Last weekend, I went back to my hometown in Hiroshima for the first time in 10 years, by overnight bus. I met up with my sister and her husband, and we visited our family graves up in the mountains by car. Along the way, we ate soba noodles in a restaurant. The shop was rather crowded with customers, both inside and out. This was surprising, considering the location: in the middle of a small village in decline, with no entertainment to speak of for anybody. Other than clean air and water, the only tourist draw seemed to be a hot-spring attached to the restaurant. The soba was just OK (not too good).
There was a field of flowers on the edge of the parking lot. Admittedly, it was not one of the most beautiful flower gardens in the world. And the sky was cloudy. However, the smell of the greenery, the view of the mountains, the quiet and peacefull atmosphere, all these combined to make me feel like I would rather die here lying on the ground among the flowers, with bugs and birds around, than in a hospital room, most likely with tubes and mask attached to my body, smelling the smell of the hospitals and hearing the noise of equipment trying to save me.
In the evening, I got together with a couple of my old friends at a Chinese restaurant, run by one of our classmates. We talked about the usual stuff: who did what to whom, how and why, back in the days. One of us said he had found his stomach cancer a few years ago, and had two-thirds of his stomach removed. He literally found it himself, he said, when he touched his belly. He said he had since been cured. My brother-in-law also noticed his cancer (of what I forgot) by himself ten years ago, and he has since been treated, with no recurrence so far.
I had been aware of the common nature of cancers even before this trip, and so the other day I phoned my Zenrosai insurance cooperative to ask if I could buy cancer insurance now, in addition to the life insurance I had already purchased years before. They said I can't because I'm over 49. I would have to buy one from one of those insurers advertising on TV, if I really want to. But do I really want it? They say death by cancer is speedy if found late; one of my neighbors died of lung cancer several years ago, and his widow said his death was only two weeks after discovery of the disease. Until then, he was walking around as if nothing was wrong with him. That doesn't seem like such a bad way to go. Quick, inexpensive, effortless. But he was around 75; I'm still 55. Too young to give up on the possibility of full recovery, or at least an extension of life by whatever length of time.
The next day I visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, located in its homonymous park, for the first time since I was in elementary school. People from abroad were everywhere. The G-7 summit of the previous week may have drawn more international tourists than usual. In the museum, the horror of the atomic bomb hit me with renewed impact. I remember my late father saying he saw the flash of light (and the "mushroom cloud" in all probability, although I cannot recall him saying as much, after all these years) in the morning of August 6, 1945, from where he was, 30 kilometers from the city center as the crow flies, followed by bits and pieces of paper falling from the sky some time later.
(View from our house, facing toward the city center. He must have seen something like this: Silver mushroom cloud, Drawing by Susumu Horikoshi, Approx. 30km from the hypocenter [Actually, about 20 km; I know the area called Yasuno in Kake-cho, and have been there many times], from Children of the Atomic Bomb, A UCLA Physician's Eyewitness Report and Call to Save the World's Children)
The trip back to Tokyo was also by overnight bus, which I had tried for the first time for this trip back home. Many of the passengers are people going to and from Tokyo Disney Land. It takes a little over 14 hours, but the price is unbeatable: 5500 yen on weekdays, and 7000-8000 yen on weekends. Such fares make me never want to use shinkansen or jets, which cost me 3-4 times more. The inevitable muscle pain and lack of sleep are barely manageable.
A young, obviously non-Japanese backpacker, who looked maybe around 20 years old, was aboard the bus, sitting in the opposite window seat from mine. He reminded me of the time I took a trip to the USA and travelled across the continent, from the west coast to the east and back, mostly by Greyhound bus, more than 30 years ago. I wanted to say hi to him, so at the very end of the trip when we got out of the bus, I walked up to him and asked him how the bus trip was, in Japanese. He seemed rather confused and said, "Only English." "Oh, OK. How was the bus trip?" I said. "OK," he said, still not quite relaxed. "I talked to you because you reminded me of myself 30 years ago, and I just wanted to wish you good luck. Sight-seeing?" I asked. "Ah, yes, thank you. I went to Hokkaido, Kyoto, Kyushu and Hiroshima," he said, now smiling. "Where are you from?" "Switzerland" "Oh. So far so good?" "So far so good, yes," He said. "All by yourself?" "Yes, all by myself." "Well, I hope you'll enjoy the trip. Good luck!" I said, waved my hand and left, without even a handshake.
Later I thought I should have talked more. I could have asked what his plan was for the rest of his trip, whether he is a student, what he's studying, etc. I could have invited him to my place for the evening; he could have stayed overnight. But then again, that might have been too bothersome for him; he was unloading his luggage from the belly of the bus, and I was on my way to work directly from there. The small gesture of goodwill may have been for the better. Small acts of kindness persist in memory. At one point during my trip in America, I was on a city bus somewhere in the west. The bus stopped at my bus stop, and I was standing in front of the doors, waiting for them to open automatically, just like in Japan. For a few seconds I just stood there like a complete idiot, when a young black man passed me and pushed the doors open and jumped out, saying, "You learn something new every day!" It took a beat for his words to sink in, and when I said "Ah, yes, ..." he had been gone.
It would be nice if the young Swiss would remember our brief exchange as being something positive about his trip to Japan.
