We're back in the present! Yay!
The time of the retrospective posts is ended! Well, that's not quite accurate - this post is technically retrospective, I guess. So are all of them. I should do more liveblogging. At any rate, we're now reporting on yesterday and not anywhere further back. I think you probably understood that from the start, but there it is explained nonetheless.
Busy, busy day today. We went to Hiroshima. Spent pretty much the whole day there, in fact, which means that despite staying in Osaka, we really haven't actually done anything here. And we're headed for Takayama tomorrow, so the secrets of this city will for now remain a mystery to us.
Anyway, we got up and made for the train station, stopping first to meet our good friend Mr. Donut for breakfast. Getting to Hiroshima took 1.5 hours in something called the 'silence car' of a Shinkansen. Ostensibly, the car is silent. No announcements are made, the people selling drinks don't say anything and you're not meant to talk. We observed this rule, fearful of being told off for poor train etiquette, even if no one else did. It was less noisy than the party that was going on two rows back on our train to Kyoto, but to call it silent would be stretching the truth to breaking point.
We were scheduled to meet Steph at Hiroshima Station, an act which took far more effort than we thought it would. But after 20 minutes of waiting for each other in totally different locations, we met up and headed for Miyajima Island.
The place was a strange one. Half spectacular views, half interesting shrines and half crummy tourist traps (I realise that adds up to 1.5, but thirds sounded clunky and I am feeling like a particularly lazy writer at 1:14am), the place had something for everyone. There were even more deer. I saw one eat a guys paper shopping bag as he held it. They were awesome.
The highlight of the visit was the Itsukushima Shrine and it's floating torii gate. Built out over the water, it's a fancy boardwalk in a lot of ways, but the view was really cool. On the other side, a man was making a seemingly unwilling monkey do tricks. At that point, we decided to turn back. After a another meal of that pancakey-omlettey thing (I can't be bothered checking the spelling at the moment), we got off the island and headed back into the centre of town.
From there we went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. We arrived in time to visit the museum, but not the hall of remembrance unfortunately. It was a very sombre, sobering experience, especially afterwards as we wandered around the many memorials that dot the park, and as we stood next to the A-Bomb Dome. Not too much more to say about it, except that if you're ever in Hiroshima, you have to go there. I'm not sure how affecting it will be on any of us in the long run, but for now it certainly has had an impact.
Onto more fun subjects. We got delayed getting back to Osaka due to the trains being packed for some reason. I had wanted to visit a bookstore in the city which closed at 9pm. We got in at 8:30. We got to the right station at 8:45. Yet somehow, we made it in and out and I got a fresh copy of The Economist (to which Ali has recently converted) at a much more reasonable price than what was going in Sapporo. We also noticed how Obama-rama has swept Japan, each and every book ever written on Barrack was on display - not only at this store, but every one we have been to thus far. The store also featured Obama's victory speech playing on repeat.
We had planned to eat at a place near the bookstore but found it to be closed. That left us with only one other option: an Outback Steakhouse we had passed a few blocks earlier. Daniel vigorously opposed it. I was hungry for Western food, though, and the thought of eating at a restaurant themed with Australian culture as viewed through the lens of a multinational corporation and the Japanese food market was too much to resist. Ali was thinking the same thing, so we flipped a coin. And the rest is history...
The place was bizarre. Cowboy hats made random appearances. The toilets were labelled "blokes" and "sheilas". A pair of Mexican looking statues sat on one mantle, and in between was a crocodile in sunglasses holding a beer. VB was on the menu, as were "Aussie Cheese Fries", a dish which does not exist in its purported country of origin. Despite all of that, though, the food was pretty good.
And that's everything up to date. We're in Takayama next, then Shirakawa-go, and then I head home. Daniel and Ali will no doubt keep you posted on goings-on from Hakuba and Tokyo.
-Nik
Due to the lack of a laptop charger, we have not been regularly blogging for a little while. I propose to gloss over this error by posting updates for all the days we missed and acting like it never happened. So even though this is actually the very early morning of Day 15 at the time of writing, please pretend it's Day 13 (Feb. 14) all over again.
The stay in the ryokan was all too short; by 10am we were packed up and ready to ship out. But although we would end the day at a new hostel in Osaka, our sights were focussed on a different target. We were bound for Himeji, and we were headed there for only one reason: to see a really awesome castle. We walked to the castle from the train station, which took about 15 minutes, where we met up with Steph and entered the castle grounds.
We were not disappointed. Himeji Castle has been built and rebuilt across several centuries, and the buildings that stand today are incredibly impressive. This will be a short post: I don't have any particular interest in going over every single bit of it like a tour guide, but there were some distinct highlights. The view of the main tower from the area just outside of it was awe-inspiring, as was the view from the top of the tower itself. There were some cool sets of armour and weapons within the tower, and a range of buildings serving a variety of purposes (like the suicide area). All in all, it was pretty fucking awesome.
After the castle was done with, we made the long journey back to Kyoto to get our bags before hopping on yet another train to Osaka. We arrived well into the evening, but luckily our hostel was right near a station so we didn't have to head far. We ate, I blogged and that's the end of that.
More to come soon.
Due to the lack of a laptop charger, we have not been regularly blogging for a little while. I propose to gloss over this error by posting updates for all the days we missed and acting like it never happened. So even though this is actually the very early morning of Day 15 at the time of writing, please pretend it's Day 12 (Feb. 13) all over again.
It was our last day in Kyoto and we had very little to do with our time. So we decided to get out of Kyoto and head for the town of Nara, about an hour away. Joining us for this trip was a guy named Avi, an Israeli who was staying with us at the hostel. He was a very nice guy: a photographer (which meant that our photo stops, almost entirely monopolised by Daniel, were doubled) and a constant traveller.
Anyway, we made our way out to Nara in a very uneventful way. The place immediately knocked back our preconceptions: travel guides emphasised the traditional character of the place, which was instantly at odds with the network of cheap hotels and fast food joints that apparently encircle all Japanese train stations. But we pressed on nonetheless, heading along the sightseeing route along with many a Western tourist.
We stopped off at several different places along the way, including a park in front of a temple packed with deer. We thought it was quite a novelty and took a whole bunch of photos, not realising that the deer were everywhere throughout the city from here on out (an interesting fact about Nara: it stinks of deer crap). We made our way through several parks and open spaces, all of which were full of deer. I gotta be honest, the novelty was starting to wear off.
After much walking, we finally found ourselves at the main attraction: the Todai-ji temple. The complex is home to what is apparently the largest wooden building in the world (I still say I've seen bigger) and one of the biggest statues of Buddha on the planet.
The whole thing was pretty cool, and we hung around there for quite a while before heading out and battling the many tourist traps that line the paths in and out of temples. We ate lunch in Nara with Avi before heading back to Kyoto. Our next stop was a real highlight of the trip. We had booked a stay in a ryokan, a traditional Japanese inn. So we bid farewell to Yashi, put our packs on our backs and headed for the place. It was great. The owners were incredibly friendly and the traditional Japanese room was very spacious and well-equipped.
After settling in, we headed back into the centre of Kyoto for some shopping and dinner. We randomly ran into Steph and wound up eating at a place called Mr. Young Men that served various types of okonomiyaki, an indescribable fusion of a pancake, an omlette and deliciousness. Well fed, we headed back to enjoy the facilities of the ryokan, which included green tea, traditional Japanese baths and yakata robes.
Next post coming shortly.
