Hiroshima

Had an amazing time here, thanks mainly to my great hosts Rina and Wan!

Wan picked me up from the train station and took me on the longest journey back to his house, when he says he lives in the country … he really means it!

It was a very nice drive through so much greenery and rice paddies and gorgeous Japanese traditional houses… an experience in itself.

His house is amazing … especially when you compare it to my shoebox! So huge and with all the details that make it feel like a traditional home!! After Wan set off for work Rina and I set out exploring, looking at the main attraction of Wan’s town… a dam (it was quite impressive though) and watching the shinkansen (bullet train) zip through showing the ultimate contrast between the modernity of Japan and the olde world villages and rice paddies.

Next it was onto the Sake Factory which looked all foreboding with it’s high fences like a Willy Wonka Factory! And the smell oozing from there was most bizarre! Next it was onto some tiny streets of old Japan and temple viewing where I saw the first Zen garden in Japan, they really are something else with their perfectly raked sand and placement of rocks an art form I think it would take years of studying to understand but only a few moments to appreciate!

Next it was onto the shopping mall where the cheapness of prices was amazing compared to what you pay in the big city! (yes of course I wanted to do all my shopping here and take it home the queen of frugal as I am :P lol) Then we went to go a well renound restaurant but it was unfortunately closed so we went to a sushi train instead where we tried everything from soup with bizarre forms of seaweed in it (they even had little nodules urgh!!) to octopus tentacle balls a specialty in Japan but that actually tasted quite good as the tentacles were hidden away inside a ball of batter (as they should be!) Then we went to the oldest part of Hiroshima a quaint little town street with ancient looking houses and even a toy store! One of the houses was from the 1700s and it was so tiny but so real you could imagine Samurai running about and women in kimono sitting gracefully inside, there was only one beam left in the house from the original through and it was all bent and warped makes you wonder how the old houses stood up to the many earthquakes Japan has!

The coolest thing about this place though were all the worries hanging everywhere, will find out what they really are one day but looked exactly like the worries on t.v.!

we went on a road trip to an island aways from Wan’s house in even more remote Japan!! Another beautiful drive interrupted unfortunately by a very miserable car crash, and also unfortunately in Japan they do not feel the same need to cover up victims as they do in NZ so you had a full view of the two front passengers of the car with their necks in impossible angles and all deranged with shards of glass, not pleasant at all so will move on… and gave good reason for the fact that even though when you see an accident in NZ and you want to stop and look but can’t see anything it is a very good thing indeed as you really don’t want to be able to see anything the images stay with you for a long time.

The nature was gorgeous and their were tonnes of fruit tree mainly citrus scattered along the roadside and you got an amazing view of the ocean on the drive. We then crossed to an island and drove around, observed the devastating typhoon damage from months before and the interesting religious relics like a huge rope of sorts connecting two rock formations in the sea.

We then went to the beach to chill out for a bit, but ended up chilling out too much as it was freezing so carried on to observe the seagull flying without actually moving forward near Wan’s car very peculiar!

Then we started to prepare for a dinner party Wan was holding for his teachers at school, good fun! I had not had a social encounter (of the wanted kind at least!) with Japanese people yet so was a lot of fun chatting with them and hearing their views and not feeling the need to study their language as they spoke to offer correction! Really nice bunch of people, Wan is definitely very fortunate, very unlike the Japanese staff at my office that seem to scorn our existence!

Dinner was a mixed pot of tacos and a traditional Thai dish and curry hmm delicious and the best I have eaten since my arrival in Japan! Then desert was choc fondue (of course my next mission when I got home as to find a fondue set!)

The next day Rina and I went to a little island called Miyajima just of the coast of Hiroshima City, it was a really interesting trip on trains and buses through the city to get there then took a ferry ride such a serene trip with the beautiful blue ocean all around. Then we spotted a large white out of place building on the coast directly facing Miyajima which Rina was to later tell me was a Religious Sect that opposed Buddhist views and was placed to be seen through the famous Red Gates that are at the entrance to the floating (when the tide comes in) temple of Miyajima!
Once on the island we were instantly stalked by the many deers that inhabit here, rather mangy looking thing but by the amount of food they get off tourists you could not say it was from undernourishment! We then set of on a walk around the harbour as the island is rather touristy it was a really nice layout and infrastructure including a traditional Japanese lantern bordered walk with some Japanese statues along the way covered in children posing for photos by their parents. The view was so idealic and peaceful it was easy to see why the most famous temple in Hiroshima is placed here, we bought our traditional Miyajima mandarin icecreams and went to see the floating temple, unfortunately it was low tide and there were deers wandering around where the water should be but it was such a gorgeous temple with it's bright red walls (the temples in Osaka are mostly brown) and bizarre semi vertical bridge, after that we went to the little touristy shopping markets and tried a traditional Miyajima maple leaf shaped pancake that could be filled with green tea, chocolate or red bean and had a look at a few other ancient temples and houses, that could easily have fitted into a movie set an ancient Japan, nestled amongst the ancient Bonsai trees in the mountain of Miyajima.
After we got off the ferry coming back we jumped onto a cable car that gave us quite a different view of the back streets of Japan in all their rickettyness and in places shamble of old broken down buildings. Then Rina headed off for an interview for a job here and I went exploring the local shopping malls and Hiroshima castle (where I illegally took photos of all the Samurai armour but it was a must as the armour was amzing soo intricate and tiny!!) Got a view out of the netting on top and then set off to the Peace Park where I evidently got lost and took 2 hours to get there instead of 20 mins!!
I met Wan and we had a look at the Hiroshima Peace dome which after comparing it to the picture of the original building left a rather airy feeling about all the people that would have been busy at work inside totally unexpectant of what was about to happen... :(
The we had a walk around the gardens which are gorgeous soo green and lucisous and the Memorial for one of the victims of the bomb, a little girl of whom's story even made it into little old Eastern Hutt Primary when I was at school and her desire to make 1000 origami peace cranes to try and stop the pain she was enduring. The memorial has since been decorated with many thousands of cranes from all over the world sent in out of respect for the girl and what happened in Hiroshima to the many thousands of victims.

Next we headed into Hiroshima city, great place, nice layout compared to the entanglement of concrete buildings that is Osaka! We had a look around the shopping streets making a necessary stop at the 100 yen store (my staple of Japanese shopping!) and then went to have traditional Hiroshima cuisine at a local Okonomiyaki Restaurant where they cook a kind of a pancake before your eyes starting with a batter cooked on a hotplate then adding cabbage and some other herbs and spices then adding some Japanese noodles and topping it off with a fried egg formed into a circular shape, some more herbs and the infamous thick dark and delicious okono sauce, absolutely delectable!!

Next we checked out the café culture and enjoyed an interesting desert cake that although looked devine kinda tasted like a whole lot of air (I guess the Japanese have to stay soo slim somehow!) and then missioned back to the bus stop so I could enjoy my lovely 7.5 hour overnight trip home and arrive just in time to start work the next day at 7:30am lovely but at least had some really great memories of Hiroshima to keep me going (and make everyone at work jealous!)