Japan: Ganbate!: Week seven: Was that an earthquake or did a sumo wrestler just sneeze?

こんにちは、みなさん！

Welcome back to week seven of my life in Japan. This might be a long one, as I've had one helluva weekend, so I advise you of this now--you can break this one up however you like. This weekend I went to Hiroshima and Miyajima for our three-day weekend, so let's begin now!

On the night bus with one of my Canadian friends

Friday we left our dorm at 9pm and took the train to Osaka station. While on the train, my friend had his headphones on and had them loud enough that it was a muffled sound that we could hear outside of it, but not enough to make out words. When the train conductor came through, he actually stopped, identified who's music it was, and tapped him on the shoulder and asked him to turn it down. Yes, on the train. I was across the aisle from him and couldn't hear it, and it was definitely not any louder than people having a whispering conversation. Just something to point out just how quiet these trains are. We got to our bus and boarded it at 10:30. The night bus is the cheaper alternative of traveling, (only $40 each way to Hiroshima, compared to the $80 Shinkansen--bullet train), but there is definitely a reason for this. It was a normal motorcoach, probably about 30 people capacity, with normal mini-bus type seating, which means it was pretty narrow, and didn't have very good recline. They have heavy curtains on all of the windows to block out the lights, and a curtain that blocks the view from the driver.
On the way there I had a nice Japanese guy next to me luckily, who was very unimposing, quiet, and skinny. Half a bottle of umeshu and two Benadryl later, I was sleeping...for about an hour and a half. At 1 AM we stopped at a rest stop, lights inside the bus blazing, and with a very loud announcement about using the restroom. I figured, grumpily, that I might as well go and was pleased to find clean, modern toilets, so this stop didn't bother me that much. However, three hours after this, at 4 AM, we were greeted by an alarm-clock-like song, a 5 minute speech in Japanese (followed by a 5 minute one in English), and full on blazing lights...all for two people to get off at one of the stops. This pattern then continued for the next two hours, with the lights bright and the alarm clock going off every thirty minutes. I, and every other foreigner on there, was aggravated, to say the least. For whatever reason this hardly bothered the Japanese people, who seem to be able to sleep through everything--buses, trains, airplanes, you name it, they're passed out cold on it until exactly the right moment somehow. It's a skill they have. Anyway...

Genbaku Dome

Atomic Peace Memorial Museum

We finally arrived to a very chilly (50 degrees) Hiroshima, wearing our summer clothes for the afternoon, freezing to death in a city that hadn't woken up yet. We meandered around until we bought breakfast at the conbini down the street from the station, and continued exploring Hiroshima. We kind of just stumbled into a lot of places on our hunt for Hiroshima Castle, like the Genbaku Dome, or the Atomic Bomb Dome at the very end of the Peace Memorial Park. It used to be Hiroshima's Prefectural Products Exhibition Hall before the bombing on August 6th, 1945. It was the only building left standing near the hypocentre of the bombing, though everyone inside was killed instantly. It is crazy how well they've maintained it in it's exact condition since the bombing. It's an eerie place to be, as if you can just feel some parts of the city that still haven't quite been able to rest in peace yet. We headed up Peace Park, which has lots of different statues and things to see, like the Children's Peace Memorial. This is a memorial that was petitioned by people and children after the death of Sadako, a little girl who survived the bombing, was thought to be okay, but died years later from leukemia. She made a thousand paper cranes while in the hospital (based on the belief that folding a thousand of these will grant your wish), each one representing her will and fight to live. However, at the age of 12, Sadako passed on, and was buried with these paper cranes. And now, in her memory, an uncountable amount of people donate paper cranes to the memorial in honor of her and all the other thousands of children who died from the atomic bomb. There were some incredible donations, and it was beautiful. On this both inspiring but depressing note, we finally headed into the museum..

Paper crane donations at the Children's Peace Memorial

Sadako's Memorial

...to see and hear even more horrible, horrible things...not quite as graphic as the Peace Museum last weekend, but horrible still. After we made our way through the museum, we were able to listen to a survivor speak on her experience, translated by one of my professors. She was 12 or 14 when it happened, and she was out working at one of the factories, not far from the hypocentre.

