Gwangju Dreaming

The hardest part of any story is beginning it. This is especially true of history. Did the French Revolution begin with Louis losing his head, or with the storming of the Bastille, or with the oath in the tennis court? Did the Cold War start with the Berlin blockade, with the surrender of Japan, or even earlier with the first Trinity Test? And the Gwangju uprising – do I begin with the students confronting the paratroopers in front of Chonnam University? With the military proclaiming martial law on May 17? With the December coup?

I suppose, if you want to be technical about it, we should start with Mireuk, without whom no one would have separated the earth from the sky by setting the sky on 4 copper pillars at the corners of the earth, and without whom no one would have created mankind (men from 5 golden insects, women from 5 silver), and where would we be then? 

But I will begin, I think, where almost all modern Korean history begins: with the fall of Japan.

Korea in August 1945 was an afterthought to, well, damn near everybody.

In the west, President Harry Truman was winging his way home from Potsdam, his mind full of the problems with the war against Japan, sorting out the defeated Germany, and, more than anything else, the looming threat of the Soviet Union and the implications of the new weapon he had tested out in the New Mexico desert the previous month.

In Europe, the continent was first starting to piece itself back together in the aftermath of the great war just ended. Refugees and displaced people flooded over every nation, everyone seeking loved ones, too few succeeding. Most of the continent lay in ruins, especially Germany, now divided, occupied, and dazedly trying to guess what a post-Nazi future for the country might look like – or maybe people were just trying to survive from one day to the next, like they had every day for most of the previous harrowing decade.

In Burma, Indonesia, and the Philippines, collapsing Japanese army units fought desperate, last-ditch stands against victorious Allied armies. Some men would vanish into the jungle to continue their fight there. Some would not re-emerge for thirty years. 

In Manchuria, the Red Army stormed forward in Operation August Storm, brushing aside the Japanese defenders like an NFL linemen rushing a toddler. The IJA was undersupplied, demoralized, and outnumbered – the Red Army was seasoned, well-trained, well-equipped, fresh from victory over the Wehrmacht and at the height of its power and glory. The communists smashed aside the paltry Japanese defenders and stormed south for the Yalu River.

And in the Central Pacific, the 509th Composite Group, operating from the modest North Field on the sunny island of Tinian, sent a small squadron of three B-29 Superfortresses on a strike mission to southern Japan. Their names were The Great Artiste, Necessary Evil, and Enola Gay. 

No one was thinking about Korea.

——-

After the destruction of Hiroshima and the surrender of Japan, the State Department in Foggy Bottom suddenly found themselves with a problem. Well, actually, they had many problems – maybe more problems than any State Department before or since has ever had to deal with. What do with defeated Germany? How to rebuild Western Europe? How many US troops shall we keep in uniform? What is our relationship with the Soviet Union? What about with every single “liberated” state in Eastern Europe? What of Greece, Turkey? What of the European empires in Africa and in Asia? What of the Nationalists and Communists in China? What of the former Japanese empire?

It was a rat’s nest of issues, old grudges, new opportunities, rivalries, hatreds, long-standing alliances now outdated, maps made obsolete…the old world had been shattered, and now it was up to Harry S. Truman, of Independence, Missouri, and the Department of State, to try and forge it anew. Letters and contacts poured in from all over the world. Greece, begging for aid in its civil war against Communist rebels. Poland, pleading not to be forgotten. The Soviet Union, wondering about the future of their wartime partnership. Some leftist nutter named Ho Chi Minh, asking for help booting the French out of their Indochinese possessions. Oh, yes, and what the hell do we do with the Empire of Japan and all its possessions?

Amidst this chaos, apparently no one had given forethought to the precise details of the disposition of the Japanese possessions outside the home islands. Korea had been discussed, but only in passing. On August 9, after Hiroshima, after August Storm, suddenly the surrender of Japan – something not previously thought to happen until late 1946, at the earliest – loomed as an imminent possibility. On the night of August 10, Allied military planners hurredly met to convene surrender procedures, to keep Soviets and Americans from accidentally (or not) murdering each other in the confusion.

As the official Army history puts it:

“Under pressure to produce a paper as quickly as possible, members of the Policy Section began work late at night on 10 August. They discussed possible surrender zones, the allocation of American, British, Chinese, and Russian occupation troops to accept the surrender in the zone most convenient to them, the means of actually taking the surrender of the widely scattered Japanese military forces, and the position of Russia in the Far East…

The Chief of the Policy Section, Col. Charles H. Bonesteel, had thirty minutes in which to dictate Paragraph 1 to a secretary, for the Joint Staff Planners and the State-War-Navy Coordinating Committee were impatiently awaiting the result of his work. Colonel Bonesteel thus somewhat hastily decided who would accept the Japanese surrender.

…At first Bonesteel had thought of surrender zones conforming to the provincial boundary lines. But the only map he had in his office was hardly adequate for this sort of distinction. The 38th Parallel, he noted, cut Korea approximately through the middle. If this line was agreeable to President Truman and to Generalissimo Stalin, it would place Seoul and a nearby prisoner of war camp in American hands. It would also leave enough land to be apportioned to the Chinese and British if some sort of quadripartite administration became necessary. Thus he decided to use the 38th Parallel as a hypothetical line dividing the zones within which Japanese forces in Korea would surrender to appointed American and Russian authorities.”

– Policy and Direction, The First Year, 9.

The 38th parallel, decided upon by Charles Bonesteel, who was up too late on the night of August 10th, with inadequate coffee, a smarmy State Department aide joggling his elbow for him to finish, a rotten map, and only thirty minutes to work, has stood as the boundary between North and South Korea for 75 years. 

A second major problem – besides the fact that pretty much no one in the United States had ever heard of “Korea” – was that they had basically no plan in place for how to administer “their” sudden new occupation zone. The Soviets, perhaps cowed and cautious by the threat of the Bomb, placidly accepted the 38th parallel and set about converting their half of the peninsula into a glorious people’s republic. They plucked a suitable anti-Japanese guerrilla from obscurity, gave him a suitably heroic backstory, more or less made up out of whole cloth, and set him up as the Dear Leader of their new pet. Thus did Kim Il-Sung become the founding member of the present ruling house of North Korea. 

The United States had no such plan. They had no shadow government in place to assume the reins, they had no Korea desk at the State Department, hell, they didn’t even know how long they’d be in the country, let alone what they wanted to “do” with it. The Navy rapidly ferried a handful of confused soldiers up from the Philippines and flung them into Seoul, where they aimlessly milled around for a few months while the higher-ups tried to figure out what the hell they were doing. 

In the end, as is often the case with the United States, they settled on the first convenient man they ran across. And here is where the troubles began.

——

Korea, after quietly whiling away a sleepy couple of centuries under the Joseon dynasty, had fallen victim to early 20th century power politics. Initially a bone in the struggle between Qing China and Meiji Japan, Korea had first become a puppet, then an outright colony, of the island nation since 1910. But the Koreans had not taken the Japanese occupation lying down. Almost from the first, there was resistance, including in the peaceful southwestern city of Gwangju. 

Across the country, there were uprisings, protests, strikes, and riots. In the barren and frigid northern hills near the Yalu, bands of rebels roamed around bushwhacking isolated Japanese garrisons. In the cities, Koreans frequently engaged in strikes or other forms of passive resistance to their colonial occupiers. The college students did what college students do best and wrote various Statements and Declarations of Intent, and engaged in protest marches. The Japanese responded with all the grace and nuance Showa-Era Japan is famous for.

While the myriad arrests, beatings, exiles, and outright murders failed to fully pacify the peninsula (to say nothing of apolitical monstrosities like the practice of comfort women, or Unit 731’s horrors), they did serve to more or less keep a lid on things for Japan through 1945. Many groups found it too hot to stay in the peninsula itself, and exiled themselves to surrounding nations, mostly to China, which was merrily engaged in one of its regular periods of outright anarchy and civil war*. One of these groups somewhat self-importantly called itself the Korean Provisional Government in Exile, and their Representative to the United States was one Syngman Rhee. 

Rhee was born in 1875 and taught English by Methodist missionaries active in the country. He came of age just as the Japanese involvement in Korea was ramping up, and became strongly anti-Japan. In March of 1919, he joined with myriad others to instigate a gathering of students in Seoul, who proclaimed Korea’s independence. The Japanese were less amused by this than the students were, and to escape arrest, torture, and probable death, many fled to Shanghai, Rhee among them. There, his political acumen and intelligence quickly propelled him up the ranks.

Rhee’s English ability got him named Representative to the United States, and he lived there through most of the Thirties. Styling himself the Chairman of the Korean Commission to the United States, Rhee spent his days agitating against the Japanese and lobbying the American State Department for recognition and material support for Korean independence. Consumed with more important matters like the Second World War, the State Department spent most of its time, in turn, ignoring the little man from the backwater peninsula no one had ever heard of. 

Until fate intervened, and suddenly the United States found itself in possession of half of that backwater peninsula and not a clue in the world what to do with it.

“The British diplomat Roger Makins later recalled, “the American propensity to go for a man rather than a movement — Giraud among the French in 1942, Chiang Kai-shek in China. Americans have always liked the idea of dealing with a foreign leader who can be identified as ‘their man’. They are much less comfortable with movements.” Makins further added the same was the case with Rhee, as very few Americans were fluent in Korean in the 1940s or knew much about Korea, and it was simply far easier for the American occupation government to deal with Rhee than to try to understand Korea. Rhee was “acerbic, prickly, unpromising” and was regarded by the U.S. State Department, which long had dealings with him as “a dangerous mischief-maker”, but the American General John R. Hodge decided that Rhee was the best man for the Americans to back because of his fluent English and his ability to talk with authority to American officers about American subjects.”

– Max Hastings, the Korean War 

In other words, Rhee was an asshole, but he was an asshole who spoke English and, more importantly, he was available. So Syngman Rhee found himself shipped off from Washington and back to his home in Seoul for the first time in 25 years, where he became the primary liaison between the United States occupying authorities and the people of Korea. In essence, Rhee became the Korean government. 

The years between 1945 and 1950 were the era of Translator Government in Korea. The Americans, fumbling around hopelessly in the dark, frequently leaned on former Japanese officials, who were after all fluent in the government and language of the peninsula. Understandably, this did not endear them to the people of “south” Korea, as the American half of the peninsula was coming to be known. People who could translate between English and Korean found themselves in positions of inordinate infuence, and Rhee, with his political acumen, quickly consolidated power behind himself, if not with American approval, at least with American indifference. America wanted nothing more than to be done with the funny little peninsula and get their boys back home. Its attention was always elsewhere – mostly on Berlin and Germany and the steadily growing showdown with the Ruskies. They gave half-hearted training to a South Korean “army,” which was mostly a police force meant to keep order in the peninsula and help Rhee hunt down his “Communist” opponents scattered around the South. Of course, Rhee was very generous with the term “communist” and arrests, torture, and imprisonment were par for the course for his government. Rhee also made frequent requests for heavy weapons like tanks, aircraft, and artillery, but the Americans, fearful that this “mischief-maker” would do something crazy like go haring off on an invasion of the Soviet zone to the north, refused. By 1949, all American troops were withdrawn from the peninsula, and the State Department was giving speeches suggesting that the American involvement in the little backwater of Korea was officially at end. 

Unfortunately, the North had not been idle during this time. While Rhee had been playing on his position as the middleman between the USA and the people of South Korea, Kim Il-Sung had been happily setting up his own private little kingdom in the North, with the full backing of the Soviet Union. He had built a fully modern and well-trained army, equipped with Soviet weapons, driving Soviet tanks, supported by Soviet planes. When the USA indicated that it was done with South Korea, and with Rhee corrupt, unpopular, and seemingly on shaky ground at home, Kim decideded the time was right, and on June 25, 1950, launched his shiny new army on an invasion of the south. 

——–

The Korean War is, of course, far too detailed to get into here. Suffice it to say that the United States hadn’t actually meant it was totally done with Korea, and intervened to save its newfound ally. The fighting raged down the peninsula to Busan, and up all the way to the Yalu River, and back again. Seoul changed hands 6 times. The United States carried out the longest retreat in its history, “attacked in a different direction” out of the Chosin Reservoir, and helped mold the South Korean army into a modern, effective fighting force. By the time the dust settled three years later, the battle lines were more or less right at Bonesteel’s 38th parallel and pretty much the entire peninsula lay in ruins. Oh, and Syngman Rhee now had an ironclad grip on power. 

