Tokyo Again 01.05

We took the long train journey back to Tokyo, and arrived at about 6pm. We had considered booking a capsule hotel for our last night, because it's so Japanese, but we chickened out. Most capsule hotels have male and female floors, and we didn't want to be separated.

We ended up booking beds at a hostel with 28 beds to a room. We didn't realise until we got there that the way they fit 28 people to a room was to put them in capsules! The capsules were like big pigeon holes. Each had a mattress, pillows and blankets and a light, and a curtain for privacy. We weren't separated thankfully, and we got to try sleeping 'capsule style'! The Japanese are so efficient!
We headed out to Harajuku, because we missed seeing it last time, and it's such a fashion icon in Japan. We were expecting to see maybe a few people dressed strangely, so we had our eyes peeled. As soon as we got off the train, girls in frilly Victorian style dresses, with frilly bags and socks and parasols came streaming towards the platform. They had ringlets in their hair and little bonnets. Some girls were dressed in maids outfits with frilly short skirts and lots of layers of petticoats. We were in shock!



We figured out that seeing as the crowds of frills seemed to be coming from one direction, that maybe there was a special event on for girls of that persuasion. We were so lucky to be there at the station, right at that moment!

We headed off into the backstreets of Harajuku, looking for somewhere to have dinner. The streets themselves were so quaint, they were cobblestone and there were dress shops everywhere selling dresses like what we had seen, and all sorts of colourful costume-type clothes.We eventually found somewhere to eat, and it had several frilly girls in there too. After dinner we bought some Asahi beer and some sparkling Sake to celebrate our last night in Japan.

Loren was so thrilled to see all those girls in costume. She thought we'd miss out on seeing them altogether because we weren't in Tokyo on the weekend, when hundreds of people dress up as manga characters and in maid outfits and other costumes and parade themselves in a park in Harajuku. Apparently most of the people who do it are people who get bullied at school, so they dress up to pretend to be someone else on the weekends. They are surrounded by curious onlookers and photographers, and they can dream of a life other than the one they suffer at school.
One other thing we missed in Japan was seeing the sumo wresting. We left Japan on the 2nd May, just before a huge wrestling tournament started on the 9th May. We were so disappointed, but it gives us an excuse to return.

Sapporo, Japan 30.04

We arrived at the station with 2 minutes to spare, before our train left for Sapporo. It was a long trip from Osaka to the very north of Japan. We changed trains 4 times to get there! Our last train was an overnight one that arrived at 6am the following morning. Artur was already taking photos of the sleeping carriages when he realised that we had been assigned a chair carriage! We were most disappointed, but we made ourselves comfortable by turning the seats in front of us around and making a sort of bed with a gap.

We had arranged to stay with a guy called Mike who we met through couchsurfing. The plan was to meet at his place at 9am, so we hung around the station from 6am when we arrived. We found his appartment without any problems, but we got the wrong appartment number, so we had to find a pay phone to call him. Mike turned out to be really nice and we chatted with him for about an hour before we headed out for some sightseeing.

Our first priority for sightseeing was the Sapporo Beer Museum! It was the oldest beer factory in Japan, built in 1878. We saw the process of the beer making, and some of the history of the beer. English captions were rare, and the only tours available were in Japanese, so we just wandered around and looked at the models of the factory and sniffed pieces of hops and barley.

There was a display of beer bottles and other paraphernalia related to the Sapporo beer, including a barbie doll/ken doll of the guy that invented the beer.
They also had some funny advirtising posters from the 1920s - 30s of geishas toasting each other with the Sapporo beer. The coolest thing to see there was the giant beer brewing container. It was 6.5m high and 10m wide!

Even better than that of course, was the beer tasting, oh yeah! For USD 2 you could sample a glass any one of their beers. We tried the original Sapporo beer which was nice and malty, and the Yebisu beer which tasted a bit like Leffe Brune. It was a black beer with a coffee aftertaste. We were supplied with some great beer snacks to go along with our beer :)


Mt Moiwa Cable Car
Next we headed for the ropeway up to Mount Moiwa. The cable car travelled 531m and elevated us 400m. It was so cold and windy up there! We even saw some snow! The views over Sapporo were worthwhile seeing, despite the clouds and the cold weather. I Sapporo is the biggest in Hokkaido island, and it was used for the Winter Olympics in 1972.


