Peace Park

The Peace Park stretched near Aioi Bridge on the banks of the Ota River. It was overcast and humid, the low-hanging clouds threatening rain. Sakura trees in full bloom lined the path along the river, and the bank was crowded with small bands of locals enjoying hanami — picnics under the cherry blossoms. People laughed and ate and drank sake in the park, the ghost of the Atomic Bomb Dome behind them. 

Today, skyscrapers, sports stadiums, and high-rise apartments crowd Hiroshima’s skyline, and the city’s train and streetcars are always packed with commuters and tourists. The castle has been fully restored, trees have been planted, and conbinis have popped up on every corner. Hiroshima feels, in many ways, like every other big city, and much more metropolitan than any place I’ve been in Ehime.

***

A few weeks before, when we were planning our trip, John had asked me what I wanted to do in Hiroshima. The first thing I told him was that I wanted to visit the Peace Memorial. Maybe saying I ‘wanted’ to visit the memorial is misleading; it was more like something I felt compelled to do, that I needed to do. 

But when John asked me why I wanted to go, I was at a loss. I eventually told him I thought it was important to do, as an American, but that didn’t quite capture it. For once, I had trouble finding the words.

***

There is no entrance to the Peace Park; the first sign we encountered was a plaque on the Aioi Bridge, directly over which the bomb was dropped. The bridge buckled and snapped in the shockwaves, I read, but it didn’t collapse until many years later.

The focal point of the Peace Park is the Atomic Bomb Dome, the shell of a former prefectural exhibit hall, where government work and events were held for the entire Chugoku region, as well as for Shikoku, where I live. Today, the iron framework of the once-green dome and the building’s peeling exterior remain the only visible signs of the bombing.

The plaque outside the dome informed me that many wanted the building demolished— it was a reminder of an event no one wanted to remember — but eventually, those in favor of preservation won the battle, and the dome was being reinforced with steel beams when we were there, to ensure that it will remain the same.

Smaller memorials dotted the walkway, and we visited each one in turn. Other tourists posed for photos as they rang the bell for peace, a large iron bell like the ones found in Buddhist temples, inscribed with sanskrit around the edges. A clock stood on top of an iron double-helix, and I learned that it tolls at 8:15 every morning — the time when the bomb was dropped.

***

My freshman year of college, I remember reading John Hersey’s “Hiroshima” in my Freshman Year Seminar. When I finished, my head was swimming. My country did this. We did this in a “good” war. We did this with an idea of what the bomb could do. We did this, but history books still record us as the heroes.

***

Near the middle of the park stood a display consisting of thousands of multi-colored paper cranes, in memory of a 6th-grade girl who developed fatal leukemia from the radiation and folded increasingly tiny cranes during her hospitalization. At the center of this display was a statue of children with a crane at the top; this memorial was the result of a petition by the girl’s classmates, and it commemorated the child victims of the bombing. 

***

Japan is not perfect. It is a country — beautiful, rich in culture, populated by many wonderful people — like any other. It has committed atrocities in China, and during World War II, it wasn’t blameless either.

But whether or not Japan is innocent is not the issue. 

Hiroshima was chosen as a target based on its population (around 300,000 at the time) and its influence in the country and the region. The bomb was dropped in a location guaranteed to do damage. It is estimated that around 140,000 people died in the year following the bombing, and 90 percent of the buildings in Hiroshima were either leveled or damaged beyond repair. In the blast, which reached around 3,000 degrees celsius, sandstone Buddhas were melted, human shadows were burned into buildings’ edifices, and trees were incinerated from the inside.

***

Inside the museum (half of which was closed for renovation and won’t reopen until 2018), the primary exhibit comprised artifacts collected after the bombing. We moved slowly through the exhibit hall, which was crammed full of people, and I read every plaque. A student’s lunch sat carbonized, but still uneaten, in his bento box. A teacher’s eyeglasses and nametag were the only things returned to her son when she disappeared. One woman kept her son’s fingernails and bits of skin to show her husband when he returned home. A boy on his tricycle was engulfed in flames in the blast; he and the tricycle were buried together in the backyard. 

***

I left the exhibit and found John sitting on a bench, looking straight ahead. I joined him, and together we sat for a few minutes, not saying anything. Some visitors left comments in the visitor’s notebook, but everything I wanted to write had already been said.

