No war on Iraq!

Oh, and no foreigners in Japan!

My buddy Albert and I attended a peace rally last weekend in Hibiya park. I thought it would be a good thing to do, you know - the prospect of the US going to war with Iraq right now seems so imminent and unavoidable, and what can I do to change anything? But there is something about marching in the street with thousands of others that helps you to consolidate and affirm your beliefs and at least give you a little hope that their might be the smallest of chances that the world's leaders might all have evolved beyond them having to kill innocent people to sort out their differences.

Anyway, that was the plan. Only we didn't actually get to the marching stage.

The turnout was impressive - someone I spoke to estimated the crowd at over 40,000 people. I guess it is all relative and in a city of over 10 million maybe those numbers are a tad disappointing, but the Japanese are very much a people to avoid making a public protest about anything, so with that in mind it was still encouraging to see so many people in agreement on one fundamental issue. Lots of clever signs abounded, from more serious photos painting Iraqi children as the real victims should war break out to cartoons of sumo wrestlers tackling George Bush.

The problem was that war with Iraq wasn't the only issue being voiced in the park. And the march was running over time by an hour and a half. When were we going to move? I had already had enough of the conversation with the guy behind me bagging all Americans - when will people learn to not judge the citizens of a country by their government? I thought at a peace rally such close-minded views on things would be absent...

While Albert and I were standing in line (it had now been 3 hours, and we were cold, hungry and tired) waiting for the march to begin, an old man, probably in his 70s, approached us and quite aggressively tried to force a leaflet in Japanese into my hand.

He asked me in Japanese:

"Can you read this?"

Now I am not the type of person to take leaflets from people at the best of times, there are so many people handing out crap in front of the train stations in Tokyo that it just gets too much. I politely declined, explaining that I couldn't read it.

His reply:

"Bah! It's no good that you can only read English! Get your girlfriend to read it to you!"

I was taken aback. Assuming that my girlfriend was Japanese was pretty ballsy of him. I explained that this was not the case and that, being an Australian, she was also unable to read his important piece of paper, so no thankyou.

"Australian? Hrrmph!"

It was at this point that he broke into badly pronounced English.

"Australia, BAD, ne?"

We have been in this country for a while now, and there are some Japanese habits that I have unwittingly adopted as a result. One of them is the gradual cocking of my head to one side while saying nothing whenever I am confronted with something of which I either disapprove or confuses me. It's very Japanese body language but I can't help it. This was one of the moments when I reacted as such.

The old man's lower lip started to tremble. He raised his voice and pointed accusingly at me, an extremely rude gesture in Japan:

"I REMEMBER ZA BOMB!" he shouted at me, anguish burning in his eyes.

That was enough, I was rattled. I caught myself from engaging in a pointless debate about World War II or justifying my Australianness, we were at a peace march for chrissake. Instead Albert and I headed for home - the march could proceed without us.