A Dream Where Sadness Rhymed With Everything

Well this post comes in rather late but I just had too much free time on my hands the past two days to do anything but lounge around and read up on news that I'd been missing. We arrived back in Kyoto Saturday afternoon from our week long excursion around the Southern part of Japan and it was certainly a worthy time. Both the Nagasaki and Hiroshima peace parks and museums were indeed sobering. Though the Nagasaki museum was less expansive as the more visited Hiroshima I feel that it succeeded in painting a more subjective picture of the destruction, fear and tragedy brought forth by the bombs. In Hiroshima, however, there was much more of a visual relic of the hell unleashed in the form of the Genbaku Dome which was located directly under the midair explosion of "little boy" and though it was not fully leveled by the blast all that stands is a broken and scorched structure, which serves as both a reminder of the past and possibly a glimpse of the future.

After two nights in Hiroshima we departed, via boat, for Matsuyama. Though Matsuyama was not the most exciting portion of our trip, the fact that the castle we went to see was under heavy renovation was a let down, it represented what one would consider a more typical type of Japanese local than say Tokyo or Kyoto. Though this won't help to convince you it wasn't a boring time we did also visit a dye museum famous for making a blue dye found only in Japan.

Finally we took a train to Himeji and then a bus out of the city for an overnight stay at a fantastic Japanese spa, known as an Onsen. Man was it relaxing. There was about three separate baths to partake, including an amazing one outside, and during my stay I doubt I've been any cleaner, or relaxed. Though rumors in the states abound about gender communal baths the truth is that they were largely phased out in order to please the God-created-genitals-AND-CLOTHES West back in the day so you'd probably have to go deep into rural Japan to find one of those relics. During the course of the night I polished off a delicious bottle of milky sake and thoroughly enjoyed both the expensive dinner and my stay. Saturday morning we Went to Himeji castle, which was quite a beautiful and grand piece of history.

Well now I'm back in Kyoto and ready to start the second half of my class sessions. ...whooo. Actually it shouldn't be bad at all. I'll get some pictures from the trip up here in a day or two also.