Winter Sports Museum
After seeing the views over Sapporo, we headed off to see the Winter Sports Museum. A lovely lady at the bus station decided to escort us there, as it was on her way. She was so sweet, she put us on the wrong bus at first, but eventually got us on the right one. She lived very close to the Museum, so she practically held our hands until we got to her house.

We climbed up the hill to the museum on our own, but unfortunately, Lonely Planet misguided us this time, and we arrived just after it closed. We were told in the book that it was open for another hour. We made the most of being up there though, as we got some great views of the huge ski jump used for the olympics.

Sapporo City
After making our way back to town, we found another foreign bookshop where we bought some more manga. Loren was thrilled and looking forward to reading the next segment.

We were supposed to catch up with Mike for dinner in the city, but he got caught up at work, so we found a noodle place on our own. We were starving, so we didin't find the best place, but the food was still ok. We got to try another Sapporo beer though, woohoo! This one was the classic Sapporo, made only from malt, so it was very caramelly.

After dinner we headed home, and met Mike who was just cooking his dinner. He opened a bottle of Bordeaux for us and cooked us some little delicacies while he was in the kitchen. We chatted for ages before retiring for the night. Staying with him was a good choice :)

Osaka, Japan 28.04

We took the train from Hiroshima to Osaka which took only 1.5 hours, and found our new 'Chuo Hotel'. The hotel was great, with amazing views and clear sounds of the railway tracks outside our window. Loren was thrilled though, because it was another traditional Japanese room.

This time they had special shelves to hide the mattresses in, so we walked into an almost empty.

We were definitely not in the best area of town. It seemed a little dodgy. We wandered down the Dobutsen-Mae shopping arcade, which reminded us of Footscray in Melbourne. We saw a dead kitten behind a barbed wire fence between sections of the arcade, where several dirty cats lived. Despite this disturbing sight, we managed to find a great restaurant that served gyoza.

Osaka-jo CastleOur first sight-seeing stop was to Osaka-jo Castle. The grounds surrounding the castle were enormous. They were filled with flower gardens and manicured wildernesses. They even had a section of fruit trees. Loren could have spent a whole day soaking in the beauty and solitude of the gardens.
We crossed a huge moat to get to the actual castle grounds. The rocks used in the walls surrounding the grounds were huge! Apparently some of the rocks were 10m long! As we approached the castle, we saw an American busker whose music echoed around the whole castle island.The castle itself was huge, seven floors in height, but inside it was a lot like the other castle in Hiroshima. We looked at a few of the exhibits, and learnt about the time when the castle was built, and the eventual fall of the empire.There were some pretty incredible screen paintings that told the story of the war that toppled the castle. We watched a movie that explained each of the sections of the painting. This castle had an even better view over the city, as it was much taller, and the moat and gardens around the castle were so beautiful from above.


The Giant Ferris WheelAfter this, we went to visit the Giant Ferris Wheel, which is apparently the largest in the world! It was 112m tall and each rotation took 15mins! The views were incredible, and there was a voiceover explaining the scenery that you were looking at.

We picked the perfect time to ride it, as the sun was just setting. The wheel was just by the harbour, so you had an incredible view over the water and the skyscrapers all over the city. We could see huge bridges and complicated layers of highways, winding in-between each other.


Ring of Life Aquarium
After the ferris wheel, we decided to visit the aquarium, which was just below it. We were curious because the aquarium was supposed to have the largest tank in the world - 34m wide, 9m deep. It was quite expensive compared to other tourist sites, but when we got inside, we didn't regret paying the entry fee for a second.

The aquarium was built on the theme of the ring of life, which is an area of ocean and land that lies very close to the ring of fire - the ring of volcanoes around the world. So the aquarium featured not only fish and sea creatures, but a huge variety of animals that live next to the water.


