Saturday October 24
Hiroshima. Clouded, 18 C, no wind.
Island Miyajima, whole day.
...more text will follow later.
Greetings,
Marcel
mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com
Friday October 23 Hiroshima.
Blue sky, Sunny, 24 C, no wind.
Mazda Museum Hiroshima
We set the alarm, because we do not want to be late for the 9:50am appointment at the Mazda Headquarters in Hiroshima. The email we sent only a few days ago, was quickly and positively answered by the Mazda head quarters. We were booked for the English tour at the Mazda plant in Hiroshima! We are very early for the appointment, as we did not want to be late. We register and enjoy the brand new model cars that are being displayed in the lobby. We need to wait until 10am. The guide is an English speaking and nice lady from Mazda. We enter the tour bus, not build by Mazda by the way and drive passed security onto the Mazda complex. Its almost a 15 minutes bus drive, this complex is huge! She explains 7km long is the complex here in Hiroshima, the largest in the world for Mazda. We see tall ships waiting to transport new cars around the world (Apparently China) and the large roads and bridges that connect all the buildings and spaces on the complex. The largest bridge on a Mazda complex is also build here, 600 meters long. We stop at the museum and get a Mazda boasting video. Than a classroom kind of explanation of the complex and Mazda in general, very informative. We are allowed to enter the brand new model cars that are being showed here. On the second floor the history of Mazda, including some of those oldies are displayed. After that we get to know the building process and design process, and see and may feel the fabrics being used (clay, plastic etc). The technical background of the rotary engine is explained and the one car in the world with such an engine wining 24 hours of Le Mans is showed. Than, as a dessert we are allowed to enter the production facility where watch the men work on the different model cars in 1 automated production line. The robots, cars, parts everything we can see. So cool. The automated transports of the cars and the elevators/robots are very cool to watch too. We head back to the head quarters to close the tour.
Before leaving the Mazda complex I thank the friendly lady and give here a little gift. I knew it was for free and tipping is not done, so I thought of this gift. Its a little Dutch gift with “Dankje” written on a note, which means “Thank you”. The fact she run after wards straight to her colleagues to show this little present, showed it was indeed the gesture that made her day too.
With a big smile we walk back to the train to go to the center of Hiroshima again.
Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
In the afternoon, we visit the part Hiroshima is known for in the world, the city which got hit by the first atomic bomb. We go to the memorial place, where the A-bomb building is, the memorial park, world peace museum and more. The A-bomb building we saw already the night before and now in daylight. I have to say, that with the sun away and night just falling in (so you still have that dark blue background) its an even more dramatic scene. But with daylight you see some more details of the building that was partly melted by the blast. You also see rocks of the building or iron frames sticking out of the walls. Just a little of 100 meters from here, 580 meters in the sky, the bomb went off. You can not imagine what that should have looked like. Later in the museum I learn, that even some kilometers away from the center buildings, trees, people and animals did not survive the heat waves it produced. As a matter of fact, some of the umbrella trees outside the city, that got burned but survived, where move to the park when they build this park. In the top of the trees you can still see the black burns of that day. 6 August 8:15 am to be precise.In the park we witness some kind of memorial service for the victims. We ask someone what it exactly is, but she does not know either.We go to the museum, which only cost 50 yen. The impact and size of the museum is bigger than I thought. In the beginning the museum shows the history of Hiroshima before the bomb. It always has been a strategic military point in multiple wars. It seems to me the people of the city at that time protested and wanted to be more a trading city than a military focused. But the force of the rulers broke them. I see the Japanese do mention briefly that Japan attacked the US on Pearl Harbor first and therefor became actively involved in World War 2. Nowhere is explained why the Japanese decided to perform this surprise attack on the US. With it the Japanese had for a while an advantage. But this disappeared in the years after.At almost the end of the world war the US had completed their Manhattan project. The project to produce an atomic bomb. In the museum you see transcripts and meeting minutes of the decisions made on what targets to analyze for the first bomb(s) to drop. The reasoning behind Hiroshima and Nagasaki is explained. I