Journal Entry #3 - Mostly Busan, Some Kochi
I can't believe that I left out The Man in Black.
Walking up the hill to the Ido castle (it's Monday night, so that was yesterday), the group stopped while the guide was talking to some actors in traditional costume. She turned to us and said, “Now we will have a dramatic performance!” A woman screamed, and a moment later one of the costumed figures, an older man, came around the corner dragging a young costumed woman, still screaming. The man's henchman followed close behind.
They got right down in the middle of our group – and then – from the opposite direction, Clint Eastwood appeared. I could almost hear the whistling, almost smell the cigarillo.
In this case, Clint was a black figure with the samurai sword and knife; he stepped out of the crowd and confronted the man with the woman. The older man gestured to his henchman and said “Fight him!” (someone translated). They fought, a quick, intense, stylized swordfight, and Clint, of course, saw his opening and delivered the fatal blow. The older man then drew his sword, and Clint made short work of him. Both bad guys lay on the ground (one seemed to be giggling) as the woman came up to Clint and expressed her gratitude. He put his arm around her, and they rode into the sunset (OK, they walked). Thunderous applause, and lots and lots of grinning pictures taken with all concerned.
It struck me that this story was the story of nearly every movie ever made, or at least most of them. It's certainly the story of my two favorite movies, “Princess Bride” and “Casablanca.” And “A New Hope,” although the damsel in distress was not a person, but an ideal. Oh – and it wasn't really Clint Eastwood. But you knew that.
It's Monday night and tomorrow's a sea day! Hooray! I feel like a kid with a weekend coming up. Four days of strenuous shore excursions have left us exhausted.
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Today, for instance, in Kochi, we visited another samurai castle, this one even more formidable than the last – because, among other things, it was up a higher hill – in this case, 180 steps to the tower keep, and then six one-floor-high ladder/steps to the top. I was thinking that the thing I like about these castles – and, for that matter, about European castles as well – is that there's no doubt or confusion regarding what they're for and how they work. They say, very clearly, “See? This is what I've built to defend me and mine. Take a look. It's pretty clear how I'll do it. Then come and get me.” At this castle, today – Kochi Castle, in Kochi – you got up most of the endless steps and then discovered you had been lured into a position that was enfiladed from three sides. And it wasn't the way into the castle. Good luck.
We went to another sake brewery where I couldn't understand anything that was said, and had the chance to taste four or five flavors, one of which was sake mixed with fruit juice. Once again, the pure sake was warm and tingly, very pleasant, but with no taste. We learned that Kochi, in addition to being famous for a four-day dance festival that “rivaled Carnivale in Rio,” (and will be on this year after three years off because of Covid), was also the place in Japan where people drank the most sake per capita. Now you know. Apparently (I'm not sure I heard everything accurately) there is a national sake-drinking competition in Kochi, where you drink from a big bowl with 1.8 liters of sake in it; the winner is he who drinks it the fastest.
We also went to a spot by the water where there were shops, a patriotic statue, and a beach you couldn't swim at. The beach had pebbles of five different colors, from five different rivers that ran into the broad bay that Kochi is on. Abbey went down to look, and came back with a few, and they really are beautiful. Our guide said that we may not think it's a beach because it has pebbles, not sand. Turns out that some previous tour group member said, “That's not a beach! It's got all those rocks!” and she's been unsure ever since. We assured her it was a beach, and someone told her about Pebble Beach (in CA? IDK - Off-grid...), which is actually a beach named for its pebbles.
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| Tsunami tower |
There are dozens of evacuation towers, or tsunami towers, in the very low, flat land that borders the bay, land that is primarily used for growing rice – acre after individually-irrigated acre of it. The towers are three or four stories tall, about 50 feet on a side, with steps rising from the ground to the first, second and higher levels (pic). Think a very small parking garage with no floors. The idea is for people to get there and get up the stairs so as to be above the tsunami flooding. Would there be time? That's a lot of infrastructure investment, so someone must think they'd work. (Sorry for poor quality pic - taken from window of moving bus)
The cruise ship pier in Kochi is new and modern, but still essentially a really big parking lot and a new terminal, which is really just a big empty building divided up into really big rooms. Interestingly, there is, bordering the the lot as it did in yesterday's port, the same mesh fence, this time keeping sand, gravel and larger gravel – really, really big piles of it – from migrating onto the pier. Very similar conveyor systems allowed the giant front-end-loaders to load ships pulled right up to the pier, which was around the corner from ours. Abbey remarked that it would be easy to lose all those piles in a tsunami – and then we started to notice and understand the placements of the various quays in the harbor – six to ten foot concrete walls, with concrete tripods scattered thickly around the ocean side to reduce the impact of big waves. Assuming huge storm waves, typhoons (July and August) and tsunamis, the quays were built to minimize their impact all along the shore.
