Hello Ozzies!
Today's post is going to be the first of a series telling a bit about our trip around the Southern part of Honshu. Each post will talk about a day in this trip. The whole 5-day trip is a tour the main highlights of the area (even though we missed some others, but we didn't have time to cover it all).
Day 1: Departure from Tokyo Station in the Shinkansen, and arrival to Hiroshima. Let's begin!
Here's a picture of the ten of us, just before stepping into adventure!
When we bought our round trip tickets to Hiroshima, we were given the option of choosing reserved seats. A normal European would have thought that this meant that if you did not reserved, seats were for those who arrived the first, and that those who didn't get seats, could not enter the train. Am I right? Well, not in this country! Look what was waiting for us outside the Shinkansen:
And that was only half of the queue!
Non-reserved tickets here means "Wait in a queue for 45 minutes and fight to death with a thousand Japanese for a seat. But don't worry! If you don't get a seat, you can always get inside the train...and do the whole 4-hour trip in the corridor, standing up like an idiot and telling yourself how stupid you are for paying 200€ for something like this" And this is what happened...Some of us were lucky enough to find a seat, but some others...well, at least they got a picture! Smile guys!
We got to Hiroshima station at around midnight. And no trip can begin without a good walk around the bars of the area. With our limited notions of Japanese, we had a hard time finding a pub, but we finally made it! There is more than sake in this country (by the way, sake is also used to design alcohol in general, so nihonshu is a more suitable word to speak about Japanese sake). We tried a liquor called umeshu, which is made from plum. It was quite nice, frankly speaking. If you can order it back home, you won't be disappointed.
Hiroshima at night is quite nice. As you can see, it looks quite bright and shiny = very modern (please, no black humor after reading this!).
But there's also place for the omnipresent kimono women:
This photo was inside the bar where we took the umeshu. And yep, that is Davide (he's really gonna hate me after seeing these pics...).
Small Kit-Kat: this photo has nothing special, but I liked the scene, so I took a photo!
The rooms in this first hostel were tatami rooms. And believe me when I say that I have never seen cleaner rooms. Spotless clean. Amazing. Davide is not going to forgive for this picture, but he'll understand...lol
Here's a photo of the hostel (I'm not receiving any royalties for this, but I think I should)
With the rising sun, the tireless Vulcanus comitte went for their first rally. First stop: Hiroshima's castle, also known as the Carp Castle. As you may have guessed, this is only a reconstruction, so we didn't get inside. But we couldn't help taking a group picture in front of it.
Now, here's an interesting photo. You may ask why, and the reason is not obvious: after the bombing, pretty much everything was destroyed in an area of several kilometers. And that includes fauna and flora...except for this tree! Ok, there's also another one next to it, also alive. But you get the point. Everybody thought that the bombing had cursed the land, making impossible agriculture or anything that involved making plants grow. And all of a sudden, "plop!", this tree starts to grow leaves. I can't imagine how happy they were when they saw it.
Next to the castle there was a shrine, and Jorge asked for this picture, so...
Finally, the main "attraction" of this city. It is sad that a place becomes famous for disasters like these... This is the A dome. It was called like this after the bombing. One of the only buildings that "resisted" the impact of the nuclear bomb. The reason for this is that the bomb was detonated almost above the dome, so the structure was not hit horizontally, and most of it managed to stand still.
This is the exact place where the bomb was dropped. It was detonated some hundred meters above this spot. Right in the middle of the city. The Americans needed to test it in a city spared by the bombings, with a nice population on which they could measure the effects of the nukes. So nice...
After a short walk around the Peace memorial park, we headed for a building called Okonomi-mura, which hosts over 20 different restaurants of okonomiyaki.
I took this picture and this was the best I could get. We have to teach Paul how to open the eyes while saying "Cheese!".
Guess whose hands appear...
The Hiroshima version of this is called "Hiroshimayaki", which has more vegetables. You can see a picture below:
They were really delicious. And very, very cheap! The chef had some nice signs saying "Welcome to my house", in different languages:
He was so nice, we couldn't help taking out a picture with him and his attendants!
As this post has become rather long (and I havent' finished with Hiroshima yet!), I think I will do a second post telling what we did after lunch.
Heading to the Children's Memorial Museum, we encountered some children playing. I don't know what they were saying (and I find the game quite weird: do we have something like that in Europe?), but the contrast between this and the Museum made quite an impact on me. The Children's Peace Memorial was inspired on the story of Sadako Sasaki. She was a 10-year old girl with leukemia, who decided to fold 1000 paper cranes - a Japanese custom through which in theory one's dreams come true. She died before finishing, and so his friends folded the remaining paper cranes for her.
Will we ever learn the lesson? I hope I have...
Sleep tight, Ozzies!
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