Survivors

The things she described are unimaginable--walking through the streets after managing to escape from her destroyed factory, seeing people who's skin was billowed around their hands as they held the entirety of their arm flesh by their fingernails, a boy walking around with his severed arm in his hand, people with babies burnt head to toe in hand...just unimaginable suffering. She lost all of her family and the majority of her friends except for her father, who was able to find her, but died a year later from stomach cancer. She was incredible, and it was a very moving speech and question/answer section. The actual Atomic Bomb Memorial and Peace Museum was massive, and really pretty--manicured grass (kinda something hard to find here in Japan, actually), lots of statues and fountains, the whole bit.

Atomic bomb survivor

Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki!

We headed out to do some lighter things like shopping and eating, and headed to Okonomiyaki-mura (Okonomiyaki town), which is a 6-floor building with a crapton of shops specializing in okonomiyaki--Hiroshima style. Osaka people mix together all their ingredients first, but the Hiroshiman's do it layer-by-layer, and it was equally tasty...I'd probably be more of a fan if I liked cabbage more, but since I'm not a huge lover of it (kinda fishy or something) it's all right. I'm sure everyone else would love it. It's grilled and layered with batter, cabbage, noodles (soba or udon), an egg, whatever meat you chose (I got bacon, mmm), and various spices. Pretty tasty. Afterward, we stopped for a pastry you see everywhere in Japan--essentially a copy of that one French pastry thing--it's a pancake-like-thing made into a cone and stuffed with whip cream and whatever you choose, and I got brownie chunks and chocolate in mine. Delicious, mm!

Pastry dessert thingy, mm.

We went out to our hostel, $4.80 away by train, and arrived...only to find out we were at the wrong one. Luckily, my friend with us is fluent in Japanese, and talked with the very confused owners of "Ｆuji Business Hotel" (the one we booked was Fuji Hostel, booked through booking.com), who tried everything they could to help us. They called the hotel, who's number didn't work, and who's address wouldn't work on our phones (and, at best guess, was 2 and 1/2 hours away from where we now were). They tried calling around other hotels nearby for any rooms, but everything was booked up. Unbelievable. (I now have a cancellation fee of the full price on my credit card, which I now have to fight and dispute, joy.) Also, this town was mad sketchy--everything was still open and bumping at 8pm on a Friday (yeah, that's weird in Japan), and filled with very yakuza looking men in tuxedos, surrounded by questionable looking women they had come flirt with our group of boys. AKA we were now in a town run by the yakuza, homeless.

Prices at the Internet Cafe

We decided to go back to Hiroshima ($4.80 back), exhausted, and try our luck there. We all had dying or dead electronics (no Internet or phones to find another place to stay), and I managed to find some outlets near the ticket booth, behind some chairs. As I tried plugging my stuff in, the ticket guy yelled at us not to use it, without explanation, and so we moved to the other side of the station to try our luck. He actually watched us and sent someone else over there, where we were very out of the way from everyone and everything because everything was closed, just to tell us that we couldn't use the outlets. I had my friend explain our terrible situation, and I begged for just 10 minutes ("Ju-pun kudasai!"), and he "allowed" us 5 minutes...and he timed us. However, as we were leaving, a Japanese lady came and plugged her stuff in, which the workers clearly saw, and didn't say anything. I pointed it out to them (as they stared at me like I was crazy), ready to flip out on someone in rage, just leaving before I got kicked out of the friggin' country. Japan gets a lot of things right, but when they get something wrong, they get it very wrong. Simple things like this always piss me off, America or Japan, because it's just power-hungry little security guards who feel the need to assert their dominance. As the topping on the cake, my friend lost his ticket on our way there, and like jerks, they made him pay again before leaving even though he explained he already paid, he just lost his ticket. Woohoo.

