Peace Tattoo

For the last three years a group of tattoo apprentaces have been giving away free paper crane tattoos on the anniversary of the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima. They start at about 10am and this year did about 30 tattoos. Eight of them were on me and my friends.

The paper crane is a symbol of peace in this city. People fold strings of cranes and add them to the Children's bomb memorial and other statues.

Here's a blog post from one of my friends about the experience: Today, I got a tattoo.

Rabbit Island, Okunoshima Japan

I can't believe I lived in Japan almost five years before someone let me know about the magical place that is Rabbit Island. I hate almost everything, but one thing in this world I really like is bunnies. I google pictures of baby bunnies before bed. I'm a crazy lady.

My mom is also a crazy bunny lady. So when she came to visit this summer I knew we'd have to take a trip to Okunoshima. It's only a two hour local train ride from Hiroshima.

How To Get There
From Mihara station (a Shinkansen stop) take the Kure line to Tadanoumi. Tadanoumi is a tiny station in a tiny town, no restaurants or 7-11s nearby. After you arrive you make your way to the ferry port on the opposite side of the station exit. At this point no signs are in English but if you figure that a ferry needs to be in the water I think you can figure it out.

At the ferry port a nice lady pointed to the ¥600 roundtrip button to buy a ticket from a vending machine. The ferry stops at two places and you want to get out at the first stop, 大久野島, a 12 minute ride.

Chillin' on the beach

He made a little house.

One The Island
Once we arrived we could already see bunnies hopping around the trees and welcome center. There was a bus waiting and everything in it was written in kanji. I could only make out the kanji for free 「無料」 and I convinced my mom to get on. The island isn't that big so how lost could we get?

The bus took us to the main hotel and onsen. Inside was a coffee and gift shop. Outside was tons of cute bunnies that run up to you and pyon pyon pyon all over the place.

Luckily my mom brought some veggies so we could feed them.

Why Are They There?
Oh, you know. Horrible WWII poison gas factory reasons. But they're all normal. Mom and I skipped the museum because we had already been to the A-Bomb one a few days before and why spoil the magic?

Feeding some buns.

Did You Know...

I haven't been posting a whole lot of content on this blog lately, but my sketchblog http://jimmyjanesays.blogspot.com, has a whole bunch of new comics up. More than three. More than five! Less than ten.

Do you hate dentists?

I finally did it. After four years of paying into the Japanese National Health Insurance program, I did something that I should have done a long time ago. I got a wisdom tooth removed.

I'd like to say, "I got my wisdom teeth removed," but this is Japan. For reasons I can only speculate about, they do it one at a time.

I may have mentioned before how I went to a dentist to get a cleaning and they cleaned my top teeth then asked me to return the next week to do the bottom. I never went back.

Luckily this new dentist I go to speaks English pretty well and is not afraid to clean all my teeth at once. I got a few fillings from him this summer (six fillings means at least four visits) but kept putting off getting my wisdom teeth pulled.

My dentist knows I hate him. Not in a personal way. Maybe I would get along with him if I met him at a bar or something.

During my tooth-pulling visit he asked me if I'd studied any more Japanese. I answered, "hai."

He asked me what I learned. I had actually just come from a lesson, but I'm way to shy to speak Japanese to Japanese people, so I said, "haisha" [dentist].

Of course he acted totally impressed then asked me, "歯医者がきらいですか？" [Do you hate dentists?].

"Hai," I answered.

Then I opened my mouth and clenched my hands together and let him do his thing. Took less than a minute.

He asked me if I wanted to take my tooth home. I said no. He told me I should because it's a souvenir. So he put it in a little plastic tooth case and in my hand. So now I have that.

Hiroshima SketchCrawl

A SketchCrawl is a drawing marathon around the world where people plan meet-ups in their cities. I've always wanted to do it and finally live in a place big enough where I could find other drawers to come with me.

We had a good time, starting at the Peace Memorial Museum (in the Peace Park) and working our way to the A-bomb dome (stopping at a sidewalk cafe along the way for pizza and fresh squeezed orange juice). It was super hot and sunny, but if we followed the trees' shade the heat wasnt oppressive.

