Nagasaki Business Trip

NAGASAKI – Aug. 17-19

I woke up Wednesday morning pretty early because I had to go to school for “Advertising Day”. That’s basically the day when all the junior high kids from surrounding schools come to visit our school and see what it offers so they can decide if they wanna come here or not. The school system here is different than in North America (but similar to Croatia’s I think) in that there are different types of High Schools (i.e. Academic, Agricultural, Business, Technical, etc) and the kids get to choose which they want to go to. Most of the lower level high schools work sort of like collages back home, so that you can work in a technical field with only a high school education from a technical school, while the kids in Academic/Business schools tend to go on to University. My role in all this was to give a short introduction to the kids who were interested in the Oral Communication classes in my school. I was instructed to be very ‘genki’ (loosely translated as “energetic, lively, friendly”….the Japanese love this word) while interacting with the kids and to be sure to smile a lot. Now, I’m a lot of things, but generally speaking, I would not consider myself overly genki, so I was a little worried that I might scare the poor, delicate Japanese children. However, as it turns out I needn’t have worried – its hard not to be genki when the most adorable little girls and boys surround me like a movie star and start giggling like, well, like schoolgirls really, and hang with awe and fanatical intensity on my every word. Feels pretty good. Although I think I might be developing a god complex. Around noon, I finished with my presentation and was ready to head off to Nagasaki for my business trip – except for one hitch – I still did not have a car. I had tried to get it yesterday but the office had been closed.
However, I told Taniguchi-sensei that I really wanted to drive to Nagasaki rather than taking the train and so he took me right after advertising day to the nearest town with a rental agency. Well the place looked pretty sketchy but they charge only $200 per MONTH for a rental. Trisha and I had decided to share a car so that meant only $100 a piece. How great is that?? We picked the car that had the most character (read the one that looked like it might actually make it up to 10 km/h without shaking apart) and then went in to sign the contract. Now I don’t like signing contracts without knowing what the hell they say but Tanaguchi-sensei was pretty much unable to really explain to me what was going on. I also I told him to translate several times that I needed this car to go to Fukuoka and Nagasaki and I wanted to be sure that it would make it. However, regardless of what I asked him he just said “ok, ok”. Which didn’t overly reassure me but I figured, what the hell? A rental contract is a rental contract right and I inkan-ed the damned things. By the way, don’t know if I mentioned this already, but everyone here has an inkan (they made me one as well). It’s basically a personal seal that they use instead of signatures. Mine says my last name in katakana (the Japanese pronounce it as ‘Robashiku”…hey, it’s actually closer to the original Croatian pronunciation than the English version). In any case, car now in tow, Trisha and I headed back to our apartments to quickly pack our gear. We decided it was best that I drive, since I felt comfortable with the wrong side of the road from having driven in England a few months ago. Earlier that day I had also sent an email to Nicole (my Toronto friend from Japanese class who I had raided Tokyo with) as she was coming to the Nagasaki conference as well. I didn’t have time to check if she responded but had told her to meet me at the conference center around 8 pm. Of course, Trisha and I had no real idea how to get to Nagasaki let alone the conference center, but we set off with giddy, naïve confidence nonetheless. One hour and 15 minutes after we started, we proudly patted ourselves on the back as we drove square into the center of Nagasaki city, having not asked for directions and having no road map. Finding the conference center was a different story though. After driving around for a few hours (and stumbling accidentally but luckily upon the hotel we had reservations for) we gave up on finding the conference center that night and drove back to the hotel in defeat. I figured I’d see Nicole the next day anyways so ditching the car, Trisha and I walked around downtown Nagasaki and ate and drank near the beautiful pier. Tired as hell, we finally collapsed into our respective beds.

