Miyajima is one of the only places I've ever seen that has a natural beauty to rival the Northwest's. Apparently it's considered one of the three most beautiful places in Japan, and it's only half an hour away (don't ask me what the other two are). This place is simply incredible; it's a small island off the coast of Hiroshima a ways, and is basically just a few mountains covered in trees and gift shops with a big old torii gate built out in the sea in front of them. The mountains are truly sublime. They ripple and roll in a powerfully human way, resembling nothing so much as the folds and wrinkles of the human body. Giant maples fill the creases around the eyes, pines overflow the laugh lines, and the wrinkled old forehead is verdant with sylvan glory. I wish you could all see them - I could not capture them in photographs and I have not the words to do them justice. If any of you come to visit, rest assured that Miyajima will be the first stop.
Not only is the scenery beautiful, but so is the wildlife. Little spotted deer cover the island, and they are so friendly that they wander in herds in the city square, allow themselves to be petted and harassed, and sleep happily along busy walks. I took rather too many pictures of them, so go here for the Deer of Miyajima Photo Page.
While searching online for a map of Hiroshima, I stumbled across the official City of Hiroshima website. It has a bunch of transcripts of the Mayor of Hiroshima's speeches on the themes of peace, disarmament, protest and America. As one might expect, he is a complete nutjob on all of the above. The Pansexual Peace Party tries ever-so-feebly most elections to take the American presidency with a single issue (Sex is good!), yet here in Hiroshima we have a long-standing elected official who bases his entire career on one idea that seems about as well thought out and coherent as the PPP's. He clearly has a stunningly incorrect and insulting conception of why the US bombed Hiroshima. Read this excerpt from a speech about nuclear disarmament, among other things: "Unfortunately, most Americans tend to interpret world events within the framework of the God-given A-bomb rectifying the wrongs brought by the attack on Pearl Harbor." Now clearly there is so much wrong with that statement that the first response should be to laugh out loud. After that, however, the spectacular ignorance and outright and conscious evil of what he says is sickening. He evidently loathes Christianity (for how else could he frame the idea of the 'God-given A-bomb' in the sense that he certainly meant it?), which makes me glad that Hiroshima is such a city of peace and tolerance. Beyond that, if he honestly believes that the primary reason America bombed Hiroshima was to "rectify the... attack on Pearl Harbor", he is so exceptionally blind to history and reality that he is honestly not fit to live, let alone be mayor of a booming metropolis.
As if this were not bad enough by itself, read this quote from a letter he wrote to Bush, purportedly in sympathy for 9/11: "We understand [9/11] because, having experienced a similar tragedy fifty-six years ago, we cannot separate the attacks this year from what happened to us."
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... HOW DARE HE? How dare he? I am made sick, literally sick to my stomach by this quote. The only time I can recall being this angry was on 9/11. That this horrible man is the leader of the city I'm in is almost too much to bear. I'm afraid I'm too angry to enumerate the countless reasons why this upsets me so much, so if for some reason they aren't eminently clear just write me and I'll discuss them in detail.
There are countless other idiocies in the speeches he's made, but they simply pale in comparison. Just for comedy's sake, check out what he said about depleted uranium in Iraq.
Psalm 46: 1-2