did not know how many meetings, investigation and even training was done. The US trained with dummy bombs on many cities in Japan, before releasing the real one. The potential cities for the atomic bomb, were not being targeted with the mass carpet bombing they did on all the other major cities in Japan. They wanted to know the impact on a large city, so therefor did not carpet bomb the potential cities.Even asking for capitulation, Japan refused. Because the lot of billions spent, the war needed to end and the Russians maybe moving further in Europe, the US (with coalition partner(s)) decided to use the bomb. To get Japan surrender and show Russia the power of the US.Unfortunately for Hiroshima the scout flights and the good weather made them become the first target. The impact, damage, casualties is than further explained on the second floor of the museum.Large scaled maps with models of the city before and after provide an insight of the magnitude of this bomb. In the past days we walked a lot in the city from station to the park, shops etc. So we have a feeling how big the city is. Than seeing on these scaled models/maps the impact of the bomb is shocking. Chills. All gone in a few seconds.The stories of the people seeking relatives after the bomb in the ruins of the city takes your breath away too. Artifacts, like burned cloths, melted tools, burned shoes, stopped watches etc makes you silent. The picture and pieces of the stone stairs before a bank, where someone was waiting that day the bank would open is thrilling. The heat of the bomb was so high, that concrete and stone objects (like the walls and the stairs of the bank building) the colors would whiten / brighten up. Exactly where this human being was sitting the stones remained dark. The persons remains were never found. In Hiroshima many relatives who could not find their family claimed their loved one might have been sitting on that spot.The pictures of clothing with dark colors catching fire and thus leaving burn wounds on the victims amaze me too. Especially because these people where 3 kilometers away of the center of the blast. The dark colors absorb more heat than light colors.There is much more to read and see, but the last thing I tell here is about the donors. Because of the bombings of cities, many children were evacuated to safe places out of town. So many children survived the blast, but immediately had no parents or other family anymore. Some of the people who survived (donors) started to search their relatives. Many of them never found the loved ones. The only artifacts they could use to identify them was for example the watches people were wearing. And stories like someone who found the watch of her dad, but that morning her mother was using it on her wrist, the little girl later was told.
You see a couple of broken watches, some displaying a time.
8:15
The time of the blast.
The time it will display, for ever to all of visitors of the museum, now and in the future....
Greetings,
Marcel
mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com
Thursday October 22 Himeji
Blue sky, sun, 24C
Visited Castle Himeji-jo.
The biggest castle of Japan, of the 12 castles still remaining.We are up very early and the sun in the blue sky shines with great light on the castle. Better photograph opportunities than this you can not wish. From the city you can already see it, as it is build on a 49 meter high hill, and itself is also about 49 meters. We follow a group with a french guide, so we can sneak peek some of the things she says. We continue on our own and enter the castle. What a big castle and sophisticated architecture is used! The view on the city and the mountains is breathtaking. I buy some real Japanese style food, you take in a box. The line of business man, tells me this restaurant might be good and I order there. We take the food to a grass field, with view on the castle and in the sun... thats what you call holiday picknick!
We travel to Hiroshima.
In Hiroshima, we received the map of the city at the tourist information center in the train station. When looking at the map and determining the direction to the castle, a man comes to us. He asks where we want to go. He mentions he lives nearby and can't speak much English, but we should follow him and we would get to the castle. So we walk for 20 minutes behind this kind business man, who walks home with these 2 Dutch people. I try to talk to him, but he indeed does not speak much English. His nodding and smile say enough though. We made friends. The last part of the trip he is also busy with his hand in the bag. Later we understand why. When the time has come to split our ways, he grabs something out of his bag. Its a paper folded crane-bird. The birds one of the young victims was folding when she was diagnosed with leukemia. She thought by folding 1000 birds, she would recover. She died, but its the story in Japan. Its the same bird, this man had given us before he walked back home. And now I tell the story to others. He might read it some day, or not. Thank you again kind stranger.
