A Sense of Scale

With each week that passes, the end creeps closer. A few weeks ago I could barely detect it, now I can smell it in both nostrils. No doubt in a couple of weeks it will be a deafening roar in my ears. This is the last of our days living in Osaka. This is the beginning of the end.

On the weekend of the 6th through to the 12th of May we had our first return visitors! Our first visitors Dave and Kerry, came back for a second time. We all got into the food and drink when they were in Osaka and then we all jumped on the shinkansen and went down to Hiroshima. Great company, but unfortunately for us, shit weather. It sleeted for the entire two days we were there, which meant that we couldn't make it to Miyajima. Poo. However, we ate a lot of delicious okonomiyaki - in both Osaka and Hiroshima - ate oysters, we sang karaoke, we did photobooth, Kerry and I went to the public bathhouse and enjoyed some Japan style retail therapy. It was all extremely pleasant, until poor Dave was struck down with some kind of mysterious stomach bug. It caught Kerry the day after they left our house. Whether it was food-poisoning or a 24 hour virus I don't know, but he went down like a sack of potatoes on the Tuesday night, but had been resurrected in true Easter style by Thursday morning, back on to the shinkansen for Tokyo and skiing with Luke.

Genbaku, the A-bomb Dome was a stirring sight. I know it is truly impossible to know the absolute decimation that must have ensued after the atomic explosion, but this building is an eerie and evocative monument to an event that truly opened Pandora's Box. The accompanying museum also has a sensitive, even-handed exhibit that outlines the human side and the administrative story of this horrific event. I defy anyone who goes there with an open heart and an open mind to remain dry-eyed.
However, there were a few people amongst the visitors, let us say from a certain country that finds this event particularly difficult to interpret in a favourable light for their own purposes, who were being quite disrespectful about the museum. I heard one middle-aged man say "I get the gist, let's get out of here." I mean, why did you come here? Did you think this was going to be a "U.S.A! All the way!" experience? This event happened, and it was the United States Army that decided how this was going to go down. The funniest part was that this certain specimen of historical denial was only in the first room, in the first few exhibits. He hadn't even gotten to the far more moving exhibits about the hibakusha (a-bomb survivors) upstairs. The pain, the poisoning, the instant deaths, the prolonged suffering, the lurking cancers - some skin and flesh was vaporised, others skin and flesh harboured the poisons that would ultimately kill the victim years later - the potential lives of hundreds of thousands of individuals, wiped out.
Parts of exhibit made me quite angry, particularly the written evidence that the existence of this new, more deadly weapon was hidden from the Japanese and the target city was chosen because of its high civilian population. It was a scientific curiosity for decades after. There is something very cold and calculated about such a decision being made in the name of science, as well as military merit of the bombing, as the penultimate event in the series of reversals against the Japanese army that ultimately resulted in the decision to surrender.
Genbaku (A-bomb Dome) and Hiroshima A-bomb Museum
The atomic bomb museum seems like a very poignant place to commence "The Beginning of the End."

V.V.V. by Thrall
It's the beginning of the end, and it's the beginning of the start as well. Next adventure, here we come. Thrall has done the last Osaka show (thanks to Elsa for the above video footage). As usual, we got offered another show off the back of that show, but it was on after we are gone, so we had to decline. We had lots of people turn up to show support, which is seriously sweet of them, as I know that many of them are not the kind of people who usually (a) go to shows, or (b) listen to misanthropic antipodean black metal. We soundchecked for a good 10 minutes. God, it made all the difference. That, and that Tom bought a line splitter so he could play through two amps at once (which really helped thicken out the sound). We played hard and fast, we roared through all the lyrics, and the crowd stood around and nodded their heads approvingly. It was a good little reception for our last Osaka show. Next we have the Kyoto show, and then it's Sayonara!
So, we've been busy, busy, busy, and to round out our busy time in the last few weeks we went to a very interesting festival, which I shall enter into this blog at a later time...
I recently went back to Nagoya, the town where I spent my first solo year in Japan. And it was tiny! Living in Osaka, the second biggest city in Japan, Osaka is just so much bigger than little Nagoya is. Nagoya just falls asleep at about midnight, the venues close, the bars lock you out, and there's no street culture compared to the vibe of Osaka. I remember when I first arrived in Japan, Nagoya just seemed so enormous, and now it just feels so tiny. My sense of scale has been completely skewed by living here. I really wonder how we will fare when we return to Australia... will it just feel too small for us to fit there anymore?