Rhee unabashedly engaged in strong-arm and outright illegal political tactics. While he wasn’t as bad as Kim Il-Sung to the north, “not as bad as a literal Stalinist dictatorship” is a very low bar to clear. Opposition parties were harassed, their leaders frequently arrested, and at times politicians who became too prominent in opposition to Rhee were outright assassinated, such as Kim Gu. Under the pretext of resisting subversion from the north** Rhee severely curtailed political rights and elections, limiting the ability of opposition parties to dissent from his regime. At times, his security forces engaged in outright massacres, including an astonishing reported 14,000 deaths during the Jeju Uprising. ^{(Tirman, John (2011). The Deaths of Others: The Fate of Civilians in America’s Wars. Oxford University Press. pp. 93–95. ISBN 978-0-19-538121-4. I have not investigated this claim myself).} 

Through the 1950s, Rhee amended the Constitution as he willed and more or less ignored South Korea’s National Assembly, getting himself elected President 4 times. The United States grumbled over his strongarm tactics, but any instability in Korea risked opening a way for the North to invade. The threat of the North acts as a constant pressure in Korean politics, forcing unity and enabling strongmen to maintain a tight grip on power. Time and again it will be used to justify all manner of authoritarian actions, including, as we will see, in response to the May 18 Uprising. In so doing, Rhee set the model for a Korean dictator that would persevere for 40 years. South Korea was by no means a free state. It was better than the North, yes, but again – low bar. Opposing parties were allowed to exist, but certainly not to win elections. Writing an opposing newspaper might work for a while, but it would eventually get you arrested (but probably not executed). And as long as you kept your head down and ignored politics, you could live a more or less free life. 

Rhee’s ride on the tiger finally came to an end in 1960, in what would become another familiar model in Korean politics. In the spring of that year, Rhee staged yet another fraudulent election, and once again, surprise surprise, he was unexpectedly re-elected because he was so beloved by the Korean people as the father of his nation (in fact, Rhee won 100% of the vote after his main opponent died a few weeks before the election. As far as I can tell, the death was actually legitimate and not a shady assassination, surprisingly enough. Go figure). Yet again, people – mostly college and high school students, took to the streets to protest yet another sham election.*** 

During the protests, in the southern city of Masan, the corpse of a high school student, Kim Ju-yul, was discovered. The regime announced that the boy had drowned, but autopsies revealed that his skull had been fractured by a tear gas grenade fired at point blank range. While the regime had been authoritarian and oppressive, it had never before stooped to the open murder of citizens in the streets. The Korean press widely publicized the incident, and the protests caught fire and spread through the entire country. Rhee proclaimed that it was all the work of communist agents, but the tired excuse worked no longer. Within a month, there were marches of hundreds of thousands in the streets of downtown Seoul, demanding Rhee’s resignation. Violent clashes were common, and it is estimated that more than 180 protestors died in confrontations with the police.

But the heart of the police forces weren’t really in it, and soon they began refusing orders to fire on the protestors, who no longer numbered just college students and dotty old professors but respectable Korean professionals and businessmen, too. Rhee proclaimed martial law, but the soldiers, too (no doubt noticing how badly they were outnumbered by the protestors) also refused to fire on the crowds. Left with no choice, Syngman Rhee resigned on April 26, 1960, and went into exile in sunny Hawaii. Thus ended the reign of the United States’ handpicked ruler of South Korea.

The road to the May 18 Uprising begins here, I think. Rhee came to power as a result of the inattention and lack of preparation by the United States for the role it found itself thrust into in Korea. He was emphatically the wrong man for the job. Even as Japan and Germany evolved into modern, multiparty parliamentary democracies, the Republic of Korea was a sham, ruled by an authoritarian strongman who had nothing but contempt for elections and the will of the “common people.” Rhee legitimately tried to rule wisely and well for Korea, and was constantly fearful of the threat from the north and from communists within, but his lack of respect for democratic norms and his cheerful disregard for human rights set a pattern for Korea that would persist for 30 years following his fall. It was in protest to a similar dictator that would lead to the bloody confrontation in Gwangju, 20 years after the fall of Syngman Rhee.


*”The Empire, long divided, must unite. Long united, must divide.” – Romance of the Three Kingdoms, published centuries ago and describing affairs in the 3rd century. Still true today – this line contains everything you need to know about Chinese history. 

**To be fair, for a number of years during and after the war, there were literal Communist guerrillas scattered around the mountains to the South. The threat of invasion from within wasn’t entirely made up by Rhee. He did exaggerate it and exploit it for his own purposes, though. 

***It is important to note that while South Korea is not a free nation at this time, it is not comparable to the North – imagine these protests in Pyongyang! There are degrees of freedom, and while I’m being hard on Korea here, I am emphatically not saying that North Korea and South Korea were basically interchangeable. One, while flawed, is definitely better than the other.

Prologue: https://gwangjulikeit.home.blog/2020/05/04/5-18-prologue-the-may-18-national-cemetery/

Chapter Two: [tbd]

Not a planned post. This is actually a reddit comment I wrote that I decided, afterwards, is worth sharing.

The question was, “Who was the nicest or the worst football player you’ve ever met?” Well, I’ve only met one football player that I can recall in my life, but I think his story is worth sharing:

“This isn’t any great story, because I’ve only ever met one football player in my life: Limbo Parks. He wasn’t a greatest-of-all-time football player, but he is a very good man so I think I’ll share a little about him. Thread is old so this’ll get buried anyway, but what the hell.

Limbo was a guard for the Razerbacks back in the early ’80s. Even when I knew him in the early 2010s he was a huge, monster of a man – over six feet tall, hundreds of pounds of bulk – not fat, just sheer mass. Muscle and bone. He had an incredibly intense glare that he could use to cow any teenager with a mere glance. He earned All-American NCAA honors, but went undrafted after he graduated in 1987. By October, he was a delivery driver for Pizza Hut.

Well, in the 1987 season, the players went on strike after the 2nd game (this is what the film The Replacements was about), and Limbo got his chance. He signed with the San Francisco 49ers and for three weeks in October that year, he was a professional football player. He appeared in the three games the replacements played, all wins for the 49ers. Then the strike ended, Limbo was cut, and that was the end of his football career.

I met him 20 years later. He no longer worked for Pizza Hut, but was now my high school’s discipline specialist. I’m not sure what his exact title was, but his main job was to drive around the grounds in a golf cart and serve as the administration’s enforcer. No one acted up in detention with Limbo looming up at the front of the room. He could be seen patrolling the cafeteria regularly, or yanking miscreants out of class to come spend time with him in his little windowless office in a distant corner of the school.

As a student, I only crossed paths with him once. I was pulling into the school parking lot late on a Sunday afternoon in April, on my way to rehearsal. The lot was empty, and I was 17, so as I came up to the stop sign separating the student lot from the rear lot with the theater entrance I ignored it and blew right past. As I pulled into a spot near the theater door, the little golf cart wheeled to a stop behind me. I looked in my rearview mirror and paled, since Limbo was looking right at me, his angry eyes locked right on mine. He pointed at his eyes, pointed at me, then, scowling all the while, slowly shook his head. Then, without a word, he drove off.

I never ran that stop sign again.

Later, though, I got to know Limbo as a person. 7 years later, now sporting a shiny new master’s in education, I returned to my high school as a teacher, and he became one of my closest partners. As the new guy, I got all the “needy” classes – the slackers, hard cases, screwups, etc. They were all great kids and I loved them, but they were a challenge, and sometimes I tore my hair out trying to figure out how I was going to get all these kids over the graduation finish line.

No one worked harder at that, though, than Limbo. He met with me every day about a few students of special concern to him. Each morning he’d stick his head through my classroom door – most of his bulk still hidden out in the hallway. He’d fix me with his stare – still so intense.

“Hey. Did Cameron turn in his homework for this week?”

I’d flip through the records of one of our perennial project students. “…not yet, it seems.”

He would nod, gravely, a deep suspicion confirmed for him. “Well, if he don’t turn it in this afternoon, you send that boy straight to me, you hear?” Then he’d vanish to continue his prowl.

When I’d deliver the bad news to Cameron in 5th period that day, his eyes would grow as wide as dinner plates, but, helpless to resist, he would shuffle off to his fate.

And the next day the work would be turned in.

Cameron would pass. Lucas, a senior repeating freshman history, would pass, and would graduate. Sarah would pass, and Clinnon, and Chelsea, and Lauren, and a dozen other students, all of whom might have dropped out, might have given up, but instead graduated and earned diplomas because Limbo Parks would not let them fail. He spent the majority of his days running down students, staying on top of their assignments, keeping a close eye on dozens of students’ grades scattered across every class and year. He’d been doing it all along – he was so much more than an enforcer on a golf cart. For many students, Limbo Parks was the reason they graduated. Because he cared, as much or more than any of the classroom teachers. By now, I expect there are hundreds of students in the Kansas City metro area who owe their diplomas to his efforts.”

It’s quiet at the May 18 National Cemetery. 

Oh, there’s the sound of running water, from the fountains that line the massive pavilion at the center. You can hear the sound of early spring birds on this bright clear day in April. The wind whispers gently through the trees on the hills looking down on the graves. But otherwise…tranquility. 

This is a rare thing, in Korea. 

In the United States, I think we take quiet for granted. There are places you can go without the sounds of people filling the streets, with no military jets flying overhead, without the constant buzz of moped delivery drivers racing down the streets and sidewalks. Sometimes, late at night, you don’t hear the engine noise, of the noraebangs and clubs blasting their music into the alleyways. The alarms of garage gates and traffic crossings, the deep rumble of bus engines, and the unending chatter and laughter of thousands of people out and about at all times – well, in the USA you can be free of that. 

Not so here. I don’t know about the Korean countryside, but in Gwangju, in Cheomdan, my neighborhood, the city does not sleep. Every hour of every day is filled with the noisy business of human life, as people hurry about their work, about their play, about their lives. You get used to it after a while, but you also forget what quiet sounds like. 

Unless you come out here, to the cemetery. 

It sits outside the city, this place of martyrs. A few miles from the heart of downtown, in the midst of the encircling mountains about Gwangju, a placid garden of serenity has been carved out of the landscape. It sits in a bowl, with most of the tombstones on the hillside (as is the Korean fashion). A few outbuildings and museums surround a massive central plaza, ringed in fountains that sparkle in the springtime sun. There are gardens, and trees, and flowers – not in bloom yet, but soon they will open up and this place will explode into color. 

 At the center of the plaza stands a large sculpted tower, twin spires gently compassing a bronze torch one hundred and thirty feet above the ground. To either side of the tower are carved reliefs of human figures – people holding signs, building barricades, gathered around a lone speaker standing atop a massive fountain – and some clutching rifles. Nearby is a statue of a jeep, of all things. Around and on the jeep stand more figures in bronze, young people in ordinary clothing, their fists upraised in defiance, flags and rifles held in their hands. Behind, carved messages in Korean English line a stone wall, proclaiming the story of these martyrs.

• 

Beyond that lies the graves. 

There are hundreds of them, small barrows standing in neat lines along the hillside. Row upon row they wind back up the hill. They are covered in neatly trimmed grass, most with fresh flowers lying before them. Every barrow – dolmen, they’re called –  has a small gravestone in front of it. Printed neatly and humbly in Korean characters is a person’s name, and their place, and time of death. The dates are all similar – mid to late May, 1980. Many have crosses carved into them. Some have bowls of incense in front of them, and some of those are even lit. All are lovingly cared for. But the most powerful part, at least for me, are the photos. 

In front of nearly every dolmen there is a photo. Black and white, for the most part. Faces of every age and description smile out from them. Here a young college boy, his goofy grin framed by the long, tousled locks that were the style of the day. There a dignified professor sits in his carefully maintained serenity, in his best suit and his too-large glasses. A middle aged woman with a gentle smile and the calm, sensible hairstyle of her time. Every photo a snapshot of a place and time – Korea, in 1980. Every single one there to remind you that behind this tombstone is a person. A person with their own story, their likes and dislikes. Maybe a boy who had scarcely thought about what he would wear for his school photo that day. Here a young woman caught in the act of laughing with her friends – no official photo. Maybe this is the only one of her that survives? The only record of her left in this world, here, in this quiet little cemetery on this quiet little hill outside the big noisy city. 

Some of the graves, of course, have no photos at all. Just a name, perhaps a cross and a date.

They are just as well-cared for as the others. 

In total, there are 482 people who rest here. This was not their original location – the military dictatorship that murdered them would never allow such a place of honor for those who died battling their regime. No, this place was established in 1993, following the democratization of Korea. As the new government sought to atone for the sins of the past, the bodies of the honored dead were exhumed and brought out here, to be re-entombed and remembered forever. The entire May 18th National Cemetery stands as a memorial and a museum for those who gave their lives in the Gwangju Uprising of 1980. In Gwangju, it is a famous place. 

But not outside Korea, curiously enough. This cemetery, which preserves the mortal remains of more people than were killed in the Tiananmen Square massacre, is virtually unknown in the wider world. The West as a whole knows virtually nothing about the Gwangju Uprising – at least, I did not, and if you will permit me a small moment of egotism, I know a fair bit more about world history than the average Westerner. 