A-bomb Dome

I felt a little rusty but managed to squeeze out 2 drawings I like. Instead of using a sketchbook I went with a clipboard with different colored papers. In the last few years I've really started hating sketchbooks, wire or bound. The clipboard gives you a nice fresh piece of paper with no distracting edges and no guilt about how many you fill.

Peace Memorial

Thanks to Glenn and Chika for coming! Hope we can do it again soon.

[EDIT]

Next SketchCrawl date is August 21st. Visit the Facebook page for details or send me an email.

Summer In Hiroshima

Rooftop beer gardens, night runs, non-stop fanning, yukata, homemade sangria, coffee Frappucinos, cold showers, sweaty bike rides, watermelon popsicles, sticky bars.

The New Apartment

Dear Blog,

I am no longer "Alone in Kudamatsu." Havent been for a few years, actually. I just moved with Motto from Tokuyama to Hiroshima. Yup, that Hiroshima, from your history book. But the name "Alone in Kudamatsu" stays. "Living in Sin in Hiroshima" is too wordy.

I love it here in the big city so far. Ive never lived in a real urban place with a population of over a million. Just today Motto and I were walking back from the grocery store and took a moment to notice how huge the high rise we past was. Like a couple of country bumpkins we stood there, noses pointed up, counting the stories. 33. So tall. We were impressed.

Motto: Can you imagine if you were building that?
Me: What do you mean?
Motto: Standing up there working.
Me: It'd be so windy.
Motto: Would you live on the top floor?
Me: Probably not, I'd think about jumping too much.

This apartment is a lot bigger than the one back in Tokuyama. We got a bedroom, a tatami room, a kitchen, a genkan, and a bathroom with a mirror and sink! I was so excited about that. The last apartment had a sink and tiny shaving mirror in the shower and that was it.

Strange noises:

• 10 p.m. church bells. Church, really?
• Upstairs neighbor plays loud 90's Alt rock on Saturday nights.
• Nightly slapping sound. Like someone is quickly whacking a fat man's back. Duration: approx 20 mins.

Good points:

• Living downtown and can get a burrito, Starbucks decaf iced coffee, falafel and Subway sandwich in one afternoon. I dont, but I could.
• Small American-themed cafe downstairs in my building. Serves coffee, cocktails, and Japanese food. The owner has big glasses and a motorbike and we say "konnichiwa" when we see each other.
• Okonomiyaki restaurant around the corner has a friendly cook who makes me vegetarian food.
• A young vegetable vendor guy stands downstairs with some cheap random veggies some days. Old ladies walk by and buy single cucumbers and slip them in their purses. They all seem to know each other pretty well.
• Squeezed 20 guests inside for my housewarming party.
• Someone keeps their wifi unlocked and it's super fast.

Bad Points:

• Raspberry-chan's new room is on one of our balconies. Motto got sick of being attacked by her and we cant let her chew up the floors and wooden moulding anymore. So she's outside like some sort of animal.

I bought some new furniture and now I finally own a bed. But too be honest I miss the futons.

Motto got that insane bookshelf (pictured left) at a refurbish shop. I told him if he wants to keep his million DVDs Antonio gave him he'd better find something to keep them in.

I tried to take pictures of the place. But a video tour will probably work better. I'll do that someday. Or you could come visit.

I should make a Drunk Vegetarian Guide to Hiroshima to accompany my Fukuoka one.

Moving Time

りくちゃん
Originally uploaded by JimmyJaneSays

I'm moving to Hiroshima next Tuesday! I swear, no more delays. I've been bringing my camera to work to take pictures of my students doing amazing things like floating, so I wont forget the little demons. I'll miss them!

Racism in Japan

I have a fever right now, so I apologize if any of this sounds delirious. More delirious than usual. Can something sound delirious? Anyway.

This blog is about my experience as an American in Japan, so I thought I ought to write about this event even though most stories you're getting out of this country have a different feel right now. On Monday Motto [Japanese] and I [American] went looking for apartments in Hiroshima. It's a weird system here. You have to find a real estate company and you tell them what you're looking for, and then they try to sell you something they want to get rid of.

