8 November Sukara Shinkansen

Yesterday we travelled to Nagasaki to visit the Peace Park. Nagasaki was only the secondary target on that fateful August day in 1945. Cloud over the primary target, Kokura, sealed the fate of the city, resulting in the death of close to 200,000 people.

Historically, Nagasaki had been an early trading centre, boasting two foreign enclaves, one Dutch and the other Chinese. Despite centuries of persecution, Christian denominations have managed to survive in the city through to the present day. It was directly above the Catholic cathedral that B52 Bockscar dropped the second atomic bomb on 9 August.

Today we are barrelling along at Shinkansen warp speed towards Kagoshima, the southern-most city on Japan's main island group. Like Nagasaki, Kagoshima has had a long history as a centre of trade with China and the West. This southern-most part of Kyushu is a long way from Tokyo. Centuries ago, the journey could take months. This isolation encouraged a certain degree of independence in the good folk of Kyushu, and not just with respect to trade and religion. Well before US Commander Perry's 'Black Fleet' sailed into Tokyo Bay, forcing an end to Japan's isolation, the Shimazu Clan of Kagoshima was smuggling students out to the West to study science and engineering. The clan went on to play a significant role in the political and military development of modern Japan.

Heading back to Hakata this afternoon, we were able to grab an early train and avoid the crowds heading into town for a Sumo competition. We were a little naughty because we had reserved seats on a later train, but we took a chance on grabbing a non-reserved seat.

We have consistently said that using the rail network in Japan is easy. However, there are a few complexities that can confuse the novice. To begin with, there are several different kinds of trains. Subway trains are probably the easiest to understand, they generally operate the same as anywhere else. Then there are Local, Limited Express, Express, Super Express and of course the Shinkansen. Adding to this complexity are the different seat types. Shinkansen trains have a First Class, known as Green Class. Many Express and Limited Express trains have reserved seats. The cost of the reservation can sometimes be greater than the ticket price. Some trains are reserved seats only. While all this sounds daunting, it is all extremely consistent once you come to grips with it. Some may also find the process of actually getting on a train a puzzle on the first few attempts and there are some fairly serious protocols to be observed as well.

This being Japan, it will come as no surprise that queueing is a serious business. We had some real problems with this initially. Queue markers are printed on the platform. Seems simple enough, but the queue locations vary with the number of cars in each train. Not only that, but on some platforms where trains leave for multiple destinations, queues have to be made for multiple trains. Different queues are designated by shapes - circles, triangles and squares. Woe betide any punter who joins the wrong queue! They will feel the silent wrath of hundreds of fellow travellers, which is a bit like ... well nothing at all really.

The over the top politeness of the Japanese was again demonstrated to us this afternoon. As we lined up a photo of a monument across a main road, we were astonished when a bus driver slowed up his bus to avoid spoiling our shot. If you want to test this out sometime, just put one toe on a pedestrian crossing. Traffic from all directions will come to an immediate halt and will remain so until you leave the crossing.

9 November, Shinkansen 456

Just a travel day today, back on the train, headed for Okayama, so it is probably a good chance to comment on some 'weird stuff'. Japan abounds in weird stuff, at least weird to us. For example, toilets here never cease to amaze and mystify. We thought we had seen all the weird toilet stuff Japan had to offer, until we came across the little gem below. When the toilet is flushed, the cistern is refilled from the top by a spout that runs into a small bowl. The bowl has no plug, so the water runs directly on to fill the cistern after each flush. Our best guess is that this is some water conservation device that you can use to wash your hands, so using the soon to be flushed water twice?

 

Pachinko is a weird Japanese gambling game that has millions of Japanese of all ages addicted! The game is played in multi-storey 'Pachinko Palaces' with names like “Fun World Just” or “Wild Happy Land”. We have tentatively explored several Pachinko joints. The first thing that hits you is the noise. Thousands of machine tunes blast you as you open the doors. Hundreds of earnest, serious and totally focused adult Japanese sit transfixed before these machines, throwing fistfuls of small silver balls into contraptions that look like poker machines on steroids. Anime characters on the screens respond to the numbers of balls won by doing little dances or in the case of more adult versions, progressively dis-robing. Good players are not just rewarded by the various on screen anime antics, they also accumulate veritable buckets of little silver balls. What they do with these is still to be determined.

 

Weird signs abound throughout Japan. To those of us who don't read Japanese, their meanings will probably always be a mystery. From time to time though, we do manage to get the general idea.

 

One special sign was explained to us in Hagoshima in southern Kyushu. High on a hill side, on an enormous rock, the Chinese characters for Sanjingan are visible for miles around. The characters were carved into the rock in 1814 by 3900 workmen who laboured for 3 months to complete the job. So what was the important message conveyed by the characters? Sanjingan means, “Very Large Rock”!