Vacation Recap - Days 2 and 3

Day 2 - Miyajima Island

[More pictures available at my Photobucket]

After getting up and heading downtown to Okonomura (a famous building with 30 Okonomiyaki shops) for lunch for the second day in a row, we set off on our trip to the luscious island of Miyajima. After finding out that the Passmo train-fare card that Kevin got was Kanto-region only, and subsequently buying him a ticket, we made our way onto a train. 30 minutes later we were in the port-area of Miyajima, a beautiful city with an indelible view of the island (and vice versa from the islands mountain tops).


The short boat ride across the waters was quite enjoyable - it's nice to see JR (Japanese Rail) has not only the biggest train network in the country, but also its own ferry! The first thing you see in detail upon approaching is the famous orange torii gate - a symbol for a gateway to holiness in Shinto. If you see it in the morning it appears to be "floating on the water," but I preferred this shot I took later on in the day:


There were many touristy shops of course, and even a fairly big residential area away from the main streets. I wonder how much a house there runs for! I also tried the Momiji-Manju, a kind of maple-flavored bun with sweet beans inside. It was OK, but nothing to exceptional. The real novelty of the island however was its massive deer population, perhaps rivaling even Nara:

Some real gorgeous sites.

We eventually started increasing our elevation, but opted not to take the cable car, since that's for old ladies and little kids in my opinion. It was quite the steep ascent though, and there were stairs, stairs and more stairs the whole way up. It was a bit tiring but well worth it, and after a few kilometers we had the pleasure of the gorgeous view from the mountain's top:

There was a rickety old shop at the top of the mountain so I bought some chocolate, sat on a bench and soaked in the breath-taking view. After so much time in the city, this was just what I needed. I took copious amounts of pictures of course. On the way back down we took an alternative route with seemingly less stairs and more windy paths:

Finally we got to the bottom and we were bushed. It was a fun hike and reminded me that I really should check out more of the mountains in the Tokyo area. Not much more to say than the pictures can tell, I believe.



Day 3 - Last Day in Hiroshima

[Photobucket]

I was honestly a bit sad to be leaving Hiroshima. The place we stayed, "K's Guesthouse" was very nice and the whole city just had this mellow vibe to it. I suppose it would get rather boring after a while though, and I'd have to make trips to Osaka see bands on tour and stuff like that.



We had lunch at Okonomura for the 3rd day in a row. I suppose I should explain a bit about Hiroshima's famous okonomiyaki...or maybe just copy and paste a wikipedia article:

"In Hiroshima, the ingredients are layered rather than mixed together. The layers are typically batter, cabbage, pork, optional items (squid, octopus, cheese, etc.), noodles (yakisoba, udon) topped with a fried egg and a generous dollop of okonomiyaki sauce. The amount of cabbage used is usually 3 - 4 times the amount of Osaka style. It starts out piled very high and is generally pushed down as the cabbage cooks. The order of the layers may vary slightly depending on the chef's style and preference, and ingredients will vary depending on the preference of the customer. People from Hiroshima tend to claim that this is the correct way to make okonomiyaki. This style is also called Hiroshima-yaki."

Yep. It's really delicious and seems relatively healthy, with all that cabbage in there. I am sort of craving some Hiroshima-yaki so I may have to find a shop somewhere in Tokyo. Here are some snaps of Okinomura, the famous building full of okonomiyaki stalls:

3 floors devoted to one kind of food.

The lunch rush.

Here's a crappy little video I took with my phone of the stuff being made. Honestly there are better videos on youtube if you are at all curious.

We started off the day by going to the modern art museum, which in all honesty was kind of a mistake. I mean the place was fine and as advertised, but so much of "modern art" is complete wankery. There was some before-after shot from 1973 of a guy falling asleep on the beach with a book on his stomach, so that he got suburned everywhere but there. The coolest thing we saw was a room where you were encouraged to pick up and place various instruments, and a doorway to nowhere in the middle would light up at the vibrations. Anyway, here's a few snaps:

Groundbreaking?

Our next stop however proved to be one of the most beautiful gardens I've ever seen in my life. I didn't have such high expectations and honestly we only went there because the other museums were closed for the holidays, but wow. Shukkei-en is a traditional Japanese garden that might numb you with awe if you have the chance to see it in real life. Everything is completely still except when a coy fish jumps out of the water to snatch a bug. You can see the sky in the water so clearly it looks like another world, it's just amazing.

I think tranquil may be the perfect word for it. Anyway, that's just about it, we killed time for the rest of the evening in anticipation of yet another fun night-bus, only this next one proved to be the worst of our 3 trips. No arm rests, no reclining seats and being squashed together, along with stops every hour that include announcements and lights being turned on, and to top it all off a bunch of girls from Osaka being really chatty all made it a pretty miserable journey. We were happy then when we finally arrived at 5:30am in Kyoto...

To Be Continued...

I'm back! - Vacation Recap Part 1.

12 days later I'm a little more well traveled, a little tired of riding night buses, and very satiated on good food and good times. The vacation was a big success with very few hitches overall. I'll spend the next couple posts giving a breakdown of my vacation, along with a selection of the copious number of photographs I took. (All photos eventually will be accessible via photobucket)

Day -1: Kevin arrives

As you all know my friend Kevin who is usually so on top of things slept through his original flight (which he will never hear the end of from me). What you don't know is that he managed to catch a flight out of Chicago mere hours before some huge snowstorms hit, so it's a wonder that he managed to get here on time at all. As it happened, he was arriving on Christmas Eve, my last day of scheduled work. I didn't know exactly what time he was coming in but gave him the a list of my break-times when he could call my phone, since I can't answer in class and he would be calling from a pay phone.

