Goodbye Tokyo!
August 2, 2007
Today was chock full of military madness! We spent most of the day at Yokosuka base, south of Tokyo. It is pretty much the central HQ of the US navy in Japan. I had never really been to a big navy base, and I was surprised at the sheer size of things. Being that my conference is actually a big deal, we were greeted by the Admiral of the entire Japan fleet, Jim something. He is in charge of something like 12 bases over 9 time zones and 52 million sq miles of ocean!! Pretty huge. The US Ambassador to Japan, Amb. Schieffer, also joined us. He was very nice as well, but reminded me far too much of a mini Dick Cheney, considering all the neo-con rhetoric that came out of his mouth (democracy this, war spending that, etc.) It was a big change from our previous adventures, and some of the delegates were upset that we spent an entire day looking at military stuff. By that I mean we were reminded by the Navy about how powerful the US is and how great they are. I am impressed by what we saw and I do think the military does lots of things, but it was a bit unsettling to hear about “destroyers” and missiles and bombs and other destructive things so much.
After a tour of a dry dock, which was also impressive, we had lunch with various high ranking Navy officials. I sat with the Dean of the Japanese Navel Defense Academy (similar to USAFA) and chatted about why I think religion should be a part of his curriculum. He laughed at first, like many Japanese do, saying “Well the Japanese are not religious!” but after a bit of questioning, I think he saw my side of things. He is interested in the booklet my group hopes to publish.
Then we had tours of the USS Blue Ridge, a huge ship (though not an aircraft carrier). It holds somewhere around 2000 people at any time out at sea. I was disturbed at how claustrophobic the living quarters were and how gray everything was (apparently it wasn’t gray enough, because the ship had come in literally 5 minutes before we toured it from Australia, and immediately a crew was out repainting it gray even though it was already gray…weird). The people were all very friendly (I think the soldiers hadn’t seen good looking women in a while) and it was quite interesting (look for my pictures). Then we had a complete change and toured a Japanese “self-defense” force ship. Though it is American built, it is completely Japanese. My question after viewing the ship is how “self-defense” –esque it is. The captain emphasized the striking capabilities throughout, even showing us videos of test fires and then showing us the real missile holder thingy and the huge guns. He seemed very proud of it all. I need more time to sort my thoughts on this out, but it felt strange.
The message all the military personnel wanted us to take home was how strong the Japan US alliance is. I believe them. Everyone seems very chummy. It is strange to think that only 60 years ago everything was drastically different.
Our evening ended in Yokohama, a very nice, modern looking town, with dinner in Yokohama’s China town. Food was good. Which reminds me – a short list of the weird things I have eaten here in Japan thus far: 1) jelly fish (thought it was noodles, a little freaked out afterwards but it was rather tasty), 2) chicken liver and other assorted parts (yakitori is chicken parts on skewers and it is very good, but they do use most if not all of the bird), 3) scrambled egg patty thing stuffed with tuna and mayo (breakfast food here is very strange), 4) several things I could not identify which had very strange texture. All in all, not so bad!
We leave Tokyo super early tomorrow to head up north. A typhoon is supposedly following. Should be interesting.
Today was chock full of military madness! We spent most of the day at Yokosuka base, south of Tokyo. It is pretty much the central HQ of the US navy in Japan. I had never really been to a big navy base, and I was surprised at the sheer size of things. Being that my conference is actually a big deal, we were greeted by the Admiral of the entire Japan fleet, Jim something. He is in charge of something like 12 bases over 9 time zones and 52 million sq miles of ocean!! Pretty huge. The US Ambassador to Japan, Amb. Schieffer, also joined us. He was very nice as well, but reminded me far too much of a mini Dick Cheney, considering all the neo-con rhetoric that came out of his mouth (democracy this, war spending that, etc.) It was a big change from our previous adventures, and some of the delegates were upset that we spent an entire day looking at military stuff. By that I mean we were reminded by the Navy about how powerful the US is and how great they are. I am impressed by what we saw and I do think the military does lots of things, but it was a bit unsettling to hear about “destroyers” and missiles and bombs and other destructive things so much.
After a tour of a dry dock, which was also impressive, we had lunch with various high ranking Navy officials. I sat with the Dean of the Japanese Navel Defense Academy (similar to USAFA) and chatted about why I think religion should be a part of his curriculum. He laughed at first, like many Japanese do, saying “Well the Japanese are not religious!” but after a bit of questioning, I think he saw my side of things. He is interested in the booklet my group hopes to publish.
Then we had tours of the USS Blue Ridge, a huge ship (though not an aircraft carrier). It holds somewhere around 2000 people at any time out at sea. I was disturbed at how claustrophobic the living quarters were and how gray everything was (apparently it wasn’t gray enough, because the ship had come in literally 5 minutes before we toured it from Australia, and immediately a crew was out repainting it gray even though it was already gray…weird). The people were all very friendly (I think the soldiers hadn’t seen good looking women in a while) and it was quite interesting (look for my pictures). Then we had a complete change and toured a Japanese “self-defense” force ship. Though it is American built, it is completely Japanese. My question after viewing the ship is how “self-defense” –esque it is. The captain emphasized the striking capabilities throughout, even showing us videos of test fires and then showing us the real missile holder thingy and the huge guns. He seemed very proud of it all. I need more time to sort my thoughts on this out, but it felt strange.
The message all the military personnel wanted us to take home was how strong the Japan US alliance is. I believe them. Everyone seems very chummy. It is strange to think that only 60 years ago everything was drastically different.
Our evening ended in Yokohama, a very nice, modern looking town, with dinner in Yokohama’s China town. Food was good. Which reminds me – a short list of the weird things I have eaten here in Japan thus far: 1) jelly fish (thought it was noodles, a little freaked out afterwards but it was rather tasty), 2) chicken liver and other assorted parts (yakitori is chicken parts on skewers and it is very good, but they do use most if not all of the bird), 3) scrambled egg patty thing stuffed with tuna and mayo (breakfast food here is very strange), 4) several things I could not identify which had very strange texture. All in all, not so bad!
We leave Tokyo super early tomorrow to head up north. A typhoon is supposedly following. Should be interesting.
Perception of Japanese culture, based on your visit: food, spirituality, technology, productivity, decorum, ritual... Perception of American culture, based on your visit: military power and destruction. The Japanese "self-defense" ship illustrates the Kafkaesque experience. Way back in U.S. history when we were isolationist and had virtually no standing army, the cabinet position used to be called the War Department. When we built up our military to world power status and began to pursue an aggesssive military policy, the name changed to the Department of Defense.
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