After leaving Beppu we headed up to Hiroshima. It was raining that day, which was fitting for the day's activities in every sense. We visited what is now referred to as the A-Bomb Dome - the structural remains of a building over top of which the atomic bomb exploded (very, very few buildings had any structural remains left to keep as a reminder and this building was particularly fitting for a memorial). We then continued on to Peace Memorial Park and into the museum of the same name. I'm not sure exactly how long we spent in the museum, but I have to say, it was very impressive. I learned a lot of details about WWII that I didn't know and a lot about Hiroshima and how it has been rebuilt from literally nothing since it was blown to smithereens 64 years ago. The last part of the exhibit was hard to handle and I could only take in so much of it before I needed to leave. It was full of artifacts (clothing, household items, etc) ruined by the blast many kilometres away, the black rain, and photos of people before they died from the effects of radiation. It was very disturbing and heart wrenching. A lot of people we'd met said not to bother spending much time in Hiroshima, and while there might not be heaps to do beyond learning about the war, we were impressed by the city. They have done a really good job at rebuilding it and it's quite beautiful, even on a rainy day. Even though it was still raining hard, we headed out late afternoon on a short train ride followed by a 10 min ferry trip to Miyajima - famous for the 'floating' torii (Shinto shrine gate). The tide was out, so we didn't see it floating in water, but it was still very beautiful and worth the trip and getting soaked in the rain to explore the island. Finally (other than my trip to Nikko) we were visiting a place where we experienced a more rural and traditional Japan. Even cities as small as Beppu are littered with high rises and neon lights. It occurred to me that in a country of 128 million, 10% of whom live in Tokyo, there must be several more cities with several million people living in them, but that hadn't occurred to me until the disappointment of our onsen-town experience of Beppu (it wasn't a 'town' at all - more than 100,0000 people live there). So Miyajima made up for it. Wow! It was beautiful! Next time I'm in that area I would like to stay at a ryokan on the island.
The following day we started off for Osaka with much improved weather. On the way we stopped and spent most of our day in Himeji-jo, a wood and stone castle built in 1580. This was well worth the stop. We got to climb all the way up inside the castle to the top - some 5 stories. I've been in a castle or two in my travels and it is rare to be able to get such access. The gardens on the grounds were also very nice and probably the best ones we saw in our travels. Late that afternoon we arrived in Osaka and found our way to a real dive of a hotel that our friends, Tom and Claire, were staying at when they arrived the following day. As much of a dive as it was, it was still very clean and comfortable. We had to shower at a neighbouring hotel though. Strange. It was near this monolith of a place called Spa World that had a roller coaster running through and around it. I never saw the roller coaster in action, but it was the butt of a few jokes on our part. We didn't make our way to Spa World - maybe another time haha! I was hoping to find the time to get to Koya-san, but with the day wearing on and exhaustion from the travel and all the walking (I neglected to mention the 45 minute detour we took on our way to Himeji-jo... getting lost seemed not uncommon for us in Japan, with dodgy directions or maps being the norm), when I lost heart to do it after I went to the train station to enquire about the trip and learned about the 4-hour return and extra cost. I had opted not to stay overnight since it would have cost at least 10,000 yen. To put it in perspective, we were paying only 2,000 yen per night in Osaka.
So I went off and explored Osaka on my own after visiting the train station. Thought I'd give Dan a break from eating dinner with me for once - it was fairly challenging. I tried a lot of different foods. Dan fell in love with takoyaki - and even got me to try some. They were fairly rubbery. To be expected I suppose. There was a certain flavour and smell that I did not like in a lot of food there and it took me some time to sort out what it was, but eventually I did - it was pork stock or pork itself. They put it in a lot of things and it is very, very difficult to avoid. It was making me ill. I never wound up eating meat itself, but I'm sure that stock was in quite a few things I did eat and had a really hard time stomaching. By the last week though, I'd mastered enough Japanese to start ordering special things - dishes 'without' meat, like I would do at home. I was able to get people to understand me when I asked them to keep the meat out of my food. I felt particularly excited about that!! They are very accommodating and concerned about making customers happy in Japan, the trick is being able to communicate your needs. So, other than the whole pork issue, the food in Japan was really something else!! Yes, I did miss some of the western foods that I love, but overall I really enjoyed what I ate there - a few more veggies and fruit wouldn't have hurt though. They don't seem to eat much of those. My favourites were: edamame; fried tofu; some of their salads with tofu; okonomiyaki was an experience; Japanese curry was interesting; umeshu is my new favourite drink; they have bottled lemon soda type of drink which is where marbles came from called ramune; pickled cucumber; soba noodles; veggie tempura on rice; and if it was a nice restaurant, the miso soup was very good (not so good at the cheap restaurants). You'd think there would be green tea everywhere, but actually there isn't. You only get it in certain instances, with specific meals (like sushi), or at a tea ceremony or special tea shops. So I didn't have as much tea as I thought I would.