My "bedroom" for the night

Now outside, in the cold wind, at midnight on little to no sleep, we wandered around, looking for something. Another friend of ours had our dilemma earlier, just because she hadn't booked anything, and we knew she was staying at an Internet cafe across the street from the station, and we decided to give that a try. Let me tell you how strange this whole phenomena is: it's a place where you pay various blocks of time and are given either a room or a cubicle, and have access to Internet, manga, and TV. They have a game section (pool, darts, whatever) available for another fee, bathrooms, showers ($3 a shower for some amount of time), drinks, snacks, and ice cream. This is apparently really popular among runaways and homeless people, and it was busy. There were normal looking people, some sketchy people, some travelers, you name it. We paid $16 for 6 hours, plus $3 for a (required) membership card. For this, we were given a cubicle-like-office that fit a desk with a computer and a Lazy Boy recliner. There wasn't a real door, just this half-thing (think Western saloon style) you could slide closed but not lock, and you could still see over everyone's thing if you were walking by. My friend was walking around and saw people casually watching porn, or playing games, or doing whatever, at midnight on a Friday night, by themselves. I grabbed a drink (included in my price), washed my face in the sink, and managed to pass out by 1:30 after downing two more Benadryl.

On the ferry to Miyajima!

Somehow surviving the night without getting robbed or molested, we checked out at 6am to avoid any extra fees (though somehow got charged an extra $2 for God knows what), and stumbled over to the station to head to Miyajimaguchi, the port city leading to Miyajima. It was a quick, (cold) painless 25-minute ride ($4.00), and a 5-minute ferry ride (another $4.00) to Miyajima Island.

This place also holds deer sacred, therefore they roam all over, but they're less friendly/humanized than the bowing Nara deer. It was an absolutely beautiful island, with so many friendly visitors and residents, really some of the kindest people I've interacted with since being in Japan. We saw the famous Itsukushima Shrine and its torii (gate), which was breathtaking (especially in the evening), and was cool because in the morning with low tide we could touch it, but by the afternoon it was surrounded by water with boats floating between it.

Deer of Miyajima

Beautiful!

We climbed two miles up Mt Misen, (535 meters high) a two hour hike up and up and up...I swear I use this analogy too much in Japan, but it was literally like the stairway to frickin' Heaven. I thought I'd die--the way we took apparently is the way you should go down, as it is way more difficult due to the stairs that go on forever, as opposed to the more sloping area that you're supposed to go up. My legs and knees are still shaking. All the Japanese people we passed were very encouraging, and friendly, always saying good afternoon and good luck, pleased to see us climbing instead of riding the car up. Somehow we made it to the top, and the entire way up really was gorgeous, and the view justified it all. Beautiful.

We then, exhausted, took the cable car down ($8 or $10) and enjoyed the views the lazy way. Starving and thirsty, we grabbed lunch--two skewers, one fried chicken, the other oyster filled with cheese and wrapped in bacon, and a dessert of the famous momiji dessert--and enjoyed the perfect, breezy weather on the rock lining the ocean.

Top of Mt Misen

Oyster stuffed with cheese and wrapped in bacon!

Momiji, pancake-like-batter stuffed with bean paste or vanilla maple custard

Several samurai's-trying-to-kill-us and deers-eating-my-souvenir-bags-while-I-was-napping later, we took some last-minute pictures of Isukushima Shrine, shopped around, and headed out on the ferry back to Hiroshima. We ate dinner at Sukiya (the "McDonalds" of Japanese food, specializing in gyudon--literally meaning "meat bowls") and killed time before our bus left at 10pm. I thought the ride back couldn't be any worse than the ride there...and yet somehow, I was wrong.