I’m not sure why that should be so. Korea itself hails the Uprising as the start on the country’s long road to democracy. At the time, reporters from all over the world gathered here to carry the news from the city to the wider world. But it has since been overshadowed by other revolutions – again, the best parallel I can think of is Tiananmen Square, where pro-democracy protestors were crushed by the Chinese regime. The same happened here, but the protestors were more successful – for a while. And more of them ultimately died. 

We forget, I think, because it is inconvenient, sometimes, to remember. It’s inconvenient that a US ally murdered hundreds of its own citizens in order to prop up a tinpot regime that seized power in the midst of a military coup. It’s inconvenient that the troops doing the murdering were there with the tacit approval and active complicity of the United States. At the time, it was easier to accept the regime’s narrative of “riots” and Communist agitators than to court a crisis with a key Cold War bastion, at a time when Russians were invading Afghanistan, when Iran had seized our embassy, and the entire country was undergoing a crisis of confidence. So, in the United States, and by proxy the rest of the West, there is almost no popular memory of a week in Gwangju 40 years ago, a sunny, warm May much like this one, when an entire city threw out a modern, well-trained army and kept them out for days. 

I had heard of the story when I came, and memories of the uprising are everywhere around the city, but I didn’t know the details. So, one day, to sate my curiosity, I made my way out here. I would learn, and hey, maybe it would make a good blog post one day. It wound up being much more than that.

The first thing I noticed, of course, was the quiet. That was rare, and it instantly impressed upon me a sense of peace that I hadn’t felt in months. Then, of course, you notice the pillars, and the sculpture. This is not the sort of monument you build to a mere riot. 

What struck me most, like I said, was the photos. It is easy, I think, to forget that the names in history books – if they make into history books at all, which most do not – are people. Row upon row, their faces gazed out at me across 40 years. Still young, still with those eyes full of hope, the infectious grins that I’ve seen on young people all over the world – I am young, and my whole life is in front of me, and this is a good time to be alive. College students, mostly, mixed in with their professors and other civilians. Going to school, working towards degrees, towards one day jobs, families of their own. The future. Most of them will always be young, now. Growing old – this is not their fate. 

And that was what got me. Because most of these people knew the risks they were taking. They knew that to protest the regime meant death, for many. Not even police dogs and firehoses, not tear gas, but actual bullets and grenades. It would be easy to keep your head down, to not join in, to preserve that entire bright shining future and just get on with your life. But the 482 people here, along with many others – the total numbers of the dead are not known, even today. The total numbers who participated in the uprising can never be known – made the choice to place those futures on the line, to stand up, take their chances, for the simple right to govern themselves. 

The same basic impulse that drove colonists in Boston and Virginia 250 years ago, the same that would sweep across the communist nations of Europe 10 years after the uprising – just the simple assertion that I will govern my own life, and no others. It’s a cause worth fighting for, to be sure, and these people did, and backed up their principles with their lives. 

And we have forgotten them.

In a few days, it will be the 40th anniversary of the May 18th Gwangju Uprising. The city here is being steadily engulfed in the preparations to mark the occasion. Many Koreans are working hard on art projects, on posters and films, on documentaries and essays and poems, to memorialize the dawn of their democratic movement. But I don’t know much of that will exist in English. There’s actually surprisingly little material in English to work with – a few poorly translated books, vague encyclopedia articles, and outdated (and misinformed) news reports from the time. 

Well, let this, then, be my small contribution to the history of Gwangju. I stood in front of the rows upon rows of dolmen, and I promised them that I, at least, would learn their story. And do my best to share it with others. For a brief while, perhaps, these happy young college kids and the ordinary people of 40 years ago can live again. And the sacrifice that they made so that others might live freely can – even if only in a small corner of the Internet – be remembered.

Chapter One: https://gwangjulikeit.home.blog/2020/05/18/5-18-chapter-one-the-thirty-year-prologue/

So I got wrapped up in my Japan trip and I never did talk about the last three months in Korea (it was only 2 months when I started writing, oops). 

By now, the coronavirus and Korea’s response to it has become old news around the world, but I think it might still be good to talk about my experience with it. It could be interesting from a historical perspective some day! I’m going to have a unique view, totally missing out on the common US cultural experience of the quarantine and the lockdown. 

I first heard of the scary reports coming out of Wuhan a week or two before my trip. This was around the time the city went into lockdown. Now, you know that reports of some terrible new disease in China are a dime a dozen, and most of them don’t ever amount to anything. But Wuhan was new – I’d never seen an entire city locked down before, and there were really interesting stories and blog posts coming out of people trapped in the city. You heard about people being welded into their apartments, about the CCP building entirely new hospitals in two weeks, about young, healthy doctors dying from the disease…I knew it was something to keep an eye on as I travelled. 

In Japan, things weren’t bad. Lots of people were in masks, I noticed. Now, mask-wearing is pretty common in Asia – I found it strange at first but after months of living here it was totally normal to me. The air pollution, especially blowing across the Yellow Sea from China, is pretty bad most days, to the point that I have an app on my phone alerting me when it’s unsafe to go outside. Masks help fight that, so they’re almost a fashion accessory here. Thank God for the Clean Air Act, is all I can say. But masks, while not unheard of, were never especially common – I’d guess that between 1/10 to 1/5 people wore them. In Japan, it was closer to 1/3 to 1/2, which confused me for a while because the air in Japan was so much cleaner. I didn’t realize until a few days in that it was the virus. 

But it was still mostly confined to China, with only a handful of cases outside that country. Tourist attractions were all still open (thank goodness), planes were still flying (thank goodness), there was no panic. I left Tokyo less than two days before Diamond Princess docked in Yokohama (near battleship Mikasa!) and was immediately quarantined. In Seoul, there were infrared cameras at the airport measuring our temperature, and we were required to self-report any symptoms to customs agents. 
Even in Seoul, though, there was no concern yet. New arrivals were all screened, especially those from China, but everything was open and public gatherings were commonplace. I spent Saturday morning in Seoul, walking through the heart of the city to one of the ancient palaces. Down the main thoroughfare, there was a massive rally in support of “Donal Trump” and the United States, as the political opposition accused President Moon Jae-In of cozying up to North Korea and betraying Korea’s special relationship with the USA. The palace was overrun with tourists, too, and generally life was normal in the capital. 

I stayed home Monday to watch the Super Bowl, and for the next two weeks my time was split between planning for the upcoming semester, due to start February 28, and watching Super Bowl highlights, analysis, and reaction. Through this time, Korea had barely 30 new cases, although anyone who travelled outside the country was now subject to a (self-enforced) two-week home quarantine when they returned. 

It was February 17 that everything changed. The 31st patient with corona, a woman who had contact with someone newly arrived from Wuhan, I believe, traveled from Seoul to the southeastern city of Daegu. Daegu is a large city of 2.5 million people, the 4th largest in Korea. It served as temporary capital during the war and was (just barely) successfully defended from the North’s invasion. It’s a favorite destination of many English teachers who live in the surrounding countryside. Patient 31, as she became known, left Seoul, was involved in a minor car accident early in February, and checked herself into the hospital. While there, she developed flu-like symptoms, but her flu test came back negative. It was at this time that she went to church – twice. But not a little Catholic church like St. Mary’s.

Korea’s fastest growing religion is Christianity, in all forms. I have Mormon missionary friends, of course, but you have dozens of Protestant congregations growing quickly as well. There are tons of off-shoots and weird little sub-cults (ask me about the church of God the Mother sometime…) as different kinds of Christianity spread all over the peninsula like kudzu. This woman belonged to one such new church. She went to Shincheonji Church of Jesus, massive superchurch with more than 1,000 congregants, all of whom were now exposed. 

From Daegu, things exploded, as the congregants had scattered all over. The number of cases exploded from barely 30 to thousands over just a few days. Korea looked like it was going to slide into a nationwide pandemic, with the attendant death and suffering involved. It’s here, though, that the government really stepped up.

First, the new school year was due to start on February 24th for us (28th for most everyone else, I think). We’d have hundreds of students coming from all over the country to stay in our dorms and work in our small classrooms. Well, right away that was delayed for two weeks. Korea took the unprecedented step of cancelling the start of the school year nationwide for two weeks – and I’ve written before about how zealously Koreans view education. This should have been a huge warning bell to everyone watching, including in the USA, that this was serious. Church gatherings, sports leagues like KBO, concerts, and other public events quickly followed. 

Second, mask-wearing became universal almost overnight. You couldn’t go into a bar or a restaurant without a mask – hell, you could barely go out in public without one. People queued by the hundreds to buy masks from any available outlet. The government quickly instituted a rationing system, based on your birthday – those whose birthdays fell on a day ending in 0 or 1 bought on Monday, 2 or 3 on Tuesday, etc. You couldn’t get a mask without an ID verifying your birthdate. Now, masks don’t do much to protect you individually, not unless they’re airtight. But if everyone is wearing one, then asymptomatic transmission becomes much, much more difficult. I resisted, at first, because I believed then (and still do) that a mask would do little to prevent the spread, but after a scolding from my principal I came to accept it, if nothing else to reassure my neighbors, and spent most of March and April masked up any time I went outside. 

Third, social distancing was a thing in Korea much more quickly than in the United States, and in many ways the nation was prepared for it. Food delivery was already ubiquitous in Korea – delivery drivers zipping around on mopeds is so common that I didn’t even think to mention it until now. Now it just became even more common. People didn’t go to bars or restaurants as often; if you did, you were only allowed in with a mask, and if you were allowed in, you had your temperature checked first. With most people masked up and distanced (although not locked into their apartments – I continued to see and hang out with friends, a bit), with new arrivals now being universally quarantined, most asymptomatic transmission was immediately cut down. 
That just left the Daegu cluster, and the government’s most important step, I think: Universal testing and contact tracing. I think this was the USA’s biggest screw up, and given the lead time the US had to prepare, this is pretty inexcusible. 

Korea immediately made cheap, plentiful, coronavirus testing kits. Overnight drive-through test centers sprang up all around the country. I walked by several daily on my way to and from work. You could go into a little tent, have a blood sample taken, and know your results within a few hours. This was either free at the point of use or incredibly cheap, like 20,000 won. So most people who had it knew very, very quickly. 

Meanwhile, the government dedicated huge amount of resources to running down those with the virus, starting with the Daegu supercluster. For weeks, anyone who had been to the church was contacted by the authorities, and their movements traced. Anyone they had come in contact with was also traced. People who tested negative were told to self-quarantine and otherwise let go. Those testing positive were universally quarantined, hospitalized if necessary, and their contacts traced. It took weeks to catch up, and Korea’s numbers skyrocketed from 30 to 10,000 over the next 6 weeks, but after peaking on February 29 at 909 new cases, the new daily infections gradually started to slow, then level off, then dropped to a trickle. Yesterday, there were 0 new domestic cases for the first time since early February. 4 new cases arrived from overseas, and that’s all. 

In the meantime, the rest of the world kind of forgot about Korea, as Iran, then Italy, then the USA itself fell victim one by one to the disease. The USA should have locked down far sooner than it did, with the voluntary social distancing and isolation that Korea did in the weeks before the Daegu outbreak. Mask-wearing should have become more widespread sooner – I assume cultural reasons are why it took so long to start in the first place – and the continued lack of testing and contact tracing is, as I said, inexcusable. 

But life here has been sort of normal the last 2 months since things exploded in late February. I wear a mask to go out and when I ride the bus, I get my temperature taken when I eat in a restaurant, my school has a thermal camera measuring my temperature when I walk in in the morning. School was delayed two weeks, then two more weeks, then two weeks again, but finally early in April we started teaching online via zoom, so I’ve been scrambling to learn how to do that and to adapt my curriculum. Gradually places like the public parks and hiking trails have filled up again, and my friends and I meet regularly on weekends to celebrate birthdays or just enjoy each other’s company. 

As a sign of how the Korean people feel, the day I was in Seoul, there were rallies and protests against President Moon, and his approval rating was underwater. On April 15, Korea had legislative elections – even in the midst of the pandemic. You had to wear a mask to vote, you were issued disposable gloves, and you had to stand at least 6 feet apart from everyone in the queues. But they had the elections nevertheless, and President Moon’s party won a landslide victory. Koreans have compared their governments’ response with the rest of the world’s, and been pretty satisfied. Understandably so – Korea more or less beat this thing, straight up. Korea has had less than 250 deaths, out of a population of more than 50 million. It should be viewed as a case study for decades to come on how to combat a pandemic. So now Koreans are full of patriotic pride, and are starting to, I think, get over a little bit of the historic inferiority complex they’ve had regarding the West. This was the front page of the country’s English language newspaper earlier this week:

Note Asia lighting the way forward. 

