Bunnies

If I say "Hiroshima" to you, what do you think of? Is it this?

Probably not.

Hiroshima Prefecture might genuinely be my favourite part of Japan. I've been there twice now, and both times I've been blown away by the beauty of the countryside and beaches, the clarity of the water, and the peacefulness of the islands. The city itself is pretty great as well; good food and a cosmopolitan vibe. The memorials and the museum are of course, not too cheery. I thought about writing a blogpost on them last year but decided I had nothing new or profound to say about it, so preferred to leave it be. All I'll say is that going to the museum was probably the toughest experience I've had here, though really important and I'd recommend it - if 'recommend' is the right word - to anyone.  But the reason I wanted to write this post is to show a different side to Hiroshima. In the west we mainly know it as the site of the first atomic bombing; the name is associated with tragedy and little else. But the US didn't choose to bomb some backwater; Hiroshima was (and still is) one of the most important cities in Japan. If you're not walking around the small part of the city specifically dedicated as a memorial to the attack, it just feels like walking around any other major metropolitan area of Japan, which is heartening if a little unsettling. It feels like you should see reminders and misery on every corner, but you don't. I don't want to make judgements on a place I still barely know, but to me the city feels like a testament to how life can find a way to spring up again after destruction.

Anyway, bunnies.

Off the coast of Hiroshima Prefecture, a couple of hours from the city, there's an island called Okunoshima (rough translation using my rough Japanese: Big Eternal Wilderness Island), better known as Usagijima (Bunny Island). (Last year I went to a different, but equally lovely island in Hiroshima, which you can read about here.) It's quite out of the way, so it's not super-touristy, but it still attracts a fair few people due to BUNNIES.

In the Second World War, the island was used as a research base for developing poison gas. After the war ended, the base was abandoned and the rabbits used for experimentation were released. Apparently no-one bothered to fix these rabbits, because a few generations later BUNNIES ALL OVER THE SHOP.

There isn't much left of the research facility, but the shells of the abandoned buildings are still there, taken over by adorable new tenants. Again, life springs up from destruction. Aggression and death paved over by ADORABLE BUNNIES LOOK

Check out that thumb action

I even got an ice cream with some fake rabbit poo in it - "Original Joke Ice Cream", as it was called. To be honest, the ice cream itself was good but the poo bits were not nearly as chocolatey as I expected and a little dry. Better poo needed.

Also, as you may have noticed from the top image, not only is the island full of gorgeous furry little bundles of love, but it's also just one of the most beautiful places I've ever been. The water is absurd. The sand is too nice. The greens are too verdant. The blues are too aquamarine. There are little caves. I want to sail all around there when I'm retired and I barely know what a boat is. I wish I could do it justice with my phone's camera. You'll just have to go there yourself.

Anyway, I hope this barely literate piece of Original Joke makes you think a bit differently of Hiroshima, if you haven't already been there or thought of going. 

bunnies

On the Election: Some Semi-Formed Thoughts

Some thoughts on the election, having spent a few days digesting it all:

1)  It's now more obvious than ever that first-past-the-post can lead to absurd results. It's no wonder there's so much political apathy when huge swathes of people have their votes made practically meaningless, simply because of the demographics of the area they happen to live in. I despise UKIP, but they're a valid party with about 15% of the votes and just one seat out of 650 (and they probably wouldn't even have that one if the candidate hadn't been a longstanding MP recently defected from another party). The number of overall votes per party compared with the number of seats borders on the bizarre. This isn't a new thing, but it makes it clear to me how important electoral reform is, not just in the name of fairness but also to increase political engagement.

2) Being an undeniably politically-correct tree-hugging loony lefty, I would be angry that the Conservatives got in, no matter what. (And no, I don't believe this makes me a 'sore loser' or that I don't believe in democracy. People have the right to choose whatever party they want, and I have the right to believe that choice was a bad one.) But I think this result angers me because of the way the debate was laid out to people, and the misinformation surrounding it. If everyone had the facts at hand and chose the Conservatives because they believe in the conservative ideology - pro-small state, pro-business, pro-traditional family values etc. - I would disagree, but there's not an objective right or wrong there, just a different set of values. I would still debate it, but the debate would be on a more fundamentally equal level.

