At this time, my current best squat, bench and deadlift were set just before I left for Japan when we had a max out week in the gym.
Squat (205 kg)
Bench (120 kg – no video)
Deadlift (220 kg)
I very much agree with this TED talk about not stating specific goals publicly so I won’t say the next targets (might be a while anyway – Japan is not conducive to the weightlifting gains, however amazing it is otherwise).
Hiroshima
So myself, Janni, Dion and Redmar embarked on the first leg of the nuclear bomb tour to Hiroshima getting the bullet train out of Osaka, we also picked up an Australian girl on the subway to come with us. Such is Japan – it’s easy to spot travellers.
I had anticipated a more sombre experience in Hiroshima but of course it is a living breathing city not a sterile monument. So we had a great night; going to an Irish bar (where I pretended not to be Irish, a bizarre latin dance club and finally an interesting club that was segmented into a number of discrete themed dance rooms.
The Japanese were so kind, we asked for directions and two women walked for ten minutes with us to the destination before turning around and walking back where they came from.
Hiroshima hypocentre
While waiting outside the nuclear bomb museum in the morning we were approached by a crowd of Japanese school girls (aged 5 to 10) who wished to practice their english on us (during which I attempted to explain what an actuary does). Afterwards, one little girl presented me with her kaleidoscope as a gift.
We turned from this absolutely endearing experience into the museum, the contrast made the visit difficult.
Myself, Janni and Redmar spent a night just outside Hiroshima to visit Miyajima island.
This deer doesn’t care about your photo
Like Nara, deer roam the streets of Miyajima with impunity, I must say that nowhere else have I seen humans and animals coexist so well – no domestication or hierarchy. It was funny to see men unloading trucks while deer sniffed around them, both species completely comfortable in the others’ presence.
Osaka
Osaka is probably what I expected Tokyo to be – pure insanity. But where Tokyo has many distinct districts, each catering to a specific purpose, everyone in Osaka is funnelled towards the centre.
The first night I just wandered around the central Shinsaibashi Suji shopping arcade in Namba which runs for 600 metres (with more shops extending off at each intersection). So many shops that it didn’t even make sense to me, the same way that some parts of the Amazon are inaccessible I would think that it would be hard for customers to penetrate the dense undergrowth and reach the inner most shops.
And when you gaze long into an abyss the abyss also gazes into you.
The second day I got up pretty early and went on my usual breakfast hunt – a process of keyword searching and bayesian updating terminating ultimately in ramen.
Had an interesting time at Osaka castle, I got chatting to a Japanese man while eating an ice cream in the castle grounds. He asked me some pretty surreal questions – like whether I had ever seen the face of the Christian god in my dreams, then he did some interesting impressions of african americans. I talked to him for a few hours and he gave me a Japanese painting on rice paper.
Incidentally, the Japanese have more of a gifting culture – very generous. Some other gifts I have received so far are: traditional rice balls from a Korean woman in the suburbs of Osaka, a wallet from a Japanese man in a bar in Kyoto and a kaleidoscope after talking to a ten year old schoolgirl in Hiroshima.
The belgian guy I’m travelling with gives people belgian chocolates in return which I think is a very good idea.
I met up with some people from Kyoto in the evening and myself and Kevin got some dinner and played pachinko. Pachinko is a very Japanese pastime, it’s analogous to a kind of pinball. We went into a massive building with four floors of pachinko and hundreds of players – young, old, male, female – it didn’t matter. The sound was deafening. Needless to say, we couldn’t figure it out and the well intentioned explanations of the locals were indecipherable .
We eventually found a bar with an American bartender who was able to explain some more intricacies of Japanese culture, which was interesting as the bar was in the host-bar district of Osaka – where Japanese women pay hosts for scintillating conversation and compliments. Literally hundreds of Japanese men hanging around dressed like boy band members.
The next day I headed on to Hiroshima with Janni and Dion.
Another funny thing we experience is Japanese schoolgirls sneakily taking our pictures in subways and trams – which only gets more pronounced the further you go from Tokyo. They are quite subtle usually by pretending to text or even take a selfie. But it is quite obvious when you turn around and there is a camera pointed at you and they are giggling away. It’s quite amusing when you call them on it though!
Fighting fire with fire.
I got the Bullet train to Kyoto in the morning. The most impressive aspect to me was not the speed but how smooth it was, felt like riding on a bubble of air!
Kyoto is a very different city to Tokyo, despite it’s historical importance as the former imperial capital of Japan it is much smaller (with a population of about 1.5 million compared to Tokyo’s 13.2 million). However, it has a disproportionate number of temples and shrines.
I was able to walk from shrine to shrine very easily on Saturday due to the confluence of these factors.
Rock garden – amazing idea.
The largest shrine I visited however was the Kiyomizudera Temple (or Pure Water Temple).
The approach is very interesting actually, it lies at the top of a hill and the path up to it is through a traditional quarter full of lot’s of Japanese women in kimonos (taking lot’s of pictures of themselves incidentally).
I was approached by two students from the Kyoto university english guiding club who asked would I mind letting them show me around.
Kiro and Aiko – great lads.
The tour was great fun, there was an interesting section where we followed a rope handrail through complete darkness (symbolising rebirth), I half regretted entering at some points.
