JAPAN 2019
Hiroshima was never on my list of places I really wanted to go, but when you travel all the way to Japan, it feels like a necessary stop to see how this city has rebuilt since that tragic day in August of 1945.
February 5
Between Osaka and Hiroshima is a couple stops that I think would be worthwhile for a stopover on the way. Our first stop is in the town famous for beef... Kobe. It's a bit surprising to get off the train and walk through a completely deserted station, is everyone off looking after the Kobe cows? We loaded our luggage into lockers (barely), and went for a morning hike.
It's a nice little walk to Nunobiki falls, as we only pass a few other tourists on their way back.
Nunobiki waterfalls comprises four separate falls: Ontaki, Mentaki, Tsutsumigadaki, and Meotodaki.
At the lookouts for the falls are several small temples with offerings.
The tallest of the Nunobiki Waterfalls, Ontaki is 43 meters tall, and its name comes from its draped cloth-like appearance.
Sometimes you see signs, and you can guess what they mean, like this sign warning against giving wild hogs bags of turnips. The other sign with its fading paint may be warning against an evil clown that abducts children... but I'm not sure.
It was a nice little detour, but our next one would be much bigger. Back to the near empty Kobe station to catch the Shinkansen Kodama Train to Hijemi Castle.
I should have suspected that there might be a surprise in store for us, when I noticed the Hello Kitty additions to the JR ticket office, but we just expected a train that looked like the one below to pull up at 11:42...
but no!!! A pink coloured Shinkansen pulls up. The ultimate jackpot, we randomly booked a ticket for the Hello Kitty Shinkansen!
It's all decked out in little Hello Kitty graphics, the tray tables, the doors, even the squatter toilet is Hello Kitty.
Our next stopover was Himeji Station, home to one of the highlight castles in Japan.
The lobby of the station contains an amazing example of a golden gilded royal carriage., each side uniquely different.
A short walk from the station is Himeji Castle, so we stuffed our luggage in lockers again. Himeji Castle, also known as White Heron Castle (Shirasagijo) due to its elegant, white appearance, is widely considered as Japan's most spectacular castle for its imposing size and beauty and its well preserved, complex castle grounds. The castle is both a national treasure and a world heritage site. Unlike many other Japanese castles, it was never destroyed by war, earthquake or fire and survives to this day as one of the country's twelve original castles.
The first fortifications built on the site were completed in the 1400s, and were gradually enlarged over the centuries by the various clans who ruled over the region. The castle complex as it survives today is over 400 years old and was completed in 1609. It is made up of over eighty buildings spread across multiple baileys, which are connected by a series of gates and winding paths.
We were able to enter the winding castle, and see displays of weaponry and historical facts about the castle. Like always you have to remove your shoes and wear provided slippers around the massive hardwood floors and stairs.
The views from the upper levels over the city are amazing.
The fish-shaped roof ornaments are believed to protect from fire, apparently they work for this castle..
The manhole covers are beautifully adorned with symbols of the city.
We didn't spend much more time in Hijemi, but they did have some unique buildings, and I'm still not sure what this "Club Sega" entails.
It would take 2 more trains to get to Hiroshima, the Shinkansen Hikari, and the Shinkansen Sakura.
When you are traveling between cities, not all trains have a girl coming around with a cart full of drinks and snacks, so it's a great idea to get some food before boarding your train. Just be aware that in the subways and inside-the-city trains/trams it can be considered rude to eat or drink. One of the great aspects of certain stations are the platform stores, want a bento box for your train ride? Do you need snacks from 7-Eleven for your trip? Or how about a selection of beer, wine, or sake to make the trip go faster?
Our most common option was to look for one of the great bakeries in the train stations. You take a tray and a pair of tongs and select whichever fresh sandwiches or dessert items appeal to you and they pack them in a bag for you to take on your trip.
Loving these signs for the cell phone zombies and incessant selfie Stick users.
One last train ride, and we would finally arrive in Hiroshima, now worries about requiring an early check-In today.
Hiroshima
The Flex Hotel in Hiroshima is very convenient to the train station, but the building looks like something out of the 50's, in fact a lot of the buildings in this city look like they are from the 50's. I guess that would make sense for a city that had to completely rebuild after World War 2 ended. It was called the Flex Hotel, but there was really no room to flex at all, the bed took up almost the entire room, and we couldn't even roll our baggage past it. At least it Included breakfast and had nice views over the city.