Life here is getting back to fully normal. With 0 new domestic cases, and total cases in the country dropping towards zero, there’s talk of reopening everything. KBO has restarted its preseason, and will start playing live games (without spectators) soon. Schools are projected to re-open possibly as early as next week, and the government has put together detailed plans for what reopening will look like and safety measures in place to prevent renewed outbreaks. The streets and public transport are busy again, and I have gone out the last few days into the spring air without a mask (although probably more than 50% of people are still wearing them). 

School keeps me busy, though. Rewriting my lessons to be taught online, actually teaching them, and grading the resulting work occupies most of my spare time during the week. On the weekends, I try to maximize my time with my friends here, since I know the time is soon coming when I shall return home, and I will probably never see most of them again. I read the news from the US, and I shake my head, but thankfully everyone in our family is safe and healthy. 

So, that’s my view of the corona pandemic from Korea. I didn’t have very many adventures, but that’s just a reflection of the competence of the government. No desperation, no near death experiences, hardly even a ripple in my daily routine. I lived in uninteresting times here. And that’s all that you can ask, I think.

May we all someday live in uninteresting times.

I want to finish my Japan narrative – school started last week and I’ve been busy. But I want to knock it out, then quickly sum up the last few weeks in Korea. 

So, I woke up Friday, pretty sad, because I knew I had to go home that day. My flight was at 7, so I should probably get to the airport at 5. But that still left me a solid 8 hours to wrap up my time in Japan, and I had a few suggestions. So, I’d check those items off my bucket list before bidding farewell. First, there was a really minor tourist attraction just a kilometer or two from my hotel.

The Japanese movie Your Name is one of the best movies I saw a few years ago. It’s animated, about a girl from the Japanese countryside and a boy from Tokyo. Every night when they go to sleep, they wake up the next morning in the other one’s body – like a constant Freaky Friday sort of thing. 

 The final scene of the movie takes place on an extremely distinctive staircase – here’s the last scene. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRM4etm_Lnc

 The whole movie lovingly reproduced Tokyo, with gorgeous animation and music, and honestly might be one of my top 10 movies ever. Anyway, the staircase was nearby, so on my last day I took a walk through a beautiful Tokyo morning. The day was bright and clear and cool – absolutely perfect weather. The streets were waking up with people hurrying to work. I walked along some pretty big boulevards, then into a small neighborhood fully of narrow, twisty alleyways. I came down one alley and turned into a temple courtyard, knowing it was the right place, but I didn’t see the stairs. There was an obvious hill next to the temple, though, and a staircase descending. I went down, then realized: duh, the staircase had to be somewhere on this hill! So I turned and walked parallel for a block or two, and there it was. 

I had to dodge couples taking photos on it, but I did get a few shots of it empty, too. I like this overview the best, though. 

From there, I wandered. I knew I was a few blocks away from a “national park,” but I didn’t know what that meant. Turns out, it was a massive city park in the heart of Tokyo that was a gift from the Imperial family. This would be my last Japanese garden, but I think the Japanese have the best gardens in the world (based on this trip), so I was all about that anyway. I walked the few blocks there, turned in, bought my ticket from a lonely guard sitting by himself at the gate (not many people there on a weekday morning, I guess), and explored for a few hours. 

My first stop was a greenhouse, which was heavenly. I liked the cool weather outside, but I also ahd sort of forgotten what heat felt like. The greenhouse was bright, warm, humid, and full of plants and water. It was honestly my favorite part of the park. I really liked the waterfall in the middle. When I’m a millionaire after inheriting my old man’s Powerball winnings, I’ll have a greenhouse in my mansion. 

Overall, I spent a good few hours at the park. Japanese parks usually go for a landscaped pond with a bridge and a teahouse somewhere overlooking the water – I saw it in Hiroshima, in Himeji, and in Kyoto before this, and now I see it in Tokyo, too. Universally they look like extremely pleasant places to relax. I can imagine sitting with a book and a cup of hot tea, watching the rain fall on the koi pond. Otherwise, they don’t really go for flowers, but more trees and bushes. Then again, it was late January, so it probably just wasn’t flower season. Still, if they look this good in the winter, can you imagine spring? Or summer? Or fall? Sometime you should go on a garden tour of Japan, is what I’m saying here, I think. 

About 11 or noonish, I headed out of the park (past the same greenhouse) and a few blocks to another subway station. I bought another 24-hour subway pass, and this time deciphering the map to figure out where in the tangled mass of spaghetti my next destination was was super easy – I had gotten pretty good at navigating Tokyo’s metro system, and am actually a huge fan of it now. I headed all the way across Tokyo, from the western suburbs of the city clear to the eastern suburbs, along the banks of the Sumida river (one of the reasons Tokyo was founded – it was a little fishing village along the riverbank). Asakusa district is a famous traditional Tokyo neighborhood, with many temples and older buildings. Of course, “older” in Tokyo means buildings dating from the ’50s and ’60s – Curtis LeMay’s tender attentions saw to that. 

Anyway, the first thing you see in Asakusa is the gate to the Senso-ji temple, which is one of the oldest and most famous Buddhist temples in Japan (albeit not as grand as the Kyoto temples I had seen on Tuesday):

This was maybe the most crowded place I had been in Tokyo. Shoulder-to-shoulder masses everywhere. I had a group of schoolkids in front of me at one point, chattering away. They weren’t in my way or anything, I was mostly just gawking at stuff, but when they spotted the foreigner behind them they started apologizing profusely in English (“Sorry, sorry! Sorry sir!”), bowing, and clearing the way. It was kind of funny, honestly. I stood on the very edge of a busy street behind me to get this photo and still barely had room.

Beyond, it’s not much better:

There’res a large shopping area with tons of tiny stalls, food stands, souvenir shops, tourist traps, all manner of stuff. And of course, shoulder to shoulder crowds. I elbowed my way through, eventually passing through another gate (visible in the distance in the second photo) and onto the temple grounds, which were overrun with tourists and schoolchildren on a field trip. The temple was crowded with burning incense and lots of washing stations (visible in the top photo, taken from the temple porch and looking back the way I came). 

I wandered in and out, and around the temple grounds, which has a number of traditional buildings and gardens, taking lots of photos. One thing, of course, loomed over the entire temple. About half a mile away was the Skytree.

I had no idea what the Skytree was before coming to Tokyo. The previous evening, at Tokyo Tower, it had been pointed out to me, but it wasn’t very prominent at night and so I paid little attention to it. Here, though, it very clearly loomed on the horizon – it’s the first thing I saw leaving the subway station, and no matter where you go, you can see it peeking over buildings. So, I decided that would be my final Tokyo destination. 

I crossed the street at about 1:00 and ate lunch at a classic ramen restaurant just opposite the main district gates. Squeezed in through the door – barely room for me and my backpack – printed an order slip from the machine in front, and handed it to one of apparently two employees – the barman and the chef. I managed to squeeze myself and all my belongings into a little seat at the bar, and had a delicious, hot ramen meal. Last thing I would eat in this country, probably. From there, it was off to the Skytree.

I opted not to check any maps – I could see the damn place after all – so it was a fun walk, and further than I thought, probably half a mile to a mile. I crossed a bridge over the river, headed through a plaza near some government offices (and a statue of some long-dead poet), then up and down alleyways, gradually working my way closer. Finally, I reached the base of the building and then couldn’t figure out how to get inside. There was a subway station in the basement, but how did you get in from the ground? I had to walk 3/4 of the way around before I found an escalator onto a 3rd floor terrace, which connected two separate buildings. One was a mall/ticket office, the other was the Skytree itself. It probably took an hour, but at last I was in an elevator and headed to the top. 

The top is nearly 500 meters above Tokyo – well, the highest floor is 481 meters, or 1,480 ft. The whole tower is 634 meters. By contrast, the CN Tower in Toronto is 553 meters. The Skytree is the tallest tower in the world, and the second-tallest free standing structure in the world after the Burj Khalifa in Dubai (which is, apparently, not a proper tower). I didn’t know this until long after the fact – at the time, I just thought, “Wow! This place is super tall!” 

I roamed the Skytree’s upper and lower decks for a few hours, gawking at the tourists and at Tokyo. I knew that once I left, it was time for the airport and back to Korea, not knowing when I’d return.  You could see the entire city from the top, of course. I looked back and I could see pretty much everything I’d explored, all the way to Mt. Fuji. I could see the Imperial Palace and knew that Tokyo Station and the Dai Ichi building (I forgot to mention walking past that – it was MacArthur’s headquarters while he ran Japan after the war, including during the Korean war…it wasn’t super interesting. Just a building) were close by. I could see Akibahara. I could make out, distantly, the national park from this morning, and the Tokyo Tower. I could easily see the temple district a half mile away, down to the individual buildings.

Looking back, you can see the temple area at dead center, and upper center, the imperial palace gardens. 

You can see the gate at center, and the temple at center-right. The street at left is the where I took the first picture of the crowds above from. 

All of Tokyo spread out below me, one last time. The top deck looped around itself once from the elevator, a gently sloping ramp that peaked at the 455ish meter mark (I don’t remember, I’m writing this email over multiple days!), and then sloping back down to a second elevator to take you down to the main deck. It was crowded with families and school kids, and it was bright and warm with all the sunlight streaming in through the windows. I wandered around, then went down to the main deck, about 100 meters lower, and wandered around some more. You had glass floors there where you could look straight down the tower – people were afraid to walk on them, as if the glass might shatter at any moment! I don’t get vertigo, so I didn’t mind them at all. There was also a cafe there, so as it got closer to 4:00 (when it would be time to depart, possibly forever), I got myself a green tea latte, perched on a stool, and looked out over the city one last time.

Finally, though, I had stalled long enough. I shrugged my backpack on again, hopped off the stool, and took the elevator down to the bottom floor. It took some doing, but I eventually found the subway station (I never did locate the main entrance, but I found an elevator on the street that took me down to it) and worked out how to get to Narita Airport, which is situated just outside Tokyo to the east (although it’s still part of the metro area – the urban footprint of Tokyo sprawls out over the entire plain – I think every flat part of Japan is built up at this point and only the mountains are left undeveloped). I was a bit concerned, because I couldn’t tell for certain if I was on the right train – this one had me getting off and transferring at a station about halfway there, and the signs were a bit confusing. I piled out at the station and had about 30 minutes to wait on the platform (little station) before the train arrived. I saw a trio of young white guys with suitcases nearby, speaking English in Australian accents. I wandered over and asked the Aussies if they were waiting for the train to the airport, too, which confirmed I was headed the right way. Nice guys, from Perth, travelling on winter break before heading back to college.  

I left the tower around 4, but the train ride was so long that I didn’t reach Narita until 6ish and it was fully dark when the train chugged into the underground station. There were hundreds of people pouring off the train and up through a labyrinth of tunnels and stairs into the airport departures lounge. It took long minutes of escalators and gates and tunnels before I finally made it into the airport proper, then up into the check-in area. Only one desk was working – corona was spreading around Asia now, and travel was starting to slow. Masks had become more and more widespread while I was in Japan, though I still didn’t think much of it. This was around February 1st, so the virus was newly out of Wuhan. I shuffled through the line, which was mostly full of Koreans since the route was Tokyo – Seoul, did the usual check in and whatnot (my Korean visa, though, meant there was much less scrutiny than when I was headed into Japan), and soon was winding through security. Lines were short, that late and with only one flight departing. I had a bottle of hand lotion I had bought as a favor for a friend alllll the way back in Hakata Station my first night in Japan confiscated – forgot the durned thing was in my bag, but of course you can’t take liquids on an airplane lest you attempt to murder everyone on board – but otherwise there were no issues. I had time to grab a quick dinner from an overpriced airport Vietnamese restaurant, and only waited about 30 minutes at the gate before it was time to end my time in Japan. I had a seat in the very last row of the airplane, entirely to myself. Safety instructions were given three times – first in Japanese, then in Korean, and finally in English – and then we lifted off. I stuck my phone against the window and took one final picture of the land of the Rising Sun before it vanished into the darkness below me.

The flight was short and uneventful. So were customs in Incheon – I came through the very same gate that I had 6 months earlier, in August, but this time it was much easier. My Korean was better, and I got to bypass pretty much all the foreigner lines by flashing my Alien Registration Card, which is as good as a Korean passport for getting through Korean customs. It took scant minutes before I was out in the main airport, with no baggage to claim. It was 11:00 at night, though, and I still needed to reach Seoul, where I’d stay the night. I flagged down a taxi driver, collapsed into the back of his cab, and prayed he wouldn’t murder me while I more or less napped on the 40 minute drive into the Korean capital. 

