Beautiful Japan?

The cherry blossoms have been out in Hiroshima for about a week now. Traditionally, this is considered the most beautiful time of year. Sakura are a national obsession, and this obsession is accompanied by the "hanami" party, where people gather under the blossoms to eat, drink, and appreciate nature. Unfortunately, with our preference for disposability, this produces a lot of garbage. Normally, the Peace Park is quite nice, and I have really enjoyed walking through it day after day on my toing-and-froing. During cherry blossom season, though, the place is filled with huge piles of garbage and the accompanying smells. It's supposed to be the most beautiful time of year, but it's actually quite unpleasant. People should be asked, told if necessary, to carry their garbage home; the park authority should remove all garbage containers for the duration of the season; bike ticketers should be reassigned to policing litter and fining litterers. It would make such an enormous difference. It's a bit late for this season, but it would make a great activity for an environmental group--gonna have to put this on the list of things to do for next year.

One of my students wrote a really great essay this year about Mt. Fuji. Apparently, there has been a movement to make it a World Heritage Site, but it has been repeatedly rejected because of--you guessed it--all the litter. The movement has focused on making it some sort of national cultural heritage site, but they're still having trouble with it. Late last year, on my third trip to Tokyo, I finally got to see Mt. Fuji from the shinkansen. I've been looking forward to it since I first got to Japan, and the experience was mixed. It was a cloudy day, and I could barely see the outline of its base rising up into the clouds. It is really awesome, in an older sense of the word. Part of the appeal of Mt. Fuji is that it stands out so much. Many mountains of similar size are surrounded by other really huge mountains that put it into perspective, but everything around Mt. Fuji just makes it look bigger. But as I looked out the window, trying to see how far up I could make out the slopes of the mountain, something jutted into the foreground. It was a smokestack, with a fume of brown smoke drifting up to merge with the clouds. I checked it again on the way back, and that damned smokestack sits dead centre in that particular view of the mountain. So there's a bigger project, save Mt. Fuji from litterers and smokestacks.