Perfect Days (Fukuoka / Hiroshima)

On deck under the starry sky of Busan, Alex smokes his last cigarette. At least, that's what he has planned. In Japan, he wants to quit smoking. Cigarettes are far too expensive there, and smoking in public is allowed only in very few zones. This makes it easier to break away from the addiction. Alex shares a dorm room with me on the ferry from Busan to Fukuoka. On a thin roll mat, you lie next to the other passengers on the floor. Just before the ten-hour crossing and night rest, Alex tells me a little about his life as an outsider in an Indian village on the border with Nepal. He has built a small business trading in rare stones throughout Asia. In between, he travels through Southeast Asia, China, and now for the umpteenth time to Japan, where one of his friends lives. He has been living abroad for over seven years and seems to have no desire to return to Germany long-term. Instead, he is considering living in Africa for a longer time next. But those are vague plans. Alex is pretty much the complete opposite of a modern traveler with a to-do list. Most of the time, he finds a place outdoors with his tent or sleeps right on the street. While I occasionally splurge on hotels, his small luxury is staying in budget hostels. People in the rest of Asia generally don't care about such a lifestyle, but it is less popular in the big cities of South Korea or Japan. Alex makes no secret that he wouldn't have come to Japan if he hadn't planned to visit his friend.

The ship finally sets off. The outer decks are closed, and at sea, we quickly realize why. The ferry, with its three levels, rocks so strongly in the waves that I have to hold my bottle of green tea, which Alex has made hot from his thermos, tightly so it doesn't fall off the table. We navigate our way to the karaoke rooms, the drink and slot machines using the railings and walls. Everything runs on cash, which we both don't have. Right now, I'm longing for a pill against seasickness. But the effect of the tea or habit soon sets in, and after we crawl into our bunks past midnight, I sleep better than in the last nights in the overly soft hostel beds. The rocking of the ship has a soothing effect.

Just as Alex has resolved to quit smoking, I have set myself the goal of no longer visiting typical tourist activities. The last few weeks have been well filled and full of impressions that need processing. I want to become the opposite of a bucket list traveler and simply see Japan as it is. Aimlessly wandering around. Every now and then a little sushi.

If someone once again tells me with good intentions that I 'must' see this or that, it will immediately go to the must-NOT-see list. I don't want to visit a single temple or shrine, I tell Alex. But that's the wrong address for him. He describes himself as not particularly religious, but shrines give him a sense of peace. He could sit at shrines and meditate forever. So less than an hour after our arrival in Fukuoka, I break my plan and we stand at the first Shinto shrine. Alex explains to me that these basically house spirits that have different functions. Depending on what strength one wishes for, one goes to the respective temple and prays or asks the spirit for help. The Shinto gates are access points to the area where the spirit resides. Often entire city blocks are surrounded by these gates. Shintos, therefore, do not only live in shrines and temple complexes.

Alex teaches me a few principles of the Japanese code of politeness. Eating while walking is strictly frowned upon. We quickly learn that one does not cross the street at a red light, under any circumstances.

With the metro, I travel to my accommodation in the west of the city. I use my credit card at the station for the payment barrier. The train is silent. A sign instructing to silence phones hangs above the seats with the quiet passengers.

At my destination station, the barrier denies me exit with my credit card. Confused, I walk to the station office and speak to the station staff. Every interaction in Japan has a theatrical quality due to the many mindful gestures. Everyone plays their role. I forget my lines and have to improvise. In each of these encounters, I probably break polite customs a dozen times without knowing it, sprinkling in small bows and 'arigato gozaimasus' all the time. Enter stage: railway employee. Bow from him. Bow from me. He sees my credit card and knows what to do. He speaks something in Japanese and tilts his gaze toward the card I offer him. I nod, he takes it. 'Arigato gozaimasus.' 'Arigato gozaimasus.' He types at a device and holds the card to it. He smilingly hands it back to me along with a small card-sized slip of paper with a short English instruction to submit it as a kind of deposit at the next counter to reset my credit card to zero. 'Arigato gozaimasus.' 'Arigato gozaimasus.' We both smile. Bow from me. Bow from him. 'Arigato gozaimasus.' 'Arigato gozaimasus.' The railway employee exits, I step through the metro barrier. End scene.

In the west of the city lives Axel, whom I met in a hostel in Taipei. Together with his Japanese wife and their little kindergarten-age daughter, he has a chic compact apartment right by the beach. He invites me to his home briefly before we head to the izakaya. Konichiwa, Axel's daughter calls out to me at the door. It's dinner and TV time. In Japan, children's television is combined with an educational program, so I get to practice counting from 1 to 5. 'Ichi, Ni, San, Chi, Go.' The little girl prompts me, and I repeat after her. Axel says that after several years in Japan, he still finds the language challenging. It suffices for phrases and everyday conversations, but even the writing characters pose significant problems for him. Now he intends to learn Japanese alongside his daughter. He's teaching her a bit of French. A language tandem.

