For the next three days in Japan, we moved fast. There was a lot that we wanted to do and see in a very short period of time. So the second night in Japan when Ben, Lacey and I were all back at the terminal after our home stays, Ben’s host family was SO helpful with helping us buy tickets and find the bus that would take us to Hiroshima. We were going to take the train, but the bus was half the price and we would still get in before midnight, so we opted for that. They spent probably an hour total helping us find the ticket counter, and helping us find an ATM machine that worked with our cards, which was quite the challenge. Then they showed us to a grocery store so we could get some food for the bus ride. They were SO helpful and honestly I don’t think we would have successfully gotten on that bus. Once we got on they told us that there was a lady on the bus who spoke English who would help us find a hostel in Hiroshima. We had no plan set up for that, we were just going to find one using the guide book once we got to Hiroshima. But about half way through the ride the girl came to the back of the bus and said she had called a youth hostel for us and they had vacancy in a dorm room for I think $20 a person. So we thanked her endlessly and she called the hostel back and made the reservation for us since the front desk closes at 10pm and we would be getting there closer to midnight. She wrote the name of the hostel down in Japanese characters and once we got off the bus we were able to catch a cab and find it relatively easily. We were so thankful to get help from these wonderfully generous people…we almost couldn’t believe how much they went out of their ways to help us, it was really awesome.
We had a good nights sleep at K’s Hostel which is run by young Japanese girls and we had two roommates from England who seemed very nice. We called it a night once we settled down there for a little while and go up rather early to set out for the day. We walked to the train station to go buy bullet train tickets for that evening to go up to Tokyo. The bullet train is the quickest means of transportation in Japan and is extremely efficient and rather reasonable. From the station we took a street tram over to Peace Memorial Park. There we saw all that there is to see. First the A-bomb dome which is a building that is still standing in Hiroshima as a reminder of the power that nuclear weapons have. The structure has been maintained to look as it did after the bombing and is now a World Heritage Site. We walked around the Peace Memorial Park and saw the Peace Clock Tower, the Children’s Peace Monument, the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound, the Peace Bell, the Monument Dedicated to Korean Victims and Survivors, the Peace Fountain, the Friendship Monument, the Flame of Peace, Memorial Hall for the A-Bomb Victims and lastly the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was a beautiful autumn day and the park itself was gorgeous with the changing leaves and monuments everywhere. It was emotional and trying seeing all of the monuments and memorials. To read about the horrible reality and aftermath of the A-bomb was difficult and brought me back to 8th grade when I read the book, Hiroshima. All of the accounts told by the author came rushing back to my memory, and I could not believe that I was standing in the very place that the first nuclear weapon in world history was dropped over 50 years ago.
The Memorial Museum was quite the experience. I think it took us a little over two hours to complete the whole thing. There was just SO much information and so much to see and read about. It took us from the leading events to the dreadful day of August 6, 1945 to all the way through to the effects that residents of Hiroshima still live with today. I learned about the A-bomb from the Japanese point of view and saw material evidence that I never could have imagined. Everything from the morphing of cement form buildings to recovered articles of clothing that school children wore on that day. I saw video clips and photographs of the devastated city of Hiroshima and I can’t believe that it now looks like what it does compared to what it did in the late 1940s. I could have spent more time going through the exhibits and rooms, but my brain was fried from all that I had seen and taken in throughout the day. Even if it was only for a short visit, I am SO glad that I made it down to Hiroshima because it was definitely a place that I wanted to see for myself, and to appreciate. The city may take the cake for the friendliest and welcoming city that I have traveled to during this entire journey. The amount of peace and happiness flowing through the streets and everywhere I went was overwhelming and almost unbelievable after they suffered such a tragic and devastating day in history decades ago. There are shirts sold everywhere saying slogans such as “Nuke Free Hiroshima” or “Peace, Love, Hiroshima”. There were people standing on the bridge over the river with Free Hugs signs and giving everyone who wanted one a Free Hug. I just found the city to be extremely welcoming and gracious towards each other and towards Americans in particular. I was predicting hostility and resentment, but received the exact opposite- it was quite refreshing. We took our time enjoying the rest of the afternoon, then went to the bus station and got a quick dinner before getting on our train to head to Tokyo. It was a four hour train ride and we slept for a little while, but enjoyed most of the ride just talking and playing some games. We finally got to the Tokyo Station around 11pm and were planning on meeting three other friends at the New City Hotel which was apparently rather close by. We followed a map, and walked through a park and magically stumbled upon it! They said they would get there around 1130pm, but that was three days ago, so who knew if they were really going to be there…
