It has been a week of the dark now in the Land of the Rising Sun

Nih-on in Kanji script

First- go to this post by Zoe at playingbythebook.net for a link to helping out with relief measures for Japan.

On 11th March, 2011, an earthquake of magnitude 9.0 on the Richter scale hit Japan, triggering many aftershocks and a massive tsunami. Between them, and with the added nuclear disaster at Fukushima, Japan has probably its darkest time since the nuclear bombs dropped on them during WW2.

Japan- Nippon or Nihon, as the Japanese call their country. The land of the rising sun. These are dark days for this most eastern of lands.

Along with the rest of the world, we watched in horror as first the earthquake, and then the tsunami wreaked havoc in those very parts of the country which we had been to in our stay there. We were in Japan, in Tokyo about a decade ago, and I have many wonderful memories of the place and its people. I was in a new place, with no knowledge of the language. Even if I was an Asian myself, the culture was not very familiar, as the books I had read are usually western-centric. (Of course Pearl S. Buck has been a favourite writer, and her books on both Chinese and Japanese backdrops were a revelation, but I still found the culture unfamiliar.) Inspite of this, I did not have much difficulty finding my way around Tokyo, thanks largely to the extremely helpful nature of those I asked for help.

I was there with my husband, but he would be out at the office all day and would come home quite late. I was left to entertain myself, as those were the days before A was born. So the first thing I did was find a book store where I could get some information in English, including a map and books on Japan. With the help of that map, I have freely roamed the streets and sidelanes of much of Tokyo all on my own.



Akihabara at nightfall

 A favourite destination was Akihabara, which was a straight walk of 6-7 kms from my home. It is like walking in New York, the streets flanked by shops and restaurants cheek-by-jowl, with neon signs that light up the place after dark. We lived in Kiba, which is by the Sumida river, or Sumidagawa, as the Japanese called it, and the road to Akihabara was across this river, over a foot bridge. The Japanese are walkers, and on any day, there would be many on the streets, walking to wherever they wanted to go.

I would start off with my map every morning after the husband had left for the office, and I have explored much of Tokyo on foot and by subway- this links to almost all parts of the city, and is much like the subway in New York or London, (of which I have travelled twice in New York, and extensively in London.) with different lines connecting with each other.

I have found that Tokyo is a very safe city to be abroad in, and I never felt the fear that accompanies being alone in a metropolis like this. At least that was the case a decade ago. I have not felt that feeling of safety in any of the other similar metros- well, Mumbai felt safe till fifteen years ago when the riots of 1992 and the blasts of 1993 destroyed that feeling.



Shinkansen

We also travelled a quite a bit outside Tokyo on week-ends and holidays. We took a trip by Tokaido Shinkansen (bullet train which travels at a speed of 250+ kms / hr) to Nagoya which is to the west of Tokyo and passed the Fujiyama (Mount Fuji-the symbol of Japan) on the way. We also visited the Fujiyama and climbed it partially on foot. Travelling by Shinkansen is an out of the world experience. At least it was to me, never having travelled at that speeds except by air. It begins with admiring the wonderfully streamlined shape of the train. Inside, it is as un-trainlike as it could be. And when the train is moving, one barely feels the motion except when passing through tunnels- or if one is looking out of the window and noticing that the landscape is just whistling by.

Nikko in the fall

We travelled to the North of Tokyo to a beautiful place called Nikko in the Tochigi prefecture, just south of the Fukushima prefecture, so badly affected by last week's disaster. We went there by train, the Tobu line, which is much more like the trains here in India. Nikko is a hill station, with a lake surrounded on all sides by hills, and many Buddhist and Shinto shrines. We were there in fall, and it was absolutely beautiful. We took a long 5 hr hike there through beautiful woods with many waterfalls along the way. 

As for the language, spoken Japanese has a certain cadence to it. I had not much occasion of conversing in the language, but I did learn a few key words- like 'moshimoshi' for hello and 'domoarigato' or 'domoarigatogozaimashta' for thank you or thank you very much, with much bowing.

MacDonalds written in Katakana

I tried my hand at their script, too, but couldn't go furthur than just recognising which script is being used. Japanese has a pictorial language, and a script called Kanji is used for purely Japanese words with culturally local connotations. The Japanese word at the beginning of this post is Nihon or Nippon, which is the name of the Japanese for their country. The other scripts are Hiragana and Katakana. Hiragana is used to write native words for which there is no Kanji. Katakana, on the other hand, is used to write non-native words- those which Japanese has borrowed from outside or those which are absolutely foreign.

I aquired a taste for many things Japanese. I had a cousin who stayed in Tokyo at the time, and he introduced us to Karaoke. We also tried typically Japanese food, and loved it. One of my great memories is eating yum, crisp tempuras and yakitori, Japan's answer to street foods, with hot sake drunk from bamboo. Yes, you read that right- pieces of bamboo, cup sized, which could hold a liquid. I have saved them, and still have them with me. I also learnt about ko-cha and o-cha, and the right way of drinking it-- green tea, for which I developed a taste at this time.

It was a lovely stay in a wonderful country, with the lush natural beauty, ultra-modern gagetry, (one has to be inside one of their well fitted and compact houses with unusual space-saving methods to believe it! I had thought it was part of the sci-fi lore of Japan till then.) and gracious people. No matter what is being said by nasty people or people who have suffered due to the Japanese in wars the world over about the country, in this darkest of its hours, I have good memories of them. After all, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely, so atrocities have always been committed in the name of war, and all of those pointing fingers at Japan now are not 'doodh-se-dhule' either.

Even the way I said good-bye to Japan has been memorable. I was travelling back alone, as the husband had to wrap up some things, and I needed to be back for a wedding in the family. It was a pre-dawn flight, and soon after take-off, the eastern horizon began to lighten. My window faced the east, and I could see the sun rising in all it's glory- and as my plane moved towards the west, it remained sunrise for the longest period of time- much longer than if it had been seen from the ground. It has remained the Land of the Rising Sun in my mind.