The Hiroshima bombing is not my story, but I feel bound to it; it’s a reminder of the horrors that people — Americans, like me — are capable of. In the atrium of the museum I’d read a quote from Pope  John Paul II about the bombing: “To remember the past is to commit oneself to the future.” 

***

We left the museum and walked again among the picnickers. Later that afternoon, we visited Hiroshima castle, where we saw samurai armor and ate sake-flavored ice cream under the cherry blossoms.

At the museum, a docent had told John in Japanese that researchers and archaeologists still discover melted roof tiles in the Ota River. I read that, today, survivors still have shards of glass removed from their bodies. At the castle grounds, two trees — a eucalyptus and a willow — that survived the bombing stood, supported by twine and stakes.

Yet, everywhere in Hiroshima, life goes on. Office workers swipe their streetcar passes on their daily commutes. Children run through parks and complain that their parents are too slow. Picnickers drunk on sake stumble home, trying not to drop their blankets along the way.

Hiroshima has remembered the past. But the city’s story doesn’t end on Aug. 6, 1945.

Ain't No Mountain High Enough: Climbing Ishizuchi

I’m a fairly introverted person. I like doing things and seeing people, but there are days when I would rather stay at home with a book and my Netflix account. And it’s for this reason that I felt living alone would be no problem prior to coming here. I like hanging out with myself. She just gets me, you know?

But being an introvert and living alone has its own insidious implications. Moving away from home (again) felt like being the new kid in school: I worried about what the other JETs would think if I wore the wrong outfit, did something ungraceful, or said something stupid. But ironically, the part I have found myself struggling with the most is actually getting outside of my comfort zone and making myself do things and see people when I’m not sure I want to do the things and see the people. I’m my own biggest obstacle to social interaction; if left unchecked, I could probably spend days at a time locked in my apartment, with no one but Walter White for company.

Enter Silver Week. This year, Japan was lucky enough to have two public holidays overlap, resulting in a five-day weekend. I hadn’t planned anything, and my Silver Week was looking pretty boring, until I was invited to climb Mt. Ishizuchi.

I love mountains — as a Colorado native, it’s pretty much impossible not to — so I’m almost always down for some hiking. When I first arrived, many Japanese people recommended I climb Ishizuchi (the highest peak in Western Japan) and I filed it away on my ever-growing, mental Japan Bucket List. Ishizuchi stands 1,982 m (6,503 ft) high — just slightly higher in elevation than Denver. Almost every hike I’ve done has been at a higher elevation than that, so I was feeling pretty confident that Ishizuchi would be no problem.

Then I heard about the chains. An older JET mentioned that the route involved free-climbing, and my desire to tackle the mountain bottomed out. I had never free-climbed in my life, and I am terrified of heights. Like, terrified as in have-a-mental-breakdown-at-the-top-of-a-roller-coaster terrified. The thought of pulling myself 68 meters in the air on iron chains seemed pretty unappealing, to say the least.

I told myself when I came here that I would do things that were scary and unfamiliar, (and I mean, hey, moving halfway across the world to a country where you don’t speak the language is ballsy enough to count in my book). Yet, despite my conviction I would challenge myself, I still spent a ridiculously long time wrestling with whether or not I would climb Ishizuchi. Had I compiled a physical list of pros and cons, it might have looked something like this:

Reasons Not To Go:

1. Heights are scary as hell. The chains are scary as hell. YOU DO NOT WANT TO CLIMB THE CHAINS!

a. What if you cry/panic/freeze up and can’t finish the climb?? Everyone will think you’re a n00b and a terrible Coloradan and a pansy.

b. On the other hand, if you go and don’t climb the chains, everyone will still think you’re a pansy.

2. You could actually fall and die. 

3. It will probably suck and you will be in pain.

4. You have to wake up really early. Are pain and possible death really worth losing sleep?

Reasons To Go:

1. You told almost everyone you want to, so now, even if you don’t do it, they will think you’re a pansy. Way to go, Anna.

2. You also actually want to do it.

3. You’re not doing anything else with your life during Silver Week. 

In the end I decided to go. If I can’t handle the chains, I can always wimp out and take the stairs, I told myself.

The closer the day of the climb got, the less sure I became about my decision. And because I’m a masochist and love nothing more than working myself into a panic, I spent hours reading blogs about other people’s experiences on Ishizuchi. I concluded that the chains were going to be scary and awful and if I tried to do them I would probably be sobbing the entire way up. 