Just across the street from the hotel was a simple looking restaurant called Royal Host, we basically had dinner at a Japanese Denny's.
Ten basic guidelines about using Chopsticks in Japan...
- Hold them properly, learn to grip them about 2/3 of the way up the handles
- When you finish eating or when you want to put down your chopsticks, don’t just put them flat on the table as this is considered unhygienic. Many places provide chopstick holders (called hashi-oki in Japanese), a small oblong piece often made out of porcelain for you to rest your chopsticks on. Or, make your own out of the paper wrapper.
- Lift the rice with your chopstick. While you might see people putting the bowl against their mouth and scooping the rice in with their chopsticks, it is often considered as bad table manners in Japan.
- While it is considered bad table manners to scoop rice into your mouth directly from the bowl, it is perfectly fine to drink soup in this way. Slurping is considered a compliment.
- A big no-no is sticking a pair of chopsticks upright in a bowl of rice. This is considered highly offensive as this is done during funerals as an offering to the deceased. Also do not leave your chopsticks placed like a cross on your bowl as this symbolizes death.
- Another big taboo is passing food from chopstick to chopstick as this resembles a funeral ritual where bones of the deceased are passed from person to person into an urn with a pair of chopsticks. If somebody passes you food, simply have them place it on your bowl or a plate but never take it with your own chopsticks.
- While you might think they would make a great pair of drumsticks or putting them up your nose just for the fun of it, it is frowned upon and considered bad manners. And while it might seem fashionable, chopsticks are also not meant to be used as hair accessories.
- Do not stab or spear food with a chopstick. This is considered rude and poor table manners.
- Do not point with your chopsticks. Just like pointing at someone with your finger is considered rude, holding a pair of chopsticks and pointing them at someone is considered equally rude.
- Do not wash your chopsticks in a bowl of soup or water to clean it from bits stuck to your chopsticks. Also, do not suck the food off of them, it's considered unhygenic.
February 6
Hiroshima had a Hop on - Hop off Bus that was free for JR Pass holders, so we would take advantage of that for the day.
Our first stop was for Hiroshima Castle and the surrounding parklands.
As you walk through the park, there is some definite oddities, there are huge eggs gathered in little clusters. Later we found out it is for an evening lights in the park event. If you look closely, you'll notice that at least one egg must have hatched.
Hiroshima Castle, also called the Carp Castle, is a good example of a castle built on a plain in the center of a city as opposed to hilltop and mountaintop castles. Its main keep is five stories tall, and its grounds are surrounded by a moat. Built in 1589 by the powerful feudal lord Mori Terumoto, Hiroshima Castle was an important seat of power in Western Japan. While it was spared the demolishment that many other castles met during the Meiji Restoration, like the rest of the city, Hiroshima Castle was destroyed by the atomic bomb in 1945.
Once again you couldn't take pictures inside of the building, but at least they let us wear our shoes in this one. The views from the upper floors across the moat were a little gloomy today.
Maybe it's the weather, maybe it's all the 1950's concrete buildings, but the city really just feels gloomy.
"The A-Bomb Dome is the ruins of the former Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall which was destroyed by the first Atomic bomb ever to be used on humankind on August 6th, 1945. The Atomic bomb was detonated in the air at an altitude of approximately 600 meters almost right over the hall. The explosion by a single bomb claimed the lives of over 200,000 people and the city area of almost 2km radius was turned into ashes. In order to have this tragic fact known to succeeding generations and to make it a lesson for humankind, the reinforcement work has been done by the contributions of many people who desire peace within and out of the country. The ruins shall be preserved forever."
August 6, 1967
Hiroshima City
The sight of this shell of a building and imagining that it is all that remains does not help with the gloom.
Rather than continuing around the Peace Park we decided to take the Fast boat to Miyajima Island and cheer up a bit. Conveniently the departure point is a very short walk from the A-Bomb dome.
From the busy harbour the World Heritage Sea Route boat takes the 45 minute journey to Miyajima Island.