The next day, as I was loudly (as always) talking in the hallway, the door of the room next to mine opened suddenly and a familiar face appeared. It was Nicole! We had been right next to each other and didn’t know it! I apologized for not coming to the conference centre, but as luck would have it she said she had not checked her email and so knew nothing of that plan. She did however, keel over laughing as I told her of our failed attempts to find the damn conference centre in the middle of the night – I had to laugh as well as we all stepped outside and she pointed out to me that the conference centre was RIGHT NEXT (I mean literally the next building) to the hotel that we had all stayed in. What can I say? I had been tired as hell.
The conference felt like Tokyo Orientation all over again. Nicole and I caught up on our lives in our new places and traded bug-scare stories like old war veterans. Nicole and I share the same sick and random sense of humour and frankly, during a boring and pointless conference it’s pretty hard to beat that. As we shot each other sarcastic looks when yet another stupid ass question was asked by one of the many douche bag JETs, I could see that Nicole was about to lose it and let loose on an unsuspecting innocent. You see, I rather like Nicole….she’s quite a character. She loves expressing herself in ways that sometimes people find offensive, but she does it in a (to me) hilarious way. Right after they gave us another speech on how bad it is to do drugs of any sort in Japan and how we should not even joke about it, I could see the wheels in her head just turning. Sure enough, during the Q&A session, as one retarded guy was wasting our time by asking how to get a loan for a car the he really wants but really cant afford (um, dumbass, there is a lot of shit I want too but cant afford, its called reality), Nicole finally lost it and turned, deadpan, to the guy and suggested that he sell drugs for extra cash and proceeded to tell him how to go about doing it. Sure enough, her comment was met with total stunned silence from the entire room (with the exception of my muffled laughter). For her own sake I had to distract her with cartoons and snippy notes for the rest of the conference. Gotta say, I’m glad to have met one person here who understands completely how I feel about some of the other JETs. Seriously, a large portion of the JET guys you can tell were not exactly ladies-men in their own countries and came here mainly to bag some Japanese girls. A lot of the JET girls on the other hand, are insufferably self righteous or waaaaay too energetically fake for my taste. Then again, those same people would probably classify me as a sarcastic, antisocial bitch….*sigh* such is life!
After the conference Nicole told me about an art exhibition from the Whitney museum that was now in Nagasaki. It featured works by modern/pop artists such as Liechtenstein, Warhol, etc. so it sounded awesome and I told Nicole (her major was art by the way) that we should definitely go. I also told Jenny, Kara and Trisha of our plans and asked if they wanted to come. The only person who seemed interested was Kara but in the end she decided to go shopping instead because we didn’t have too much time until we all had to meet up at the Youme Beer Garden for the prefectural all you can eat/drink party. Deciding that we could see the exhibit quickly, I put on my best night-on-the-town-but-not-too-dirty-for-a-museum outfit and Nicole and I traipsed off. [ x ]
Well the Exhibition, which was in Nagasaki’s newest (and architecturally gorgeous) museum, was awesome! Even though it was a fairly small exhibit, there were some really great pieces. Having Nicole around, apart from being entertaining, also turned out to be quite useful as she could tell me all about the artists and art pieces (thank god for art majors) without having to rely on reading the plaques that were in Japanese only. When we were finished at the museum we still had some time before we were supposed to meet everyone at the beer garden for the tabe-nomihodai so we decided to go for a bit of shopping. Well it just so happens that right next to the beer garden is a huge shopping complex. Lucky us. We walked around for a bit and I tried not to get depressed at the fact that the large sizes here would really be a small back home (even Nicole was having a harder time finding things that fit and she is model thin). At least she could put on the shirts. Just when I was getting sorta pissy at all the beautiful clothes I couldn’t have, I spotted what looked to be an XL shirt that actually looked pretty damn big…and it was not only funky, but only 900 Yen ($9.00)!! So I bought it of course. The rest of the time we spent laughing at all the Engrish. It really is as bad as everyone says. The T-shirts are covered with meaningless but hilarious English gibberish.
It was now time to head to the party, which as it turns out, was rather a disappointment. Essentially, we paid about $45 each and it was crazy busy so it was hard to keep ordering drinks so we ended up waiting too long for each drink (though by the end we worked out a system where we ordered drinks for other people and then just took them when they came so that we always had one in reserve). Also, we only had two hours in which to drink and eat as much as we wanted. Well the food part sucked since it was BBQ but you had to cook it yourself at a grill that was at each table. It took forever! We all ended up getting hammered since no one had eaten and we were getting so pissed at having to wait for the food to cook that we just kept drinking instead. Afterwards, Nicole, Kara and I, deciding we were far too sober still, decided to go to the local convenience store and get some liquor and walk around. I love that you can drink on the streets here by the way, in case I haven’t already said that. We bought a bottle of some weird Japanese liquor that had a picture of a woman with no eyes (that should have clued us in as to its potency, but meh) and we took off to a nearby park, drinking and causing trouble as we went. After we were good and drunk we decided to walk to the entertainment district (huge bottle still in tow) and try to find a good club. We wandered for what seemed like hours and bothered several unfortunate Japanese people with our half assed Japanese questions. As a side note, earlier that day Nicole had made a pact with herself that she would not learn any Japanese after she got pissed at some stupid JET guy who said that he feels sorry for the people who can’t speak any Japanese. She is bent on proving that she can get by with just the words Sumimasen (excuse me) and Arigato Gozaimasu (thank you very much). That night was the first time she tested her theory and every time she approached a Japanese person she would say “Sumimasen, nightclub??”. Yeah, it didn’t get us that far. I tried my luck at it as well, since I can form a few simple sentences by now, but I was slurring so badly and half falling over that no one had any hope of understanding me. Eventually we gave up and grabbed a cab back to the hotel. Poor Kara threw up as we got out, and I didn’t feel that much better at that point. Somehow we all made it to our hotel rooms and passed out (but we were making so much damn noise it’s a surprise no one heard us and complained).
I woke up the next morning with a bit of a headache and some confusion. Since most of the severe hangovers I’ve had in my life have been in good ‘ol TO, for a second I actually though I was in Toronto. Then as I looked around and realized I was in a hotel I started wondering why I was there, and which hotel I was in, in Toronto. It wasn’t until I looked down and saw that I was wearing a kimono and not pajamas that it all came back to me. Right. I’m in Japan. That was a slow morning. I knocked on Nicole’s door first and she looked like a mess. I didn’t look much better. We went to check on the others, and it turned out one of the girls had thrown up all over her hotel room and her stuff, the poor chick and was now feeling like ten kinds of hell. At the conference, Nicole and I barely had enough energy to make fun of people. Kara passed out on a desk and I didn’t have the energy to see where everyone else was. The conference thankfully ended early so we got our stuff together, packed the car, and Nicole, Trisha, Kara and I decided we were going to Fukuoka. Jenny was staying in Nagasaki to hang out with some other friends and to go to a beach party. I just wanted to be in a big city and go clubbing, despite how I felt at that moment.

