Takadanobaba Station in Alameda

Our trip to Hiroshima afforded me my first time to ride Japan's bullet trains, the Shinkansen.  I had heard about Japan's fast trains when my parents returned from their first visit in 1969. I was only six years old and the stories were fantastic. Those first bullet trains looked like they had come out of the science fiction movies. They still do today.  More than 50 years later, the trains are running on an expanded network, at higher speeds. The top speed for bullet trains in the 1960s was 210 kilometers/hour (130 mph). Today, top speeds on the Tokhuko line, which stretches north from Tokyo, are 320 km/hr (199 mph). The top speed on the Tokaido line is 285 km/hr (177 mph). Each train set on the Tokaido line is 16-cars long with a capacity of 1,300 passengers.  The original line, the Tokaido, connected Tokyo and Osaka, via Kyoto, Nagoya, and Yokohama. Today Shinkansen service stretches the entire length of Honshu, Japan's largest island. The service has been extended to Ky

Save the Date! The next Layout Design & Operations Weekend Meet will be Friday February 2 - Sunday February 4, 2024 at the Finley Community Center in Santa Rosa, CA. Join us for a weekend focused on model railroad layout design and operations. A virtual event will also be offered! The final details are still in the works. In the meantime, follow the event page on Facebook for updates or visit the website at  www.bayldops.com  for all the details as they develop and the registration link once that goes live. Open to all modelers. You don't need to be a member of any group to attend.                                                                                               # # #

On Tuesday, August 29, Hiroshima was our destination.  I'd just seen the movie "Oppenheimer" and was glad I saw it before visiting the location of the first angry atomic bomb blast. The politics of the development and eventual decision to use the bomb are probably the most serious that I have ever contemplated.  Visiting Hiroshima was sobering. The city and its memorials showed me the other side, a not-well known side in the U.S., of this war story. In late July, I visited Munich, Germany, another target of Allied bombing in World War II. Both cities have been completely rebuilt. But, the reconstruction (which had to be done) covers over the massive destruction and loss of life.  Reflecting on both visits, I became aware that these were once the countries considered our enemies. We bombed the crap out of them. Today, we are friends.  In both cases, I didn't sense or experience resentment from my hosts. Looking on the rebuilt cities and countries, I felt bad about the

When I left off I had just visited the Todaiji Temple in Nara. From there we visited the Kasugataisha Shrine. This is a shrine devoted to nature and even has a statue of a deer. We fed live deer here. The city of Nara sells special cookies that are good for the deer. Once the deer sense that you have a cookie — they are all over you.  They will bow to get a cookie. Basically you hold the cookie up and the deer will bow its head. I bowed back and we bowed to each other for a while. Then I handed over the cookie. Couldn’t torture them for too long.  They have a lot of lanterns outside the shrine. They only light the lanterns twice a year. That must be something to see. At some shrines, there’s a tradition of buying your fortune. If it’s good, you keep it. If not, you leave it. Mine was not a really good fortune, so I left it tied to a string.  Mine is in the middle (top) with the long tab hanging down. The tour concluded and we took the bus into town and had pizza for lunch. Don’t laugh,