He did not take me to an isolated area and murder me, so that was nice. He let me out downtown, a few blocks from my last hostel. I wound through the streets a bit, but found it without too much trouble, thankfully – it was now nearly midnight. I went through a door (covered in signs scolding guests to please consider the neighbors and be quiet, also stop drinking in public) and descended into a basement, past a large metal door. Inside was a noisy, well-lit lounge, with beat-up, comfortable looking leather couches and armchairs scattered around a few TVs, while Korean hip-hop thumped through hte air. A pair of young Koreans sat behind the desk, a man and a woman. They ran through the welcome nonsense and led me to my room. It was small, compared to the big Japanese dorms, and not nearly as nice. No private bunks here with anything so fancy as curtains and private outlets – just a grim concrete room with cheap metal frame bunkbeds, no shelves. The bottom bunks were claimed by other travellers already, and one already held a sleeping form, so I had to settle for a top bunk. The entire damned bed swayed as I climbed in, and I was afraid it would topple over. 

A few minutes later, a large Slavic man entered the room. He looked, well, the very model of your stereotypical Russian – large, beefy frame, heavy brows over dark eyes, a large hooked nose, close-shaven skull, wearing a wife-beater and boxer shorts for bed. He spoke English well, with a thick Russian accent, and was a really friendly guy. 

“Hello, friend! What is, uh, what is name? Brad? Good to meet you, Brad! I am Yuri. You know where I am from? Yes, yes, Russia! How are you knowing? Good, good… I am from Yakutsk. You know Yakutsk?” I did. It’s a territory in Siberia in Risk. “Wow, you are smart guy! No one knows Yakutsk! What are you doing here, Brad from America?” 

Yuri was gregarious and warm, but he was also obviously lonely. He chattered away while I got ready for bed. He was from Yakutsk, but hadn’t lived there in years. He had an ex-wife, and a 4-year old daughter living in Moscow. He hadn’t seen her in more than a year, and missed her terribly, but he was trying to save up money to go home. He lived in Manila, where he taught English to people – hence why his English was so good (albeit heavily accented). He wondered if he would see his daughter soon – did I have a wife, a child? Not yet? Well, someday, Brad from America, someday! He liked meeting people in his travels, and liked Asia because it was so cheap. Someday, though, he would move to Moscow to be near his family. Yuri was perhaps too friendly for after midnight after the draining week I’d just had, but at the same time there was something a bit pathetic, perhaps a bit pitiful, about him that I couldn’t help but feel warmly towards him. I hope that he does fulfill his dream of moving to Moscow and living near his daughter.

Eventually, I drifted off to sleep, and when I woke up the next morning after an uncomfortable night, Yuri was snoring away contendedly in the bunk below mine. I slipped out of bed, headed alllll the way across the building to the lone male bathroom on the floor, squeezed into a tiny, concrete pillbox of a shower, and got myself more or less cleaned up. Then I dressed and checked out, while Yuri still slept, and that was the last I ever saw of Yuri from Yakutsk. 

I had a few hours in Seoul – I had scheduled more than a day, in fact – but I was so exhausted from everything that after a morning poking around the ancient palace of the Korean kings, I couldn’t really face a full day exploring the city, not with my comfy apartment just a short busride away. I’d return to Seoul, some day. So I found a subway station, made my way to the Seoul bus terminal, and by lunchtime was on a bus for Gwangju. I arrived in the city by 5ish, hopped on another city bus for home, and by 7 pm Saturday night had collapsed into bed. 

The day after that was Super Bowl Sunday, which I spent in a haze of giddy anticipation and anxiety (to be honest, I didn’t expect to win, but tried to tell myself I was happy just to be there). I was off Monday, too, so I woke up early and spent hte morning hunched in front of my laptop for Super Bowl LIV (which may have ended with me jumping up and down in my apartment and annoying the neighbors).

The next day, Korea imposed 2-week quarantines on anyone returning from abroad. 

I didn’t expect to be writing this when I woke up this morning. Hell, I didn’t expect to be writing it 5 hours ago. And I’m a mess, and really in no state to be writing at all. But I need to process, and this is the best way I know of to do that. So write I will.

Let me start at the beginning, I guess.

I emerged from my apartment this morning to head to work early, as I normally do on days where I teach first hour (spoilers: it’s all of them). I like to arrive early enough to settle in, check my email, and have a cup of coffee before I’m in front of students – I hate walking in and having to hit the ground running. It was a bright, clear morning, with cool temperatures and a nice breeze. The spring birds were singing, and most of the city was still asleep so the noise of people and traffic had faded. Apart from the birds, in fact, it was quiet.

So quiet, in fact, that I heard a weird chirping – it sounded like a really insistent bird, in fact. It was loud and sounded very close by. As I looked around, I saw, practically at my feet, a small orange blob crawling around in the street. It was easy to miss – it was less than the size of my hand – and even as I watched, a sedan raced by down the street, its tires coming within bare inches of striking the thing. Notwithstading that, the thing lurched even further out into the street, where the next car to come – at any moment – would surely spell its end. I came over, baffled, and squatted down to find – well, a kitten.

He was small, very small – again, he could fit in one palm. His eyes were closed, his legs didn’t really work yet, and he was still slick with afterbirth. In fact, he was so newly born that he still had an umbilical cord trailing off him (do cats have umbilical cords? I had never thought about it, but I guess they do. I’ve seen young kittens but never one this young). He was constantly mewling, small, tiny chirps demanding food, his mother, I don’t know. I dithered, momentarily – was it bad to touch a newborn kitten? Again, I wasn’t sure, but then a car rounded the corner on the end of the block and I decided. I certainly couldn’t leave him lying there in the street to be squished. He deserved a chance, at least.

I bent down and gently eased him onto one palm, keenly aware of how fragile he felt. I carried him only a short distance to a nearby bush. Cradling him in my palm, I patted out a small nest in the grass there under the branches, where he would be warm and safe, but still within a few feet of where I found him, so his mother could find him. Then I went searching for mom.

Now, I have a number of alley cats who live near my building, and I hear them every night brawling and singing alley cat songs. Naturally, this morning, there were none to be found. I paced around the entire block, peering into their usual hideyholes in the various nooks and crannies of a Korean apartment block, but finding nothing. I came back and examined where I had found hte little kitten, and while there was a small fluid trail showing his bold sally into the road, there were no other clues I could find to his mom’s location.

Well, I turned to my trusty old friend, Google. It seemed first, that kittens could survive several hours without their mother, even newborns. So, second, it was best to leave them where they were (provided that area was safe, so not the middle of a busy street), and wait for mom to return to find them. Only if after a few hours of no mom should you seek a vet and attempt to care for the cat itself.

Now, I have a small amount of experience with kitten litters myself, from brief trips out to the farm at Pierce City. I knew when cats had a new litter, they would frequently find a safe hiding place for their kittens, and mom would bring them there one at a time. Kitten hunts were a fun pasttime when we knew a cat was expecting. So, in all likelihood, Mom was away hiding this little one’s littermates, and she would be back. Well, if she was any kind of mom at all, she’d find him, as he continued to mew his tiny lungs out. As for a vet, I had no idea where a nearby Korean vet was, and I had no time – my early arrival to work was entirely vanished by now, and I had to leave 10 minutes ago even to make it to first hour on time. The cat would be safe enough under the bush, and I could re-evaluate after work.

I stumbled through work, teaching four classes today, grading a bunch of written assignments I had idiotically assigned thinking they’d help me (to be fair, they did), trying to write most of my final Japan post (and succeeding), and the myriad other minutiae of a day at the science high school. I flew out the door as soon as the final bell rang, bent on checking up on the little cat.

I hurried home, the 30 minute walk taking me only about 20 today, and as I came down the street to my apartment, I could breathe a sigh of relief. An adult cat, her markings matching those of the kitten more or less, looked up from the nest I had placed the little cat in. As soon as she saw me, her eyes narrowed and she sprinted a short way off, then glared at me from underneath a discarded cardboard box.

My reading had told me that this was normal behavior, and if left alone she would return to her kitten. I must have interrupted her while she was preparing to bring him to her own hideyhole. Well, mom being present was a huge relief, since it meant the cat would be taken care of and I didn’t need to find a vet. Plus, I wasn’t ready to become a father, and didn’t need the responsibility. I peeked into the nest to verify the kitten was still there and still alive, and indulged myself in a pair of photos for posterity. It’d be nice to remember him by.

• 

• 

I didn’t pet him, but left him alone and undisturbed there. After nodding to his lurking mother nearby, I made myself scarce so she could do her thing. I met with friends for dinner, but when I returned, I had a nagging sense. Before I would rest safely, I just wanted ot check in, and make sure that the nest was emptied. Beyond that, not my problem.

When I came to the nest, it was quiet. No more tiny mews, for the first time all day. I crouched down, and looked inside. Then reached inside to feel.

The little body inside was cold. A few hours, at least.

I don’t know why that hit me so hard. But it did. It hit really hard. I tried to save you, but I failed. I failed, and you died, and for that, I am sorry.

I’m sorry that you had less than 24 hours on this Earth. It’s not the best Earth ever, but it is a pretty good one, and I think you would have liked it here. I’m sorry that for that short time, all you had was me. I wouldn’t pick myself to be the only person you meet in a lifetime, but…well, I’m who you get, I guess. I’m sorry that you might have had a life, and now you will not, and part of the reason might be me.

I’m no stranger to animals dying. I have said goodbye to many pets over the years. But…they had full, long, and happy lives, for the most part. I was devastated when Sam left me two years ago, but Sam had the best life any dog could ask for, full of treats and warm beds and snuggles and love. This cat got a few moments with me, and a bush. And I know that young animals, especially strays like this one, die in droves every year. On the farm, the survival rate for litters is well below 50%. There is nothing surprising, or unexpected about this.

But dammit, for this one, I tried. But I wasn’t good enough, and for that, you get your brief life of 20 hours or so, before you join the tens of millions of other animals that die alone, unmourned, unloved, and unremembered.

But you’re not one of them. Even though it was just for a few hours, I knew you. I cared. I’m sorry you didn’t have a better savior. That you got someone who cared, but had a million other cares – finalizing the day’s lesson plan, making sure I got at least one class worth of grading done, making sure I had ingredients for the grilled cheese and Parasite night I was planning with my friends. Even the little attention you got was divided. And my attention was limited to a few Google searches, a few moments warm in my hand as I moved you to a safer space, and thoughts and prayers.

As things go, I make a somewhat shabby Messiah.

Growing up, one of my biggest influences was always Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin and Hobbes is one of those comic strips that has, I think, universal appeal – maybe the only comic strip with universal appeal. Everyone I know that has read it, loves it.

Because Calvin and Hobbes was always more than just a goofy strip to make you laugh. It was funny, yes, but Bill Waterson also had a masterful talent for making you feel, too. He could effortlessly weave his jokes in and around commentaries on modern politics, on commercialism, environmentalism, war and peace, love, the pains and joys of growing up, the importance of family and friendship, and yes, life and death.

Calvin and Hobbes helped me to grow and understand the world. It wasn’t just a newspaper strip -Waterson’s underlying personality, his worldview, built on a love of exploration and wonder in the world, a hatred of the stupid and asinine systems that corrupt us and attempt to control us, a simple joy in a well-thrown water balloon or artfully constructed snowman, largely came to be my philosophy and worldview.

When I found that little body, knew that I had failed, and was plunged unexpectedly into grief for an animal that hadn’t even existed the day before, I instantly thought of Calvin and Hobbes. Calvin went through this, too.

I agree with him. Little cat, it wasn’t very grateful of you to break my heart.

And so, little cat, this is my farewell to you. Those two pictures I snapped, and a brief, 5-second video of some of your mews, are the only records of your existence that will ever exist in this world. I am the only person you will ever meet. I wish you had gotten a better deal. I wish you had grown up, and fought with other alley cats, and explored, and learned, and had lazy mornings in the sun and late night adventures in the rain and maybe made friends with the English teacher walking by on his way to work. Sometimes life give us a raw deal. Sometimes all we get is a few hours, a hand, and a bush.

But you won’t be unremembered, or unmourned. Even if it was just for a few hours, you were here, and you were important to someone. You were important to me.

I feel terrible right now, but I am blessed that I got to be the one to know you. It was a privilege, little cat. Goodbye.

What a stupid world we live in sometimes.

PS Hug your pets today.

Well, I’m just about wrapped up with Japan. Thursday and Friday were my last two days in the country, and I spent them both in Tokyo. 

I got up early, as I always do on vacation, and took some time on the roof of my hotel taking in the city. Tokyo is huge – it sprawls out over I think hundreds of square miles, covering basically every bit of land in north-central Japan that isn’t a mountain. It’s mostly dozens or even hundreds of neighborhoods and smaller cities knit together without any break in the urbanization. The only way to get around is via subway. So, that was my first stop. 

