CEDAR LEAF IN JAPAN Published in Cedar Leaf on December 2013
As we announced in the last edition have been all November in Japan for training related to our work environment in the Departmental Government of Rivera in Uruguay. It was an adventure writing and editing Cedar Leaf this month , stealing a few hours sleep , also on airplanes, in waiting rooms of airports, and other times of the month , but the commitment to you always deserves that little effort but pleasure large, that is to deliver the Cedar Leaf, this month “Made in Japan” . Apologize that the correction may not be optimal , and that the version in the other four languages should also be made more haste than usual. Those who receive by mail our publication will probably even a few hours earlier than usual by jet lag with Uruguay, Japan will “12 hours later”. And this experience in the Far East has given us the possibility of valuable course information provided by the International Cooperation Agency of the Japanese government, we have agreed for the support we got our superiors in the town of Rivera, and once found a very special culture. We were able to visit several cities with epicenter in pretty Kitakyushu City, historic sites true heritage of humanity that go hand in hand with an amazing modern life, technology in all aspects. Today is a country with impressive force of lights, colors, flavors and aromas. People stand in his courteous greeting tilt, kindness, with gentle manners, unhurried but surely, low profile, and even tingling in their major cities, the bet is the physical and spiritual tranquility. A Japanese village in the same context that gives such importance to punctuality as the air we breathe, being late is not provided here, or for a person , a train, a bus, a show. A nation that rose from the cruel wounds of war Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, and today few decades has better partner as which attacker by then, and has spiritual strength values difficult to describe. We collected hundreds of curiosities, but definitely see all the vehicles with the steering wheel and the driver to the right and left hand coming from the street, roads and boulevards, is quite unique. Books, magazines and newspapers beginning in what for us is the last page. We crossed the amazing tunnel under the ocean, walking 70 meters deep , across the Sea of Japan on one side of the earth to the other island , breathe the mystique of all cities of volcanic mountains surrounded with buildings on its slopes to near the top . A village reminiscent of recent injuries and the aftermath of the tsunami and the still worrisome failure of the Fukushima nuclear plant . All lunch with a theme “sticks”, use the bullet train, witness the tea ceremony, and thousands of bikes driven on the sidewalk and among people at high speed, to attend a wedding and photograph us with boyfriends . A turning point was the visit the mystical mausoleum where he was released the atomic bomb in Nagasaki at 11:02 on 9 August 1945.Also is distinct feeling of change of sleep per 12 hours ahead of Uruguay along the long , exhausting , yet captivating journey almost giving a lap around the Earth in kilometers. And in that particular country , contact with the family was fluid with current tools, I could hear Tranqueras radios, and thrill to the TV through the internet with the soccer matches of Uruguay with Jordan , especially on November 13 – birthday this server – when to midnight here in Japan, Uruguay noon , the Uruguay’s football team set foot in Brazil 2014 . And so we passed the Land of the Rising Sun, on the edge of Asia, the Far East, just three times bigger than Earth Uruguay, but with about 150 million …..
José María Almada Sad