Spring Service
Sep. 4th, 2007 12:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skyringIt is within a grasshopper skip of spring here in Canberra, and once again I can enjoy that special, joyous, smug feeling that I find so irritating in my Northern Hemisphere friends. No longer will visitors from Darwin or Cairns gaze out at the willows and poplars on the drive in from the airport and ask, “why are there so many dead trees here?” Nor will I have to scrape the ice off my car windscreen when I return at three or four in the morning for the drive home to bed.
Two colourful heralds of spring have appeared along the roadside. The wattle is flowering, its fluffy golden flowers promising a glorious summer for the future, and a present for allergy sufferers. And here and there we see delicate pink clouds from cherry and plum trees.
It has been a year since I did my taxi course. Each lunchtime I would emerge into the crisp air and turn either right, towards the academic remainders bookshop, or left towards the sandwich shop. Sometimes both. And above me the cherry blossoms along Kembla Street lifted my heart with their fragile beauty. First as clusters of pink on the bare twigs, and then increasingly as a fairy carpet beneath.
That was a happy week, those five days of learning at the feet of experienced cabbies. My teachers were people who got a great deal of pleasure out of their job, and looked on it as more than an easy way to make a few bucks. Ever since then, I’ve enjoyed listening to the yarns old cabbies spring, and occasionally telling a few of my own.
Those cherry blossoms reminded me of my first visit to Japan, a few months earlier, when I was lucky enough to catch the April blooming in Osaka and Hiroshima. Such a land of contrasts to my Western eyes: the hideous urban ugliness of the great cities against the occasional beautiful parks, the sakura pink against the dark tree trunks, colour against the grey of the laneways.Technomarvels and ancient customs. Amazing friendliness in the anonymous city.
Osaka’s recreated castle was a tall confection of pagoda gables in a park made up of ancient fortifications and monuments to fallen samurai. From the topmost lookouts I oversaw an island of greenery amongst the drab city, a peaceful retreat from the relentless hum and noise of industry and commerce.
We caught a taxi, my guide and I. I had no Japanese, and Cari, an English teacher from New York, not much more, but she knew Osaka and could point the cabbie in the right directions. I drew some comfort from the fact that here in this alien land the driver sat on the right side. But when I reached to buckle up my seatbelt, my hands skidded on emptiness.
“Seatbelts are optional here,” Cari smiled.
As an Australian cabbie, I’m required to ensure that my passengers are correctly strapped in, and with over a generation accustomed to “click-clack, front and back”, it’s a rare passenger I have to remind to “Buckle up please, not that it’s going to be a wild ride or anything, but it’s the law.”
In Japan the laws are different. Everything’s different. The cabbie had this weird lever arrangement so that he could open the passenger door without leaving his seat. Not sure about this. If a passenger is having trouble with the door, I like to bounce out and help them. I need every excuse to get a bit of exercise that comes my way.
There’s also the possibility that by hanging onto the lever, the cabbie can prevent a passenger from leaving the cab. Until they pay the fare, for instance. But once I got to know a bit about Japan, I couldn’t imagine a Japanese person ever “doing a runner”. On the list of Japanese national qualities, politeness and industriousness are at the top, and dishonesty doesn’t rate a mention.
In Canberra we only have one railway station, and it only has a couple of trains each day. Japan has the sort of railway system you’d get if you gave the train set nerds from your schooldays a bottomless bank account and an endless supply of Jolt Cola. Cari’s local railway station has a shopping mall built into the premises, and three levels of platforms, ranging from the underground on the bottom to the Shinkansen bullet trains whipping past at supersonic speeds on the roof.
“You think this is something?” Cari asked, seeing me gawping at the food hall, where dozens of tiny restaurants served the hurrying commuters. “You should see the main Osaka station at rush hour – it’s the railway station from Hell!”
We had tickets for the Shinkansen, and as I waited on the platform I reassured myself that I was here in real, waking life. Since my childhood, the image of these sleek superfast trains speeding past Mount Fuji had been an icon of Japan and the modern age. It was like preparing myself for a trip on the Concorde or the space shuttle, and I peered up the track, awaiting the marvel.
It did not disappoint. It was something out of science fiction, needle-nosed, a cab blistering out with two uniformed captains aloof behind the glass, and inside it was all neon and space. Cari generously gave me the window seat and then with a hum of power we were off, faster and faster along the smooth bullet-rails.
