What happens if somebody visits Hiroshima?

Recently, the newspapers, websites and news blogs were full of analyses of Obama’s proposed visit to Hiroshima. When some of my friends told about the plan of the president to visit there, I was skeptic and told them that it will not happen. The proposed visit had some thing to do with our high school physics book.

Neither politics is a subject to ignite ideas for blog posts here nor do I intend to criticize the diplomacy of politicians. Criticism, especially negative will not yield any positive result.

The equation we learned in our physics class was e = mc2. Our physics teacher, Girijan Master explained the meaning of each component in the equation. Girijan Master was not simply a teacher for me. We at high schools used to listen to him as if we hear an interesting story when he teaches complex theories of physics. It was thus we heard more about the city of Hiroshima, far away from our home town and country, in Japan.

By the time we reached High school, we had enough general knowledge about Japan and its importance in the technology products supplying to other nations. Moreover, we heard from our history teacher regarding the heroic acts of Japanese military that triumphed over European and American power axis during World War II. The history teachers were not so serious to tell us what went wrong with the war at last.

What happened before sixty or seventy years before may not be interesting to the younger generations, but when it still can influence the lives, we have to listen to the history. Looking back more seriously to what Girijan master told us when he explained the miseries of human beings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I can now realize that the energy equals mass multiplied by square of speed of light has many things to do with politics, human sufferings, power shift, alignment of nations, trade and business.

History is not written with golden letters always. Many times it is written with a knife that has the stain of blood of many innocents. Revisiting the history needs much more political will and compassion to those innocents. It may not always come with the determination of a political group that depends on the support of  majority. It is here Bertrand Russel proves himself true in saying that truth is not always absolutely true, but is what the authority or majority says. Then the chances for truth are fifty percent in the present day society. It may not be always the truth we hear as the truth is decided by the majority.

War is a crime, whoever is responsible for it. It is also true that no present-day generation can be blamed for what had happened in the past. What we can do is to learn from the past and take caution not to repeat the same mistakes that happened once in our history.

Girijan master taught us the famous energy equation on an August. That may be purely coincidence. The test ground of energy equation waited for the president which never happened. What happened in the past must not be willingly important to the present generations especially when it involves many complicated self-disgusting historical facts. We may not be able to wipe out the energy equation getting realized in many countries, but at least a caution is required to save our future generations.

This post does not attempt to find fault with anybody, but just wanted to reiterate what Girijan master taught us in our High school class. The ‘e’ that stands for energy can stand for emotion also. Then the mc (mass x velocity of light) can stand for man’s common-sense (mc). Emotions of hundreds of thousands of innocents are in the hands of common-sense of our political leaders.

A free visit to Ueno zoological park, Tokyo

The weather was suitable for an outing today with moderate cold and sun. It helped us not to change our previous plan to visit Ueno zoological park. The drive to visit the zoo was our daughter’s demand to see the animal characters which she had imagined while hearing bed-time stories.

For us, telling Panchatantra stories to children is a way of imparting moral values too. Children imbibe social values and importance of team work, social life etc through stories of animals. Originally written by Vishnusharma centuries ago, Panchatantra stories are very popular in India even today. Bed time stories help children to grow their visualization and imagination process, thereby help to ignite their hidden passions for creativity.

To our surprise, when we reached at the gate by exiting through JR-line, it was written in big red words that the “ADMISSION IS FREE”. Good! In English too. Once more I confirmed by asking the staff at the gate of Ueno zoo that admission is free today. In fact we were unaware of this fact. I have read in some of the Japan tour website that admission to the zoo on the foundation day of the zoo, probably on March of every year, on Greenery day and on October 1st etc are free, but never expected to be free today. The ticket fare for an adult is 600 Japanese yen on normal days.

There really are a lot to see in Ueno zoological park. It is one of the favored tourist spots in Tokyo and foreigners also prefer to visit on their short visit to Tokyo. If we search for some of the must see places in Tokyo, name of Ueno zoo also will appear in the search results. I got the same when I did a google search last year to make a list of places to see in Tokyo.

Ueno zoological park is wide and the exact geographical details may be available at the zoo official website. We entered the Ueno zoo through the Main gate which comes from the JR Ueno station. Right at the entrance, we can see Pandas. On the right side of the entrance we can see a variety of pheasants and pigeons including Japanese pigeon. The red panda is one of the famous attractions of Ueno zoo. Unfortunately the Panda region of the park is missing the giant panda. There we could see a notice that the giant panda was died on April 2008.

We walked to show elephants and monkeys. On the way, we could see the Thai pavilion, which was donated by Royal Thai government. Elephant forest section is one of the popular sections of the zoo. For us, we have seen many elephants in the past and elephants are part of the social life for people hail from Kerala. The elephants at Ueno zoo could not bring any nostalgia to me!

There are Japanese cranes and birds on the left side of the entrance. After taking our lunch we proceeded towards the mono-rail that goes to the West Garden. The monorail starts from East garden. Ueno zoo has two areas. One is West garden and the second one is East Garden. This separation is easier to make plan for visitors according to their preference to see animals.

The main attractions on the West garden are Kangaroos, Vivarium, Giraffe, Okapis, Alligators, Snakes, Frogs, Turtles, Penguins, Rhinoceroses, Zebra (which is one of the favorite characters in my daughter’s bed-time stories), Hippopotamuses and Flamingos etc. It was an eye-catching scene flamingos stand on single foot.

The attractions in the East garden are Lion, Tiger, Gorilla, Lama, Polar bear, varieties of birds apart from the elephants, pandas and monkeys.

The zoo is well maintained by the staff and rest rooms are located at the right places for the convenience of visitors. Food items are also available at major junctions and enough numbers of benches and tables are also properly set. Ueno zoo, with cafeteria, free rest rooms, rental strollers, baby stations, nursery room, first aid station etc., is an ideal place for outing with kids.

I strongly recommend visit Ueno zoo if you are making a trip to Tokyo with or without your family. It is a place to see in Tokyo.

Emotion recollected in tranquility!

There might be a Wordsworth walking in the tile paved streets. He might have written thousands of praising words and poems on his solitude about the colorful leaves that falls on the street. On his way back to home through this street, he might have spent more of his unconstrained time on one of the wooden benches on the garden imbibing the beauty of the nature.

It is thus the poetry takes birth. The beauty of nature here in autumn season will inspire even a monster! Emotions could be recollected in this tranquility, thanks to Wordsworth for putting all those words to make a meaningful definition for poetry.

Life in Japan is more beautiful than before with the start of autumn season. Life becomes colorful when the nature around us makes up herself in colorful wardrobe. During autumn season, leaves change their color, thus making the whole panorama more scenic.

This photo is taken from the balcony of our apartment. The street down was not visible with the densely packed green leaves till some days back, now turned to be visible from top. The green leaves also turned into different colors.

This street that goes to the Higashi Ojima station looks enticing with yellow, orange, green, orange, dark brown and red leaves intermingles each other. Ideal place to spend time during day time if we are free!

The trees near the river bank also turned their leaves colorful, making the river more attractive than ever before.