But I still bought the climbing gloves. And, despite brief fantasies about coming down with a sudden stomach flu and bailing on the group, I still showed up at the Iyo-Saijo train station at 7:15 a.m. Monday.

It was a promising day to climb a mountain — warm, but not hot, with clear skies. And, joking with the rest of our group, I was feeling pretty good. The first leg of the hike was straightforward; it involved a fairly rapid gain in elevation as we climbed set after set of wooden stairs, but that was nothing I hadn’t seen on a hike before.

We reached the first set of chains, an extra set mostly designed to give people a taste of what’s in store if they continue. Looking at the snaking, metal links, I was pretty convinced that I would skip this set. I’ll try the next one, I told myself, knowing full well that if I didn’t try this set, it would be really easy to simply not try the next set, and the next one, until I reached the summit without actually touching a single chain.

But, seeing almost everyone else in the group head for the chains, something — whether sudden bravery or just peer pressure — switched. I pulled on my gloves and walked up to cliff face.

The climb was much easier than I expected. There were a few times when I abandoned the chains in favor of scrambling up the cliff itself, and a couple times I had to ask for help to find the best route, but I made it to the top in one piece. I did not have a panic-induced meltdown. I did not fall and die. I did not chicken out. And, perhaps most importantly, no one called me a pansy.

The way down was scarier than the way up, as the internet had promised. But somehow I still made it back to solid ground. And then I made it up the next two sets of chains as well. None of the chains were half as scary as I’d anticipated. After worrying myself sick about them, it was almost a letdown. But the last set of chains had been billed as the meanest, and I was pretty resolute that when we got there, I would duck out and take the stairs the rest of the way up.

When we reached the last set, my friend pulled on her gloves, looked at me, and asked, “Are you gonna do it?” I relented and pulled out my gloves too, feeling a lot less confident than I had for the previous three sets.

The last set of chains was, in fact, the hardest. Unlike the other three sections, there were meters-long stretches where the cliff-face dropped away, leaving me no choice but to keep both feet in the rungs of the chains. I took the chains one link at a time, trying to keep my eyes off the ground. I banged my knees on the cliff-face, straddled tree trunks, and got a little too familiar with the other climbers’ backsides. But despite all that, I made it, just like I had with the other chains.  I stood on the summit and looked out, at the rest of the Ishizuchi range, chest heaving but feeling pretty bad-ass. I looked down on the puckered mountains I was used to looking up at. I watched the clouds’ shadows skim across their surface. And, on top of that peak, it was easy to forget how worried I was at the bottom.

You made it to the end! Have a photo!

(Pictured: Ishizuchi summit)

Adventures in Naoshima

Well, my first full week in Ehime is over, and I survived. I feel like I have been here so much longer than I actually have — isn’t it strange how that seems to happen? I’ve finally started to figure things out, I feel like. This past week, my supervisor was at teacher’s training, so I took some time to get to know the neighborhood. I found the grocery store, drug store, and conbini with no problem, thanks to the map from my lovely building managers! And I even took my clothes to the dry cleaner’s and tried to speak in Japanese with the cleaners. That went okay, until I tried to write my name in katakana and the cleaners thought I was “PT” instead of アナ (ana). 

I could go on forever about all the things I’ve done, but I’ll spare you the nitty gritty. Easily the highlight of my week, and my time here so far was a trip I took with my supervisor on Sunday to Naoshima island off the coast of Takamatsu, in nearby Kagawa prefecture.

Upon disembarking the ferry on Naoshima, our first stop was visiting the six art houses in the island’s historic district. At one of the art houses, guides explained that we would be brought into total darkness and slowly exposed to dim light. They guided us into the building, telling us to feel along the walls until we came to a long, stone bench we all sat on. I know it’s the cliche, but I physically couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. This wasn’t your average, everyday darkness. In the words of Spongebob Squarepants once said, this was advanced darkness. It seemed to weigh on my eyes, and no matter how much I strained to see, nothing was visible. Maybe it says something about the way my brain works, but it was like being shut in a tomb, and I had to cross my arms to reassure myself that I still had a body and wasn’t just suspended in the nothingness. It would have been even more surreal had it not been for the small child whispering to his father in Japanese.