I headed down into the subway station near my hotel, which was very near, thankfully – just a block or two. Once again, the morning was dominated with thousands of people hurrying to work. Crowds are everywhere in Japan – the only time I was ever alone was in Sekigahara. Otherwise there’s always at least a few dozen human beings in your immediate area. Trains are crowded, streets are crowded, etc. The nice thing, though, is that everyone is extremely polite and courteous to each other – I think the Japanese would have wound up killing each other off long ago if that wasn’t the case. Anyway, I squeezed down past the crowds and towards the line. I asked the guard at the gate if my rail pass would work on the subway, but unfortunately the metro system isn’t a Japan Rail line (the state company) and is instead run by a private company. He pointed me to a nearby ticket kiosk, though. I wandered over, selected the English option on the electronic menu, and paged through the confusing list of ticket options – single way tickets, round-trips, 24-hour passes, but only on certain lines, comprehensive passes, etc. When the guard didn’t see me go through the gate right away, he came out of his booth and hurried over to make sure I was okay. He was a very helpful and courteous fellow, and together we got a decent 48-hour pass, which would last me until it was time to fly home the next day. He also insisted I take a map of the metro, which included guides to various tourist attractions in Tokyo, which actually came in quite handy.

I rode the metro and transferred through several stations. That was a lot easier said than done, though – the Japanese subway system is a tangled spaghetti mess of practically a dozen different lines all looping back and forth on each other, and the stations are maze-like collections of stairs and halls and platforms and gates rambling on for several stories up and down and hundreds of yards lengthwise, all underground, and all filled with thousands of people. Thankfully the signage is very clear and comprehensive, and I was able to wander more or less in the right direction, purchasing a single-round trip ticket down to Yokosuka. Yokosuka is a harbor suburb on one of the peninsulas jutting out into Tokyo Bay south of the main city. It’s most notable as the home of the US naval base in Tokyo Bay and the headquarters of our Far East fleet. My interest, though, was in Mikasa.

Mikasa is an old Japanese battleship permanently preserved in Mikasa Naval Park, right next to the US base. She’s a famous ship, though, with a distinguished history. Mikasa is the only surviving predreadnought battleship in the world. 

See, steel battleships can be divided into two groups: predreadnoughts, and dreadnoughts. When the British launched HMS Dreadnought in 1905, they revolutionized warship design. Before Dreadnought, ships were a confused mess of designs as naval architects tried to figure out what worked and what didn’t work with the new technologies of steam and iron plating. Ships had hugely varied armaments, eclectic collections of guns, some even had rams, that kind of thing. No one had much of a clue. Dreadnought got rid of all the smaller guns, though, and radically went with a small number of big guns mounted in a few turrets. She also had fancy new turbine-based steam engines, instead of reciprocating engines. Her big guns could shoot further and more accurately than the guns on any other warship, and her fancy engines meant she could sail faster and for longer than any other warship, too. That meant that Dreadnought could defeat any other ship or even any other collection of ships afloat, because she could keep out of range of any ship that attacked her while pounding it into scrap metal. So, since Dreadnought, all battleships have followed her design of having a small number of big guns mounted in turrets, with a few smaller guns to ward off destroyers and small craft, and fast turbine engines, and are called dreadnoughts after the first ship. The Missouri, in Pearl, is a dreadnought. 

The pre-dreadnoughts have all disappeared, except Mikasa. She has 4 big 12-inch guns in 2 turrets, a huge assortment of 6-inch guns, and even more 3-inch guns crowded onto her deck. The ship was designed to fight in the old way of sailing up broadside to an enemy and pounding away with everything. She’s been preserved as a museum ship because she won the most famous naval victory in Japanese history – she was Admiral Togo’s flagship at Tsushima (the island I sailed past last Friday), where the Japanese fleet had almost literally blown the Russians out of the water. So I was eager to see her. 

I got to the Yokosuka train station at about 10:00 that morning. It was a bright, sunny day, absolutely gorgeous weather. Apart from the rainy day at Himeji, I had fantastic weather for the trip – I’m told it was unusually nice for the time of year, and that Japan isn’t always that nice. I walked a few blocks through the streets until I came to Mikasa park. There’s a big, grassy area, an open plaza. a statue of Admiral Togo, and, of course, the ship itself. She sits in a concrete drydock safely out of the water. I headed over to a little electronic ticket booth and got myself some museum tickets, poked my head into the giftshop (empty except for a pair of chattering employees, and nothing I particularly wanted to buy), then boarded the ship. 

• 

• 

The upper decks are mostly preserved as they were, with an English audio tour available. I had the ship to myself, it seemed, and I wandered up the portside, past the main gundeck, looked in on the radio room, bridge, con tower, and eventually over to the starboard and down into the main decks. Below, the ship has been converted itno a museum on the Russo-Japanese war and the rise of the Japanese Empire. You see here a lot of the pro-Japanese bias you had in Hiroshima. Lots of Japan heroically defending Asia from Russian & Western encroachment, not so much on Japanese colonialism itself. But the museum is well-done, with lots of artifacts, great exhibits on the course of the war, the battle of Tsushima, and Mikasa’s career (short, since even as she fought Tsushima in 1905 Dreadnought was making her obsolete on the other side of the world), and even a collection of models of every ship in the Imperial Japanese Navy (which I would have freaked out about if I hadn’t seen the same thing at the Yamato museum a few days earlier). There’s even VR simulations of standing on the bridge of the battleship during the fighting against the Russians. Towards the stern, you can tour the officer’s mess and quarters, the captain’s cabin, and the admiral’s cabin. I was a bit disappointed that you couldn’t go into the engine room, magazine, or any of the turrets, however. 

• 

• 

After a few hours of messing around, exploring the VR, playing with the fire director on the bridge, and walking around the park, I was ready to move on back to Tokyo. I tried to get back to the bus station without using Google Maps (which had been my lifeline in Japan since getting my Japanese SIM installed in Hakata – it tells you exactly which train to take and exactly which platform to be at, at what time). It was only a few blocks and I was sure I remembered the way. I did not remember the way. I got turned around several times, stumbled into hte gates of Yokosuka naval base once (the guard was American, so that was nice – actually Yokosuka has lots of Americans in the streets and lots of business had English signs, obviously catering to servicemen), and finally found myself in front of a streetside burrito truck. Well, it was near to noon at this point, and I hadn’t had lunch, so what the hell, I bought a chicken burrito. It was heavenly – like, unbelievably good. The tortilla was perfectly crisp and flaky, the chicken nice and hot, the seasoning perfect, the cheese perfect. I do believe that the best burrito I’ve ever had was from a food truck in Yokosuka, Japan. 

After my burrito, I DID find the train station again, without using Maps, and headed back to Tokyo Station. From there, it was the short walk to the imperial palace.

The palace grounds are an enormous park in the heart of Tokyo. Most of the living quarters of the imperial family are closed to the public (naturally) except on special tours, and the majority of the compound is behind ancient moats and high walls, with guards on all the gates. But you can still walk around some of the gardens, notably the East Gardens. I joined hundreds of other tourists and explored. The gardens are large, and crowded (as always), but not as nice, I felt, as the Hiroshima city garden or the Himeji castle gardens. They’re grander in scale, but don’t have as many little nooks and crannies to hide in, no tranquil gardens with a little stream, waterfall, or pond in the center, or secluded little teahouses. Even the old imperial gardens in Kyoto felt more intimate than these. Lots to see and gawk at, and it took me hours to explore all of them, but honestly I preferred the earlier ones to the imperial gardens. 

From there, I travelled to the nearby Akibahara District. Akibahara is a famous shopping district dedicated to anime – like a Mecca for anime fans. I’m not a huge anime fan, but I do like some shows and movies, so I thought I’d check it out. I emerged from the subway late in the afternoon, and walked a few blocks through the crowded streets. The first thing I noticed is was how…small…it was. Just a couple of city blocks – you can walk from one end to the other in minutes. There wasn’t a lot to tempt me, honestly – there were lots of shops selling merchandise, but it was all figurines and collectibles and other things I have no interest in. There were lots of girls dressed as anime maids or other characters trying to tempt me into cafes, or holding signs and waving them in the street, but I wasn’t really interested in that sort of thing, either. One news reporter did try to interview me for a story they were working on, until they learned I was American and not from a Commonwealth nation. On the whole, the entire place was kind of…lame. Oh, well, at least I can say I went.

As the sun started to dip towards the horizon, I wound back into the subway system and traveled the short journey to the Tokyo Tower. The Tower is a big orange Eiffel Tower-like construct in the heart of Tokyo, and I thought I’d explore it. I came out of the station a few blocks away, and I remember when I turned the corner onto the street the tower sits on – it’s enormous. You really have to crane your neck to see the top, and the sidewalk had like a dozen people all crouching down to try and take photos of the massive thing. I snapped my own, of course, and then walked over a short hill and then down onto the Tower grounds and into the lobby. 

Once inside, you can buy a pass to the top, of course, which I did. I was herded with a group of about 10 tourists (a Japanese family, a Japanese couple, and a Peruvian family – we chatted a bit in Spanish, which was a welcome relief from Japanese) onto an elevator, which quickly jumped up a few thousand feet (it felt like) to the main deck, which has the gift shop, cafe, and whatnot. Then it was another shuffle around the tower to a second elevator, and another ride to the very top observation deck. 

It was spectacular. The top deck itself is all polished mirrors and glass, with soft lighting steadily shifting between a variety of colors while dramatic music swells in the background. I arrived just as the sun was setting, and managed to get Mt. Fuji at sunset. We had been given special tablets which let us look out over the city while a nice-sounding man told us what we were looking at, which was basically all of Tokyo. The whole city lit up below me, and you could spot every major landmark – the Tokyo Dome, the parliament building, Tokyo Disney, Akibahara shopping district, Shinjuki Station, the scramble crossing, Tokyo Bay, you name it. There’s no earthly way for me to describe the experience with words, so I won’t even try. I spent I think more than hour up on the deck, just gazing at the city, which sprawled out below me. You could see the lights of tens of thousands of cars crawling around on the various streets and highways, the arteries of Tokyo. You could see the lights of hundreds of skyscrapers, each one of them tiny below you, but enormous if viewed from the ground. Eventually I mustered the will to travel back down to the main deck, where I just sat and stared into the city for a while. It was my last night in Japan, and I was feeling very sad. It had been an amazing trip – the best in my life, I think, because it was mine, and it was the greatest adventure I’d ever had – but all good things must come to an end. I knew, once I left the tower, it would be back to the hotel to sleep one last night. So I knew once I left this deck, I might never have this view again. I lingered.

Finally, I headed back to the elevator. On the way, I paused again and watched a lengthy video on the history of Tokyo and of the Tower, which was built to be a sign of hope and inspiration to the Japanese people as they rebuilt the city following its near total destruction in the war. Again, didn’t really mention how the war started. Ah, well. On a whim, I took the stairs down instead of the elevator – why rush? – and made my way through the cool nighttime air down 88 flights of steps back to the bottom. Still following my whims, I crossed the street to the Tower and found a fancy Italian restaurant. I felt a little awkward dining alone, but the wait staff said it was fine, so I settled into a table and treated myself on my last night in the country. I had some wonderful seafood pasta (crab), a gin and tonic, and nursed a cup of coffee while watching the dining room, which was lively with couples coming and going, mostly. The waitress and the host were very attentive to me, and made me feel welcome, even if I was somewhat scraggly and underdressed after a week living out of a backpack.

By 9:00, it was time to head home. I took the subway – the spaghetti mess of the map actually pretty easy for me to navigate by now – and a middle-aged Japanese woman actually sat next to me and talked to me. Japanese people never talk on public transit, and they certainly don’t talk to me, so I was pleasantly surprised! She had decent English, and wanted to make sure I was getting on all right in the country. 

The ride was short (I never took the subway longer than a half hour, no matter where I was going. Compared to my 45-90 minute bus rides in Gwangju, it’s spectacularly efficient), and I staggered back to the hotel, pretty wore out. I don’t remember hardly anything of the walk back or of falling into bed there. Just one night to go. 

I really do want to finish this Japan trip, because I’m saving it in my blog, too. Just using emails to you as an excuse to write and hold myself accountable.

So, on Tuesday, I went to Kyoto, and ended the night by being chased by boars off the mountain. Wednesday I was finally moving on to my final stop in Japan, the big one: Tokyo itself. However, I had all day to get there, and I had all day Thursday and Friday to explore the city before my flight Friday evening.

I woke up in my hostel Wednesday morning and packed up to go. I guess I’d like to pause and talk about what Japanese hostels are like. The one in Osaka was especially unusual. Like I mentioned before, you entered through a small coffee shop/restaurant on the ground floor. The shop was tucked away in a narrow alleyway, with lots of private homes crowding all around. People had their laundry out on lines to dry, stray dogs and cats, the works. Once inside, you removed your shoes and left them in a cubby in a small waiting area before heading upstairs. This is normal everywhere I went – shoes just aren’t worn indoors at all. Upstairs, there were several big dorm rooms – lots of places have mixed gender and female-only rooms, very rarely are there male-only rooms.

