As Japan, the land of Zen and Yen reels post the earthquake and tsunami, it brings back some memories of the country
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As Japan, the land of Zen and Yen reels post the earthquake and tsunami, it brings back some memories of the country. I was in Japan in 1996 as a sports reporter to cover the Hiroshima Asian Games. On touching down at Tokyo and then travelling in a bus to the domestic airport to catch an internal flight to Hiroshima, I was struck by the attention to detail given to objects around the city, among other things.
The first thing I saw was that Tokyo had several plants placed at roundabouts for beautification. The plant holders actually had wheels underneath them, so they could be moved around for easy cleaning underneath. Trust a Japanese to think of that.
In Hiroshima, there were language problems. Most Japanese struggled to speak English. A proprietor of a restaurant frequented by the Indian media covering the Asian Games would greet Indians with the line, "Welcome. I know you come from the land of the longhaired god, Alibaba." No offence taken. One presumed he meant Saibaba.
I went to some place in a bullet train, called the Shinkansen. The ticket price was enough to send you into cardiac arrest.u00a0 Inside this steel capsule, all was silent. A peanut vendor came in selling peanuts, which cost quite a few yen. In Japan, not even peanuts cost peanuts.
While roads were clogged with traffic, there were bicycle lanes with men in three-piece suits on bicycles! Students cycled to school, and women too, were on bikes, with little children in something like baskets at the back.
The cook at a restaurant inside the hotel,u00a0 where the press was staying, gave me two small Japanese dolls as souvenirs. I still have those cloth dolls, now fraying at the edges; a memory from one of the most fascinating countries one could visit.
An earthquake has also devastated Christchurch in New Zealand. I was there on a media trip for the promotion of the movie, the Lord of the Rings some years ago. Christchurch is so very British and stunning. I remember seeing bright blue flowers blooming there.
The Kiwis often told me, "We are vastly under-populated and that is just the way we like it." A quaint tram ran all through Christchurch. Compared to Japanese cities, Christchurch seemed very laid-back. Simply everything, all shops and businesses, were closed in the city on Sundays. The joke was that even parachutes do not open in Christchurch on Sundays. One hopes they both heal, in their own way.
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