Naturally Nihon

Today's main experience was a 3 hour ferry journey across the Seto Inland Sea that separates the island of Honshu from Shikoku. Our destination was Matsuyama, which perhaps is not a premier sightseeing spot, but I love a ferry crossing, and it is en-route to Takamatsu where there's another fantastic garden to visit. Anyway, cracking weather for a sea cruise! I couldn't help but notice the megaphones mounted on poles near the sea once we got to Matsuyama. I guess these are the tsunami warning sirens which really makes the danger of this area seem real! That said... We've been here two whole weeks now and still no sign of Godzilla 😞

I'm just going to post two photos I took, both with a brilliant blue sky that disguises the horror that took place here. I was briefly tempted to add an image from the Internet of a victim of the atomic bomb that was dropped here, but decided against it. I leave it up to the reader to do their own research and see the burned flesh, charred skin etc. 8:15am on a bright, cloudless morning on the 6th of August 1945, one bomb was dropped here. 140,000 people died on the day and in the following months to the end of 1945. It sometimes seems as though the human race has not ascended much above the club and spear in terms of thought and civilisation. The so-called leaders of the world appear to be the most reckless among us, expending lives for political ends. We'll need luck if our species is to persist much longer. The Peace Memorial Museum should have been a moving tribute to those who perished and suffered, but sadly it was ruined by the staff who failed to...

This evening we fetched up in Hiroshima, but not without a brief stopover in Okayama to stroll through Koraku-en, "one of the Three Great Gardens of Japan." Completed in 1700 on the instruction on feudal lord Ikeda Tsunamasa it was passed to the Okayama Prefecture in 1884. Our journey from Osaka was on the speedy Shinkansen... And from the hustle-bustle, into the relative tranquility of a beautiful Japanese garden, with all that thought that goes into views and telling a story through the placement of stones and water and sculpted trees... This was such a different experience to Kenroku-en in Kanazawa which was much busier, not just with people, but with trees...almost no open space except above the water. Here in Koraku-en by contrast, much of the central are is taken up by an expanse of (I'll call it) lawn, which evokes rolling countryside leading to lakes, mountains and trees in the distance... Ignore the white lanterns. They were pr...