I wasn’t sure if my eyes were playing tricks on me, but slowly, a square began to emerge from the darkness. It grew brighter and more defined until there was clearly a screen a few feet ahead of us. The guides told us to move forward, and so I stood up and walked forward among the crowd of black silhouettes. When I reached out to touch the screen, my hands closed around nothing but air. I looked down, but I couldn’t see where the emptiness ended, in any direction.

We left the building and headed to lunch. When my supervisor showed me a list of restaurants in the area, I saw the cat cafe, and knew exactly where I wanted to go. I was a little disappointed to see that you had to pay a separate fee to sit in the cat room, but we sat down to order lunch. As she pulled out her chair, my supervisor cried out. There was a cat under the table. I happily traded seats with her so I could get some quality cat time in. The other customers were women, too, and they all squealed, “kawaii” as they watched the cats through the window to the cat room. I have no doubt that I will be visiting more cat cafes in the future.

After lunch, we visited four more art houses, my favorite of which was an old Edo-period shrine, called Go’o Shrine. We had to climb a long flight of stairs to find the shrine, and as we walked through dense trees, my supervisor commented that it was like Totoro. The shrine sat on a cliffside overlooking the ocean, and it was one of the more beautiful things I’ve seen here. The “art” portion of this art house consisted of a staircase of glass slabs that led up into the shrine. We weren’t allowed in the actual building, but a guide supplied us with a flashlight so we could venture down into a narrow cavern and view the shrine from below, shining our light on the glass stairs to make them shine like ice. I thought of the first line of One Hundred Years of Solitude (and if you know me well, you’re probably rolling your eyes right now).

Go’o Shrine was the last stop on our Naoshima art house tour, so we headed to Benesse House Museum at the request of my supervisor (and, okay, I’m always up for visiting an art museum). The Benesse House Museum is in some way affiliated with a hotel lower down on the hill, and I felt pretty plebeian mingling with all the hotel guests, who, unlike us, had their own private shuttle to the museum, could access more of the museum, and even had use of a private beach off of the hotel. The artwork in the museum was all modern art. In the main room of the museum, three metal silhouettes called “Chatter, chatter, chatter” for a predetermined amount of time before breaking into what seemed to me, at least, to be Gregorian chanting. The sound of their pre-recorded voices echoing in the open room was almost more disturbing than the total darkness I’d seen earlier. 

We left Benesse House and headed back to the port. On the way, we walked along the beach and saw the two iconic pumpkin sculptures that Naoshima is famous for. We still had some time until the next ferry by the time we reached the port, so my supervisor headed off to a public bath house. I wasn’t feeling adventurous enough to brave being naked in front of equally naked strangers, so I stayed behind and grabbed some dinner, looking the most gaijin I’ve ever looked as I scarfed down some chicken tenders without the aid of chopsticks. I didn’t get lost, though (always a source of anxiety), and I didn’t have to undress in front of strangers, so overall, it was a success.

On the ferry back to Takamatsu, I felt content with my first touristy adventure in Japan. Earlier, as we walked down the hill from Benesse House, an Irish man behind us had shouted, “This is the coolest place I’ve ever been to!” and, at least in that moment, I had to agree. There’s always a sort of wistfulness, I find, that comes from leaving a vacation spot and returning to the real world. I always wonder about people who live in places like Naoshima. Do they gradually become desensitized to the beauty of their home? Is it just mundane to them now? What place gives them the same escape that their home does for others? I don’t know. But I do know that it’s always nice to make it back to your own bed, no matter how great the trip has been.

Day 1 in Ehime: The Kindness of Strangers

I stepped off the plane in Matsuyama feeling nothing but overwhelmed. The past two (three?) days had been a whirlwind of flying to Japan and orientation in Tokyo, where I battled jetlag, met hundreds of new people, and sat through countless seminars, all while wearing business formal. I was exhausted, my one suit was dirty, and it was actually hotter than Hades, I’m convinced. But nevertheless, today was the day I would move to my new home in Niihama, Ehime prefecture.

Outside of the baggage claim, representatives from every JET’s new placement stood with hand-decorated signs. Some JETs had a crowd of people around their sign, and some had former JETs waiting to welcome them to their new homes. 

Two people waited with my sign — my supervisor and another teacher from my main school. My supervisor greeted me in English, and I replied in the same way. We headed out to the parking lot and set off for Niihama, about an hour’s drive from Matsuyama.