While officially named Itsukushima, the island is more commonly referred to as Miyajima, Japanese for "shrine island". This is because the island is so closely related to Itsukushima Shrine. Miyajima has a long history as a holy site of Shinto. The island's highest peak, Mount Misen, was worshiped by local people as early as the 6th century. In 1168, Taira no Kiyomori, the most powerful man in Japan during the end of the Heian Period, selected the island as the site of his clan's family shrine and built Itsukushima Shrine.
It's a short walk from the pier along the beach and into the main town, and just like the town of Nara, this island is covered in friendly deer.
It's actually quite a nice break to come here and get away from the city, there is tourists, but nothing like what we have seen in Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. You can actually just wait a few seconds for nice photos, and the deer aren't angry because someone teased them.
Miyajima Island is most famous for its giant floating torii gate. The sight is ranked as one of Japan's three best views. At high tide the shrine and its gate appear to float above the water, and this is certainly the time at which they are most picturesque. At low tide, the water drains out of the bay, and you can walk out and see the gate from up close.
That deer is actually stealing a carton of milk someone set down to take a selfie, I probably could have stopped it, but... funny
Both the torii gate and the Itsukushima Shrine are unique for being built over water, appearing to float during high tide. The shrine complex consists of multiple buildings, including a prayer hall, a main hall and a theater stage, which are connected by boardwalks and supported by pillars above the sea. At least they didn't make us take our shoes off here.
Secretly watching a prayer ceremony
From Itsukushima there is some smaller structures and winding paths from the beach that lead up to the Daosho-in Buddhist temple. It was a very nice and brightly coloured temple, but we really needed to see some statues in wool hats.
And no, that's not what I meant, but it was kind of funny.
I knew we were getting close when I saw this little toque wearing statue.
Daisho-in is one of the most important temples of Shingon Buddhism. It is located at the base of Mount Misen, on which the sect's founder, Kobo Daishi, first began the practice of Buddhism on the island of Miyajima. It's a very colourful temple, with lots of gardens, moss covered stonework, banners and religious artifacts.
Once we made it past the scary guardians and this Japanese pinocchio, we found our wool cap wearing statues... thousands of them!
Not everyone wore wool caps... but most of them did.
You could spend hours wandering amongst these little Buddhas as they all seemed different, but when we heard the banging of drums and the sound of bells, we went into the temple to experience a Buddhist prayer ceremony.
The detail in the gargoyle style heads around the temple were amazing.
After watching the ceremony we quietly snuck out as the Monk was talking to people that were at the front, and made our way back down to the temple entrance.
An interesting Buddhist ritual can be performed when walking up the temple's steps. Along the stairs is a row of spinning metal wheels that are inscribed with sutra (Buddhist scriptures). Turning the inscriptions as one walks up is believed to have the same effect as reading them. So, without any knowledge of Japanese, you can benefit from the blessings that the reading of sutra is believed to entail.
My concern is that we took the Buddha trail up, and the spinning wheel stairs down, did we just undo thousands of years of scriptures? I'm pretty sure that I'm not welcome in whatever Buddhist version of heaven exists now. See those angry men on either side of that sign, they're looking at me
From Daosho-in we took the upper road back into the town and could look down on Itsukushima Shrine and the torii gate.
The tide is going out at Itsukushima shrine
Apparently Miyajima is famous for oysters, and everyone is pushing them on us, but as I like to say, I don't eat anything that looks like it came out of an oxes nose. Don't even ask me about this sultry buddha.
We had a great lunch at Miyajima Brewery with a great view across the water.
Their beer menu provided a great breakdown of the fragrance, body and bitterness of their craft beers... it was very hard to choose just one. So I didn't. The food would be classified as excellent, if it wasn't for their obsession with Mushrooms and Congi (eel fish) that still had it's head attached.
Our last objective on Miyajima was to find a nice local dessert before heading back. I wasn't sold on the gold leaf ice cream, as I was concerned about the glorified after effects they had on display next door.
So many flavours of ice cream, I had to choose the matcha flavour, and those maple shaped cookie/cakes looked pretty damn good.
