When I woke up, Marino told me that American people shower in the morning so I will shower now. And I did! She made me a great breakfast with bread, scrambled eggs, fried pork (not bacon), and cabbage. We talked a little and she told me about Lake Biwa. I showed interest so we went. Unfortunately, Taku was having a huge fit, hitting his mother on the head while she was driving and screaming at the top of his lungs. We parked the car at the lake and looked around for a little while. The lake didn't look too wide, maybe 2x as wide as the Mississippi, but it was long. There was a lot of industry and a city across from us. There were some wind surfers and kite flyers on the small rock beach and Marino asked them to take pictures of us. She wouldn't let me take pictures with my own camera ever. She kept saying she will mail the pictures to me. We left quickly because Taku was hungry.
We went to a sort-of mall and ate McDonalds for lunch. Taku ordered a very big bowl of ramen and Marino got a teriyaki set which she shared with Yuki. They also got toys. We went from there to the third floor of a Y100 shop. I got stickers of Japanese words for guys in the office. The kids got toys. We walked through a kimono section and she showed me pictures of 20 year olds at their "coming out" party. They were all very beautiful. Then I saw the prices and WOW! Y20,000 minimum for accessories. On our way out we passed an arcade. Of course the kids went nuts. They got money from their mom to play games. Marino told me to get in a tiny bus with the kids. She put money in it and it started rocking back and forth. At the end it took our picture and printed up stickers.... We went down there and Marino told me that I was going to make an easy American dish for the Hippo Family Club potluck that night. I found spaghetti noodles and tomato paste and parmesan cheese.
When we got home I gave the family their quarter-set gift. They were in awe of it. They kept saying it was a treasure. I taught them about the quarter program and they said they would keep it forever. We made the spaghetti and there was TONS of it, at least, Marino thought so. It was about 1lb. I added the tomato paste, some basil from her herb garden, some garlic, and a lot of salt. It didn't taste good. But we packed it up in the traditional Japanese "tupperware" box stacking thing and wrapped it in a scarf. We drove somewhere to what looked like a family community center. We took our shoes off and got rubber slippers. Upstairs were a lot of families and Robin and Lindsay. We tried to talk to each other but the families wanted to show us off. When all the families (about 15) arrived we played games (1-2-3-4-5-6-7, London Bridges, and an unusual version of duck-duck-goose). Many of the games were in foreign languages because the Hippo Club learns more than 12 languages at once. After game and song time we played "put up the tables and chairs and set up food". Someone put a beer in front of me, and I filled a tiny plate with many different types of foods. By far, there was the most pasta left untouched. Marino introduced me to a 26 year old mother of a 9 month old. The baby was really cute but the mother seemed tired and distracted. She also breast-fed the baby right at the table. The baby drank tea and ate tiny pieces of food from the mother's plate. It seemed unusual to me, but I don't know that much about American babies so I didn't say anything.
The three American girls had to give a speech. Marino taught me to say, "Nagano, wakolohim!" which translates somehow as "I don't know Japanese language." After the speeches (which no one could hear because the kids were so loud). We had cake and sang Happy Birthday. Apparently, it was the fourth anniversary of this particular Hippo Family club. Then we went home.
We talked around the kitchen table for a long time. We talked about New York, my job, and the female reproductive system. Fuminori is an OB/GYN who specializes in in-vitro fertilization. A paper of his just got accepted into a journal and he wanted me to read it. It was about the presence of messenger ribonucleic acids in the fetuses of in-vitro fertilized mice. The words were very big. I complimented him many times on his knowledge of English. Marino asked me to translate, or at least explain an email she got from a friend. It was a chain letter from a Canadian Essayist who was defending America against people who say that we deserved what we got. It was very political and took a long time. They looked awe-struck when I finished. It was again past midnight- so we went to sleep.
6:30pm Shinkansen train
So, I woke up Sunday and went back to bed. I finally left my room at about 10am. The kids were sleeping and Marino sent me to the shower. I decided to use her shampoo and soap. But when I got wet and looked at the bottles, there was no English. So I washed my hair with both. Bad idea. I think I used the soap last. Out of the shower we had pancakes for breakfast. Glorious, sweet, crispy on the outside, and soft on the inside pancakes. I grabbed the butter before Yuki could eat it all and put what turned out to be honey on them. It as a beautiful thing. When Taku finally woke up we drove to a "festival," really a fair.
There were rows of "white houses" (or tents as we say) that shop owners set up. Most were restaurants. In the center was a large stage. There was some costumed Power Ranger show going on that Taku really got into. It was hot, so we left the middle as soon as it was over. The next few hours is easy to explain: cotton candy, soda, candy, ice cream, games, toys, and train. One of the games was a ring toss. Marino paid and told me to win something for Taku. But when the guy saw me they moved the sticks really far away, and I lost. I felt really badly and apologized a lot. They gave Taku a prize anyway.