I hadn’t even set foot in my new city, and already I felt like the worst JET of ALL TIME. I’d been practicing a Japanese self-introduction all week (more like all month) for when I  met my supervisor, and yet, when it came down to it, I couldn’t even muster a “konnichiwa.” What the hell was wrong with me??

I spent the car ride panicking in my sweaty, smelly suit, until lunch, when I enjoyed some delicious udon, and then got back in the car where I continued doubting myself. A (not entirely hyperbolic) transcript of my inner monologue follows:

Oh my god, I’m so stupid! What am I even doing here?? I should’ve let a better candidate take my spot. I’m not cut out for this. How am I going to survive a year here when I CAN’T EVEN TELL THEM MY GODDAMN NAME?!?

Luckily for my self-esteem, when we got to my main school, I managed to introduce myself correctly — in Japanese — to both my principal and vice principal. So it got better. 

The rest of the day was a whirlwind of getting my gaijin card (foreign resident card), buying furniture, and moving into my new apartment in Niihama city. My apartment had zero furniture in it when I moved in, so I had to buy a bed, rug, and kitchen appliances. The teachers at my school (where would I be without them?!) were kind enough to donate a lot to me, so I had a fridge, a wardrobe, a microwave, and TONS of towels. Like, more towels than I would have ever thought I would need. 

The air in Niihama felt (and still feels) like the inside of a gym sock. It’s so hot and humid here that when I step out of the shower, I basically just stay wet the rest of the day (sorry not sorry for the gross imagery). So yeah, those towels will definitely come in handy. My coworkers also brought me an electric fan, without which I would most definitely be a greasy, gaijin puddle on my apartment floor. 

After the majority of my furniture was moved in and after I’d gotten some food for the next day at the conbini (convenience store) down the street, I prepared to settle in for the night, only for my building managers to show up at my door. They’re a middle-aged married couple, and they brought me kiwi and tomatoes. 

The wife, who spoke a little English, told me: “We are worried about you because you are alone in a foreign country.” 

I can’t really say how much I was moved by their compassion for me. I had definitely felt pretty alone and overwhelmed that day — not through anyone’s fault, of course — and it was encouraging to know that there were people looking out for me.

The building managers spent some time struggling to explain to me how to get to the nearest grocery store. Then, the husband told me to follow them  and led me to their apartment on the first floor. They invited me in, gave me black coffee and put on some smooth jazz — two things I don’t normally involve myself, and that I don’t associate much with Japan. The wife drew me a map with detailed routes to the drug store and grocery store. As I left, they told me to let them know if I needed anything. I thanked them and told them I would.

I don’t know what about me made them want to take care of me so much. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m a young, short woman. Maybe it’s my overwhelming gaijin-ness. Maybe they have a daughter near my age and know that I’m somebody’s child, too. Whatever the case, so far in Japan, I’ve found myself like Blanche DuBois — depending on the kindness of strangers (and everyone who knows me knows I don’t really like to do that). My supervisor, fellow teachers, and basically everyone I’ve met have been so incredibly kind to me, and for this reason, even though I know I will have good days and bad days, I’m now feeling a bit less worried about living here.

But only a bit. Let’s not get too crazy.

Ireland, or, The Luck of the Tourists

Well, it's been a long-ass time since I've posted, and as a result, I've done many many things since the last time. I've been to Ireland, Belgium, Spain, and all over England.

I'll start with Ireland. For our first long weekend, we ventured to Dublin and then to a small coastal town in Ireland called Howth. Everyone really seems to love Ireland, but I think that when they think of Ireland, they picture rolling green hills and seaside, like the Ring of Kerry. We stuck to Dublin.

When we arrived in Dublin, it was 11:00 pm, and we couldn't find our hostel. Dublin's not as big a city as London, but we were wandering around in the not-so-great north side of town (to put this into perspective, our tour guide the next day said we "might not want to leave the south side," so that was comforting). In the dark, in a strange city and a strange country, the threat of getting our skin cut off seemed imminent, and I couldn't help but think, "WE GON' DIE!" Every barking dog, every innocuous pedestrian seemed to target us for pickpocketing, leering, and/or dramatic capoeira dance battles, at least in my imagination anyway.