Loved the pier-side entertainment in Kochi. When we pulled in this morning, there were five huge flags being expertly handled by dancers – you have to see it to get how cool it is (pic). This evening, a three-piece band played – an accordion, a guitar and a sort of drummer. First, they were really, really good musicians – they played expertly and shared the melodies and harmonies effortlessly. Some of it was the sound system, which was small but excellent. Second, the drummer: he sat on a box, which he drummed on. He also had a single small cymbal on a stand in front of him, which he used for emphasis. No other kit. There was a microphone on a stand, pointed down at the little cymbal. I found this hysterical. Anyway, they were good, even if they played mostly pop music. They did play some Japanese music. Video here.
There was also a dance company, twelve dancers in traditional costumes, the women in red, the men in blue, the women with odd but elegant basket-like hats made of reeds or straw. They did one dance which was introduced as a popular traditional dance, and during it, we noticed some older Japanese woman on the ship dancing along. Was this some kind of Japanese macarena? Many people had gathered on the pier to see the ship, and one mother with a maybe-two-year-old girl was teacher her daughter the dance.
Then the ship pushed away and we are sailing north, on the edge of the Pacific, toward Yokohama. Abbey and I ate in the Lido – it was super Gala night in the dining room – red and gold theme, for those packing formal wear in a variety of colors and styles. We talked more about my thoughts regarding our relationship with the staff in the dining room – using the black-tie uniform to de-personalize them – why couldn't they wear typical or traditional clothing from the homeland? Why not, one night, wear t-shirts from their favorite bands, and engage us in conversation about music in our respective worlds? That would be awesome.
The couple at the next table heard me complaining about suits-as-uniforms-which-depersonalize-us, and turned around and said, “I'm with you!” We got to talking and they are from Slovenia, and had been talking, in a common language that was not English, with a member of the wait-staff who was from Bosnia. That's what I'm talking about!
Tuesday morning (I think)
The Pacific disappeared overnight.
Oh no – not the actual ocean – that would be a truly catastrophic event, which you would already know about, in the last moments of your life, as the atmosphere thinned while the great suddenly-empty basin was filled with air rushing at perhaps supersonic speeds around the world, and the other waters of the world rushing frantically – but more slowly than the air – to do the same, causing destruction and devastation all along the way. The Panama Canal turned into an unimaginable rapids and waterfall! The polar ice cap, such as it is, sucked through the Bearing Strait, and every glacier on the coast of Antarctica sheared off and tumbling – hundreds of miles of them, miles thick – into the Drake Passage. What would it be like to spend one's last moments perched on Cape Horn, witnessing the end of the world?
Well, no. That's not what's happening. What actually happened was that “The Pacific,” the book by Simon Winchester I have been enjoying so much and have mentioned here briefly, disappeared from my phone. For a perfectly normal reason: Libby is a library, and it was due. The Libby audiobook was stored on my phone, so it was accessible even when off-grid, but my phone knows what day and time it is all by itself, and the Libby app accesses this information and simply erases the file from my phone the moment the loan expires. Each library has a finite number of “copies” of any book, audio or text, and your copy is available again to other library patrons once it is returned. That's why most good recent books are not available on Libby; other people have taken out all the copies and you have to put it on hold and wait your turn.
Before the trip, we took out a lot of books , and our planning was based on the inaccurate assumption that we could replenish them – either renew or find new ones – during the trip. Not so off grid. But now, due to this attrition, we are left with a total of one book left – the second book in “The Culture” series that Randall recommended, an audiobook of 19 hours which is due in five days. So – at breakfast this morning we agreed to turn on the phones tomorrow in Yokohama and load up again. We are assuming (perhaps, again, inaccurately) that when we get to Alaska, which was, when we left at least, part of the USA, we could use our phones under normal conditions.