After spending the whole day sort of worrying about whether he even made it out of Chicago or not, whilst I was helping a staff member move some items for New Years cleaning, I finally got a call around 8:55 from Kevin telling me he's in Shinjuku station. Sweet relief. I met up with him there and was happy to see he opted to use the luggage-moving service I recommended him (just hauling your carry-on through the subways here is troublesome enough), and coincidentally I ran into a few of my co-workers and students who were going out for ramen, so we tagged along with them. Kevin got to try his first authentic Japanese ramen and learned how the coin-based ticket machines worked. He kept saying that it was so surreal being in Japan, it didn't even feel like he was there - with all the creature comforts like a plethora 7/11s and Starbucks that seem to follow one halfway around the globe.

Day 0: Bye bye Tokyo, Hello Hiroshima!

Showed Kevin around town a bit, got our bags ready and left for the bus station around 7. Me being slightly paranoid and extra cautious as I always am, I gave us ample time to find the bus station. We were standing outside for roughly an hour before people started to converge into our area with luggage and whatnot. I asked a girl in Japanese if she was going to Hiroshima, and she said "yea, we're probably taking the same bus." So all seemed well enough.

10 minutes before we were supposed to leave, wondering where the bus and where the rest of the people who were riding it could be, that same girl comes up a flight of stairs and is saying something that I don't quite understand. Something about going down, and finally I get that she's telling us to check in with the bus people downstairs in the concourse. Naturally when we got there there were nearly 100 people standing around waiting - the night-bus has gotten quite popular as of late, considering that it normally runs around half the price of the shinkansen (bullet train). We checked in, and not a moment to soon, since we only waited about another 5 minutes before we boarded. The bus was decent, comfortable enough and we could recline somewhat despite the curse of our tallness leaving something to be desired for leg-room. It was a 12 hour ride though, and I only managed to sleep for about 2 of those hours, but survived nonetheless. Kevin however could sleep through an earthquake measuring 10.5 on the Rickter scale.

Day 1: The Peace museum, the A-bomb Dome & Hiroshima castle.

It was a nice feeling after that long bus ride to be greeted cheerily by Mami at the bus station around 8:30am. Mami was the T.A. (Teacher's Assistant) for my Japanese class in my last semester of college, and I told her I planned to visit her if and when I moved to Japan. There's one promise kept. Her energy seemed contagious, and after dropping off our bags at the ryokan (Japanese-style inn) we were staying at we made way.

En Preparacion.

Hiroshima is, to me, a beautiful little city. It's so small-time compared to Tokyo that if it wasn't for the unfortunate events of 1945, it would scantly be on the radar, paling in comparison to the other monstrous metropolises I've seen thus far. The visible mountains in the distance and the sheer openness of everything was like a breath of fresh air to me. The rivers and bridges integrated with the city were also quite beautiful. Still more unlike Tokyo, Hiroshima has a tram-line that goes through some major parts of the city for easy access. Our first stop was the Atomic Bomb dome, a dilapidated building which was directly beneath the a-bomb and was therefore spared from complete destruction.

Atomic Bomb Dome.

A city view.

The Peace Park begins with the A-Bomb dome and leads to the much visited museum, so we went there next. It was big and quite beautiful despite our sleep deprivation. Mami said that she had been to the museum several times when she was younger on school trips, but was most often chatting away with her friends or not really paying attention, so this would be her chance to really learn something. After a failed attempt at a tour from a volunteer guide who seemed to be looking more for free English practice than anything else, and subsequently ditched her as fast as possible without being blatantly rude and took a subsequent sidequest to experience Hiroshima's other claim to fame: Okonomiyaki (literally: "Cooked as you like it")

Okonomiyaki

Sidequest complete and bellies full, we returned to the peace museum. As it turns out they systematically structured the museum to get gradually more and more depressing as you go through the thing. It starts off innocently enough, with a rather truncated history of events before, during and after the war. Then things get gradually heavier until you're seeing pictures of melted bodies and actual tongues and other actual bodily components kept intact to display the havoc that radioactivity reeked upon them. The most moving thing to me was the stories of individuals, broken lives and people scrawling names on bricks in vain efforts to find information on family members. I'm glad I made it through there but have no plans on going again any time too soon. There were also other cool bits to the museum like a letter from Einstein, and information such as leaflets dropped by the U.S. Government and destroyed by the Japanese during the war.

After all that we needed something lighthearted to take our minds off the monument to tragedy we just witnessed, so we went to Hiroshima castle! The place was beautiful and offered numerous photo opportunities.

Hiroshima Castle.

The moat!

Our ever-vigilant female Samurai guide, Mami-san.

After all this we were pretty beat, but still we pressed on since Mami was leaving for Grandmother's the next day and wouldn't be around to hang out with us anymore. We had some delicious Kaiten Zushi (Rotating Sushi) - you know the kind of place where they have fresh-made plates you can choose from rotating on a conveyer belt - and finally did a bit of Karaoke. I passed out some time around 8, knowing that going to Miyajima island the next day would be equally as exciting, even without Mami: less atomic stuff, more wild deer!

To Be Continued...

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For more pictues, see my future site for hosting pictures (since blogspot has a cap), Photobucket.