Inside the dorm, there’s typically some lockers and hangars for things like coats and bags, then lots of beds. The beds are stacked two high with only the ends facing the main area, and come with curtains to give privacy. Inside, you have your bed, a small shelf or cubby to house some things, and typically a lamp or an outlet. Space is small, but as long as you don’t expect too much they’re quite cozy and comfy. Bathroom facilities are communal, with a bunch of sinks and mirrors in a common space and then a few shower stalls with an attached changing room. The showers are small and the heads honestly a little low for me. It’s hard to be tall in Asia. On the whole, they’re not luxurious, but they’re very comfortable if you’re travelling light and alone, like I was. 

So before I left Osaka, I had one last destination: Osaka Castle. Yes, my third castle, but this one had the most historical significance! See, during Japan’s warring states period, Osaka was the capital of one of the last great lords of the period, Toyotomi. Whoever held Osaka could dominate Kyoto (just 40 miles away, remember), and whoever dominates Kyoto dominates the Emperor (the Emperor was/is widely respected as the “ruler” of Japan, but he didn’t make any actual decisions and entire wars were fought in the country with each side claiming to be the true servants of the emperor). In the final days of the wars, 1615, the head of the Emperor’s military forces, the shogun Ieyasu Tokugawa, led a siege of Osaka castle to overthrow Toyotomi and remove the last obstacle to his rule. In those days, the shogun was the true ruler of the country. Osaka was besieged, there was a massive battle fought just outside the castle, and in the end Toyotomi committed suicide. The shogun Tokugawa united the country and moved the capital to his home in the city of Edo, far to the east. His descendents ruled Japan from 1615 all the way to 1870, when the Emperor reclaimed authority and moved to Edo, renaming the city Toyko (the Tom Cruise movie The Last Samurai is a highly fictionalized version of those events). 

I took the subway from near my hostel a mile or two and emerged near another one of those massive glass-and-steel office towers that dominates modern architecture. Everyone around me was a businessman hurrying to work, it seemed. It was still early, not even 9:00, and the day was clear and cool. Just to the south of me I could see the castle sitting in its park.

I had to wind around several moats and walls to approach the main keep. There weren’t many people around, ebcause I was coming in the back way, from the north. The museum was piping martial Japanese music over some hidden speakers, lots of war drums pounding steadily. I passed various old gates and walls, looked out over Osaka, and came to the site where Lord Toyotomi committed suicide after losing the battle of Osaka. That was neat. 

Once I got up to the castle itself, there were hundreds of people around – tons of tour groups, including children on field trips. I bought my tickets and headed in. The castle interior has been filled with a museum on the Warring States period, the life of Lord Hideyori Toyotomi, and the final siege of Osaka. Each floor has a theme and dozens of exhibits, artifacts from the time, historical documents, some pretty cool dioramas, videos (entirely in Japanese, sadly), and on to the usual observation deck to look out at the city. I spent a few hours poking around. 

• 

• 

Now, my plan had been to head straight from Osaka to Tokyo, maybe pausing at Fuji town on the way or something. But then I realized…this might be the only time I’m in Japan, and it’ll certainly be the only time I’m in Japan by myself. If there was ever a time to have my own independent adventures, this was it. So as I made my way back down the 5 stories of the castle, I pulled up my maps and started looking for a specific town, one I’d read about years ago but never dreamed I’d visit. And sure enough, it was a few hours away by train…but not totally out of my way. I could visit and still be in Tokyo this evening. 

So I decided to go to Sekigahara. 

I had to wind back out of the park, again, heading south this time, over the old battlefield. I got stopped by one Japanese man on my way out, who was very eager to practice his English. He used to work on an American military base, and had very good English. He was a very friendly guy. For some reason I remember his teeth clearly, even now, more than two months later – he had two gold teeth. Funny, the things that stick out about people. 

Anyway, it took me damn near 40 minutes to walk back to the train station from the castle, but from there I started hopping on regional trains and headed north, past Kyoto, and into the Japanese countryside. We chugged along the shore of Lake Biwa, passing increasingly small country towns as I went. A few hours later, about 1 in the afternoon, my train chugged into a tiny platform in a sleepy country town called Sekigahara. I mean, tiny – Hakata, Hiroshima, and Osaka stations all had more than 25 train platforms each. This one had 2, and a tiny station building with a single ticket gate. There was absolutely no one around – for the first time since coming to Japan, there were no crowds.

Sekigahara is small, with a population of only 7,000 – tiny by Japanese standards. It’s a handful of houses and shops clustered around the crossroads and the train station. You can walk from one end of town to the other in 20 minutes. Otherwise it’s surrounded by fields and farms, woods and mountains. Overall, it reminds me a lot of Pierce City. So imagine a random Japanese tourist showing up in the middle of downtown Pierce City – that’s about what I was doing here.

So why come?

Well, Sekigahara is basically the Gettysburg of Japan. I mentioned earlier Ieyasu Tokugawa, the shogun or military dictator of Japan, in 1615. Tokugawa became Shogun because in the year 1600 he won the Battle of Sekigahara, here in this sleepy crossroads town.

See, Tokugawa was clashing with a fellow by the name of Mitsunari Ishida. Ishida served the emperor and was resisting Tokugawa’s ambition to become shogun. The two jostled and sparred politically in Kyoto for years, until eventually things came to a head and Tokugawa withdrew to his lands in Edo, to the east. Ishida declared Tokugawa an outlaw and began gathering an army to overthrow him, while Tokugawa gathered his own supporters to march on Kyoto.

Sekigahara sits in the middle of one of the best passes between Kyoto and Edo (today Tokyo), so Ishida prepared to meet Tokugawa here. He drew up his Western armies in an ambush on the hills that surround the town, and Tokugawa’s Eastern army marched right into the trap. Unfortunately for Ishida, Tokugawa had been in secret contact with many of the Western nobles, and had promised great rewards in land and wealth if they switched sides and helped make him shogun. So half of the Western army either refused to fight or outright joined hte East. Ishida and his most loyal generals were surrounded and killed. Tokugawa marched on to Kyoto and had the emperor declare him shogun, executing a lot of the surviving Western nobles in the river bed I had crossed over the day before when I was in Kyoto. (There’s a Japanese drama made in 2017, called Sekigahara,n about the battle, that I thought was pretty well done, but I think it might be confusing to people who don’t already know the story). 

So today, Sekigahara is filled with memories of the battle. There are huge painted murals on the walls outside the train station of most of the major players, and lots of maps and signs pointing you to key locations from the battle. I walked around for hours in the mostly-empty fields, going to this skirmish or that camp, and mostly just being amazed that I was actually standing in Sekigahara – it’s so far from anything that I never dreamed I’d make it here one day! There’s no tours and I couldn’t find a convenient museum, but there’s lots of good signs, including English ones. I seemed to be the only visitor that day – indeed, I was almost the only living soul in the town, it felt like. 

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Finally, I headed back to the tiny train station and tried to decide which of the two platforms was the right one to wait for the next train. It wasn’t due for another hour – trains not as frequent out here as in Osaka or Hiroshima. I eventually found a kindly Japanese woman (ultimately there were 4 of us waiting for the train) and she assured me I was in the right spot. I hopped on the train, which took me the rest of hte way through the mountains and into Nayoga (another huge city sprawling over most of central Japan), where I transferred to shinkansen bullet train one last time. 

The bullet train raced along the southern Japanese coast for Tokyo. It was filled with people – I remember a particularly lively group of 5 students across the aisle from me who were all playing a card game together in the middle of their cluster of seats. The best part of the trip, though, was at sunset, as we came around into Fuji town. There, looming across the valley, I could see Mt. Fuji itself, its upper slopes all snowy and golden in the late evening light. Fuji town, in the valley between the train tracks and the mountain, was already starting to settle in for the night and there were lights twinkling there. The train was so fast that the whole panorama was in view for only about three minutes, but I was able to snap a single picture before it vanished forever. 

We rolled into Tokyo Station about 7:00 that evening. It was full dark by now, but in Tokyo that doesn’t matter. I think it’s the largest metro area in the world and I was right in the heart of downtown. Forget thousands of people, it felt like there were tens of thousands of people hurrying aroudn the train station and the surrounding plaza. The station was smaller than I expected, but built in a beautiful classic brick style – it dates back to 1870 and fronts directly on the Imperial Palace. When the Emperor moved here he had it built so he could easily travel his country. It was destroyed in the war, of course, but has been rebuilt and restored to its former glory. 

All around the station were massive skyscrapers, their lights glittering in the nighttime air. I had another good walk through the city ahead of me, and everywhere I went there was light and people. Dozens of people were walking or jogging around the moats that surround the palace complex, every crosswalk had hundreds of people waiting to go, and traffic was unceasing. I walked through big business districts with massive boulevards, along shopping areas with tons of streetside restaurants and cafes, up and down hills, through narrow alleyways (crowded with people), and gradually worked my way to my last hostel. 

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This one was bigger than any I’d stayed in yet, with a large ground floor and a hip, modern style of architecture with lots of exposed brick and concrete. By the time I checked in and had had dinner, it was past 9:00, so I decided to settle in for the night. I uploaded my pictures for the day in my cozy little bed, and then downloaded Sekigahara so I could watch a movie about the battle. 

The next day was my last full day in Japan. 

Hiya, Dad –

I hope everything is going well there. Heard that Missouri finally locked down – thank goodness. The sooner people stop going outside and isolate for two weeks, the sooner this can be got under control and we can go back to our normal lives. I hope you and everyone in the family is being smart & safe. 

Taking a break from lesson planning to write about my trip on Tuesday. I heard back from Wydown and I’m in the second round of interviews – I need to put together a lesson on the origins of the Cold War. They sent me the email last Tuesday, but I somehow missed it, so now I have to have everything together by the end of today! D: At the same time, I’ve got to get my lessons for this week in Korea in by the end of the day today, as well, so it’s busy, but I need a break to refocus my mind. 

So, I left off my narrative having arrived in Osaka Monday night. It was cold, wet, and rainy, but Himeji was spectacular – one of the highlights of the trip, for sure. I recommend it to anyone who visits Japan. 

Tuesday I had no specific plans, other than “Kyoto,” the ancient imperial capital (Tokyo wasn’t the official capital of Japan until the 1870’s). What exactly was in Kyoto? I didn’t really know, but I figured I’d play things by ear when I got there. So, I made my way through the streets back to the train station.

Osaka is a lot busier than Hiroshima. For one, it was a weekday, and no longer a holiday, so the streets were crowded with people hurrying to work. For another, it’s the second largest city in Japan, I believe, so there were people everywhere! Furthermore, the Kyoto-Osaka line is one of the most important in Japan – the two cities are only 40 miles apart, and plenty of people live in one but work in the other. Thankfully, that means there’s tons of trains, of course. 

So, safely ensconced on the train, I flipped through the Internet to figure out what to do in Kyoto. The answer was pretty obvious, though – the old Imperial Palace is open to visitors! So naturally I’d go there first. 

The station is in the south of town, and like all other stations, is huge. Just outside of it is a model of the old Rashomon gate, which used to stand there as the southern entrance to the city. It’s famous as the place where the Akira Kurosawa Rashomon takes place – if you’ve never seen it you should definitely give it a watch, it’s one of my favorite movies. The imperial palace is a two-mile walk north, a straight shot. So I paused at a coffee shop to get get a drink and set off. 

It’s wonderful walking through a new city. You get to see the people, the buildings, the traffic, and really get to know a place. I walked by old Buddhist temple complexes side by side with modern glass and steel skyscrapers. It took an hour or so, but at last I reached the palace grounds.

When Kyoto was the capital, the area around the palace was filled with living compounds of dozens of court nobles, living near the Emperor and jostling with each other for power and position. There were all sorts of intrigues and power struggles, assassinations, raids, sometimes even open warfare in the streets of the city. When the Emperor moved to Tokyo, though, the nobility went with him, and today the old noble quarter has been turned into a wonderfully large park in the heart of the city. I came in through a side gate, not really grasping where the main entrance was, and explored some old preserved noble houses set aside as museums. Japanese houses are generally a series of rooms set around an open courtyard, with covered patios and sliding walls everywhere. Not bad places to live, honestly. The park is filled with ponds and trees and wildlife, including lots of cranes, which was cool to see. 

Eventually, I wandered up to the palace itself. There are two villas – one was used for retired emperors, the other was the actual palace the sitting emperor lived in. It was about 10 am, and sign-ups had just opened up for walking tours of the retired emperor’s villa. You can’t get in without a tour, and tours fill up pretty quick, so I was lucky to get there so early. I put my name down for the 1 pm tour and headed to the other villa, which is just next door. 