The castle is nice to see, but nothing compared to Himeji-jo, I think we are getting spoiled with all the great sites we have seen already. My photograph hobby tells me, that with the sun set, there might be lights shining on the the A-bomb building. So despite being tired, we continue for some more walking to this site. It has lights, and the sky is becoming dark but also has that little light still. Exceptional conditions for a picture of a world historic site.
We walk back via nice and busy shopping streets, where we also bump into a restaurant where you grill the delicious meat yourself. Great dinner and a wonderful day comes to an end.
Greetings,
Marcel
mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com
Wednesday October 21 Kanasawa
Blue sky and sun, 23 C.
Kenroku-en, Large garden
Its a beautiful day to watch the large garden. One of the top 3 gardens in Japan, build in the 17th century. A Chinese style garden with the 6 elements (flowing water, space, cover, genius, views and old elements). Its a large and gorgeous garden indeed and very relaxing. The large groups you need to avoid, they can be quite disturbing. I spotted during our walk 3 different species of large butterflies. One is so big, its almost if you see two hands flying in the air.HigashiThis is a former Geisha districts and has some old houses and streets of those times. In one of the shops you can see the famous gold plated walls. Its a very nice neighborhood. The many many temples spread here in this area are too far apart from each other and after the many great temples and shrines of the past weeks, we are not going to walk to all of those. We head back to the hotel to pick up our luggage and the train for the trip to the biggest castle in Japan, Himeji.
Travel to Himeji
The trip is during the day, so we can now also watch the environment we are traveling in. We will meet many tunnels, as going through mountains is the way the Japanese build their railway. At one station, many school children are also waiting for the Shinkansen. We almost thought we would be too late to enter the train if we had to wait for this large crowd, but thats because we are used to the system less approach in the Netherlands ;-) Here, the teachers split them in 2 groups and than lined them up with 3 in a row. When the doors of the train open, all stand still and wait for the instructions. Than 1 line at a time run organized and silent into the train and take their seats. All about 60 children are very efficient and swift in the train before you know it. We have plenty of time ourselves to find our reservation seats too. Luckily we had a reservation this time, because with these children, the train is 100% full.Arriving in Himeji we check in and go to the center to find us a restaurant. It come to our attention, that the further away of Tokyo the less English menus, signs and the like you find here. We eat Asian style in restaurant Len. Excellent food! Funny, we picked our menus from some blurry pictures on the menu. One menu was only a salad (very good though, but we did not expect it) and the other one was Nasi Goreng, but than Japanese style. We had a great dinner and an excellent day again.
Greetings,
Marcel
mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com
Interesting to see how clean everything is. Streets, stations, houses, hotels, shops, hicking trails, mountain tops etc. Parkingspots are cleaned, even tissues are given at game shops to clean te machines you play on, every meal you get cleaning tissues in a restaurant or even warm towels to clean your hands. Taxi drivers, when waiting on customers , just like our shuttle bus driver, have a towel in the vehicle and remove the dust from the cars.
Sofar in more than 2 weeks, many cities, trains, buses etc, I have seen 1 wall with 1 graffitti on it. I bet it will be removed soon.
The Japanese show it is possible to have a people in a country respect their environment.
Ah, one more example... In the castle we visited, you need to take of your shoes. You get a plastic bag for it, so you can carry it.
At the end of the route, you put the plastic bag in a box. Arround the next corner, 2 ladies are folding the bags in a way they can be re-used and are given to the new visitors. Thats an example of clean, thoughtfull and recycling!
Respect.
Marcel san. |
| 2009-10-17 |
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Marcel de Koningh
Photo KingH
Skype : photokingh
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/marceldekoningh
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marcel.de.koningh
Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh
Blog : http://photokingh.blogspot.com/
Hyves : http://kingh.hyves.nl/
email : mailto:photokingh@gmail.com
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Takeshita Street
A street with a big sign above it, where my bad humorous thinking goes
;" They are bad in English spelling, it should be Take a Shit Street".