They are known as Momiji Manju - The Maple Pastry From Miyajima. Manju consists of a dough of flour, water, sugar and starch, and often filled with red bean paste (which comes from azuki beans). Numerous shops had automated machines making one after another, each batch with a slightly different flavour filling. There were ladies handing out samples, and it is completely possible that we may have left with a box full of many different flavours, fruit, green tea, chocolate, custard...
One last visit with the friendly and curious deer of Miyajima, and we headed back to our boat.
It was much nicer weather for our fast journey back to Hiroshima.
The nice weather was overshadowed by our next stop, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and park.
Four years to the day after the bomb was dropped, it was decided that the area would not be redeveloped but instead devoted to peace memorial facilities. The boat lets us off right beside the Atomic Bomb Dome, and we head inside the museum and buy our tickets. Not more than 5 minutes later an announcement is made that the museum is closing in 30 minutes! Why would they not tell us that at the ticket booth? As it turned out, a little over 30 minutes was enough to take in the horrors of this museum.
The Peace Memorial Museum consists of two buildings, but one is under construction. The museum looks at the history of Hiroshima and the advent of the nuclear bomb. Its main focus is on the events of August 6: the dropping of the bomb and its outcome in human suffering. The personal details displayed are quite upsetting and serve to remind that we should not take peace for granted.
"So, they decided this bomb would not just kill - it would do something biblical: One bomb, from one plane, would wipe a city off the map. It would be horrible. But they wanted it to be horrible, to end the war and to try to stop the future use of nuclear bombs. They chose Hiroshima."
Hiroshima was compact and enclosed with mountains, the Americans and their allies determined that If you put a bomb like this in the middle of it, you end up destroying almost the entirety of the city. Hiroshima was also a real military target, it was a major port and a military headquarters, and therefore a strategic target.
Japan announced its surrender to the Allies on August 15, six days after the bombing of Nagasaki. On September 2, the Japanese government signed the instrument of surrender, effectively ending World War II.
The park still contains some trees that show the effects of the bomb. Near the center of the park is a concrete, saddle-shaped monument that covers a cenotaph holding the names of all of the people killed by the bomb. The monument is aligned to frame the Peace Flame and the A-Bomb Dome. The Memorial Cenotaph was one of the first memorial monuments built on August 6, 1952. The arch shape represents a shelter for the souls of the victims.
The Peace Flame is another monument to the victims of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, but it has an additional symbolic purpose. The flame has burned continuously since it was lit in 1964, and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs on the planet are destroyed and the planet is free from the threat of nuclear annihilation.
The Children's Peace Monument is a statue dedicated to the memory of the children who died as a result of the bombing. The statue is of a girl with outstretched arms with a folded paper crane rising above her. The statue is based on the true story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who died from radiation from the bomb. She believed that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes she would be cured. To this day, people (mostly children) from around the world fold cranes and send them to Hiroshima where they are placed near the statue. The statue has a continuously replenished collection of folded cranes nearby.
The Peace Bell stands near the Children's Peace Monument and consists of a large Japanese bell hanging inside a small open-sided structure. Visitors are encouraged to ring the bell for world peace and the tolling of this bell rings out regularly throughout the Peace Park.
The Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound is a large knoll that contains the cremated ashes of 70,000 unidentified victims of the bomb.
Throughout the parks are so many more monuments to those that were killed or eventually died from this horrific world event.
All the happiness of Miyajima Island is lost, and we head back to the bus stop, not saying a word.
After relaxing in the room for a while we found a little restaurant called Zakynthos that was really close, and just down a set of stairs. When Norine's soup came and it was in a cup the size of a cappuccino, I started getting a bad feeling. My meal was truly awful, it was basically spaghetti with ketchup and cut up wieners, not at all what the description showed, and I could only eat a portion of it. That's it, no more restaurants that are down a set of stairs.
Later that night I started feeling what could either be a sore back or Kidney stone pain. When I threw up my dinner it was 50/50 whether it was the bad food or Kidney Stones, I suspect a combination of both.
February 7
It's a short walk around the lagoon from our mini-hotel (far left building) to the station for our train to Nagasaki. They were all out of the free breakfast sandwiches, well, all out of the edible free breakfast sandwiches.
It took two trains to get to Nagasaki; The Shinkansen Sakura to Shin-Tosu, and the Limited Express Kamome to Nagasaki.
