The time had come, and I got a ticket to ride, an expensive one that would allow me to go almost anywhere in Japan at 120-200 miles per hour, and in first class no less. The only real limitation was that I had only 14 days to use this golden ticket, and if I lost it there would be no way to replace it without paying again, which wasn’t going to happen. Now, going from an essentially leisurely existence filling my time going from one amazing ramen house to the next while enjoying the sprawling immensity of Tokyo, to having an unlimited ticket to ride anywhere in the country was a bit daunting.
I had honestly grown attached to the little area of Tokyo two blocks from Ueno Park where I was holed away inside a capsule hotel, surrounded by hard nosed Japanese businessmen whose conversational skills were a case study in minute facial fluctuations and nods of the head. Regardless, the time had come for me to leave my pod and explore the true gems of this ancient land beyond its millions of tons of concrete and plethora of distractions.
Before I left however I did happen to meet a few interesting people. The most notable of whom were a trio of Canadian/Koreans traveling together, a father and son, and the fathers best friend who till lives in Korea but joined them as well. They loved Canada when first arriving there some decades ago, but based on their conversations with me me they would almost be willing to come to America now because of how insane their government has become in recent years.
I had not expected them to be anything like me in terms of their views on gun rights, politics or economics, but when they showed me pictures of their firearms and their ice cream parlor, shaking their collect heads in shame at the mass censorship and propaganda campaigns that has taken the world by storm in recent decades, I knew I had found kindred spirits. We shared a Korean meal at a nice restaurant and went shopping together. Then took group photos and promised to see one another again some day. Lovely people.
The days before my departure into the unknown I spent a great deal of time exploring Ueno Park and its many museums, as well as exercising on the jungle gym where I met a group of Chinese students studying in Tokyo and who all belonged to the Gym Club. I may be fit, but these guys set the bar far higher than the average athlete, doing hundreds of reps a session and bulging at the seams. As intimidating as they looked, they were all too happy to share time on the equipment, and get to know those brave enough to step up to the challenge. My little ritual was to buy a head of lettuce or bundle of kale and sit behind the group chomping down as I watched them. Passers by gauked at this but assumed I might be the sleeping giant leading the gym squad. Or they simply had never seen anyone get down with greens like that before.
One morning I looked for a meetup to join and found a vegan group having a large gathering. I signed up and after a failed attempt to find it, something that happens a lot to me in this huge metropolis, I arrived at a large cafeteria where there was a market of vegan vendors selling their wares. I was instructed to take a raffle ticket which I could turn in as soon as I bought 1 item from five separate vendors. I paid about 2,000 yen or roughly $13 U.S. for a variety of snacks and sugary creations. The best of which was certainly a raw vegan chocolate strawberry ice cream moose cake which I had to hold myself back from buying another time, sacrifices had to be made…
After all that I got a tiny half cake far inferior to the Moose which left a bitter taste in my mouth both literally and figuratively since it was not the item I told the lady I wanted as my raffle prize. But such is life, its for a great cause after all. I met many fantastic people and inspired a host of them with my speeches on changing the world via changing oneself, and dropping the baggage, the fear and most of all the hope, which baffled many at first.
“Abandon hope?” they cried. “That’s the craziest thing we’ve ever heard.
“No.” I said with a smile. “The craziest thing you’ve ever heard is your own voice crying out for saviors you don’t even believe in yourself, and all the while denying your own abilities to change things for the better. Going day after day, year after year, hope after hope, with nothing to show for it but a badge that marks you as a faithful servant of Hopium. Never to change yourself, but to feel accomplished in your steadfast commitment to inaction.” This turned many heads at the table, and I was quickly the center of all attention which brought the mistress of the event down upon me.
“Will you sign this petition to request the Japanese government stop torturing monkeys for brain research?” She asked, placing the paper and pen before me and many others without waiting for a response and stepping away.
“No.” I said, and she turned around with a snap of her neck, a single eyebrow bulging so much it threatened to depart from her features entirely.
“What?”
“I don’t request things of the Government. I leave them alone and I expect the same courtesy.”
“But surely you want the animals to be free as well.”
“Yes. But I do not intend to ask them to be moral when they are only a reflection of the people who make up the country.”
“That’s not reality.” She said, shaking her head and pushing more papers and pens in front of the other guests before they had any time to refuse. She came up to me later while in line for coffee, she was shaking visibly and had been the entire event. I wanted to tell her so and suggest the last thing she needed was more caffeine, but she got into an argument with me about how fucked up Trump winning was and how the rest of the world is watching in horror at it.
“Things are bad all over the world right now.”
“No, just in America. Your government is insane.”
“All governments are insane.”
“No they aren’t, how can you say that? Governments are a necessity, without them no one would help other people at all.”
“What makes you say that?”
“People don’t just help other people for no reason.”
“So unless someone puts a gun to your head or threatens you with imprisonment you wouldn’t help others?”
“Your just crazy. I can’t believe people like you exist. We’ll talk about this later..” she said, and excused herself.
I tried to do just that but she made it pretty clear with her body language that she was not interested, so I left the event, had some amazing Vegan Ramen at a shop suggested to me by one of the other attendees and returned to my pod.
That night I went on the Japan Rail Website and looked over all the places I could go, but couldn’t make heads or tails of all the options, everything looked good while also looking far away and difficult to get to. So I looked online for some pointers and found this guy Andrew in Youtube, he has a channel called Japan Unraveled, and he suggested a route which would make the most of my ticket. The starting point didn’t really interest me, it was up north where it was still rather cold, plus I had talked to a friend from back home who has an acquaintance living in Japan, in the same area as this particular destination in fact, only just below it in a place called Sendai. Once I contacted this known variable he suggested I go South until things warmed up, after which time we could meet up. Plus he was very busy at the moment with his new Movie production, being a producer and all.
So I went with the second destination. A place where hell itself appeared above the city once not that long ago, laying all to waste and annihilating a generation of Japanese from the face of the Earth, altering History forever. Hiroshima, the site of humanities first Atom Bomb attack against itself, but it would not be the last…