The Telegraphic

The cost of our desire

I went to the Hiroshima A-Bomb museum on the weekend, which is a sombre and macabre place that I never want to return to. Melancholic audio files on repeat drone in the background whilst you read the information, fragmented and juxtaposed against charred remains and diagrams. Broken, melted artifacts in glass cases are accompanied with the story of someone’s death. Glass shards puncture furniture like they did skin, bottles fused together by the intense heat sit in cabinets. Burnt and melted skin is preserved, suspended in liquid, next to graphic photos of burns set against timelines. Eventually, I stumbled out the exit, immediately ambushed by a questionaire and comments book.

What was I to write?
“Very informative, well put together exhibit”?
“I liked the wax diorama of people melting to their deaths”?

Nobody else seemed to have written anything along the lines of “macabre and horrible” yet, so I wrote that. Throughout the day, snippets of song lyrics and poems kept running through my head, reborn through what I can only say is a sudden realisation of some very important fact which I can’t quite comprehend.

The rest of the day
(somewhat lighter)

After lunch we left the heavy atmosphere of Hiroshima behind us and travelled by ferry to Miyajima – one of the 3 most beautiful places in Japan, according to the Japanese. The monks of the Itsukushima Shrine built a beautiful orange torii (gate) in the shallows of the sea off the coast, which at high tide is reflected by the water below. The only thing more amazing than the gate was the amount of people beachcombing at low tide. After a walk around the shrine, we went into the Awajima mountains, which were pristine and serene. We caught a cable car halfway to the top of the highest point, then walked to the top, where there was a shrine and a beautiful view of the inland sea (and of course, a coca-cola vending machine). There are some photos right here.

I finally got around to uploading all my new photos. Enjoy.

I’m currently working on a ‘day in the life’ series – involving pictures of me on a bike, in various places around Himeji (basically the way to uni). I want to make it a bit like a treasure map, where you click on the map quadrant and get a picture of the place, with me me on a bike. Or maybe a bit like that game Myst. It will be a interactive adventure of epic proportions. Well maybe not epic, but definitely proportional (hahaha I can’t remember where I stole that from).

The problem of course, is taking the photo with me and my bike, a fair distance from my bike, whilst still riding my bike. Hmm.

After Uni on Friday, all the Ryugakusei (exchange students) got together at the Apartments for a curry cookoff and a bit of a drink. Whilst I didn’t make a curry I did donate a lettuce, tomato and some asparagus that my host mother insisted I took with me. The curry was awesome although there was a little bit of a rice shortage, seeing as most only thought to cook curry. All up a pretty crankin’ night.

I awoke the next day at 8:00 with a slight hangover and not enough sleep, to get ready for a sea kayaking adventure with my ‘host brother in law’, Kei. Simon also managed to wake up and get to my house before 9:00 to join us. After some painkillers, Aquarius and a half an hour trip to a cove west of Himeji we donned the stylish kayaking gear and had some quick lessons. We were joined by 2 of Kei’s sea kayak buddies. One of them, Ken, (who’s a great guy), introduced himself to us with the unusual line “Hi, this is Ken”, which he followed up with, “So guys hows about we go for little bit of a kayak to over there, do some exercises then come back to over here to get the lunch”. Quite amusing. After our lessons, we decided to head for an island about 5km away, which took us about 50 minutes to get to. We had lunch there, after I fell into the shallows whilst trying to get out with numb legs, then we went island hopping, did some stone skipping and also some exploring.

In return for taking us kayaking we had to go and do some english tutoring, for two hours in a catholic church (we weren’t converted – they just run a class), near Himeji castle. We just talked about Australia and ourselves, then went with them for free dinner and beer at a small okonomiyaki restaurant. After that we went to Murisaki’s birthday party, then walked home (because my bike tire went flat).

I got about 5 hours sleep before Kyoko woke me up to get ready for a daytrip to Ako, which is famous for the (pricey) antique market that is held outside a famous shrine, where 47 Samurais committed Harikiri at the same time for what seems to be a rather complex reason. Jo and I just wandered around, looking at the crazy stuff for sale, like explicit statues, katanas, antique sumo magazines, retro cameras and an unopened ‘Alien’ the movie figurine. We had lunch then returned home.

A great weekend.

In case you’re wondering about the title (yeah, even if you weren’t, you are now), it’s a quote from George W Bush off a bushlexia page, which is quite humorous. I even fired up my del.icio.us bookmarks so I could add them. There you have it.

I thought I should do a more upbeat blog because people have been thinking that I’m a bit depressed. I’m not, I was just complaining and being cynical. There are entire communities of people on the internet who do nothing but complain, like most forums for example.

For the last couple of weeks I’ve been doing Aikido, which is a form of martial art derived from Ju-Jitsu (in 1942 by Morihei Ueshiba). There are some large differences between the two, however, as I had heard beforehand but never quite realised. Basically, Aikido is like a Tai-Chi version of Ju-Jitsu, where you’re more interested in inner spirit and perfecting a technique. Functionality never really comes into the picture – although having said that, if you managed to do a technique perfectly then you could do a lot of damage. All the techniques are very similar to Ju-Jitsu, but slightly different. The main differences that I can see is that you sometimes rely on the other person’s cooperation and that the stance is different. Even though the small differences have large repurcussions, I’m enjoying it and getting quite a lot out of it. I think I am making “Steadfast progress”. Last night, my rolls were 100% better than the night before (although they’re still very different to Ju-Jitsu – believe it or not). There’s a few things I hope to get out of it:

1. Improve my flexibility – we do about 1/2 hour of stretches before we start
2. Improve my falling (Ukemi) – when they fall over they do it with grace and elegance
3. Improve my body movement and locks (the main things they seem to seek prefection in)
4. Meet the grandson of Morihei Ueshiba – (Morihei also taught Jan De Jong, who’s school I belong to in Australia).
5. Get a bit fitter – we do 6 hours all up a week.

Tonight I’m heading over to the apartments (where the other exchange students live), where there’ll be a curry cookoff. Should be fun. Then I’m going canoeing on saturday and to a flea market out the front of a famous castle and shrine on sunday. But now I’m off to get ready for Uni.

Catcha later
Danny

I have been informed by the friendly staff of the international centre that I do not exist. There is no such student as Daniel Price. There is however a Danikoru.

Basically, I made a mistake when I was filling in my application form for Himeji Dokkyo- I spelt my name incorrectly in katakana (Japanese characters), but spelt it right in English on the same form. The logical plan of action is to correct the mistake – that’s why there is such a thing as administration; if things didn’t change and mistakes weren’t made there would be no need to administer anything.

In Himeji however mistakes do not get corrected. I first noticed this when I received my homestay contract. Naturally, as I didn’t want to commit fraud, I corrected my name before signing it.

A month later, they say there is a problem with my name on the contract and that they would print out new ones – which sounds good – but the problem they had was that there was no such student as Daniel Price. So I was forced to sign a contract with someone elses name on which as far as I’m concerned isn’t legally binding in any way, shape or form.

I haven’t been escorted off university grounds for tresspassing yet however.