We looked at a bunch of places that were either too far from downtown, old, dirty, expensive, had the bathroom sink in the kitchen, or had the laundry machine in the kitchen. You know, things I'm not ready to settle for.

We found a place that was cheap for the size (3DK) and downtown. In our tired state we decided to take it despite the non-refundable 340,000¥ key money [$4,000 USD deposit]. Motto signed the contract and wrote my name down as his co-inhabiting fiance (he tried to hide the "fiance" part from me, when pressed said it looks better than writing "laundry folder).

Begin Rant.
So today we got a call from the real estate agent saying the landlord doesnt want to rent to us because I'm a foreigner. Apparently he had Filipino tenants before and they ruined the apartment.

Wow. They may know how to queue in line but this is a backwards country. Can you imagine an American refusing to rent to a Japanese? Or refusing to rent to any non-American? That stuff just doesnt go on in most of the civilized world, yet in Japan the real estate agent didnt even seem too shocked. If I were him I'd be like, You call them and say that, bigot.

You hear stories like this all the time in Japan. I was used to the constant stares, being asked if I "want to pa-ti" buy gross men, having to use a credit card to get a cell phone, and people doing black face on TV but this is a new hurtle I wasnt ready for.

It makes me more and more upset when I think about the fact I've been here 3 years, absorbing the culture and trying not to always be the nail that sticks out.

My first American thoughts about this were lawyer! newspaper! we should own that building!

And as far as the fear of me destroying the apartment with Motto, I thought that's why we give him the $4,000. It goes to cleaning the apartment and replacing all the tatami floors when we leave.

This shouldnt be acceptable behavior in Hiroshima, the city of peace, or anywhere. I assure you no Americans living there were Tweeting #PearlHarbor last week.

If anyone is itching to defend Japanese xenophobia and racism in the comments section have fun.

You can reTweet this link to let the word out that things like this are still being allowed to happen in 2011.
End rant.

I'm OK, thanks for askin.

I was asleep when the earthquake hit. I didnt check the internet or TV before work so when I saw I had three missed calls on my cell after work I panicked. No one ever calls me, especially from overseas. It was my grandma seeing if I was OK. She called again and filled me in on what happened. Then slowly as my east coast friends started to wake up (noon their time) and my family in Texas heard what happened (FOX news must have picked up the story) more and more tweets and Facebook messages came in. I'm not trying to call out other members of my family about the fact that only my grandma in Boston picked up the phone and paid long distance fees to check that I was alive. *ahem*

Anyway, I let everyone know I was fine, and even posted the previous blog post before I found out how bad the earthquake and subsiquent tsunamis had been.

Then the western 24 hour news media really sunk it's teeth into the story. A man was found 9 miles out to sea, a nuclear power plant had an explosion, the cast of Twilight had to evacuate Vancouver.

I could hardly go online without seeing some misinformed person on the other side of the world saying, "Cancel your travel plans to Japan, it's not safe over there!" Jon is coming to visit me next month and someone wrote to him that Narita airport is a mess and he should rethink his vacation.

Other people worry about nuclear fallout traveling to California. Someone on Facebook said that Japan refused to accept help from the US (FALSE). #PEARLHARBOR started trending on Twitter.

My dad is not convinced I'm safe as he sees the press cover the devistation more and more.

Ok, folks. Japan is big. Some plant workers have gotten radiation poisoning. That's really terrible. I think it was 10 to 100 workers. The nuclear power plant was designed to withstand earthquakes and has systems in place to deal with a meltdown. Even if the thing blew up I'd be fine in Yamaguchi. You'd be fine in your home across the ocean. The poor people of Fukushima would have to deal with some shit, though.

A lot of people are missing. They dont even know how many thousands died. It's devastating to the country and will take a long time to bounce back from.

No one should cancel travel plans to Japan. The last thing this country needs is to lose tourism dollars right before cherry blossom season.

EDIT: As I wrote this a 6.0 earthquake hit Shizukoa, south-west of Tokyo. The news anchors have put their helmets back on.