We have been supplementing our Libby library recently with the ship's library of actual dead-tree books, which is not spectacular but not bad. The first book to disappear from Libby was Claire North's “The End of the Day,” but there was a hardback copy in the ship's library and I was able to finish it (one of the best books I've ever read, and a candidate for a book club if I've ever seen one). Currently, I've got another book by her, and a novel by Paul Theroux called “The Lower River” (during the family week at our house in Truro in 2016, Theroux spoke in Provincetown and I went to listen, and bought a copy of this book, which he signed, but I haven't read it yet), and a breezy, often amusing history of France by John Julius Norwich, who I'd never heard of but who I will read (posthumously, unfortunately) more of in the future.
Anyway. I hope no one expects this journal to be consecutive – in order – because it isn't. It's time to write about Busan, Korea, where we were four days ago (five?). And – by the way – I've been thinking of the disappearance of the Pacific, and it seems reasonable that the Panama Canal locks would hold the Atlantic up quite easily, as that is what they do every day. So the water would have to go around. But isn't a waterfall a much more exciting prospect?
Anyway – Busan, which is on the southeast coast of Korea; its second-largest city and biggest port. We arrived on a hazy morning, sailing into a large, industrial bay with huge cranes to either side, and a slim, white, enormous bridge spanning it all. A small white pilot boat darted out of the mist to deliver its harbor pilot, and two orange tugs kept pace with the ship – but never needed to touch it. A black and white tug, with a red communications mast, circled our ship – probably a harbormaster's boat – observing and supervising.
The trip this day was the longest by far, for we would be visiting a historic village and tomb-mounds that were an hour and a half away.
Busan is a city of millions, most of whom live in endless ranks of high-rise apartment buildings; the overall impression is much like Tokyo – semi-modern and simple. No garish or daring architecture, except at the ferry terminal (pic from internet), which seemed to represent waves on a stormy day.
The reasons Koreans (Busan is typical of South Korea as a whole) build up is that most of the country is mountainous. Like the volcanic topography of Japan, Korean mountains are steep but rounded at the top (as opposed to steep and pointy, like the Alps), and thickly forested all over. The mountains seem to crowd together, ranks and ranks of them off into the distance, kind of like the apartment buildings.
The day was overcast, until the end, and it rained on and off all day. We first visited a large and historic Buddhist temple, which was decorated with lanterns and flowers for the upcoming birthday of the Buddha. It was built on a hill, of course, so lots of climbing and ancient stone steps. The gate we went through was guarded by four gods who protected it; they were wonderfully grotesque and elaborately painted (pic) (as was a great deal of the temple and all its buildings); both Abbey and I thought they were the best part of the temple.
The afternoon was in the historic town, whose name I do not remember and will have to look up [Gyeongju – ed.]. In modern times, it is the place that Koreans often chose for their honeymoons, but more recently it is becoming known for the awesome burial mounds that have been there forever but have been investigated only recently. There are thousands of them in an area of a few square miles, conical with domed tops, ranging from maybe twenty feet high to maybe three times that, placed in no particular order or hierarchy. The mounds date from prehistory, so there is no way to know much of anything about them.
When archaeologists began planning to excavate the mounds, it was decided to start with one of the smallest ones, just to get a sense of what was involved. No one knew anything about what , if anything, was in there. If I'm remembering correctly, it wasn't until the 1970s that excavation began, and then they realized that they didn't have the technology to do it properly. Work continued again sometime later, and it turned out that the very small mound contained, in addition to a burial box, over eleven thousand artifacts of all kinds, including incredibly ornate and delicate gold jewelry and a crown. Oh – and the flying horse painting, too (see below).
Eleven thousand. In the smallest mound, of over a thousand mounds.
The mounds – unlike the Pyramids – have been undisturbed for thousands of years, for a simple reason: There are no entrances. The artifacts and bodies (assuming they all contain bodies) were placed, covered over with dirt, and the mound was built over them. In addition to insuring that everything in the mounds will be intact and pristine when they are uncovered, this process can suggest something about their views of the afterlife. There were artifacts buried with the body, perhaps for the person to use in the afterlife, but certainly, whatever the afterlife was, it didn't take place in the mound. The Pyramids included some pretty ornate and elaborate rooms for the deceased to occupy, but for the ancient Koreans, the afterlife was probably... somewhere else.
There was also a museum nearby, covering artifacts from prehistory on, including those from the excavated mounds. I felt it was an awesome museum experience – just artifacts, but arranged and presented in a way that flowed from era to era, from stone tools of the neolithic to bronze to gold, engaging and fluid, moving along through history with a skill that's hard to describe. Just artifacts, and the identifying labels became unnecessary after a while. There was clearly a brilliant historic/aesthetic intelligence at work in the museum's design, and I found it riveting and memorable.