Thankfully, though, we found our hostel without incident. And the next morning, Dublin was nowhere near as scary as it had seemed. Things were looking up, but rain and an hour-long trudge trying to find the Guinness plant kind of put a damper on things. We returned to the hostel wet, hungry, tired, and (at least in my case) bummed that Dublin Castle wasn't actually a castle. I did get to visit a statue of James Joyce in St. Stephen's Green, though, so the day wasn't a total bust.

Dublin Castle. Definitely NOT a castle.

I was about ready to give up on Dublin when the city redeemed itself. The day dawned clear (first good omen), and we visited the Yeats exhibit in the National Library (Can we pause for a second and talk about how brilliant WB was???) and, what was easily the highlight of my trip, the Chester Beatty Library. Chester Beatty had a shit-ton of money, for whatever reason, and he spent it collecting the most impressive artifacts he could get his hands on. Like, it's not even funny how rare this stuff was. I saw a copy of the Qur'an where all the Arabic characters were cut out individually and pasted on the page. I saw an excerpt from the Book of John that dated back to the 3rd century. THAT'S ALMOST AS OLD AS JESUS!!!

(At this point, just imagine a REALLY FRACKING AWESOME picture. No cameras allowed in CB.)

And then to top off a good day, we ate dinner at Boojum, aka Irish Chipotle. And it made me so happy and homesick all at the same time. Seriously, why don't we have it in England??

We were feeling pretty good about the day, until we met our roommates. Hansel, Dylan, and Doug. They were three German bros who really, really liked to party. Doug and Hansel were over six feet tall, blonde, and had chiseled jaw lines. So, basically, really, really, really stereotypically German. That night, our sleeping was interrupted by a drunk-off-his ass Dylan, who couldn't even get into bed he was so wasted, and almost started a fight in our hostel room. But hey, cheap lodging.

Day three, probably the highlight of the trip, we ventured to a small fishing-town suburb of Dublin, Howth. Howth was everything I wanted from Ireland: dramatic crags, vast ocean, and the best fish chowder I've ever eaten. Plus, there was SUN. It was lovely.

And the whole time I was alternating between happy tourist/grumpy tourist, I was constantly being reminded that Dublin is a city full of ACTUAL people and is a place with ACTUAL problems. Ireland the landmass is thousands of years old, but Ireland the country is less than a hundred. There are political ads in Dublin that still advocate for independence today. Only a hundred years ago (not long in the scope of history as I've come to learn) Irish Catholics were protesting for the right to get weekends off, and the only employer who would listen to them was Guinness. They have a spire in the middle of the town that cost 2 million euros, but they don't have a monument to one of the most influential female journalists ever. It's important to remember that. Because, *CHEESEBALL ALERT* more than entertainment and souvenirs, the most important takeaway we can get from visiting any country is learning how the people there live and what matters to them. And, surprisingly, they're not always the same thing.

Commemorating the Dublin Lockout of 1913

Surprises in Edinburgh

Well, after the last two weeks I feel woefully behind in posting, but it's been a hectic time. We took our first British Studies exam last Wednesday, which essentially consisted of writing three essays in two hours and then I was in Ireland for four days. So, yeah.

But enough excuses. BLOG NOW.

Before my life devolved into the psychotic chaos that was preparing for an exam and a four-day trip (imagine me alternately shoving clothing into my backpack, flipping frantically through mountains of handouts about kings who are ALL NAMED EDWARD, and stress-eating Aero bars while wallowing in self-pity) I went to Edinburgh for the weekend. Woo.

Edinburgh is not what I thought it would be like.

I don't know. Maybe I thought Scotland would be a shit-ton of sheep-covered bluffs, or maybe I thought Edinburgh would be like a mini-London, but neither of those were the case. At all. I was pleasantly surprised.

(I've generally tried to include like a little life-lesson I've gotten from each place I visited, but I don't know if I have one for Edinburgh. It was just cool. Sorry if you were expecting some soul-searching.)

We stepped out of the train station in Edinburgh, only to be greeted by a big-ass castle. You'd think I might be bored with castles by now, but it really never gets old, especially not when it's Edinburgh castle, which is situated on a freaking CLIFF overlooking like a whole block of gardens. Not only was it a beautiful castle, but it also would have been very effective as a military fortress, given its height and impressive size and how close it was located to water. So that was impressive, and I wasn't really expecting a castle in Scotland, probably because I had zero expectations. Everyone talks about London and Ireland, but poor Scotland gets neglected, I feel.