However, what frustrates me is that I feel a lot of voters based their decision on ideas that are being constantly fed to us, yet are simply, objectively, factually wrong. Ideas like 'the recession happened because Labour overborrowed' - go on Google for two minutes and you can get the numbers which show that Labour's borrowing was at a reasonably low level until AFTER the crash, when we bailed out the banks. Indeed, their borrowing was far lower than Osborne's has been. You don't have to like Labour or agree their government was a good one, but the idea they borrowed us into recession is an easily disprovable myth. Yet it's completely entered the public consciousness now. Everyone thinks it's a fact, and saying it isn't true usually provokes a reaction like you've just said lobsters can fly. Likewise you have ideas like 'too many people are on benefits' - on average people think 27% of benefits are fraudulently claimed. The actual figure is 0.7%. In fact, benefits are underclaimed, not overclaimed i.e. far more people are entitled to them, but don't claim them, than fraudulently claim more than they should. But again, everyone seems to agree that there's a tsunami of lazy benefit fraudsters washing over the country and draining our finances. Again, this isn't about ideology, it's just about facts - if you believe the welfare system shouldn't exist, or should exist differently, that's fine, we can argue about that. But I'm not sure most voters are hardcore ideologues. I could be wrong, but I think the majority of people are probably pragmatists who base their views on what they think are the facts. It frustrates me that the UK on the whole gets a distorted idea of what those facts are.

I'm sure this spread of misinformation is complex, but I think the reason I'm so angry about this election result is that it feels like a rigged game. Conservatives help the rich, so the rich mainly support Conservatives. The rich are also powerful and influential, and can do things like, say, buy the newspapers and tell them what line to follow. The newspapers tell everyone things that will make them want to vote Conservative, and the whole nation's frame of reference skews to the right. I'm 23 years old, practically a baby, and it astounds me to think of a time where Labour could actually discuss socialist ideas and put them into practice without being branded maniacs. There was actually a plurality of ideas, rather than "let's do loads of cuts and stop all the foreigners" vs. "let's do slightly fewer cuts and stop only some foreigners". The idea that cuts are actually BAD for the economy doesn't even get a look-in, even though that's what most economists will actually tell you. So it's not the result that upsets me so much as the whole bloody state of politics.

Just to finish: this is not me saying that everything is the right's fault and the left are blameless victims. Labour have been an incompetent opposition and incompetent in the election campaign, and they are now pretty much totally directionless. The left in general majorly needs to sort their (our) shit out.


If you read all this midnight bollocks here's a reward:

On April

April is the turning point in the Japanese calendar. Specifically, the point where the air turns warm overnight and we begin the doomish march to summer, with its 100% humidity. But before then we might have at least a few scant weeks of spring - balmy skirt weather, cakes in the park, cherry-blossoms. I got to see the very earliest blossoms in March, actually - by coincidence I booked an appointment at a hairdresser's on a street in Nagoya which, for some reason, gets the sakura about two weeks before anywhere else in the city. It was completely unexpected and I threw my cardigan off in delight.

Sadly, the rest of the all-too-brief cherry-blossom season was disappointing. There were a lot of rainy days, and I was too busy with the new school year and a visit from my family to attend any proper hanami parties (read: outdoor drinking, picnic blankets, ordering pizza delivered to your local park to be eaten under falling petals). While I was with my parents, however, I did get to see some great blossoms in Hikone, a town well-known for its castle. To be honest, with the hanami season the blossoms aren't always as impressive as you might hope, but I think it's its role as the harbinger of spring which makes it so lovely - the gooey air mellowed by breezes, the food stalls, the skies. All will be well for the next couple of months, apart from all the MASSIVE BUGS EVERYWHERE. (Today I saw an ant the size of a dachshund, and accidentally crushed a bug that left a bright orange mess all over my hands, all in the space of five minutes.)

April was generally a bit chaotic, with the new school year and introduction to a load of new kids, classes and schools, as well as my family visiting, so there's not a lot to report. I do have one other highlight of the month: the fire festival at Tejikara in Gifu Prefecture, which is wonderful and definitely really, really dangerous.

I'm not competent enough to explain the historical significance of this festival, and I suspect there really isn't any, apart from 'we like to show how good we are at running through fireworks shirtless', so I'll link you to Gifu's tourist board website here, but basically a lot of shirtless men carry portable shrines filled with gunpowder, a bunch of fireworks are set off, and the men walk through cascades of firework sparks carrying the shrines with seemingly little trouble. Also, some of the shrines featured Jibanyan, a character from the popular kids' anime Yo-Kai Watch, for whatever reason. It was difficult to get pictures due to the lighting, general chaos and the fact that I'd been playing on my phone all day and had 4% battery left. We also had to stand very far away, because of all the fire and fireworks and fire, so it was pretty hard to see the men themselves with my own eyes, let alone through a crappy phone camera at night, and none of my pictures of them carrying the shrines through the fireworks really came out right. But I hope I can get a bit of the spirit across here.

That last picture is the most important one.