The temple was full of such symbolic tests, such as a massive iron weight that if lifted would would mean a man is strong enough to have a great life.
Sorry Kiro, looks like it’s not going to work out for you.
Also, two stones that if one can walk between blindfolded will be a portent of a girlfriend and a ledge that will grant your wish if you survive jumping off it – unfortunately I’m told many people have taken this literally.
The ledge in question in the background.
Afterwards, the Kiro and Aiko brought me out for lunch at a bizarre restaurant.
Japan exports some of it’s cuisine to the West – sushi, ramen. But there really is so much food here that does not exist anywhere else.
Kiro and Aiko were great fun anyway, they were very keen that I explain the concept of windmills to them and told me how much that they enjoyed Naruto.
In the evening I went out in Kyoto with some people from the hostel.
While getting breakfast on Sunday morning, I asked for a crepe. The waitress gave me a funny look and brought me to the bathroom. Crepe not crap!
One of my goals for this trip was to read/listen to a lot of books (though not to the exclusion of Japan of course).
So I started off by going to Ueno Park and walked around listening to The Wind Up Bird Chronicle by Haruki Murikami, which is set in Tokyo actually so very fitting.
Check the easter egg on the right hand side.
I ended up chilling out so much that I was a little late for the Kabuki show I had booked in the evening (and by late I mean it started at 4.30 and I got there at 4.25 – the Japanese are punctual).
So when I got to this amazing theatre I walked in alone, and was greeted in the atrium by I think eight attendants who each simultaneously bowed formally.
Have to say, the constant acts of subservience take a lot of getting used to (especially coming from a broadly classless society like Ireland), when a waitress takes your order she will often kneel on the floor beside the table. They also have this “service” voice they use, higher pitched and girlish. Often they bow to me and I bow back at them, can be quite funny – an understanding passes that we are just playing a game – I’m playing the oblivious gaijin and they’re playing the demure Japanese.
The show was comprised of three parts, a short comedy play, a longer dramatic play and a tradition kabuki interpreted dance, four hours all told.
If you’ve seen a traditional Japanese painting you will have a good idea of the Kabuki aesthetic I think – very similar with the bright colours, high contrast and minimalism.
Interesting experience I think and quite a point of pride for the Japanese I think.
I had met some people in the hostel the night before and we had decided to out to Roppongi (Japan’s entertainment district).
Good fun! Sushi on the right.
So luckily enough, a sumo tournament happens to be held in Tokyo in May.
The stadium in Tokyo is very traditional, architecture that would be very much at home in Shogun Total War. For that matter, Sumo itself is 50% tradition and 50% sport. It can be hard to distinguish the genuine warm up from the tradition feet stamping – lot’s of belly slapping and tugging at the jock straps also.
The lads.
Very chilled out experience – got there at 12 and stayed until 6, listened an audiobook between bouts and had a nap. The bouts progress from amateurs up to the pros and the audience levels progresses commensurately.
Very strange sport, I couldn’t help but wonder whether the wrestlers could benefit from a bit more a muscle to bodyfat ratio, lot’s of bellies, didn’t seem to be a lot of traps.
I wouldn’t mind seeing how Cian Healy
or even the Japanese Midote Daisuke
would fare.
One comical aspect was how often the wrestlers were thrown into the crowd, the audience is really quite close to the stage and those men are very large.
Later in the hostel a Japanese guy called “Sushi” (I suspect he was playing a joke on me) told me that Ireland is famous in Japan for it’s marijuana – did not know that.
One thing I always forget about plane journeys is how long they are. Yes, I surely always know in a purely academic sense how long they are but that is not meaningful knowledge.
I think that since they are so uneventful the brain does not create strong memories of the event thus you perceive it as being quite short in retrospect.
However, I was sitting next to an Estonian fellow pursuing a phd in structural biology in Okinawa, Japan – very interesting man to talk to for 10 hours. Said he has to write all his code in Fortran due to legacy and speed reasons (they also deleted all comments to save space)!
One thing that strikes you when you get to Japan is that a significant proportion of the population where surgeons masks all the time. Given how clean Japan is in general I initially thought that this was some sort of national germ phobia. My much more immersed flight neighbour however said that it was for more altruistic reasons – that they would not spread infection rather than that they would not catch it.
Definitely a theme here, the Japanese are extremely diligent. Watching them fill out and stamp forms is strangely hypnotic. If you have ever seen a child act out an adult job, there is a similar focus and consciousness of the task. It seems like they view each step as a discrete problem to be conquered completely whereas I view such tasks as distractions. Perhaps I’m getting ahead of myself here.
Anyway, very friendly people. I then got the subway to my hostel.
A little overwhelming.
Went to check out a local shrine after dropping off my bags.
An elderly Japanese man came up to me while at the shrine and said he would like to practice his English and would I mind?
So we went for a bit of a stroll and eventually ended up going to a restaurant getting dinner – bizarre.
Interesting man, I taught him all I knew of Western table manners and he drew me incredibly detailed maps of Japan.
I mentioned I was in Japan for three weeks and he asked if I had quit my job, he couldn’t conceive of getting that much holidays!
Nicholas Clarke 