,) I would like to think I won't come home the same person. As I've talked with a lot of other backpackers, after this much travel one can't return home and be normal. There whole world is out there, waiting to be seen. Waiting to be changed, waiting for something to happen. I have been reading the Japan Times quite a bit. I don't have much hope for Japan anymore. A dystopian future awaits it. Money Politics, or Concrete Politics as I end to think of it domiantes the whole country. The Japanese people, who as a people, are lovely, kind, considerate and open have had to suffer to take Japan so far forward into the furture ahead of everyone else that it can't continue.

When I got back to Fukuoka at 1:30am, I saw the homeless people at the train station. There were somewhere between 50 and 100 people, with their carboard boxes for homes, or sheets of newspaper sleeping in the warmth of the building. I don't know yet where these people go during the day, how they eat, how they survive. Or evenwho they are.

I want to find out though.

So now, all I have left is shopping, shopping and more shopping, and maybe look for work. Actually, I think some reflective analysis of the state of Japanese culture in the later part of the 20th Century might be in order. Or I might just go to Starbucks and have a coffee.

Fish

Tomorrow, I'm sure to find myself turned into a giant banana.

Yesterday I caught the train down to Kumamoto, which has castle number 4 in the list of great castles of Japan. I didn't actually go to the castle, because (a) if I return to live here, it'll be a day trip, and (b) I had already seen the three other great castles, and since I only saw two of the three great gardens, and one of the three great views I thought I'd be consistent and not complete the set.

Instead when I got the local handbook, opened it and saw the picture of the 500 stone Buddha statues, I thought, I'm going there. Now Kumamoto is about 2 hours by train from Fukuoka. And I had missed the early one. Actually, I wanted to catch the 8:15am train, but slept in. Once there, I caught a tram to the bus terminal. And I had missed the bus I wanted (was checking email, naughty me), so I took the sight seeing bus around the castle as I had an hour to wait for the next one. Some junior school kids got onto the bus and asked me some questions in Japanese and English, like what my name was. For 7 year olds, they were suprisingly well enunciated in their English and Japanese. They took the obligatory photos, and I jumped off at the first chance I had. The local bus took 1/2 hour to get to the bus stop, which I'm pretty sure it missed when I pressed the buzzer. After about 10 minutes walking (and some directional help from a hairdresser), I got to the base of the mountain. Another 10 minutes along a fairly small, steap road, and I got to the rice paddies most of the way up. I asked a crusty old woman, who may not have seen a Westerner since WWII, by pointing at the picture and doing my best Japanese, "Which way is it?" Eventually I got there. Of course, several other people were there (thankfully no tour groups with flag waving tour guides.) I did however take the correct route from the directions I got from the hair dresser, because the map that she gave me for tourists was really, really bad (but I think she knew that and was trying to tell me.)

The place was great. These statues were about 400 years old, and marked the place where a great Samurai mediatated in a cave for 90 days and wrote a book called "A Book of Five Rings," about war and all that. It was, as usual for a Buddhist temple, quite peaceful. It is said you can find your own face within one of the 500 statues. Unfortunately quite a few had lost their heads, which considering how I felt the day before seemed quite apt. I did find some grumpy looking ones, and a few lazy ones so perhaps there was the idea of me within some of them.

When the bus dropped me off, I took note of when the last one to return was, so I headed back down the hill to the bus stop. After some more helpful directions I found the place. I was almost worried that I'd have to hitch back, because there was one last bus back to Kumamoto. Thankfully it arrived, but the trip back was quite scary, at some points the road narrows so only one direction of traffic is possible at a time. Considering how narrow the roads were to start with, there wasn't much room left for it to get any narrower.

Today I finished reading The Complete Short Stories of Franz Kafka. He was a German Jew who wrote from about 1904 until his death in about 1924. He was a surrealist writer. One of his stories, a well known one (apparently) is where the main character wakes up to find he has turned into a giant beetle. When I asked my friend (who had influenced me in buying the book) how I was meant to read it, she said that the work was mostly autobiographical.

Franz Kafka turned into a giant beetle.

This morning, I wanted to catch the 8:15am train again. I left the hotel at 9:45am. It was raining, and I was carrying a banana. I used it as an umbrella. The subway was late, which never happens, so it mustn't have been a train ... maybe it was a whale. I got to the JR station late, and so I missed the whale I had planned to catch. Knowing I was so late that trains had decided, as a collective whole to be whales. Eventually I caught the whale to Nagasaki, because I wanted to go to the Peace Museum, and it wasn't too far away (well, 2 hours away.)

