October
29, 2004 - Morning Commute
My first checkpoint is Nada Station on the JR line (Japan Rail). There are three, count 'em, three rail companies that operate passenger trains in Kobe city; JR, Hanshin, and Hankyu. The system is superior to what we have in Seattle in every possible manner.
All directions and distances are measured relative to the nearest rail station. If someone asks me where I live I say, "JR line, Nada station, five minutes walk." If I ask someone for directions to the closest Konan (a sort of Home Depot meets Wallmart) they say "Take the Hanshin line, travel two stops (from Iwaya station, the Hanshin station nearest our house) to Oishi Station. It is 2 minutes walk."
I ride the train to Rokkomichi Station, 1 stop past Nada.
My uncle Joe Ward wrote of riding Japanese busses during his visit in the 1960's. As near as I can tell the ride hasn't changed a bit. I've included his story for your enjoyment.
Guest
Contributor Uncle Joe Ward - Life in JapanI went to Japan in October of 1961, stayed there all of 1962, and came home in February of 1963. I was 19 when I went, 20 when I came back, and I didn't know nothin', as they say. I missed a lot of good opportunities to learn and do things. Didn't have enough sense.
They flew me and six or 8 other guys who were with me into Tachikawa, near Tokyo, and took us into town in taxis to a train station. That was an amazing ride. The taxis were little Japanese cars that later became familiar in America, but which hadn't been seen at that time -- Datsuns and Toyotas and such. There were no traffic lights, and the streets were incredibly crowded, so the drivers advanced largely on guts. They'd take to the sidewalk at a high rate of speed sometimes to get ahead of other cars, scattering people in the process. We sat in the back fairly wide-eyed.
I think we were in Tachikawa a couple of days before we left on the train, and we could go into the city to wander around some and eat and whatnot. There were stores and bars down really itty bitty streets, alleys really. The place smelled bad. We soon discovered why. The sewers were largely open ditches, and people walking along a fairly main street would just duck into an alley, squat, and relieve themselves.
I liked the food immediately, though I think on the third day or so, on the train, I had a moment of culture shock when I bought a bag of peanuts and they didn't taste anything like Planters. I felt a little annoyed, thinking that they ought to get a little thing like that right. We spent a lot of time looking out the windows of the train, and my overall impression was that the country was primitive -- the way people dressed, the way they got around (a lot of them on bicycles, something I didn't appreciate at the time) the way their houses looked -- small and unpainted, for the most part. I remember seeing one man busily stringing up what looked to me like giant parsnips, big white radishes that he was hanging on a sort of fence, I guess to dry.
We went all the way from Tokyo up the island of Honshu to a ferry that took us across to Hokkaido, the northernmost of the four main islands. Wakkanai, where we were headed, was on the northern tip of Hokkaido. The ferry trip was great, my first venture on a body of water I couldn't see across. We didn't spend the night on it, but we had nice state rooms and we met some pretty girls. They played what sounded to us like "Auld Lang Syne" when we cast off from Aomori, headed of Hokodate, and it was kind of comforting because it was familiar.
We spent a night on the train going up through Hokkaido, and ate in a dining car. There were a bunch of Japanese at other tables drinking very good Japanese beer and getting fairly swacked. So we ordered some, too. We got fairly swacked, too. We couldn't speak to them, and they couldn't speak to us, but drunken singing is a universal language. They knew some American songs, such as My Old Kentucky Home, and they really sang them with feeling, even though I gather they didn't know what the words meant. We sang with them on our songs, and eventually tried singing theirs. We all laughed a lot. But we felt a little peaked for arriving at the base the next day.
We lived in dorms much like I later lived in at UM. And we stayed pretty much to the base, though sometimes we would go across the street from the main gate to a string of bars over there. Very occasionally we would venture downtown, though some of the guys who'd been there before spent quite a bit of time downtown --and in fact lived off base, with girls. If a person lived with a girl, she was called a moose. In the dorms we had Mamasans -- Japanese women who would wash our clothes and shine our shoes and keep our rooms cleaned up for a pittance. Clothes that had to be dry-cleaned we'd take to the base drycleaner, but they took care of underwear and socks and everything. They were nice people, generally quite a bit older than we were -- very polite and cheerful and friendly. But they didn't speak much English and I never learned much Japanese, so we didn't have deep discussions. Some of the guys in my group buckled down and learned Japanese and learned a lot more about the place than I ever did.
