Month: October 2005

I’ve heard so much about this controversial shrine. It’s the shrine where Japanese war dead are honoured.

Ever since Prime Minister Koizumi was elected, he made numerous trips to this shrine to pay respect to those who died in wars which include 14 Class A criminals from War World II. Due to this, South Korea and China have been protesting every visits by Koizumi and his predecessors ever since.

Van blasting propaganda.

Then last week, according to BBC news, Mr. Koizumi will be visiting the shrine at 8:00GMT, which based on my calculations, would be 5PM Japan time. (+9 hours)

It rained heavily though. My socks were soggy and my jacket was soaked but yet managed to visit the shrine. However, it was like any other typical Japanese shrine.

I took refuge at the Yushukan Museum, which is just next to Yasukuni shrine. The museum is also hell of a controversial place. The place is filled with exhibits and photos which relate to wars that Japan were involved in. Unfortunately, most of them were in Japanese, even the explanations of the bloody exhibits were only available in Japanese.

Yushukan Museum

The entire exhibits blamed imperialist, mainly Americans for World War II. It was said that WWII was due to USA’s harsh treatment i.e. embargo against them hence they had to ‘defend’ their country taking over other territories.

The museum never mentioned about atrocities committed during World War II and some facts were even distorted. For example, they blamed the Marco Polo Bridge incident on the Kwantung Army.

Pictures of those killed in the war

They had no mention of the Nanjing Massacre. All they said was that they ‘surrounded’ Nanking and then “residence in Nanking were once again able to live in their lives in peace”. Despite photographic evidence of mass rapes and murder of the residence of Nanking, the bloody Museum basically said nothing happened and everyone lived happily ever after.

Unfortunately, the Yasukuni Shrine is independent from the Japanese government and is privately funded. Intervention from the government to alter the contents of the museum is highly unlikely. To me, no matter how provoking Yushukan museum has said, I personally think that insulting the Japanese people on what the museum had said is not acceptable. I have not checked other Japanese museums regarding World War II hence the views of Yasukuni Shrine and its museum cannot be regarded as the opinion of the Japanese society as a whole.

I had another 30 minutes before Koizumi’s visit to the shrine. I waited and waited till 5:15PM. The sky was already dark. But…

He didn’t turn up!

The fucker FFK ME. CHEE BYE!

Located about an hour away from Tokyo. It was the ancient capital of Japan during the Kamakura shogunate

Jane said loads of retirees choose Kamakura to spend their retirement there.

Our first destination was Daibutsu (Great Buddha). It’s a huge Buddle statue. It was housed in a temple but the temple was washed away by tsunami in 1498 leaving the Buddha statue intact. The Buddha is hollow, you can go inside the statue with a price of 20 yen. Nothing interesting though.

Jane & I @ Daibutsu

Daibutsu side view

We took some pictures, bought some souvenirs and left the place immediately.

Continue reading Kamakura – ancient capital of Japan

I find it amazing to spend the morning in Kuala Lumpur and then the rest of the night in Tokyo.

So here I am, in Oomori, 9 hours from my departure from Kuala Lumpur. As usual, it was a hassle, had to carry many things. I made a mistake by bringing my jackets along. The weather here isn’t cold at all.

One of the most difficult things to cope here is taking a train. Although Japan is famous for its extensive and convenient train services, I usually spent 10 minutes staring at the map, trying to look for the station that I want to go. Then another thing is the bloody phone booths. It’s all in Japanese. Even the bloody lady who tells you, “the line is not in service”, speaks in bloody Japanese.

wah..headache man…

Shinjuku

My first destination was Shinjuku. This place has everything, high class department stores, home less people, erotica related shops, restaurants and so on.

p0rn anyone?

I walked aimlessly around Shinjuku armed with a lousy Lonely Planet guide. Shinjuku doesn’t have many interesting places to visit (I visited the interesting ones on my previous trip) but the unique neon signs are something worth to see.

There was some sort of film festival in Shinjuku. It was a small festival though. They had a row of Star wars troopers, Darth Vader and other Star Wars character lined up in front of a red carpet. Darth Vader was rather short though. Hek hek

Then they brought a monkey walk the red carpet. I had no idea what the f00t they were trying to do.

Reminds me of Michael Jackson’s pet monkey, Bubbles

Darth Vader clearly pissed as attention is diverted to the monkey

I went on another round of aimless wandering. This time round, I saw a man standing on top of a bus with speakers around it.

If I had this on video, you can see a guy waving his hands aimlessly.
In Japan, this is quite common during election time. That man standing on the bus is a politician. I guess he was trying giving a speech about his policies.

While walking under a bridge in Shinjuku, I saw boxes lined up along the pathway. It’s shaped like a coffin. It’s kinda amusing to see home less people popping their heads in and out from the boxes. Reminds me of the game which one has to hit moles with a cub when it pop out.

Shibuya

Shibuya is a youth oriented shopping district. I met up with Jane for dinner here.

Shibuya is the place one should go to check out Japanese fashion trend. Kogyaru (young girls who tan themselves and colours their hair blonde) are abundant here.

The best place to watch people is at the area of Hachiko Statue and Shibuya 109 as it’s an extremely popular meeting spot.

Hachiko Statue

The food here is great and quite affordable as well. A nice bowl of noodles usually cost me less than 1000 yen (RM33~). But if I want to be stingy, I can head to the nearest supermarket at night and wait for them to slash the prices of their takeaway food.

Buy a ticket to get your food.

This is xes signing off from Tokyo. Will update from Japan for the next 28 days!