Nagasaki Peace Park Memorial (warning, heaviness ahead)

Before leaving the city though, we decided that we should see the Atomic Bomb Peace Memorial. As we walked around the beautiful park, on what was a beautiful day, I found it hard to imagine the horrible thing that had happened in the Urekami district of Nagasaki approximately 60 years ago. It had been summer then. It had been hot and humid and sunny. Captured by the beauty of the peace park I felt calmed by the natural serenity of the setting. I felt my hang-over going away and I took pictures and lightly chatted about the night before and plans for Fukuoka with the girls. However, as we headed towards the epicenter of where the bomb had exploded my mind gradually turned to darker things. The others became quiet as well. Somehow it didn’t seem right to be laughing and talking about our night out in a place like this, where so many people had died in an instant, and so many more had been irradiated to the point of no return, dying within weeks of the blast. The bomb had exploded in the air, and there was a memorial right under where it had gone off. Nearby, there was a piece of the original Urekami cathedral that had survived the blast. As we read the statistics and stood in that somber place, I suddenly felt profoundly pensive. My mind played through every “horrors of war” movie I had ever seen, including the stuff they show you in school. I imagined what that must have been like, what any war must be like and thanked (though I’m not religious) any deity that would listen that I have never had to experience anything like that. Later as we got back into the car and headed finally to Fukuoka, my mind stayed a while longer in its pensive state. I thought how lucky I had been really. I had been raised middle-class to fairly liberal minded parents. I had been exposed to literature, theatre, art, travel, and anything else I wanted to try. My education had been paid for. I had never starved, seen war, been persecuted or been obviously discriminated against. In many ways, I was way better off than most of the worlds population at the present time. Meanwhile as yet again, an unnamed person complained that she was sooo hung-over (we all were, but the rest of us were not nearly as vocal about it) and her whines were cutting right through my headache and my thoughts, I finally said to her “you know, I think we should count ourselves lucky that the worst thing anyone of us can complain about is a hangover when there is so much suffering going on in the world”. My comment resulted in a sullen silence. As I went back to thinking, I thought how interesting it is that travel can open your eyes to so many things. Even things you might know and be aware of back home somehow don’t really have the same feel. I can see why Che Guevara decided to become an activist after taking a motorcycle trip around South America. Sometimes you have to face the physical and not just intellectual reality of something in order for it to really hit home.