And maybe it was better that I didn't have any expectations, because then it's impossible to be disappointed.

Anyway, there were lots of neat shops in Edinburgh, which we went into and which inevitably left me feeling pretty pathetic because all the beautiful sweaters and bottles of scotch cost more than £10, which is approximately my entire budget for a day of travel (only joking).

But the best part of Edinburgh was the (free!) hike we took up Arthur's Seat. For those of you unfamiliar with the world-renowned geology of Scotland, Arthur's Seat is part of a volcano. It's a little more than 800 feet high and pretty rocky, so, though my Indiana friends are going to find me pretentious for saying this, it's a really tall hill.

 View of Edinburgh from the castle!

 Well, all my best pictures of Arthur's Seat are trapped on my phone. Maybe I'll add them later.

That's not to undermine its impressiveness, though. It may not reach above tree line, but Arthur's Seat was still incredible. (And I did make fun of my "flatlander" friends, but it was a moderately difficult climb, especially when you make the poor decision of wearing Toms to hike in...not my best plan.)  It's amazing to me that we live in a world where people have found a way to settle environments as varied as deserts and rainforests. And looking down from Arthur's Seat and seeing the tops of skyscrapers I'd been walking underneath for two days made me feel separate from it all, like I was able to step back and reflect and not have to worry about assignments or politics overseas or money. But it also made me feel connected. I stood in the same spot as probably millions of people have before and looked out over a city of several hundred thousand and think, "so that's what we all look like down there."

And the music swells. I'm sorry if my earnestness is like eye-rollingly obnoxious or anything. I promise I'm not trying to be an inspirational postcard. But really, I thought I would feel much more isolated overseas, when in reality, I feel weirdly connected to places here. It's just cool to think of all the people who have stood in the same places I have, who lived in these houses and walked on these streets. I like that I've been able to feel that in places where I don't live. And that's a nice note to end on, so I'll stop.

Next post: Encounters with crazy drunken hostel roommates.

Yay! You made it to the end! Enjoy this picture of Totoro from my hostel!

MIND = BLOWN

Everybody who's ever blogged about Europe has written a post that goes like this: "OMG Europe is just so old compared to the US. We're just such a young country. We've been around for like, no time at all. OMFG MIND = BLOWN."


I personally consider this one of the more obvious observations a traveler can make, but after visiting Stamford and Lincoln this past week, I can understand why bloggers freak out about Europe's age. In Stamford, we saw streets that were functional in medieval times. In Lincoln, we walked through a gate that was used by Roman emperors. At the Lincoln museum, we saw plates and goblets that were actually used by actual people in Romano-British times, and my friend summed up the awe we felt perfectly. "That plate is older than the United States," he said.

Actually, almost everything in the Lincoln museum was older than the United States. By a whole fracking lot. And while I was very much bowled over by that, what I almost found more impressive was the weird juxtaposition of time periods throughout English towns. The current Lincoln Cathedral (which is, like, too beautiful for words, by the way) was built in the 11th century on top of an even older cathedral that was built by the Anglo-Saxons. There were walls built on top of walls, glass-covered Roman wells that were built before people forgot how to do plumbing and then remembered again (weird, I know), and there was even a CASTLE.

Okay, so the castle was under construction. Still cool though.

And in the midst of all these crazy ancient artifacts, there were real-life modern people. When we were there, two men got in a tussle because one tried to park outside the other's house. A street musician heard our American accents and played "Yankee Doodle" on a piccolo. People had cell phones and music players and Instagram, and they had all of these things while they were standing on top of the castle or walking through the Roman gate or viewing a cadaver tomb in the cathedral.

Cadaver tombs are metal as shit, by the way.

The cathedral. Pictures don't do it justice.

And all this was really cool and really weird to me. It's like, modern culture and the preservation of ancient cultures don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's a little magical. But mostly it just makes me realize that we are not the only generation to live here, on this Earth. There have been billions of people here before us, and they weren't all club-thumping cave-men. They had art and religion and some of them could even build DOMES. Then I kind of wondered what our civilization will leave behind on the planet. What will insanely advanced cultures think of us? Will someone look at our silverware in the distant future and think how cool it is that real people just like them actually ate off of plastic? Will they think our relics are as hardcore as cadaver tombs? Who knows. I tried to fight it, but I guess my point is, "OMG EUROPE IS OLD. OMG MIND = BLOWN."