Marino got us all yakisoba and we ate it while watching Taku ride a Thomas the Train ride a dozen times or so. It was a little golf-cart thing with benches attached. Fuminori got there from work and sat with us for a while. Marino left with the kids and came back with more candy and a book of postcards with pictures of Lake Biwa and Mount M-something that's the second tallest in Japan. It was beautiful! We left there to go to a museum about bronze bells. I have a lot of brochures about it, so I'll look at them to remember what exactly the museum was about. Fuminori walked with me and explained a lot of the exhibits. Before we left we dressed up like traditional rice farmers in robes and funny hats and took a picture in front of a big bell. They also bought me some beautiful prints of sutras.
We stopped back at the apartment and I got my bag. Taku complained a lot, threw things and kicked toys. They decided to drive back to Kyoto in the hopes that the kids would sleep. Taku yelled most of the way there. Marino gave me a set with a mirror and coin purse made of kimono material. She told me I am her younger sister ad she made me promise to come back to Japan and visit. I tried to tell her how special her family is to me, since they are the only family I stay with in Japan. They're my Japanese family. But I started getting choked up so I stopped. When we got back to Higashiyama, Marino and I and Yaku got out of the car and Fuminori went to look for parking. Inside we waited for G so she could meet him. We talked for a while over cookies and coffee. It started getting to be time for dinner so we waited outside for the car. When he pulled up he said hi to G and I said bye to Marino. We hugged, my eyes teared up, they waved to me until the car was out of sight. Ichie Ichigo. I miss them and can't wait to send them a post card or email.
We ate dinner, had a seminar about Hiroshima, went for a walk, and watched F get drunk on his gift-bottle of sake.
10:00pm HYH
This morning started out very early on the subway and then we took a bullet train- Shinkansen- to Hiroshima. The train was the second fastest in Japan, not the first. Still it went really fast. Scenery went whipping by. We passed whole mountains in a minute or two. It did feel smoother than a normal train but it swayed a lot. It's like being in an airplane with turbulence for two hours. I did get a little motion sickness when I looked out the windows, but once I stared at the inside of the train for a while I was ok.
We arrived in the bustling Hiroshima metropolis and took a trolley to the Peace Park. The first thing we saw was the A-Bomb dome. The building is just a brick and concrete shell. We walked quickly through the park to the museum. We walked past the Peace Flame that will only go out when all the nuclear weapons have been destroyed. At the museum we first had a speech by the president of the park. Then we had two hours to walk around. It started pretty tame: videos of mushroom clouds and airplanes, photos of the destroyed city. All through this I was struck by the timeliness of of our visit here. We, the US, did this terrible thing to other human beings. We created this living hell of fire and blood. What happened in New York was devastating, but we have produced so much worse. The death toll from the bomb was hundreds of thousands.
Anyway, the next session was about nuclear weapons. It was scary to think that not only can today's missiles cause so much more damage, there are so many of them. There was a video about nuclear winter. There it first hit me tat any use of nuclear weapons would kill everyone. I started changing my mind about war. Before today I considered joining the Reserves to fight for our country.
The next section detailed the effects on human beings. The first part was a diorama showing a mother and son running from the burning city with their skin falling off and bleeding. There were photos of victims' skin, faces, arms. Actual clothing that had to be cut away from the bodies of burning children. Fingernails, hair, scar-tissue, a watch stopped at 8:15am, pieces of glass found in the bodies of victims after they were cremated. It turned my stomach in the most unbelievable way. To see what we did to human beings, children. War is such a terrible thing. There could never be any reason to create this hell on Earth.
We left and went to eat our box lunches in the park. While I ate I started thinking of the people who died right where I was sitting. I looked over towards the sky where the hypocenter was and imagined how it must have felt to watch that bomb fall through the air and realize a split second before that you were going to die.
Wow. I'm way off subject. Ok. After lunch we walked around the basement of the museum. It was an exhibit dedicated to a girl who folded 1,000 paper cranes while praying to get better from the leukemia she had. She died when she was, maybe 12. I folded a crane myself and wrote on the wings: For Peace in USA and World.
Our next event was to attend a presentation by a bomb survivor. I didn't really catch her name but she looked a little like a Jewish mother. It was a translated speech so it began a little slow. Many of us were crying by the end of it, especially as she described the death of her mother. I took notes as she spoke so I would always remember her story. This woman and other people like her are the most vivid reasons for Peace I can imagine. When it was over I had G take a picture of me with her and told her I thought she looked beautiful. We gave her a standing ovation.
We next took a walking tour of the park. There were many big and small monuments. One to Korean victims, children, the students who were working on the roads and died, and many many others. We (G) placed our paper cranes at the memorial to the children and the girl with leukemia. We ended back at the A-Bomb dome, and this time it meant so much more to me. The inscription on the memorial to those who died keeps sticking in my mind: we will not let this evil happen again. We can't have a war. It's the worst possible event humans can produce.
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