Osaka was soon past. Everything was soon past. Towns, villages, tunnels and bridges were gone in the blink of an eye. The only constants were the mountains in the middle distance, green forests on their steep flanks, and the silver rails beside us.
The train rocked sideways in the bow wave from a Shinkansen going the other way. Our combined velocities gave it a rocket speed. One moment it was there a scant metre beyond my nose, the next there was nothing but the clear air and the speeding green landscape.
A conductor worked his way down the aisle, checking tickets, each passenger getting the same set of deft motions as he examined the card, punched a hole, handed it back and gave a genteel little bow. I was charmed.
“The local trains are cheaper, but it takes a whole morning to get here,” Carla advised, as we drew up at Hiroshima’s station, a short hour after leaving Osaka. Again, it had multiple levels of platforms and a shopping mall, and outside a quaint street tram waited to take us on. After the war, cities from all over Japan sent trams to Hiroshima, and to this day they trundle about in a glorious mixed memory of bygone days, a moving museum for rail fans, including two of the four Hiroshima streetcars that survived the attack.
I was awed by my first sight of the Peace Dome, the empty girders and ruined stonework a reminder of the city destroyed by the atomic bomb. A tumbled ruin, it was one of the few buildings remaining upright after the explosion scoured away flimsier structures and set the wreckage burning. Now it is a shrine, and we tourists, we pilgrims linger in front, talking in low tones and never smiling.
There was more to see. Across the Ota river were more memorials and shrines. A statue of a young girl recalls Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia years after the war. She spent her final days folding paper cranes, hoping that when she finished a thousand she would begin to recover. She made six hundred before she died. Her schoolmates contributed the balance, and to this day children from around the world send folded paper cranes in her memory. They are housed in displays around the memorial, millions of multicoloured paper birds, spelling out messages of peace.
A rest house surviving the bomb now offers refreshments and souvenirs. The donated cranes are recycled into notebooks and bookmarks after being displaced by fresh donations, and I bought a few bookmarks, marvelling at the rich texture of the recycled origami paper, full of coloured fragments from around the world, held together by love.
A huge Japanese bell hangs in an elegant little shrine, and visitors are encouraged to ring the bell for peace. Every few minutes the deep note of the bell sounds out over the park, and another wish goes with it.
“Look!” Cari nudged me. A group of tourists were walking through the park, escorted by a man in uniform. “It’s a taxidriver tour. The tourists hire the cab and are shown around by the driver. It costs a huge amount of money.”
We found ourselves on the river bank again. Hiroshima is built on a river delta and there are seven river mouths, each channel defining another island. Here was an arcade of cherry trees, their fresh blossoms forming another river of pink. Beneath the trees were groups of businessmen, sitting on picnic blankets, drinking saki and eating rice snacks. “See how they hold out their glasses,” my guide pointed, “If a blossom falls in their drink, it is good luck. They call it hanami, and they send out the office juniors before work hours to mark out the best spots so they can have their lunch under the trees.”
In the river a pink boat cruised by, tourists lining the deck and a hidden generator sending out clouds of pink bubbles, which floated surreally overhead. A camera crew moved through the merry businessmen, gathering footage of the celebration. An atomic bomb survivor, an old lady now, stood on a bridge silently holding a placard.
They are serious about their message of peace here. The whole of the atomic bomb museum is one long sermon on the evils of atomic war, and I am cynic enough to find the message a trifle cloying. Yet after seeing the sad fragments of the destroyed lives, a sandal here, a lunchbox there, a shadow of a vaporised woman burnt into the stone steps where she had been sitting, and reading the story of the party of schoolchildren who had been clearing a firebreak under the bomb’s detonation point, I began to understand.
It was with sorrow in my heart that I turned from the last display and walked along a gallery, the view of the memorial park under low clouds, the ruined dome at the far end of a tended vista, the open space made up from the never-finished firebreak. I didn’t cry, but I was close. A soft rain began to fall, and I wrote my name in the visitors book, adding a note in French, il pleut.
Cari led me back under the cherry blossoms, past drunken businessmen widdling in the bushes, to the streetcar stop, and we returned to the station, wandering down the candy aisles of a department store, purchasing peculiarly Japanese sweets in odd flavours and packaging for my children at home in a land untouched by war.
