Since leaving America August 2006, I have traveled to sixteen countries. A great deal has happened. This site is to share my thoughts, photos, music, writings, travel experiences, and developing political/social commentary with you. I hope you find it interesting and informative.
Over a year ago, in my Longing For Spring article, I mentioned that every year we go to Kasai Flower Garden. It took a little longer than expected this year, mainly because it’s been so cold and roses are blooming much later, but Masumi and I made the trip this past weekend.
It’s about a one-and-a-half hour drive but very much worth it. Here are some photos, both of the extraordinary grounds and the greenhouses, among the best I’ve ever encountered.
Beyond the expected charms of this garden park, we were treated to a most unusual spectacle! Hawaiian dancing I have to say is among the last things I thought we’d run into. But Japan, as I’ve repeatedly said, is full of surprises.
While the world seems it’s becoming more chaotic by the day, economies fall apart, and many folks are worried about the future, life here in Japan, at least for us, is pretty decent. Let’s hope our good fortune holds and the rest of the planet rediscovers what’s important in life and how much value there is in every human being.
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Several years ago I visited Hiroshima. Very recently I was in Nagasaki. As is common knowledge, these were the Japanese cities on which the U.S. dropped atomic bombs, the only time in history nuclear weapons have been used in war.
Both cities have peace parks, peace memorials, and peace museums honoring the victims of these war crimes and making a noble attempt to get the world to completely abolish these horrifying weapons of mass extermination once and for all.
My reaction after spending several somber hours at each location was: ‘Everyone should be required to see this, learn the truth about the bombings, and come to fully understand the profound existential threat nuclear arms truly are.’
The problem is that the people who visit these sites are folks like Masumi and I who already want peace. And the people who really need to visit them never do, and even if they by chance were somehow to stumble on them would not take any of it in with an open mind, with love in their hearts, with a desire to learn and develop an appreciation of their fellow human beings. They worship war and view those of us who want peace as sentimental fools.
The museums offer a wealth of important insights, insights that are suppressed by our sociopathic “handlers” who know the truth but want to keep it from us normal sane folks, because we would then understand the pure evil that possesses them, their pathological agenda, and the self-destructive obsessions at the core of their desire for world conquest.
Here are three shocking facts both the Hiroshima and Nagasaki peace museums rigorously document, indisputable evidence that the dropping of the atomic bombs were war crimes.
Mushroom cloud over Nagasaki, Japan, Aug. 9, 1945. (AP Photo)
1) The bombs purely targeted civilians. There were no legitimate military targets near the epicenters of the blasts. The Nagasaki plutonium weapon exploded directly above hospitals, elementary and high schools, churches, a college campus, and residential buildings.
2) The dropping of the bombs was “scientific” fact finding, to determine under real conditions how effective they would be, meaning exactly what the devastation would look like. Documents from the U.S. government confirm this.
3) The dropping of the bombs was not a military necessity, but a political statement. It put the world on notice — directed especially at the Soviet Union — who would wield the ultimate power in the post-WWII world.
As has horrifyingly become apparent, there would be nothing unique about this merciless and unnecessary slaughter of Japanese civilians. Over the coming decades, the U.S. would go on a genocidal rampage: more than 1.5 million innocent North Korean citizens in the Korean War; 2 million Vietnamese non-combatants in the Vietnam War; at least 176,000 killed over twenty years in Afghanistan, from of a war we started; nearly 500,000 Iraqi deaths the direct result of our invasion of that country. More deaths in Syria, Libya, now Ukraine, all directly attributable to U.S. military aggression and imperial hubris.
But Hiroshima and Nagasaki was when our hyper-savagery initially went into high gear.
This is why we should — and must — talk, and talk honestly, about these events that occurred in the frenzy of war almost 78 years ago.
But I fear we won’t. Instead, we’ll continue to rationalize and lie, sugar-coat the truth, immerse ourselves in fairy tales, glorify war, and tolerate the worst among us to lead us closer and closer to the abyss of human annihilation. There are war planners in the MIC who now are saying we can win a nuclear war. Someone must be putting LSD in the water coolers at these think tanks!
How can we end this madness? Where can we find the courage to confront the destroyers of dreams, the killers of innocents, the psychopaths who risk the lives of every human on earth?
Don’t we owe to ourselves and this amazing human experiment to do something?
War is bankrupting us morally, economically, socially, spiritually!
Nuclear war threatens all life on the planet!
We must end the insanity!
While you’re thinking about these last few remarks, here are a few photos of the Nagasaki Peace Park, and the memorial garden which sits right in front of the peace museum.
Every modern country is struggling to deal with the pressures of new technology, pressures which are accelerating exponentially as new technologies accelerate in number, sophistication, and appeal. YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, games, smartphones, tablets are all in the mix, offering on the plus side unparalled opportunities for learning and communication, quick and easy ways of getting things done, but on the negative side pulling our focus, scattering our energies, wasting our time, and attenuating our capacity for deep, extended concentration.
We deal with this as adults. Similarly kids are more distracted and tempted with the fun, ease and convenience of technology than ever before. With each passing day, there are more and more technical shortcuts for just about any task.
Now with AI, we apparently have at our fingertips a tool to get just about anything done . . . EFFORTLESSLY! Type, hit enter, BINGO! A new song, a new poem, a novel, an article on just about any topic, a plan to conquer the world!