Izakayas are the less formal Japanese restaurants. If that's even a category in Japan. In groups, people sit at tables divided by wooden walls, sometimes on the floor. Shoes are left outside or in front of the dining area. Alone or in pairs, you are seated at tables in front of the counter. A combination of small dishes is often served, such as miso soup, a fish or meat dish, pickled radish, and a dessert.

Axel's language level is sufficient to place our order. The atmosphere in the izakaya reminds me a lot of the bar from Wim Wenders' 'Perfect Days', where the protagonist winds down his evening after work. Two regulars sit at the counter. An older couple runs the place, decorated with typical Japanese interior from the 80s but could also be from the 50s. Timelessly simple. He is the cook; she is the waitress. 'Arigato gozaimasus!' 'Arigato gozaimasus!' Axel has ordered us sashimi. It's my first proper dish in Japan, but I can already claim that it's the best food I've had on this trip.

His expat friend Tommy from Bavaria joins us. He has been living in Japan for twelve years and speaks fluent Japanese. It seems to be a good life for the two of them, who have adjusted to the country's peculiarities through their families and the foreign community.

It's hard to switch off in the Shinkansen. For a relaxed train ride where you can read, doze, and write, you probably need to book Sapporo - Kyoto. From Fukuoka to Hiroshima, it's just over an hour travel time. So upon arrival, I look for a bench by the river. A few school-uniformed children are playing by the shore. They throw their half-filled milk cartons into the water to see who can throw farther. Pollution and breaking rules tear at my idealized image of Japan. But children are children everywhere in the world.

In one of the typically Japanese passages with glass roofing, I find a Beatles café: 'Yesterdays.' With its English wooden-panelled interior, record covers, and original concert posters with Japanese characters, it feels like a perfect set. Well copied. I climb up the narrow wooden staircase and sit before the smoking room, which I can look into through the interior windows. Axel was right - smoking is a habit of outsiders. Here at Yesterdays, the avant-garde has gathered to smoke. A guy in his early 30s sits with his rainbow glitter pants and elephant plush handbag next to an older gentleman in a plaid shirt. A beautiful contrast to the black-and-white suit world outside in the rest of the city.

The atmosphere in Hiroshima's Peace Museum is solemnly quiet. Despite the mass of visitors and school groups, no one pushes. Occasionally, you can hear a sniff. The exhibition touches many: remnants of clothing, images of hibakushas (survivors of radiation), diary excerpts from relatives, and children's drawings of the scenes right after the detonation.

In one part of the memorial hall, you can watch eyewitness interviews on PCs. One particularly touches me. A woman recounts how she accompanies her brother as he dies after the bombing, after which she decides to become a peace activist. In her writings and speeches, she not only raised awareness of the horrors of Hiroshima but also did not shy away from mentioning Japanese war crimes.

Only three structures in the epicenter of the detonation survived the inferno. The technical city hall, now a memorial at the river's edge, a gate of a Shinto shrine near the castle, and the steel-reinforced basement of an office building on the river island Tokaichimachi. There, a single employee survived the disaster because he went down at the moment of the drop to get a file. On a memorial plaque at the entrance of the reconstructed house, it says: '...we recall with great sorrow the many lives taken sacrificed to mistaken national policy.' Aha, lives that were sacrificed to misguided national policy... a way to deal with the past. Through convoluted passive sentences. With non-apologies like this, I am not surprised that South Koreans are still waiting for an official apology from the Japanese for the crimes in World War II.

On my way to the walking tour, I spot a German tour group from 30 meters away. I am becoming more and more of an expert in spotting my kind. As I walk past, I catch a few snippets of conversation: 'Why does one come to Hiroshima?' a woman rhetorically asks the group with a meaningful look. She means to say: Nobody comes to Hiroshima for mere tourism, without having the bombing of '45 in mind. Visiting the city, which as a young university town has a lot to offer, doesn’t make you a disaster tourist. But it always resonates, as it does at other locations of human crimes. What is remembrance, what is sightseeing...?

On the tour with the Pakistani guide, I get the impression it is the latter. The engineering student does the thematic tour on the atomic bomb drop to earn some extra money in the process. Accordingly, he rattles off emotionlessly data on fall and detonation height, repeats the same information on various memorial plaques four to five times, and lists facts about the radiation radius and casualty numbers. With a Canadian in the group, I agree that we could have given ourselves a tour packed with superficial Wikipedia knowledge.

Near the station, I walk up a hill with a Shinto shrine.

Alex, the German dropout hobo, is hitchhiking and camping on his way to Kyoto, passing through Hiroshima, he writes to me. The day before, he had set up his tent on the same hill between the shrine and a former WWII observation tower. At 3 am, he heard a noise. A bear or wild boar, he wasn't sure. After sunset at the Peace Stupa over the rooftops of the city, I walk back down the hundred red Shinto gates the steep steps toward civilization.