I stared out the window on the way back, appreciating the fleeting beauty, my feelings at one with the grey clouds. That night, in the cramped apartment Cari shared with two flatmates, I made a long entry in my travel journal, ending with two words in upper case, underlined and bold.
NEVER AGAIN
Two colourful heralds of spring have appeared along the roadside. The wattle is flowering, its fluffy golden flowers promising a glorious summer for the future, and a present for allergy sufferers. And here and there we see delicate pink clouds from cherry and plum trees.
It has been a year since I did my taxi course. Each lunchtime I would emerge into the crisp air and turn either right, towards the academic remainders bookshop, or left towards the sandwich shop. Sometimes both. And above me the cherry blossoms along Kembla Street lifted my heart with their fragile beauty. First as clusters of pink on the bare twigs, and then increasingly as a fairy carpet beneath.
That was a happy week, those five days of learning at the feet of experienced cabbies. My teachers were people who got a great deal of pleasure out of their job, and looked on it as more than an easy way to make a few bucks. Ever since then, I’ve enjoyed listening to the yarns old cabbies spring, and occasionally telling a few of my own.
Those cherry blossoms reminded me of my first visit to Japan, a few months earlier, when I was lucky enough to catch the April blooming in Osaka and Hiroshima. Such a land of contrasts to my Western eyes: the hideous urban ugliness of the great cities against the occasional beautiful parks, the sakura pink against the dark tree trunks, colour against the grey of the laneways.Technomarvels and ancient customs. Amazing friendliness in the anonymous city.
Osaka’s recreated castle was a tall confection of pagoda gables in a park made up of ancient fortifications and monuments to fallen samurai. From the topmost lookouts I oversaw an island of greenery amongst the drab city, a peaceful retreat from the relentless hum and noise of industry and commerce.
We caught a taxi, my guide and I. I had no Japanese, and Cari, an English teacher from New York, not much more, but she knew Osaka and could point the cabbie in the right directions. I drew some comfort from the fact that here in this alien land the driver sat on the right side. But when I reached to buckle up my seatbelt, my hands skidded on emptiness.
“Seatbelts are optional here,” Cari smiled.
As an Australian cabbie, I’m required to ensure that my passengers are correctly strapped in, and with over a generation accustomed to “click-clack, front and back”, it’s a rare passenger I have to remind to “Buckle up please, not that it’s going to be a wild ride or anything, but it’s the law.”
In Japan the laws are different. Everything’s different. The cabbie had this weird lever arrangement so that he could open the passenger door without leaving his seat. Not sure about this. If a passenger is having trouble with the door, I like to bounce out and help them. I need every excuse to get a bit of exercise that comes my way.
There’s also the possibility that by hanging onto the lever, the cabbie can prevent a passenger from leaving the cab. Until they pay the fare, for instance. But once I got to know a bit about Japan, I couldn’t imagine a Japanese person ever “doing a runner”. On the list of Japanese national qualities, politeness and industriousness are at the top, and dishonesty doesn’t rate a mention.
In Canberra we only have one railway station, and it only has a couple of trains each day. Japan has the sort of railway system you’d get if you gave the train set nerds from your schooldays a bottomless bank account and an endless supply of Jolt Cola. Cari’s local railway station has a shopping mall built into the premises, and three levels of platforms, ranging from the underground on the bottom to the Shinkansen bullet trains whipping past at supersonic speeds on the roof.
“You think this is something?” Cari asked, seeing me gawping at the food hall, where dozens of tiny restaurants served the hurrying commuters. “You should see the main Osaka station at rush hour – it’s the railway station from Hell!”
We had tickets for the Shinkansen, and as I waited on the platform I reassured myself that I was here in real, waking life. Since my childhood, the image of these sleek superfast trains speeding past Mount Fuji had been an icon of Japan and the modern age. It was like preparing myself for a trip on the Concorde or the space shuttle, and I peered up the track, awaiting the marvel.
It did not disappoint. It was something out of science fiction, needle-nosed, a cab blistering out with two uniformed captains aloof behind the glass, and inside it was all neon and space. Cari generously gave me the window seat and then with a hum of power we were off, faster and faster along the smooth bullet-rails.
Osaka was soon past. Everything was soon past. Towns, villages, tunnels and bridges were gone in the blink of an eye. The only constants were the mountains in the middle distance, green forests on their steep flanks, and the silver rails beside us.
