CCHS

making awards of $25,000 to women who have suffered terrible domestic and/or drug abuse to help them re-train. Three ladies this year: one from America who escaped from Afghanistan and wants to study law, the second from Mexico wanting to be an engineer, and the third from Canada re-training as a kindergarten teacher. ‘Dream it, be it’ involves providing professional role models for school girls and providing help for them to find the career they want. We had bento boxes for lunch on Conference days which contained various interesting delicacies of Japanese cuisine and, although we didn’t always know what we were eating, we improved on our handling of chopsticks!

 

Yokohama was the first Japanese city to open its gates to outside influence when a certain Admiral Perry

employed gunboat diplomacy in 1859 so that the city went from a small fishing village to the city of 3.5

million people it is today. Following our usual practice Denise and I travelled the tourist bus routes and identified a boat trip around the harbour, various important landmark buildings and museums, and Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples to add to our collection.

 

One of the museums was the Japan Newspaper Museum (Newspark) which we went into because it was there. I was correct in saying that it might be difficult as it would probably all be in Japanese and they wouldn’t expect Europeans to go there but it was very interesting. They have a newspaper press pretending to be working and many newspapers around the displays from which you could pick out the year in numbers.  Most museums have simple titles for those speaking English but not here. One of the amusing things to do was to produce your own newspaper and two delightful young Japanese ladies, who spoke English, helped us to have a go at this.  One of them took our photo and then we used computers to put our picture and a few words into a newspaper and they printed them off for us to keep. Needless to say I have no idea what the articles are about! Afterwards we wandered around the displays and were met by the director of the museum, no less, who apologised for the lack of English and gave us a guided tour. Newspapers are very big in Japan, despite the electronics industry, and apparently 95% of Japanese people read and rely on newspapers.

 

Our next port of call was Nara and the Japanese Soroptimists there gave us a wonderful welcome including a banquet, a temple, and a visit to Osaka. We acquired a Japan Railways passport and became adept at travelling on the shinkansen bullet trains. It was a good buy because it did buses in various places as well.

 

We moved on to Kyoto, a city with no tourist buses and a bewildering array of service buses which Denise soon sorted out with the aid of a map. From here we went to Hiroshima for a day which was a sobering experience when we visited the Peace Museum with the exhibits that survived the atomic bomb and the stories of their owners. Today a modern city has arisen from the ashes encouraging all to visit and remember the importance of peace, especially welcoming parties of schoolchildren.

 

Finally we ended up in Tokyo where we spent a day visiting Mount Fuji (mostly hidden in clouds) and another seeing the sights of Tokyo.

 

Everywhere we went in Japan the people were welcoming and helpful, even if they didn’t speak much English and the whole trip was a great pleasure with so many fascinating sights to visit.

 

Footnote: My friend is very energetic and younger than me and I was amazed to discover that, with all this exercise, I have lost six pounds in weight which I am working to keep off.

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