ok.
i’m bad at this blogging thing
clearly… it was all going so well, i was regular and informative, heck i was
even a little witty…
anyways, enough about that… let’s
talk hiroshima. =)
i’ve been slowly but surely
working on my “hiroshima: the epic adventure” post and i’m going to post it
in instalments, each day will be a separate post with it’s own set of pictures.
doing this to build suspense and also to stave off carpal tunnel – i can be
pretty wordy and i have four days to cover… also, i think a massive post plus
pictures would kill the blog server… (this blog will be based on memories plus
scribbles and journal entries i made while i was there)
preamble.
summer vacation, my very first
one in japan, my very first “designated time off” as a teacher. i didn’t want
to just doss about at home, i wanted to travel a little. that was probably one
of the things that worried me about moving abroad – the restrictions that would
be placed on my ability to travel.
when i lived in the uk i could,
and did, travel quit extensively. the availability of cheap holidays, long
weekends etc, was great. japan isn’t really the place to live if you want a
great holiday at an even better price… so, i decided that i wanted to travel
but it had to be a reasonable distance (i had roughly one week to burn) and it
had to be a reasonable price…
hiroshima is about eight hours
away by car (roughly) but by bus and shinkansen (bullet train) it took about
four hours and it fit the budget as well. so, three nights in a hostel were
booked and off i went!
day one: monday. where i travel
and arrive and wander about.
i took the bus from ebino to
fukuoka at about 8.45am in the morning: the bus takes about three hours to
complete half the journey (three quarters of the travel time…) the bus journey
was fun: it was a road that i’d driven a few times but obviously never had the
chance to properly gawk at because i try to be responsible when i’m driving and
i keep my eyes on the road…mostly… so it was nice to be a passenger for a
change and just take in the scenery. truly, i live in a freaking beautiful
place… so green and lush and… scenic. yeah, scenic. =)
i arrived in fukuoka (the
“capital city” of my island) at about 11.45am and made my way to the ticket
office at the train station. i’d pre-booked my bus and hostel but the train
ticket was to be sorted on the day. i’d priced the shinkansen online but it was
coming out super super expensive so i figured i’d be using the local trains
(which take about six hours or so). i got to the shinkansen ticket place first
and thought “what the heck!” and decided to use my newly learned and practiced
japanese to ask for a ticket price (use it unsuccessfully in a place it’s not
needed and you’ll nail it when it is needed…) got quoted a price that was only
a few thousand yen more than the local trains and about half the price i’d
found online… booked. booked booked booked. =)
i had about twenty minutes to
wait then hopped aboard the shinkansen. this train was immense: it’s basically
an aeroplane on tracks. inside it’s laid out like an aeroplane, it goes just as
fast (this may not be strictly true but it felt like it) as someone who loves
travelling and who loves trains, i was pretty pleased by this point.
i arrived in hiroshima one hour
later (result!) and made my way to the hostel roughly five hours earlier than
i’d planned. dropped my backpack at the hostel and had a lot of unexpected time
to kill…
i decided to make my way to the
peace memorial park while the weather was good. pretty much my whole trip it
was meant to be stormy and not good weather so my brain decided that taking
some good weather photos of the peace memorial etc. was sensible and i agreed.
i walked the twenty minute or so walk from the hostel to genbaku, the location
of the haunting A-Dome (genbaku dome) and the peace memorial park and museum.
hiroshima is pretty amazing. when
you consider that it has completely regenerated since the bomb was dropped in
1945… wow. just wow. the city was humming with life, throbbing. i like cities a
lot and hiroshima is definitely my kind of city – big enough to get the city
vibe but small enough that it feels homey. my university was in a city like
that: like a really big town on steroids.
i wandered about the memorial
park for a few hours, just adjusting to the heat (it was super hot that week in
hiroshima, i was desperately craving my high-altitude hometown and the slight
breezes it has to offer) and taking in the sights, sounds and smells of
somewhere completely new. i’m getting acclimatised to japan, i’m not thrown or
alarmed by “just how different” it is, there was no wonder or excitement at a
lot of the commercial stuff (the stores etc) because they are part of my life.
the excitement came from the newness and the differences i could perceive in
this different part of japan.
i eventually stopped creeping
about the peace memorial park and decided to get some food, i’d been travelling
most of the day and had eaten very little… i couldn’t face the constant “lost
in translation” that comes with menu ordering… i made myself a picnic: onigiri
(rice balls), a sandwich, dried squid (really the only way i enjoy eating it),
mixed nuts and an amazing fruit salad. and beer. it’s completely legal to drink
in public in japan, they prefer you to stay still while you’re doing it though:
it’s not a crime to walk down the street drinking a beer but you will be
judged. it’s not uncommon to see people stopped on a bench, or on a patch of
grass, sitting having a post-work beer to themselves in the slowly setting sun.
i plodded along to the river with my feast and watched the sun set on
hiroshima. contented doesn’t even cover it…
i wandered back to the hostel,
intent on a shower and a reasonably early night. this was not on the cards… my
roommates were all back by this point and they were a nice bunch. we ended up
going for drinks which turned into wandering about hiroshima at night which
turned into clubbing. we got ourselves a foreigner discount (we paid for two
people and four got it) and danced the night away. i remember (drunkenly)
emailing my dad in wonder, i think at that moment, in hiroshima, it really hit
me… i live in this country. i’m a believer in “home is where you hang your hat”
and right now, my hat hangs in japan. pretty surreal, huh?
day one photographs:
welcome to hiroshima.
downtown hiroshima from the river.
hostel room. lovely.
the rooftop "hangout" at the hostel.
genbaku dome. the only structure to survive the bomb.
memorial for the mobilised students. hiroshima was full of junior high kids when it was bombed.
dome from the river.
folded paper cranes. make a thousand of these and you may be granted a wish.
memorial for children. the figure on top is sadako sasaki with a crane flying above her: she folded thousands of paper cranes before dying at 12 years old. she was two years old when the bomb dropped.
the peace flame. it will be extinguished when there are no nuclear weapons left on earth.
the memorial cenotaph.
the peace gates.
these peace gates have "peace" written on them in many languages.
i was really there. =)
the peace flame at dusk.
genbaku dome at dusk from the river.
the dome.
the dome by night...
next up:
day two: tuesday. trams, ferries
and a sacred island. oh my!
