Nagoya and Kyoto, Japan

In November I traveled back to Japan with a group of recent Ivy League grads to compete in an Ekiden, or Japanese version of a road-relay. Among our group were three of my Dartmouth classmates, Ted, Boups and Kai. We first traveled to Nagoya, the fourth largest city in Japan. It is a huge city of 2.2 million, located on the Pacific coast on central Honshū.

The top picture is the four of us at the Nagoya Castle. The castle was originally built in 1612, but was destroyed by American bombers in 1945, and has since been rebuilt. I did not know this until well ofter my visit. Japan is the first country Ive visited which has been largely destroyed by America during WWII. Though one might expect some lingering anti-American feeling over this, there was none to be found. The Japanese seem to have largely put the horrors of WWII behind them. On my previous visit to Fukuoka, my friend Dan took the train to nearby Nagasaki, and visited the memorial to those killed by the American atomic bomb dropped there in 1945. He said that people were very surprised to see an American there, and one elderly Japanese man, who spoke English, asked him what he thought of the memorial. Dan expressed his deep sorrow at what had happened in Nagasaki, and said he felt very embarrassed and uncomfortable being there. The Japanese man told him that it was alright, and that he was glad to see Dan there, and that hopefully such a thing would never happen again anywhere. Dan was very moved by his visit to the memorial.

We spent several days in Nagoya receiving phenomenally good hospitality from our Japanese hosts at Asahi Shimbun. We visited their newspaper headquarters and exchanged gifts. After our race they took us out for Karaoke and brought along two cases of Asahi beer on the metro, which they were shocked to see a bunch of skinny men polish off during the short ride. In the race itself, we were crushed by the majority of the Japanese collegiate teams. On our best day, perhaps our team could have finished 5th or 6th, and with all of us out of college, and no longer on our best form, we finished towards the back of the pack. The Japanese runners are extremely disciplined and hardworking.

After the race we traveled via Shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. Kyoto was the capitol of Japan for 1100 years. There was some consideration by the United States of targeting Kyoto with an atomic bomb at the end of World War II, in the end it was decided to remove the city from the list of targets due to the "beauty of the city" and the city was spared conventional bombing as well. As a result, Kyoto is the only large Japanese city that still has an abundance of prewar buildings. We visited one of the most famous of them, the Golden Pavilion. Sadly, this too was burned down, but by a crazed monk in 1950. It is a recreation of the original, and is covered with pure gold leaf.

Fukuoka, Japan

I boarded a loooong flight from San Francisco to Osaka/Kansai Japan, and then on to Fukuoka. 11 hours, my longest flight ever. This is a big city of 1.5 million on the southernmost island of Japan, Kyushu. At the time I remember thinking that it was kind of the Japanese version of Miami. Although, at the time I had never been to Miami so what did I know.
Japan is some serious culture shock for someone who hasn't traveled much. Lots of lights, and traffic, and the signs are in indecipherable characters.

It was hot and rainy most days, but I got to visit some nice beaches.

I was in Fukuoka for the World University Games. I was running the Steeple, and this was my second US team, my first being only the week before when I was in England! Lots of travel this month.

I stayed in the well equipped athletes village with the rest of the team. The Japanese put on a great meet. They had lots of cultural events, taiko drumming, sumo exhibitions, origami. Just kidding on the last one. My friends Dan and Scott and I met the three Japanese girls pictured above and hung out with them one day. They invited us back to the apartment that one of them lived in with her family. It was neat to see how people live in Japan. The place had all the same amenities that any American apartment would have, except it was really, really small. The dining room table was only a foot off the ground, and everyone sat on the floor on mats. The whole two bedroom apartment couldn't have been more than 400 square feet. These were not poor people, this is just the tightly packed lifestyle the Japanese accept. Across from the apartment was a beautiful, serene Buddhist shrine in a small park. It didn't seem like a bad life, just a life in miniature.