In an adjoining building was displayed a few of the most exquisite of the gold artifacts from the mound (some hanging so that you could stand behind them and be photographed in a way that made it look like you were wearing them). Also there was the museum's – the town's – pride and joy from the tomb – a painting of a flying horse on a piece of birch bark about the size of a dinner tray, done, probably, 5,000 years ago. A replica had been displayed for some time, as the original was stabilized, and had drawn many visitors, but our guide was excited to tell us that recently the original was able to be displayed, and that's what we saw.
This was one of the trip's memorable moments, along with the vase in Tokyo from about the same period. The figure itself brought to mind the cave paintings in France, 30,000 years older, but a product of the same human spirit, awe, shared mythology and artistic impulses and appreciation – on opposite sides of the world.
Mom says she remembers hearing that there were 16 mounds that have been excavated, which could be right. The reason our memories can differ in these cases is because 1) we're old and 2) our shore excursion guides were Japanese (or Korean) and spoke English with varying levels of accuracy. I estimated, for instance, that in the long day at Busan, I understood about 50-60% of what the guide said. I could infer some of it, but most of the rest was lost. Add in the quality of the sound systems and the fact that there are often forty-odd people gathered around trying to hear, it often doesn't work.
Then the trip back to Busan, through the same mountainous terrain – thick forests on steep, round-topped or only slightly peaked mountains. And suddenly you'd come on a small valley, from which has sprung a dozen or two dozen apartment towers – they found a little flat land, and made a town. Then more mountains (and more rain).
Back to Busan, with non-stop apartment towers – 50, 60 floors – one after the other. Even so it looked like a pleasant city, and when we got into it, close up, traveling the city streets back to the ship, the city seemed pleasant, efficient, clean and tidy. There was not as much landscaping in every available square foot as in Japan, but as I think I've noted, in Japan the landscaping is obsessive.
Leaving the city, we stood on deck and watched it glide by; we slid under the enormous bridge held up by threads, it seemed, and then went down to dinner. We sat with a view out the stern windows (you can be grateful that I've decided against a long description of stern windows and their origins) and saw, for quite a long time, a classic Japanese print – the sea, the setting sun through the mist and haze, ranks of mountains, fading as they approached the horizon, and the clouds creating an elegant pattern all their own. We watched it so long that we disturbed the Japanese couples who were sitting at the window, and that's why we didn't take a picture. But we won't forget it.
I realized, when I was writing about Busan, that I had not mentioned that Nagasaki is a center of shipbuilding – we passed many drydocks on the way in and out, many with partly-built ships in them. This – shipbuilding capacity – was one of the reasons Nagasaki was targeted.
So it's still Tuesday, and I'm still enjoying a deck chair, looking out at the sea, in this case, since I chose to sit on the starboard side, right into the Pacific Ocean. We're sailing north from the southernmost provinces of Japan, where we've been for most of the trip, and, I suspect, saying goodbye (sayonara?) to the warm and sunny days. There's a stiff breeze and it's warmest-jacket weather.
I've been watching a lot of waves. I am not yet bored. I've also been thinking Pacific-sized thoughts, so among other things, I've imagined what all the energy in all the waves on earth is like. Enough to spin a small planet, no? Waves are energy – the water doesn't travel anywhere (that's currents which are a whole other thing), but the energy in a wave makes the water go up and down, then off to the next water – up and down again, and again. Waves are energy made real – not the energy in a room, or the energy in a crystal, but real, physics energy, displayed in astounding simplicity, right before your eyes. The sun creates climate which creates wind; the wind creates waves. There's nothing to imagine – it's right there.
And on one (important) level, there is nothing chaotic about the waves on a body of water, even a mega-body like the Pacific. Each wave and wavelet and whitecap is perfectly following the natural laws that created them and maintained them, and will continue to do so forever Given enough data and a big enough processor, we can precisely predict everything there is to know about every erg of energy pushing every molecule of water anywhere on earth. It's all according to plan, and there's nothing chaotic about it at all – like a massive symphony, each wave playing its part.
So that's what I've been thinking about this afternoon. That and whales. I keep thinking I'm seeing a whale, but I'm not. Hope we see some. Or at least a dolphin.
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