Maybe I’m too stuck in a legacy paradigm — after all, I am a product of celebratory mating prompted by victories over Germany and Japan . . . a Baby Boomer! — or maybe there are truisms which simply are timeless.
Here’s one I believe makes sense: Human satisfaction and personal reward is not necessarily in getting something done, but in doing that something, i. e. the effort to do it.
You can buy a computer program that plays an incredible game of chess. But the real reward comes from playing an incredible game of chess.
Same with music. I know I could buy some AI software which writes on command whatever kind of song I might want to hear. Is that supposed to somehow compare with the incredible child-like joy, the exhilaration I get from writing — however good or bad it turns out — a song myself?
That concept is not lost on teachers here in Japan. My wife, Masumi, teaches music in a nearby school system. She competes with computer games, the internet, iPhones, yes the entire array of distractions which her elementary students carry around with them — and the increasingly pervasive levels of ADHD which the foregoing produce — still manages to teach her kids how to play and how to appreciate music. She deserves a medal!
Masumi loves to show me success stories she comes across, examples of how the educational system in Japan serves the real needs of students and doesn’t abandon its core mission by pandering to the latest technological fads.
Here are two such examples. These are not Masumi’s students, because she teaches grades 2 through 6, elementary level. These examples are — are you ready for this? — nursery school kids! That means 5 and under! Try to process that as you watch the Yayoi Nursery School orchestra play a piece from Phantom of the Opera.
Here is a performance at the Toddler Music Festival, playing excerpts from Camina Burana.
I’ve lived in Japan, coming and going, for sixteen years, and I’ve discovered that every major city in this country has a unique personality. This really should come as no surprise. Would anyone in the U.S. think that Miami and Detroit aren’t dramatically different? Cleveland and San Francisco? Seattle and Washington DC?
But we carry preconceptions, prejudices when we go to foreign lands. We are at first probably overwhelmed by the dramatic shift in scenery and gravitate toward cultural commonalities, seeing all the things that cities and communities and the culture in general have in common, meaning in this instance, identifying and focusing on what we expect to see wherever we go in Japan: those cultural, social, religious, architectural features which make Japan . . . Japan.
Eventually, hopefully sooner than later, the scales fall from our eyes and the perceptual filters are replaced with more sensitivity and perceptiveness, a clear and objective view.
It took a while for me. I’m no different than anyone else who grew up in the West, saddled by prejudices and misconceptions, stereotypes we are relentlessly bombarded with in the bubble of U.S. “exceptionalism”. We get these from every direction: the media, movies, television. For example, I imagined Japan pretty much all looked like downtown Tokyo. The amazing truth is, 70% of this country is covered with forests. This is a land of stunning natural beauty, not cement, glass and glaring lights.
Eventually, I began to objectively “process” what I was seeing, hearing, smelling, touching, tasting — this last one being very important in such a food-centric society.
As anyone who follows me here knows, I live in Hyogo Prefecture with my Japanese wife, Masumi — we just celebrated our 11th wedding anniversary! We live close to three major cities: Kobe, Kyoto, and Osaka. Talk about distinct personalities! Kobe is our favorite, though Kyoto is the one best-known by international travelers for its geishas, and exotic temples and shrines. Osaka is exciting and fun, to say the least. But Kobe is originally the home of Masumi’s family, though they’re now scattered about.
Over the course of our courtship and marriage, we’ve been all over Japan, from Hokkaido in the north — a stone’s throw from Russia — all the way down to Hateruma, the southernmost island in Okinawa — a stone’s throw from Taiwan.
Even so, there was one place 13 hours west of us by car, we yet had to visit.
NAGASAKI!
It’s easily the most Westernized city in Japan. See for yourself.
Maybe I should have called this article ‘Life In Japan: Culture Machine’. As you can see, we weren’t just transported in time, but were given a taste of a completely different culture, that of Europe in the 19th Century.
While I thought Masumi looked spectacular, I can’t tell you how ridiculous I felt in that outfit. At the same time, I’m generally feeling pretty ridiculous these days. Should I embrace a whole new persona on Facebook? To heck with peace. Fire the cannons!
By the way — and I’ll make this short and sweet — the reason for the “Westernization” is very straightforward. During the Meiji Restoration, Japan finally opened itself up to trade with the West. The influx of traders was led by the Portuguese, then the Dutch, who carted everything they needed to feel at home in the Land of the Rising Sun: clothing, diet, churches, religion, architecture, etc.
This is not to suggest the Japanese welcomed the cultural “pollution”. In fact, at first visitors were confined to an artificial island in the harbor of Nagasaki, so they couldn’t mix with the local population. This area is called Dejima. It has been reconstructed near the original wharf, which is where we took a few photos. When ships arrived, the sailors and businessmen had a military escort take them to directly Dejima. Obviously, there was some interaction within the confines of the island, as the traders made deals with the local Japanese. Also, since there were no women accompanying the travelers, Japanese consorts were allowed in to service the needs of the all-male population. But for a long time mobility was extremely limited.
As we all know from the McDonald’s restaurants in Paris and Beijing, cultural creep can be insistent. Eventually, more and more of the West infiltrated Nagasaki. Houses and churches — though for many years Christianity was aggressively oppressed by the Japanese — eventually were built outside of Dejima on the mainland, and it is these remaining structures which give Nagasaki its truly distinctive Western character.
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