Joanna Lumley's Japan Poem by Sheena Blackhall

Land of the midnight sun's pristine Japan
Hokkaido island shields the red crowned crane
Old ways remembered by an Ainu man

And in Sapporo city soldiers plan
Ice sculptures when snow grips each window pane
Within the Fukushima zone, a ban

On all but one, who hopes that his lifespan
Will see him staying on in his domain
Elsewhere some folk brew sake, rice fields plan

The Shinto Fire Festival, with such elan
The fireballs wheel, fantastic and arcane
Pagodas, earthquakes, lava rivers run

Hot springs. Those of the macaque monkey clan
Soak, preen their partners, coquettish and vain
Like little people bubbling in a pan

And then, to Tokyo, magnificent, urban
Fast as the wind, the famous bullet train
See high buildings rise, dwarf ryokan

All risen since the war, no more shogun
Few Geisha girls, white faced, demure, remain
Quick Sushi bars for the pedestrian
The Nakasendo Way, exhaustion!
Tokyo to Kyoto walking through the pain
Where Cherry blossom flowers, Utopian!

Mount Fuji's on Honshu, cerulean
Skies, lakes and peace together jointly reign
A land of Buddhist temples is Japan

Try a hotel of robots, no woman
Will wait upon you, that's against the grain
See Nagasaki's resurrection

A radish farm, huge veg for the vegan
Beneath a live volcano, Nature's chain
At Okinawa, meet a karate dan

Hear elders singing. One musician
Sounds out the gong, monks chant out a refrain
Elsewhere, small children's class custodian

Puts them through drills, should a volcano damn
The day, erupt and redly rain
Lava and ash, deliver Armaggedon

And Thomas Glover, that amazing man
A Scottish Samurai, trade magician