We ate most meals at the chow hall and spent time at the recreation hall and the base BX, a store for us. The base did have a couple of hills on it which I ventured to climb with friends one time, and we found old concrete fortifications up there that the Soviets had blasted the hell out of at the end of World War II. Sometimes we'd go outside the base and walk along the shore of the island, where there were a lot of fishing boats in various states of repair, and strange-looking seaweed, and lots of nets and those greenish glass globes they used as floats. Japanese would be out in the water up to their waists gathering the seaweed.
Most of the Japanese buildings in the area of the base were frame, unpainted. The sewers were open ditches, and the place smelled. We had a chapel on base and we'd go to mass there mostly, but several times a group of us ventured downtown to the Japanese Catholic church, which was strange. The Hail Mary in Japanese sounded about as long as the apostles creed in English. Confession was easy. The priest didn't understand a word we said, nor we a word he said. I was once in his study -- can't remember why -- and noted that he had a human skull on his desk.
At Christmastime we did go downtown to the department stores. There were some big ones. This was a city of about 300,000 people. They had a lot of good stuff, and cheap. One of the two Christmases there was the only time I was ever able to buy a Christmas present for everybody in the family -- the folks, all the siblings, and all of the nephews and nieces born at that time. I remember a lot of robes and gatas, a kind of shoe. It was great fun getting all that stuff wrapped up and shipped. I never did bring mother any china, though. I didn't know anything about that being a good place to get china until about a week before I left, when I got a letter from Aunt Emily, who had just learned I was there. She was interested in china, but it was too late.
We got downtown mostly on buses, small Japanese busses. Often there was standing room only, and when I stood, I had to bend my head to one side because the ceiling was too low. The Japanese passengers always thought that was funny as hell for some reason. And there were two handrails along the center of the bus from the front to the back, for standing people to reach up and hang onto. They were over most peoples' heads, but my head would be between them. In winter when the street was really rough because they just packed the snow down rather than plow it, the bus would rock back and forth, and my head would bounce back and forth between those two bars, and the Japanese people would damn near fall out of their seats laughing. Some would get tears in their eyes from busting a gut. After a while, I realized there was nothing malicious in their laughter. They would try to reassure me with hand gestures and expressions. It was just funny as hell to them.
Another memory have from the bus was once asking a little Japanese girl what her name was, using words I'd learned from a friend who was studying Japanese hard. She was the cutest little thing, in her kimono and gatas, and her hair all done up. About four years old, I think, and she was smiling at me. So I kind of squatted down and asked her what her name was. She said, "Agnes." She was some GI's kid.
There was talk about getting off the main island to a place called Rishiri Shima, that had been visited by some of the older guys, allegedly, and which took on an aura kind of like Bali Hai in South Pacific. I never heard how one could get there. I did go to a Japanese bath downtown once where the water damn near scalded the hide off me, and a young woman gave me a massage, including walking up and down my back, that left me feeling like a dishrag.
One time my squad, or whatever it was, got to take base vehicles and some beer and food and go down the island a ways to a beach, where we spent a day drinking and eating and cavorting. My first swim in salt water. It was great. We made big circles in the sand and had sumo contests, where each guy would try to throw the other out of the ring. I was pretty good at it, from milking cows, I guess. I beat this one grizzled old sergeant, who'd spent several tours in Japan. He was nice about it.
One other time a group of us got bikes out of the recreation hall and rode them downtown. They were three-speed "English" type bikes with those godawful seats that would just kill you off. I didn't know anything about having a frame that fit me, or about distributing weight, and I remember it as a miserable outing. I didn't do that again.
I've often wished I'd been interested enough to find out something about real cycling over there. I could have afforded a very good bike, probably could even have had a big enough frame made, and presumably could have seen a lot more of the island.
Mostly I just stuck to the base, working on University of Maryland correspondence courses, trying to get some of my college out of the way while I was in the service. I did get some English and History credits, but it clearly was a case of letting academics get in the way of my education. I did get off base to eat quite a bit. I loved that Japanese food. Just a bowl of rice with some soy sauce in it seemed like a superb dinner. Their bread was better than ours -- more substantial, as I've found to be the case with bread in Europe, too. And I loved sukiyaki, and a bunch of dishes I can't remember the names of. Mostly they were some kind of rice and maybe an egg, and some chopped up chicken and vegetables.
But there you have it. I'd sure like to have that to do over again.
Uncle Joe cira 1960's