We saw some of the cutest animals we have ever seen! The cutest by far were the sea otters. They were so much bigger than we expected, they were about the size of seals. They lazed around floating on their backs, with their hands together like they were praying. Some of them kept their hands together and their heads above water while they rolled over on their sides over and over again.
The next cutest of all was the giant penguins. They stood around in the snow staring at each other and waddling back and forth. Some of them got into little tussles with each other, and it looked like they just stood around in little social circles. One of the penguins parked himself on his stomach beneath the falling snow.
The dolphins and seals were pretty cool to watch. Some of them didn't stop moving, they just kept swimming around and around. One of the seals became friends with Loren. He parked himself underwater near the window and just stared back at her. He was so cute and had the biggest black eyes. Every now and then he'd go to the surface for air and then come back to stare at her.
The biggest tank was amazing! You could view it from 4 different heights as the path around the tank gradually took you down lower and lower. The length of the exhibits was 660m and it took us a good 2 hours to get through the whole thing. The first exhibits showed animals above the water, and as you got lower, you saw the water beneath the tank, and all the other sea creatures that live in the water below.
The size of the big tank was necessary as it housed a huge whale shark. It was quite funny because the whale shark was constantly escorted by a troupe of other fish. They swam above, beneath and behind him.In the lower waters of the tanks, we saw octopus, giant crabs, turtles and in the Great Barrier Reef section there was lots of coral and colourful fish.


Dotombori Nightlife
We finally managed to drag ourselves away from the aquarium, although Loren could have gone to the top and seen it all again quite happily. We went to Dotombori which was supposed to have a lot of great restaurants and famous sights.

We struggled to find a restaurant with an English menu that wasn't exhorbitantly expensive. Eventually we chose place that sold tako-yaki, otherwise known as octopus balls. They were crispy balls cooked with octopus and a creamy sauce inside. We ordered a few varieties, meaning different toppings, same balls. We weren't actually sure what they were when we ordered them, but we liked them.
After dinner we visited the Ebisu-Bashi bridge, which at night looks identical to one from the movie 'Blade Runner'. Artur was very impressed by the neons displayed around the water and bridges.

Next we headed for Amerika-Mura which means America Village. All the teens around here dress like they assume Americans do and party at hip-hop bars. It was quite incredible seeing some of the outfits. Most of them wear colourful vintage style clothes, others wear hip-hop gear, some wear little more than hotpants and boots. In this area, accessories are an absolute must.
Apparently, the reasons for the outlandish fashions in Japan, not just including the American die-hards, is because of the crash of corporate culture. People used to live and breathe for a corporation that they'd work at for their whole lives. The company would pretty much dictate everything that you did. After the corporations had a major crash, people lost faith in that way of life and looked for individualism.
Now most young people find everyway possible of expressing individuality, especially in the way they dress. You can still see the remaining corporate influence in the old men you see on the subway. They seem very stiff and proper and almost unidentifiable from the next salary man. They work long hours and are usually coming home on the trains at the same time we are heading home after seeing the sights of the city.

Socks Glorious Socks
The next morning, we went shopping in the Minami area. Loren was absolutely thrilled by the variety of socks that were available in Japan. There is a sock for every pair of shoes. If you have closed toe shoes, you can get socks with lace edges that will peek out from the edge of the shoe. If you have shoes with a strap, you have socks with a strap to go underneath. If you have open toe shoes, you have socks with no toes, but with lace or patterns that will show around the edges of the toes and the rest of the shoe.

There were a million patterns of stockings, ones with jewels and pictures, and long sock in every shape and colour, not to mention leg warmers and any other type of foot accessory imaginable. Loren struggled with all her might not to take home every pair of socks that she came across, but that still left her with an armful of socks and stockings.

Our last shopping trip was to the foreign language bookshop, where we bought a guide for India and several manga! Loren devoured the manga in a few hours, and was keen to buy the next ones in the series.

Hiroshima, Japan 27.04

We took the Shinkansen to Hiroshima, which was quick and comfortable as usual. We noticed this time, that the ticket inspectors bow when they enter or exit each train carriage.