The Peace Park and Museum were pretty good. I ate my lunch in the park, trying to avoid the herds of school children, who seemed to turn into giraffes when I wasn't looking. Lunch consisted of a sandwich, a sushi triangle and a banana.

The museum was better than the Hiroshima one I think. It had a better, more somber atmosphere. Some of the videos and commentary was really moving, and very telling. But again, as with Hiroshima the attrocities commited by Japanese were pretty much covered up.

As usual, I just missed the whale I wanted to catch getting back to Fukuoka, so I sat around for an hour just wasting time. I really should have been doing Nagaski for all I could, but I really, really couldn't be bothered. (Actually, the real reason was that I was feeling really disgusting. I had planned to go to this hot sand onsen about 4 hours south of Fukuoka by whale, and so I didn't have a shower in the morning knowing I'd be going for a swim in the beach (perhaps some train watching), having a shower at least twice and all that. As such, I didn't make it and so I was hot and stinky all day.)

Oddly though, when I was sitting in the Peace Park after the museum, wondering if I'd go up to the Rope Way (which didn't seem to be operating, and no, the thing hadn't turned into a large yellow canary, it was red) a group of four girls and a bloke turn up ask ask if it was okay to take a photo. I thought they wanted me to take a photo of them, but no, the four sit two either side of me and the bloke takes the photo. Before I could work out what was happening, they'd run off for more photos elsewhere. Maybe I stank too much.

Maybe I shouldn't have eaten the banana.

Beer, Beach and Chunder

Okay, so I got sick again.

This morning I was having a heave ho, an upward food evacuation, a chunder, a jackson pollock, driving the pocelain bus, talking on the pocelain telephone, spewing, vomiting, a food escape, a puke and a rainbow or technicolour yawn.

After that I had a downward food evacuation, painting the bowl, Dehli belly, the trots, a chocolate milkshake, splatter and patter, Montezuma's revenge, liquid fart, a slip slop splat and the runs.

I feel a bit better now.

I had gone out for dinner with an English girl last night, who I had met in Hiroshima, and thought she had already left Japan. In the hotel yesterday morning I waited for the lift, when the doors opened there she was. It was a bit of a shock really. Struggling to remember her name, we organised to meet that night for a drink and some dinner.

Fukuoka is famous for it's Ramen noodles, which have a broth of boiled pigs bones. Quite tasty really. Anyway, these yatai are everywhere and are quite popular. Normally in Japan the food preparation is quite clean. I've never had a problem before buying food from street vendors.

I was going to Nagasaki to meet another of my English friends for the day. I was running quite late, which was why it was so weird to bump into my English friend from Hiroshima. We could have missed each other my seconds quite easily. Anyway, I got to Nagasaki about an hour late, which wasn't doing to bad for me. Eventually I bumped into my friend who had gone off to put her backpack into a locker for the day. Nagasaki is really relaxing. Although I didn't get to the peace museum this time (maybe in a few days, love this rail pass) we went to the harbour development which looked just like Cockle Bay Warf on a smaller scale. Instead of seagulls flying around we had wild eagles. I was waiting for one to swoop down and pick up a small child, or a dog that everyone seemed to be walking (dogs, they were walking dogs, the childen were incidental.)

Anyway, got back to Fukuoka on time (suprisingly.) Went out for dinner, had quite a bit to drink. We found this really good International Bar. Don't think I could find it again, not because I had too much to drink but all the streets look the same (they are either small, or large.) And well, the rest is detailed above for your reconstructive pleasure.

I guess not all Japanese food is prepared as well as I thought. We avoid the yatai that had "Stewed Internal Organs" advertised on it's outside, and the things we couldn't identify. Needless to say, I didn't see her this morning before her flight. Oh, yeah, she was leaving for China today, so she had almost left the country.

What was weirder was that I'm beginning to believe that there are probably about 10 backpackers in this country, and I've met most of them. Just knowing one or two backpackers in common is pretty weird here. But I could draw a graph with quite a few connected lines to who knows who, just from staying at Youth Hostels.

Today, after spending the morning recovering, I have come to Karatsu. A seaside beach town about an hour from Fukuoka. Although I got wet up to my legs, and the water was really refreshing, I wimped out going for a full splash. After having a quick shower and got changed, I wished I really had gone for a swim. Maybe on the weekend I'll return. There are two beaches, one with surf and one that is in a protected bay. Being 5pm when I got here, the surf beach was too far to walk and I couldn't work the busses out. The quiet beach was okay, it was what I needed. But it was getting cold.

Must go eat. Hopefully the food will progress through my body in the normal way.