So, it’s the 6th of July, and, well, I’m here.

Of course you’re there, you might say.

But the 5th of July, yesterday, was supposed to be the day when a huge earthquake hit Japan, accompanied by a huge tsunami, according to a manga artist who was supposed to be able to foretell the future.

Obviously, this time the prediction wasn’t quite successful, because nothing really has happened. Although that’s not to underestimate the continuing earthquakes in the southern part of Japan, in the island chain south of Kagoshima.

But although those earthquakes are significant and no doubt quite unsettling for the inhabitants of those islands. They’re far from a potentially country-destroying level earthquake, which was what was prophesied.

So, well, I’m glad I’m still here, and I’m glad that Japan is still here. Let’s leave it at that, shall we?

It’s Easter this weekend. I’m expecting some chocolate from the UK in the post any day now.
But one thing intrigues me. Why isn’t Easter bigger in Japan?
Looking at it superficially, the answer is obvious. Easter is a Christian festival, and Japan isn’t a Christian country. But just look at Valentine’s Day, admittedly not particularly Christian. It’s huge in Japan, perhaps even more so than in the Western countries where it originated.
And then there’s Hallowe’en. There might not be so much trick-or-treating or dressing up, but there are whole shelves of Hallowe’en chocolate and sweets on sale in the supermarket in the weeks before the end of October.
On the face of it, Easter should be a perfect festival for Japan: it has chocolate, and it has the all-important kawaii factor in the form of cute Easter rabbits. It should be up there with Christmas as a major Western day absorbed into Japanese culture.
And yet each year, Easter passes basically unnoticed in Japan. I wonder why?

Outside the supermarket near my house, there’s an ATM- or a cash machine- in a little building. And close to this, there’s the supermarket’s smoking area. As the name would suggest, It’s just a small area behind a fence where people can indulge in their nicotine fix. Why they can’t even go to a supermarket without needing to have a cigarette is beyond me, but that’s another story.
Anyway, today I was waiting to use the ATM, and idly watching the smoking area. In the five or so minutes I was there, every single person who finished their cigarette immediately put a mask on.
Don’t they realize that given that they’ve just been smoking, using a mask is probably a case of too little, too late?

I saw a man washing his car in the supermarket car-park this morning. Just a normal man, washing a normal car. Not someone who worked for the supermarket or anything- in fact, he looked like he was waiting for his wife to come back from doing the shopping.
What was really eye-opening, though, was that he’d got a whole bucket of water and a sponge from somewhere!

There’s a proverb in Japanese, ‘Kodomo wa kaze-no-ko’. It literally means that children are like the wind. They play around in the wind even when it’s bitterly cold, and it’s said that because they’re like the wind, they shouldn’t stay indoors all the time, but should play outside.

Well, there was a blizzard this afternoon, and in the midst of that blizzard, I saw two boys walking home from school, both dressed just in shorts and short-sleeved polo shirts. Nor did they seem uncomfortable- they were laughing and joking as they walked.

I think that might have been taking the whole ‘kaze-no-ko’ thing to extremes!

It’s been really cold over the past week. And here in Hiroshima, when it’s cold outside, most of the time it’s cold inside too. Central heating isn’t a thing, and even when houses have heating, they’re generally not well insulated. Hiroshima is just the wrong temperature: it’s normally not cold enough to need central heating, but when it’s like this it’s too cold without. I suppose it’s like a reverse Goldilocks principle.

Let me tell you how cold it’s been: yesterday, my curtains had frozen to the condensation on my windows!

Today marks a very significant milestone: the 60th birthday of the Tokaido Shinkansen.

The service between Tokyo and Shin-Osaka (the Sanyo Shinkansen wouldn’t open all the way to Hakata for another ten years) was known (marketed?) at the time as ‘Yume no Cho-Tokkyu’ (夢の超特急): the Super-Express of Dreams. What a glorious appellation. But looking back now, when the Shinkansen is so engrained into everyday life in Japan and the system as a whole is an inspiration for high-speed rail networks around the world, I think that it’s almost more appropriate to talk about ‘Cho-tokkyu no yume’ (超特急の夢) instead: the dream of the super-express. Just think what the Shinkansen has made standard, un-noteworthy, in Japan over the past six decades:

• A service with punctuality measured not in minutes but in seconds;
• A long-distance, inter-city service with a frequency akin to a Tokyo commuter line;
• A service that makes travel simple over distances that would previously have been unthinkable without travelling by air.
• A service that has significantly changed the style of both business and leisure in Japan.
• A service that, even now, continues to attract new custom, contributing to economic growth and development, with each new extension to the network.

Networks in other countries may be more extensive, may exceed the Shinkansen in terms of speed; but in terms of frequency, punctuality, ridership and reliability, the Super-Express of Dreams surely still leads the way.

And over the past six decades, the ‘Yume no Cho-Tokkyu’ (夢の超特急) has become the ‘Nichijo no Cho-Tokkyu’ (日常の超特急): the Everyday Super-Express. Perhaps that, more than anything else, is the true achievement of the Shinkansen: it has made punctual, frequent, reliable high-speed railway travel not something out of a dream, but something exceedingly normal.

Here’s to the next six decades of progress.