We arrived at our Ryoken, which is a Japanese Inn or Guesthouse. We were greeted by a tiny old lady who pulled out a laminated piece of paper with English written on it and a Japanese translation. She rapidly spoke in Japanese while pointing to each line of English. Apparently the lady of the house was out and she was to look after us in the meantime. She was hilarious, bustling around and asking us questions in Japanese. We think the word she kept using to ask if we understood was something like 'ne?' Loren was following what she was pointing to in English and replying 'Hai'(yes/ok). So there was a lot of pointing and then 'ne?', 'hai', 'ne?', 'hai'.

We were thrilled to discover that the room was very traditional. The beds were thin mattresses with sheets and quilts on them, but they were just folded in half at the side of the room while no-one was using them. We were also each given a yukata, which is like a bathrobe that can be used as pajamas.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park
After settling in, we set off to see Hiroshima on foot, as the city is not very big. Our first stop was the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. We spent about 2 hours exploring the museum and learning all the details about the nuclear attack.

Hiroshima - before the attack

The fateful day of the attack was the 6th August, 1945, at 8.15am. 90,000 people died in the explosion and after 1945, the number reached 150,000. 92% of the buildings in a 2km radius were destroyed completely. The temperature of the hypocentre of the fire ball was 4000 degrees celsius.

Hiroshima - flattened after the attack

The museum stocked all sorts of confidential documents from America that gave reasons for why the bomb was dropped. Some of the reasons were, that they wanted to finish WWII, or that they wanted to justify the 2 billion dollars that they'd spent on nuclear research for the A-bomb.
Other more sinister reasons include the desire to just see what a nuclear bomb would do.

They'd tested the bombs on deserted buildings and occasionally on animals tied to stakes, but they'd never seen what it would do to humans, and what it would do to an entire city. They even dropped scientific guages with the bomb, as though it was a sort of experiment. The choice of Japan as a possible nuclear target, as opposed to other possible countries such as the Soviet Union, was because they weren't scientifically advanced enough at that point to be able to make any use of the remains of the bomb, in terms of Japan trying nuclear research of their own.

The damage to the city and the long term damage to those exposed to radiation was enormous. Many people died from diseases caused by the radiation, and other lived with strange mutilations to their bodies. One of many cases was a man who had fingernails that grew with blood vessels inside of them, so his nails were completely black. If the nails broke, they would bleed for a very long time, so he couldn't cut the nails at all. Models of humans with melted skin hanging off their arms were very disturbing, as were photographs of children and adults with burns covering their entire bodies. Many of the casualties were children that had been taken out of school to work on creating bomb shelter sites.
We also saw pieces of concrete and steps that were stained black from the people that were burned and vaporised right in front of them. These sections were removed from the city and preserved.

It was a shocking experience to learn what had happened to Japan, and to see how much Japan has recovered in the last 60 years. We were very encouraged by the way Japan has chosen to respond to the attack. They have chosen to use the devastation as an example to others countries of why nuclear disarmament is so important.

There is a flame built into the monument in the peace memorial park, and it will not be put out until the last country is disarmed of its nuclear warheads. The mayor of Hiroshima writes a letter every month to the head of the nuclear governing body in America, begging them to give up their weapons and promote peace.
After visiting the museum, we wandered through the memorial park and saw the flame, and an old building made of ferro-concrete whose skeleton survived the bomb. The remains of the building are left standing as a reminder of what Hiroshima has endured.

Hiroshima-jo Castle
We then headed for Hiroshinma-jo (Carp Castle) which was constructed in 1589. Much of it was dismantled after the Mejii restoration, leaving only Donjon main gates. The rest was destroyed by the bomb, but was rebuilt in modern reinforced concrete in 1958.

The inside of the castle had displays about the history of Hiroshima, but it was all in Japanese. We had fun trying on some outfits there though. Artur tried on the traditional male 'kimono', and Loren tried on the Samurai armour, because the girl's kimono was missing several pieces.


At the top of the castle, you could see all around the city of Hiroshima. The view was great from the balconies.

Japanese Southbank

We had dinner by the river, and once again we were surprised by how much the area looked like Melbourne. The place where we ate looked just like the new set of restaurants by the river near Federation Square.
Artur kept stopping all the way throughout Hiroshima, because he was fascinated by the large scooters. He kept taking photos of the different models, including Majesty, Skyward and Fission.