Making A Trip To Japan? Add Chugoku To The List

Making A Trip To Japan? Add Chugoku To The List - Recently, a group of journalists from Malaysia were invited to travel around Shikoku, the smallest of Japan’s four main islands. The trip also included a visit to Okayama and Hiroshima. Read the first part of the article here.

Our time in Shikoku, Japan was bookended by an overnight stay in Okayama and a six-hour dash through a few key attractions in Hiroshima. The visits to these two cities made up the Chugoku portion of our four-day media trip last December.

Considering that the region consists of five prefectures huddled in the westernmost portion of Honshu, Japan’s largest island, we barely scratched the surface. But it was enough to make it clear that Chugoku has much to offer if we care to look beyond the usual Honshu destinations such as Tokyo, Kyoto and Osaka.

Okayama began as a castle town, and Okayama Castle continues to be one of the city centre’s most prominent features, but much of it, including the keep which was destroyed during World War II, were reconstructed about 50 years ago.

A replica lacks historical resonance, but the castle remains a handsome and imposing landmark. It is also known as Crow Castle because the outer walls of the keep are black.

The Asahi River separates the castle from another of the city’s top attractions – Korakuen, which has long been regarded as one of the country’s three great gardens. It is a mystery how this trio was picked, but the other two are in Mito and Kanazawa.

More than 300 years old, Korakuen was designed to delight the visitor as he strolls along its snaking path because there is something new to see at every turn. Unfortunately, we were there in winter, when the garden is not at its vibrant best.

A short train ride from Okayama city brought us to Kurashiki, whose prime draw is the Bikan Historical Area. Formerly a hub for the rice trade, the place has suffered little wartime damage and has kept many of its Old World characteristics, particularly the buildings. People come here for the ambience, the sights and shopping.

Two things stood out in our few hours in Hiroshima, and it was an odd pairing.

The first thing we did when we arrived in the city was to grab lunch and one of the must-eats, we were told, is okonomiyaki. Here is how the JNTO describes it: “Okonomiyaki (savoury pancakes) is a dish made by mixing ingredients like finely sliced squid, shrimp, pork, beef and cabbage into a batter made from flour and grilling on a flat iron grill.”

Hiroshima takes pride in its version of okonomiyaki. It is claimed that the city has the most okonomiyaki restaurants in Japan. That is not difficult to swallow because we ate at Okonomimura, a building that had about 25 such eateries spread over three floors.

We next experienced a more sombre side of the city when visiting the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and the nearby A-bomb Dome. The museum’s displays are meant to convey the horrors caused by the atomic bomb that was dropped over Hiroshima in August 1945, while the dome is a grim reminder of the event.

A tourism leaflet calls Hiroshima a “city that prays for world peace”. Indeed, no other city has a more compelling reason for doing that.

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Antibiotics Consumption Soars, Fueling Fears Over Superbugs

Antibiotics Consumption Soars, Fueling Fears Over Superbugs - A STUDY in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) – based on sales data for 76 countries – shows that consumption of antibiotics increased 65% from 2000 to 2015, driven by users in low- and middle-income countries.

The research team headed by scientists from Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy in the US capital said countries needed to invest in alternative treatments, sanitation and vaccination.

“With antibiotic consumption increasing worldwide, the challenge posed by antibiotic resistance is likely to get worse,” said the authors of the study.

“Antibiotic resistance, driven by antibiotic consumption, is a growing global health threat,” it said.

“As with climate change, there may be an unknown tipping point, and this could herald a future without effective antibiotics.”

In the 76 countries studied, the number of so-called “defined daily doses” consumed rose from 21.2 billion in 2000 to 34.8 billion in 2015.

Eili Klein, a researcher at the Center for Disease Dynamics, Economics and Policy and one of the study’s authors, said the jump signifies “increased access to needed drugs in countries with lots of disease that can be effectively treated with antibiotics”.

But, Klein warned: “As more and more countries gain access to these drugs, these rates will only increase and that will drive resistance rates higher.”

One group of experts formed in the United Kingdom in 2014 estimates that in 2016, there were at least 700,000 deaths related to drug-resistant infections.

Over the 16-year period studied, the increase in antibiotics consumption was marginal in the three countries with the highest usage – the United States, France and Italy.

But it was a different story elsewhere: in Asia, consumption of antibiotics more than doubled in India, skyrocketed 79% in China and rose 65% in Pakistan.

The three countries are the biggest users of antibiotics among the countries deemed low and middle-income for the purposes of the study.

They are also countries that suffer in some areas from poor sanitation, irregular access to vaccines and a lack of cleaning drinking water – all conditions that allow infectious diseases and drug-resistant infections to spread.

“Radical rethinking of policies to reduce consumption is necessary, including major investments in improved hygiene, sanitation, vaccination, and access to diagnostic tools both to prevent unnecessary antibiotic use and to decrease the burden of infectious disease,” the study says.

For Klein, eliminating overuse of antibiotics should be “a first step and a priority for every country” especially given the alarming projection that by 2030, consumption may have increased by another 200%.

“Estimates are that 30% of use in high income countries is inappropriate,” Klein told AFP.

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