Only a certain amount of people are allowed into the palace at any one time. They give you a number as you enter, which you have to return when you leave (so they can keep track of how many people are in), but then you get an audio guide and you’re free to wander. The palace is mostly a set of living chambers and audience rooms, depending on if the emperor was feeling public or private that day. The public rooms include waiting areas, a carriage porch, and the famous throne room where audiences with the emperor were held. The private areas are bedrooms, living areas, places for scholars, and of course extensive, beautiful gardens. The Japanese love a good garden. I wandered around with other tourists for a few hours, taking hundreds of pictures, seeing everything. Lots of signs like “This tree is where such-and-such samurai was assassinated by Lord So-and-So during the Boshin War of 1493,” “here is where Emperor Meiji’s scholars drafted the proclamation overthrowing the shogun in 1870,” and so on. Nice place to live, though, if you can avoid being murdered by a political rival.

At noon, I grabbed some lunch right outside the palace compound. There’s an Irish pub right across the street proudly proclaiming “It’s five o’clock somewhere!” (I believe it was 5 pm in New York at the time), so I like to imagine the Emperor and his retinue ate there sometimes when out and about in the city. I rejoined my tour group at 1. Most of them were Japanese, of course, but 3 of the 50 us were foreigners – myself, clutching an English audio tour, and a French couple on their honeymoon. We were led all around the villa’s gardens, which are huge, and beautifully put together. Kyoto might have the most gardens per square mile of any place in the world, and they’re all wonderful. 

As the afternoon wore on, I walked back twoards the train station. The temples I passed earlier in the day, this time I explored. They’re UNESCO World Heritage sites, and some of the largest wooden buildings in the world (I heard claimed the largest wooden structures in the world, but can’t verify that). Each temple has a large compound surrounding the enormous main buildings themselves. I was free to walk and explore to my heart’s content (removing my shoes before setting foot on the polished wooden porches or going inside, of course). There are a pair of sites, about a quarter mile of each other, so I got to explore some of Kyoto’s back alleys on my way from one to the other. 

By the time I finished, it was only about 5:00, and I didn’t feel like going to Osaka yet. So I headed south from the station, again walking through some obscure and out of the way back alleyways, through small neighborhoods, past school kids hurrying home, just a regular day in Kyoto. I passed a river where the survivors of Sekigahara were executed (more on that tomorrow), but my goal was a large park/mountain just outside town, Fushimi. 

Fushimi is a large Shinto complex famous for having hundreds upon hundreds of the famous torii gates. Wealthy Japanese, to get blessings for themselves, have a tradition of donating torii to the shrine, so they’ve been set up in long, winding tunnels and paths all up and down the mountain. I thought the park was a few acres at most, so I’d explore it before dinner, then head back. 

It was overrun with thousands of people, vendors, police – the busiest tourist area I’d seen since Itsukushima Shrine back in Hiroshima on Saturday. The long tunnels of torii were filled with people, every last one of them posing for a classic photo to upload on social media to rave reviews later. Finding a deserted patch to do my own social media photo was almost impossible. You had to snatch moments of a few seconds when no one was around, because inevitably another gaggle would be coming down the path in just a moment. I did grab one resigned selfie at one point. 

As I wound further and further up the mountain, I started to realize that this park sprawled over miles, not acres. I had gone in maybe a mile, it was dark now, and the rain, absent all day, had returned and was gently falling. I got high enough on the mountain to look over Kyoto, and STILL the torii wound away into the darkness, snaking back and forth up the mountain side. The few maps I could find were in Japanese and totally incomprehensible, and all the other tourists had vanished. In fact, by about 6 pm, I was the only soul around, it seemed. I was high up the mountain, alone, in a graveyard (lots of those in the park), in the rain and the night, and I heard rustling in the bushes. Well, no large predators in Japan, I should be fine, right? 

Well, I happened to glance at a sign at that point: Wild boars sighted at night in this area! Please keep your distance!” Nope! I decided I had seen enough of Fushimi park and turned around right there. Never did make it to the top. 

It took me about an hour to make my way back through the tunnels of torii and to the entrance to the park. Happily there was a subway station right across the street from the entrance, so I didn’t have to walk back to Kyoto station. I hopped on the train, rode back, and then bid farewell to Kyoto and caught my train back to Osaka.

In Osaka, it was late, but I had had a buddy who lived here for a few years after graduation, and he told me of a great dongatsu place I had to try. Dongatsu is beef and egg and noodle stew, almost like ramen. It’s buttery and garlicky and delicious. I walked into the tiny little alleyways of Osaka and found this place. It was a small hole in the wall – only seats at the counter for like 8 people. Right as I stepped through the door, in front of me were a pair of Americans, a middle aged white guy and a black guy about my age, arguing about what to get. In lots of Japanese restaurants, you order at a sort of vending machine near the door. It gives you a ticket with your selections, which you hand to the man behind the counter and he gives it to the chef. 

I sat with the Americans as we waited for our dongatsu and got to talking. They were animatronic engineers, of all thigns, and were in Osaka for work. They build the funny robots that you see at amusement parks, like the characters in It’s a Small World at Disneyland. One guy had on a sweatshirt proclaiming himself a member of the Gringotts crew – he built the goblins at the Harry Potter park in Orlando. The young fella was new to the trade and was apprenticing under the older guy. They told me stories about the industry and characters they met – my favorite was “Volcano Dave,” who as you might guess is a guy who specializes in volcanoes. If you want a volcano at your park, Dave’s the guy you go to. If you remember our pool in Kauai – of course you remember that pool – it’s possible Dave did the volcano in the middle of it. They were a fun pair. 

Dinner was finished late, nearly 10 pm after my long day, so I walked back to my hotel, which was just a few miles away. Back through the dining room (curry again wafting through the air) and upstairs to my little bunk bed. The next day I’d have a few more sights in Osaka, then it was off to the big one: Tokyo. 

Okay, so today I’ll bring you from Japan to Osaka, and we’ll be nearly halfway done with my Japan trip. 

Monday wasn’t as nice as the previous two days – it was a bit chilly and drizzly all day. I woke up early, as usual, and headed out for the train station. It was my last walk through the peace park and through Hiroshima’s streets – I was surprised at how much I would miss the city. It’s a really peaceful, quiet city for how large it is. A little house on the outskirts, maybe up on one of the mountains overlooking the bay, would be an incredibly pleasant place to live. 

Anyway, I walked past the castle one last time and through the busy streets near the train station, for the first time entering through the front doors instead of the underground shopping mall. Again, the train station was crowded with hundreds of people, lights and noise from trains everywhere, but at this point I was getting pretty good at navigating. I found the same train to Kure I took the day before, and I was on my way back to the city. 

I went straight to the JMSDF museum and was one of the first people through the doors. The museum itself was neatly put together, but a little limited, I felt. Most of it was about the JMSDF’s history of minesweeping, which was a really important task following WWII – the Allies had dropped hundreds of thousands of sea mines around Japan in the final months of the war, and it took decades to get them all cleared up. You’d still hear about a fishing boat blundering into a mine and getting its entire crew blown up late into the ’50s, for example. There were lots of artifacts and examples of mines and mine-disposal equipment, but the real draw of the museum is the submarine.

Once the JMSDF expanded beyond minesweeping, it bought a bunch of old subs from the US in order to protect Japan’s sea lanes from the Ruskies and Chinese. You can board and explore a few of the crew and command areas in one of these subs, which I did. It was extremely tight quarters – my elbows were frequently brushing the walls, and I had my backpack with all my luggage with me since I wasn’t returning to the hotel, so I was really having to squeeze. There was an old Japanese sailor serving as a tour guide on the bridge, and he was explaining all the instruments and control surfaces to a couple there before me, but he kindly showed me how to work the periscope. I was able to look out at the bay and over at the Yamato museum across the street. 

After an hour or two at the museum, it was time to hit the road. My ultimate destination was Osaka, about halfway between Hiroshima and Tokyo, but along the way I wanted to stop in Himeji and see Himeji Castle, one of the most famous and elaborate castles in all Japan. I walked back to the department store in the light rain and bought some donuts, and munched on them back at the train station. From there, it was back to Hiroshima, and then back into the shinkansen area to catch the bullet train. I felt a pang as I left the city for the last time – I didn’t expect to love Hiroshima as much as I did, and I knew I’d miss the city. I took one last photo as my train departed to remember it by.

The ride is pretty uneventful. The train is smooth, and most of the time the view is either of the ocean to the south, or of tunnel walls as you dive into one of the hundreds of Japanese mountains. By the time I reached Himeji, it was raining steadily, and the air was pretty chilled. I had packed an umbrella, naturally, so I was fine. From the platform, I could glimpse the castle looming about a mile away in the distance. If you remember the James Bond film You Only Live Twice, at one point Bond visits a “ninja school” – that was shot at Himeji. 

The walk there was cold and wet, and main road ran straight from the station to the castle. The castle grounds are enormous, sprawling over many acres, and the castle itself is fiendishly intricate, with dozens of walls, courtyards, towers, and buildings all making a labyrinth around the main keep. The idea is that any attackers would get confused and lost and give the defenders more time to murder them with arrows from above. 

There were hundreds of other tourists there, but the castle is large enough that everyone spreads out and I felt like I had the place to myself a lot of the time. I made my way from gate to gate, courtyard to courtyard, winding around through the outer areas, through a massive western addition, through the “Long Gallery” – in Japanese castles the walls are hollow and people lived in them. The Long Gallery is the entire southern and western wall of the compound, and was the living quarters for the castle’s ladies-in-waiting. The inside is all polished wood and the typical sliding walls. You had to remove your shoes and carry them with you in a plastic bag (as would be true of the main keep). 

Eventually I reached the keep itself, and started climbing it. Inside the castle, most floors are very open, with lots of supporting pillars being the only thing to break it up. Historically, the floors would have been divided by sliding paper walls and have had lots of furniture, but today everything is bare. Each floor is smaller than the one below it, so as you climb the stairs get narrower and steeper, and the available space gets smaller, until the top floor is only the size of a typical bedroom. Again, great views of the surrounding city. 

I made my way down and back out through the grounds. It had taken more than three hours to explore the castle and I took about 500 pictures. Next door were the castle gardens, and I had naturally bought a joint ticket because it was so cheap (everything in Japan was really affordable! My hotels were between $20 – $40 a night, the rail pass was $200, meals $5-$10 twice a day, and most museums less than $10 – the majority were free! All told, I spent less than $1000 for everything, with the vast majority of it being the ship, train, and plane tickets). The rain was intermittent now, so I walked through the gardens with only a handful of other people. The gardens are divided into a series of courtyards by walls, and each courtyard had a theme. Most of them have running water and lots of sculpted hills and trees. Honestly, Japan has some of the best gardens I’ve ever explored – every one of them was serene and tranquil, the sort of place you can easily imagine an ancient lord kicking back and relaxing. 

Soon enough, I had exhausted the gardens, and by this point I was pretty tired from a long day – it was getting on to 5 in the afternoon and I’d really only eaten those donuts that morning. Should have had lunch at some point. Oh, well. I paused in front of the castle to try to take a selfie that didn’t look awful, which failed – I have no idea how to smile for photos and always look insane. Then it was back, a brief wait for the next shinkansen, and on to Osaka. 

Osaka was big, flashy, and busy, much more lively than Hiroshima had been. Right outside the station traffic was crazy, but there were elevated walkways and plenty of traffic signals. Japan is a very orderly, well-organized place and it’s really easy to be a pedestrian…although sometimes I would get frustrated at waiting for the walk signal at a 10-foot wide road with no traffic in sight. I headed for my hotel about a mile away, again, walking, to get a feel for the city. I walked past dozens of big, flashy hotels, through a random city park underneath a highway overpass, and finally into some narrow back alleyways. Finally, I came to a little coffeeshop in a traditional neighborhood – all one or two story buildings, winding, twisty alleyways, no major roads. It looked wrong, but my map said it was the place, so I went in. 

Inside was lots of heavy wood architecture, dim lighting, and a wonderful smell of curry (I still hadn’t eaten dinner). A young Japanese man at one of the tables smiled at me and hurried over, asking if I was there for the hostel (spotting the backpack, no doubt). It turned out the hotel was on the second floor of the restaurant, so he led me upstairs, past a lounge where an Australian guy was hitting on an American girl, and into the dorm. I was tired and wet from the journey and the rain, but the curry smelled so good that I ventured back downstairs and had a great curry dinner – a late one at about 8:00, but that just made it better. I wasn’t about to go out and explore Osaka feeling as I did, so instead I bought a coffee, sat in the warm restaurant, and just watched hte people come in. 

Next day’s plan was to head to the ancient capital of Japan, Kyoto, a short train ride away.