Never mind, a dirty mind is a joy for ever my grandmother used to say.
The street in fact is great. Lots of shops and little places to grab
a snack or drink. We roam around and watch a lot of the interesting
types of young people walking here. Its famous for the more
extravagant looks of the folks over here, and its correct. Some, to
us, weird looking girls all dressed with fake hair and wearing dresses
like dolls. Only around 15 years old or so. Some of the boys also are
dressed up, and the interesting part I think is, that no matter how
weird or extravagant, nobody is watching or starring at each other. We
enter a food court and take some typical Japanese style food,
excellent again. We decided to try another attempt to enter the
Imperial East Gardens, if they are open.
Imperial East Gardens.
As we had tried for 2 other days already to enter the garden, this
would be our last chance and attempt to enter it. The first time we
were there on Friday, a day they are closed, as the signs said. On
Monday they also close, so the second attempt we did on a Tuesday. But
the Tuesday we tried, they were closed. Monday was a holiday, so for
this special occasion they opened the park and closed it on Tuesday.
Great. This third time they were finally open.
The gardens are very nice, although not much flowers at this time of
the year. The place is neat and clean, managed by all the workers in
the garden. The grass seems more like carpet than actual living
organism. The stone walls surrounding the palace have been
repositioned to prevent it from more damage by time. I noticed some
big colored spiders which I wanted to capture with macro photography.
Sheila did not want to stay or see it, hehe, so I did it myself ;-)
The trip back is quite crowded and back at the hotel we both are
exhausted. I guess having the flu for 1.5 weeks, visiting Tokyo for a
week, walking all day and having 38 million people around you might
get you somewhat tired ;-).
We take some food from the supermarket and plan some more for the next
week. We bump into the fact that when we wanted to be in Kyoto there
is the biggest festival of the year. Although interesting to see, we
feel we might be too late to plan our 1 week hotel there. Browsing the
internet confirms all hotels are full, so we decide to switch plans
and have Kyoto at the end of the holiday.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcel de Koningh
Photo KingH
Skype : photokingh
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/marceldekoningh
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marcel.de.koningh
Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh
Blog : http://photokingh.blogspot.com/
Hyves : http://kingh.hyves.nl/
email : mailto:photokingh@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Skype : photokingh
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/marceldekoningh
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marcel.de.koningh
Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh
Blog : http://photokingh.blogspot.com/
Hyves : http://kingh.hyves.nl/
email : mailto:photokingh@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcel de Koningh
Photo KingH
Skype : photokingh
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/marceldekoningh
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marcel.de.koningh
Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh
Blog : http://photokingh.blogspot.com/
Hyves : http://kingh.hyves.nl/
email : mailto:photokingh@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcel de Koningh
Photo KingH
Skype : photokingh
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/marceldekoningh
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/marcel.de.koningh
Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh
Blog : http://photokingh.blogspot.com/
Hyves : http://kingh.hyves.nl/
email : mailto:photokingh@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Shinkansen is the name of the ultra speed trains in Japan.
We experienced these speed devils, both standing next to the track and passing by as well as in the train itself to our destinations. Incredible sleek design, it seems fast from the looks at it already. But if these babys get up to speed, hehe :-)
The comfort is also remarkable, lots of leg space, all chairs are facing the front of the train, so never driving backwards. The seats are lined up with 2 and 3 chairs, and they can put back (just like in planes) so you can really relax... or take a "quick" nap of over 300 km an hour.
And the Japanese timing precission is standard on these trains too. Not a second too late.
Travelling in it, watching it or putting it on photo its all fun to me. I love these trains with speed.
The last picture shows their feeling of timing, which they never seem to loose. Interesting is also the way they seem to wave or make gestures with their arms, while checking procedures or something. I haven't discovered yet what they are doing, but have seen it a couple of times. Also with a normal train and even with the cable car train we took in the Japanese Alps yesterday.
Greetings,
Marcel
mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com
