Peaceful Garden

Ohayo gozaimasu,

I'm getting ready to leave for the Imperial Palace. of course, I won't be able to go inside since the Imperial family still lives there, but I can take my very own photo of Edo castle.

I am a gardener, so I have been visiting the Japanese garden that is connected to my hotel. I has been very calming to go there after all the sessions I have attended.
You can see at least one thing that reminds me of home in one of these pictures.

Can you guess which one?

And since we are in Japan, there are more fish. These are called koi, and are NOT eaten!

In this garden I also came upon a Christian Chapel, while sitting inside I thought of my favorite hymn---

In the Garden

Hibakusha

Konnichiwa students,

Today, the first session I attended was entitled "Peace Education". One part of the program was given by a teacher from Hiroshima. The second half of the program was the retelling of the personal experience of one person, Matsushima san, who survived the Atomic bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.

The dropping of the A-bomb on Hiroshima was accomplished by the United States, although all countries were working towards producing such a bomb. What they did not know at the time was that it would turn out to be a weapon so frightening that those who know of the devastating results would be compelled to convince world powers never to use it again.

The U.S. dropped the A- bomb thinking that it would put an end to World War II by crippling Japan's ability to continue fighting. The bombing did accomplish this end.

Matsushima san said that he was lucky because he was it in classroom about 2 miles away from the epicenter, and on the opposite side of his middle school. When the bomb hit the ground, it totally annihilated everything in a mile radius of the denotation mark. Those who weren't killed immediately, either died shortly after, or years later due to radiation poisoning. He said that in a instant his life changed forever. He was blinding felt intense heat, and was thrown across the room by the force of the blast. He had cuts all over his body from the shards of glass from the windows penetrating his skin and was bleeding everywhere, but he was alive.
He saw people evacuating the city with ashen gray skin sometimes. without hair, or their hair standing straight up. They walked with their arms stretched straight out from the intense pain. They looked like ghosts, he said. He made it out of the city to further inland where his mother was living. He was sick for 10 days with diarrhea, but he was alive.

However, those who did survive were called Hibakusha, and faced discrimination because they survived. People were afraid that they would be contaminated with radiation poisoning. People didn't want their children to marry survivors because they thought their grandchildren would suffer genetic defects. Those Hiroshima children who had not been born yet came into the world mentally retarded, and people were afraid of associating with others who might experience terrible after effects.
From this experience, Matsushima san has had the desire to speak for peace, and the banning of using the A-boom again. He speaks to promote peace education. Something I think we should all do.

Here we are holding an origami peace crain.

Shimbuya

Konbanwa students,

I'm sorry that I didn't have an entry for last night. I was having technical difficulties, and by the time my problem was corrected, I was too tired to keep my eyes open. I did only have 3 hours of sleep before I went to the fish market. I actually wrote the entry about the fish market when I returned at 6:00 a.m., so I was too exhausted to do another after 10:00 p.m. Sometimes you will see a couple of entries dated the same date. Sometimes I will write two or three at one time if I have a lot to write and time allows it. Also, since Google is the creator and host of Blogger my blogspot loads through Google at a specific time of day, California time.

I am not at a loss for anything to write about, there is plenty and all of it has been either interesting, a different experience, an adventure, or all three. Lack of time is sit down at the computer has been a problem for me...But let's begin now.

I just returned from an area of Tokyo known as Shimbuya. The Shimbuya area is known as a hang-out for the youth culture, and has the busiest intersection in the world. Besides the the stores that are located there, it is also the end of the Ginza Metro Line, and that is one of the reasons it is so busy. People are exiting the Metro at all times of day, every day. I know that if you have never been to a big city like New York, Chicago, Washington D.C., London, Paris, or Tokyo you don't know what I'm talking about. These cities all have commuter trains underground. Some are called by terms like subway, others use the word metro, short for metropolitan, or city area.

Metros are safe in terms of the incident of accidents, avoid traffic interference, go fast, are a cheap way to travel, are better for the environment, and save time. I like them, so tonight I decided I would learn how to travel the Tokyo Metro. For 160 yen, which is about $1.56 in U.S. currency I traveled one way across half of Tokyo in about 10-15 minutes. I returned the same way for the same price.

Here are pictures of busiest intersection in the world, a map of the four or the nine different metro lines posted for this metro station with the stations that it stops at on each line (the other lines are not posted on this list because you would have to transfer from one of these lines and get on another to go to a different area of the city---you would use the same ticket because they are not collected until you exit the station), and the Neon lights that illuminated my first Friday night in Japan.

I'm inviting comments. Where are they, please?