Final goodbye to Miyajima

This bus had no power outlets, and I had dying electronics, and the girl I sat next to (another student from Kansai Gaidai I didn't know) kept scooting into my space and squeezing her butt onto mine. I literally could feel her butt cheek division on my thigh. Annoyed, I took my two Benadryl without realizing that we were going to do the same stops in reverse, so my driver talked for 30 minutes, and kept the lights on for 2 hours. I managed to groggily stay half-asleep for those first two hours, but after the first rest stop, I couldn't fall back asleep or get comfortable in the narrow seats with terrible recline. He kept flicking the lights on and talking about God knows what, and we arrived at Osaka station at 4:30 AM. Note, the drive doesn't actually take that long, but the drivers sleep halfway through the ride--not that big of a deal because the trains don't start until 5 anyway, but for those who were riding to Kyoto, another 30 minutes away, I'd probably be annoyed. We took our cold, crowded hour ride back home, plus our 15 minute walk, and I showered and crashed, never so happy to see my flat little futon in my life.

Cheese gyudon

Overall, it was a good weekend. A very long one, but a good one, despite all the bumps and bruises and lack of sleep. I'm glad to be back in my room, curled up on my futon, showered, fed, and using my electronics. It's the simple things that make you the happiest. We're currently planning our trip to Tokyo, leaving the night before Halloween so we can be in Tokyo for it (eep!) and we're going to finalize all the details tomorrow. We've got midterms coming up the next two weeks (holy crap), and my oral exam for Japanese is this week. Wish me luck!

Ponder-ances~~

Melon float from McDonalds

I felt my first earthquake! http://www.google.org/publicalerts/alert?aid=c8e488af6425776b&hl=en&gl=JP&source=web . It kind of just felt like being in a small house/car and having a big semi go by, where you can feel the sway and shake and you hear a little rumble, and you raise your eyebrow and say, "Dang." You gotta feel for Japan, I mean really--tornadoes, typhoons (hurricanes), tsunamis, floods, earthquakes, volcanoes...for a country so small, they sure do have a lot of problems. Seriously.

The melon soda float at McDonalds is delicious. Do normal floats have ice in them? They put ice in theirs, and I'm not sure if that's normal or not. Whatever, it and the ebi-fillet are must-haves here in Japan. Don't miss out.

Japanese people turn their cars off at stoplights. At first I thought they were just turning off their headlights, or dimming them, but you can actually hear their cars clicking back on when the light changes. They're incredibly patient about the person in front of them turning their car on and going (whereas in Miami, if you sit for even half a millisecond after the light turns green, they're honking violently behind you). I don't know why they turn their cars off, because at this point they should be able to idle efficiently enough that this is unnecessary. Nevertheless, just an observation.

The best brand of melon bread. SO GOOD.

Sweat rags are sold everywhere--decorative, cute, masculine, for the young and for the old. They're normal face towels, except they're used specifically for heavy amounts of sweat. I'm kind of torn on the whole sweat rag vs hand debate, as I can't decide what's actually grosser. Yes, it's nice that you don't have to worry about them having just wiped their neck sweat off with their hand and grabbing the door handle, but it's also really unattractive when you see a pretty girl whip out her sweat rag from her bag (stank and all). Practically every Japanese person has one, and I'm just not sure if it's a trend I want to catch on in America.

Top of Mt. Misen

When you go to a buffet in America, the goal is to fill up your plate with everything possible, and at least try a little of everything. Yes, inevitably, some things are going to be gross, possibly inedible, but you try it and move on. That's the whole point of paying for a buffet, right? Well, in Japan, there are rules specifically against leaving anything on your plate, especially at buffets. This is a constant struggle we non-Asian-country kids have been having, because if we first of all can't read the signs, we kind of just grab everything and hope for the best, and secondly, a lot of things just don't taste as good as they may look here. This gets us lots of glares as we try to swallow down the unpleasant food we have on our plate (and allows us to come with creative ways to hide the food we don't eat, like in a bowl of melted ice cream). Most of the buffets have time limits, and you are clocked in and clocked out, given the set of rules which always include the "clean plate" rule. I know, I know, it's good that they save their foods with all the starving people out in the world, but I just paid over $12 to eat, which means by golly I am going to eat and not eat whatever I please, because if it isn't good I'm going to fill up on good stuff instead. This argument never really works with Japanese people, however. /sigh

And on that final note, tada and farewell, oyasumi nasai!

<3