The train rocked sideways in the bow wave from a Shinkansen going the other way. Our combined velocities gave it a rocket speed. One moment it was there a scant metre beyond my nose, the next there was nothing but the clear air and the speeding green landscape.
A conductor worked his way down the aisle, checking tickets, each passenger getting the same set of deft motions as he examined the card, punched a hole, handed it back and gave a genteel little bow. I was charmed.
“The local trains are cheaper, but it takes a whole morning to get here,” Carla advised, as we drew up at Hiroshima’s station, a short hour after leaving Osaka. Again, it had multiple levels of platforms and a shopping mall, and outside a quaint street tram waited to take us on. After the war, cities from all over Japan sent trams to Hiroshima, and to this day they trundle about in a glorious mixed memory of bygone days, a moving museum for rail fans, including two of the four Hiroshima streetcars that survived the attack.
I was awed by my first sight of the Peace Dome, the empty girders and ruined stonework a reminder of the city destroyed by the atomic bomb. A tumbled ruin, it was one of the few buildings remaining upright after the explosion scoured away flimsier structures and set the wreckage burning. Now it is a shrine, and we tourists, we pilgrims linger in front, talking in low tones and never smiling.
There was more to see. Across the Ota river were more memorials and shrines. A statue of a young girl recalls Sadako Sasaki, who died of leukemia years after the war. She spent her final days folding paper cranes, hoping that when she finished a thousand she would begin to recover. She made six hundred before she died. Her schoolmates contributed the balance, and to this day children from around the world send folded paper cranes in her memory. They are housed in displays around the memorial, millions of multicoloured paper birds, spelling out messages of peace.
A rest house surviving the bomb now offers refreshments and souvenirs. The donated cranes are recycled into notebooks and bookmarks after being displaced by fresh donations, and I bought a few bookmarks, marvelling at the rich texture of the recycled origami paper, full of coloured fragments from around the world, held together by love.
A huge Japanese bell hangs in an elegant little shrine, and visitors are encouraged to ring the bell for peace. Every few minutes the deep note of the bell sounds out over the park, and another wish goes with it.
“Look!” Cari nudged me. A group of tourists were walking through the park, escorted by a man in uniform. “It’s a taxidriver tour. The tourists hire the cab and are shown around by the driver. It costs a huge amount of money.”
We found ourselves on the river bank again. Hiroshima is built on a river delta and there are seven river mouths, each channel defining another island. Here was an arcade of cherry trees, their fresh blossoms forming another river of pink. Beneath the trees were groups of businessmen, sitting on picnic blankets, drinking saki and eating rice snacks. “See how they hold out their glasses,” my guide pointed, “If a blossom falls in their drink, it is good luck. They call it hanami, and they send out the office juniors before work hours to mark out the best spots so they can have their lunch under the trees.”
In the river a pink boat cruised by, tourists lining the deck and a hidden generator sending out clouds of pink bubbles, which floated surreally overhead. A camera crew moved through the merry businessmen, gathering footage of the celebration. An atomic bomb survivor, an old lady now, stood on a bridge silently holding a placard.
They are serious about their message of peace here. The whole of the atomic bomb museum is one long sermon on the evils of atomic war, and I am cynic enough to find the message a trifle cloying. Yet after seeing the sad fragments of the destroyed lives, a sandal here, a lunchbox there, a shadow of a vaporised woman burnt into the stone steps where she had been sitting, and reading the story of the party of schoolchildren who had been clearing a firebreak under the bomb’s detonation point, I began to understand.
It was with sorrow in my heart that I turned from the last display and walked along a gallery, the view of the memorial park under low clouds, the ruined dome at the far end of a tended vista, the open space made up from the never-finished firebreak. I didn’t cry, but I was close. A soft rain began to fall, and I wrote my name in the visitors book, adding a note in French, il pleut.
Cari led me back under the cherry blossoms, past drunken businessmen widdling in the bushes, to the streetcar stop, and we returned to the station, wandering down the candy aisles of a department store, purchasing peculiarly Japanese sweets in odd flavours and packaging for my children at home in a land untouched by war.
I stared out the window on the way back, appreciating the fleeting beauty, my feelings at one with the grey clouds. That night, in the cramped apartment Cari shared with two flatmates, I made a long entry in my travel journal, ending with two words in upper case, underlined and bold.