We spent our next day in Nara, the first capital of Japan. There are many temples and shrines to visit here, and it's all on foot. It takes the good part of a half day to walk about and see everything. A half hour train ride from Osaka and we were there, as the lady at the information desk said, the deer welcomed us (they have sacred deer here). It was a long day exploring the various heritage sites, but it was well worth it. We got to see the largest wooden building in the world - Diabutsu-den Hall, which is part of Todai-ji temple. It houses Diabutsu, a 16 metre tall Buddha - believe me, it is very impressive!! Behind the Buddha, there is a pillar with a hole in it. You are meant to crawl through this hole, which is said to be the size of one of the Buddha's nostrils. If you manage to squeeze yourself through, you will achieve enlightenment. We managed to get ourselves squeezed through it. It is a bit daunting when you crouched down and peered through the hole that you have to crawl through - I nearly didn't do it. There were many, many Japanese school groups visiting the area as well. The kids all wanted to practice their English with foreigners and seemed to have tasks/assignments to do, getting us to write notes for them in their notebooks and taking photos with us. They were very cute. Upon returning to Osaka we met up with Tom and Claire and the following day the four of us headed to Kyoto.
Our first day in Kyoto was spent in Gion, dinner in the downtown area, followed by karaoke. We DID spot a Geisha while we were downtown looking for an izakaya in which to have dinner. Gion is the Geisha district, so were were surprised to see one downtown, but we were very pleased, as it's not easy to spot one!! Gion is very expensive and touristy, but beautiful and there are lots of little side streets that look and feel like you would expect of traditional Japan. The thing to do in Kyoto though, is visit temples. As you can imagine, we were getting a bit saturated with temples at this point. So many crammed into so few days already. Our second day in the city we hired bikes and 5 of us spent the entire day riding around Kyoto. I was in my element. We had these hilarious single speed city bikes with baskets and creaky brakes. All the walking was turning my legs into lead and a day on the bike made me feel like a new woman!! We visited the famous 'golden temple', Kinkaku-ji, and the Zen gardens of Ryoan-ji. After that we rode our bikes down the Path of Philosophers, around many of the other temples and shrines and snapped photos, but had neither the energy, nor the bulging pocketbooks to enter any others. You could spend a week visiting temples in the Kyoto area. On a side note, the Kyoto train station was the most impressive of all the stations we went through. It was more like an airport. The visit here was a bit rushed, so this will be a place to go back to when I return to Japan one day soon!!
Wanting to use our rail pass to get back to Tokyo before it expired, we headed back on the last shinkansen of the evening and arrived at midnight. We decided to stay near the Shinjuku station where we were to catch a bus early the following morning, so we made our way to a mangakissa - a Japanese comic book/anime/internet cafe/games room facility where you can stay in a cubicle over night if you like. It wasn't overly comfortable (kinda like trying to sleep in a lazy boy recliner in your office cubicle), but it was a place to stay. We found out later that it was in the red-light district of Tokyo, which would explain the transvestites we saw when we were looking for the place! We boarded the bus the next morning to Kawaguchi-ko, lying on its eponymous lake, in an effort to see Mt. Fuji before leaving Japan. Unfortunately both days that we were there the entire volcano was covered in clouds. Fortunately there was the best onsen I'd been to right next to the hostel and I enjoyed a few hours there in the evening!!! Back in Tokyo the following day we loaded up on souvenirs at the stalls near Senso-ji in Asakusa, followed by one last dinner at an izakaya down the road and had a drink at a little place near the hostel where we spent an hour chatting with the staff there using our phrasebook, and them using an electronic translator they found on the internet with their mobile phone. It was a great way to end our stay in Japan!!
My flight back to Sydney not being until the evening, I still had a few hours the next day which I spent with Will and Claire, a couple we'd met the day before at the hostel, and bought myself a yukata and some tabi. Then I found my way to the airport with a little help on the train from a local who saw me checking and re-checking my subway map. Had a couple of umeshu-sodas on the plane and didn't even touch the fork and knife on my dinner tray. I have to say, being back in western society here in Sydney, I feel strange not eating with chopsticks and not being surrounded by Japanese people and language. Three weeks of immersion has definitely made an imprint. I had no idea how much I'd love the country before I went. Now I will be looking for a date and some funds to get back there!!
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