We did run into some other SAS friends that we didn’t know where staying there, and eventually Antoinette, Matt & Chris showed up! The rooms were only “for two people” so Ben and Chris checked in and the rest of us staggered up throughout the next ten minutes. We all showered and got ready to go out in Tokyo – starting at 1230am about, haha. We took a cab to an area that we were planning to meet up with more friends in and wound up going to Freshness Burger, a “fast food” place to get some food since we hadn’t eaten since lunch and we just walked around and went to a few bars in the area, and wound up coming home around 3am I think. We pushed the two beds together so four people were able to sleep on the beds, and two of us slept on the floor. We would only be sleeping for a few hours so we knew it was no big deal. Matt, Antoinette and Chris had slept in a bar the night before….aka they didn’t sleep, so when Lacey, Ben and I woke up around 6am to go to the Tsukiji Fish Market, they decided to sleep in. We caught the train and made it to the market a little late, the prime time is between 5-6am and we got there a little after 7am. But it was pretty neat to see all of the fresh catches of the morning. It is basically where all sushi restaurants come to buy the fresh fish for the day. We got to try some pretty interesting food, half of which I had no idea what it was, and I ate some REALLY good raw fish. What could be better at 730am?? That was fun to walk around for about an hour or so seeing all of the interesting food they had out. We stopped at a little store to get some snacks for the day, because the night before we had decided that we were going to go to Tokyo Disney!! First we stopped at the Imperial Palace, Gokokuji Temple and the Tokyo Castle. The Temple was neat, we walked around it for awhile. The Palace and Castle we couldn’t get really close or go into, but they were neat to see. There was some sort of horse brigade coming through that no one would explain to us, but it was cool to see. Then we hopped back on the train (subway and train are the same thing in Tokyo…and we had gotten frighteningly good at figuring out all of the lines). Originally we had no intention of going to Tokyo Disney, but after seeing all of the advertisements, and that the park was revamped into CHRISTMAS, I was sold. When we were looking at a map in the station to figure out the best line to get on, we met a Japanese student who spoke very good English and helped us find lockers to drop our packs at for the day so we didn’t have to carry them around Disney for a few hours. He was extremely helpful and was getting on the same line that we were so we had the chance to talk with him for a few minutes. He recommended that we go to DisneySEA instead of DisneyLAND. We had no idea what the difference was so we took his word for it! As soon as we saw the Christmas trees and lights and heard the music, we knew it would be a good afternoon in Disney. We walked around, shopped, people watched and went on a couple of rides. We all developed this love for children while we were traveling through Asia because they are so absolutely adorable. There were a few weird things about Disney Tokyo…like the lack of Mickey, and the overwhelming presence of Duffy, a character that I have never seen or heard of before. We went to “Western Land” instead of “Frontier Land”, which was funny. It was a good afternoon and once the sun set and the park was lit up with Christmas lights it was magnificent. It probably was not as elaborate as Disney in the States, but it still put us in quite the Christmas spirit. We couldn’t stay for the light show unfortunately because we had to get to Yokohama by 9pm to go to the Ramen Noodles Museum because Lacey had to visit there as a class assignment. We caught a crowded train to Yokohama which took only about 45 minutes and after some confusion, final made it to the Ramen Museum. It was the weirdest place I have visited on this trip. First of all, not a single person there spoke English. Lacey’s assignment was to try all of the different Ramen noodles they had, but each one cost about $5 and was a huge bowl! It was this poorly lit building that was supposed to look like a city inside? And there were all these different little “stores” that had the different noodle dishes. It was very bizarre, I still don’t really understand it. But there were some other SASers there since the ship had just gotten to Yokohama that day and a number of students stayed on the ship between Kobe & Yokohama.
We finally made it to the port around 11pm after making friends with this very interesting man on the train. He spoke very little English, but explained that he was also a backpacker and insisted on helping us find our way to the ship (since we didn’t exactly know where the port was). He also wanted to take us out to drinks and back to his house for dinner (which we obviously declined) but he did catch us a cab and took us to the port which was very nice. We probably could have walked, but when we told him that he basically started to tear up, so we let him catch us a cab. I know as soon as my head hit the pillow in my cabin I was out.
The next morning we debated taking the train to Mt Fuji, which wasn’t very far away, but at this point we were running low on money and just wanted to stick around Yokohama. So we walked around the pier, where many other ships and cruises were parked and enjoyed the beautiful weather just walking along the water. We did a little shopping at a nearby mall and then found a Round Sushi restaurant which was exactly what we wanted! We call them Conveyer Sushi in the States…where you sit at a big counter and the sushi chefs make two pieces of sushi and put them on color coded dishes that cycle around the conveyor belt and you just grab what you want! The plates have different price values, and then you pay at the end depending on how many plates you have…I had been to one in London before, but not in the States. The sushi here is really different than at home, and not exactly what I expected. They don’t really make rolls unless you request it, and they use a lot of mayo which is interesting. The best one that I had was avocado & tuna with mayo. They also have crab, tuna and shrimp salad pieces which were interesting. Overall, fantastic lunch and just what we wanted as our last meal before getting back on the ship for the long haul to Hawaii. After lunch we walked around the park for awhile – climbed trees, watched families fish from a river and then we went on the World’s Biggest Ferris Wheel! It gave us a beautiful view of the city, and apparently on a clear day you can see Mt Fuji, but it was definitely not that clear that day. It took about 20 minutes to go all the way around and was pretty fun. We bought some groceries after that (half of which I had no idea what it was…) and then we went back to the ship to get on a little early. We were pretty exhausted and my feet were actually in pain from all of the walking that I did the past two days through Hiroshima and Tokyo.
Throughout most of Japan there was Christmas music and Christmas decorations and it was fall weather, so it actually got me in the mindset for the holiday season. Japan was one of my favorite countries of the journey, and once again a lot of it had to do with the home stay that I did while in Kobe. I found the Japanese to be extremely kind and helpful and although I did hear other students talk a lot about racism throughout the country, I never once encountered it. Lots of people were rejected from bars or clubs for being American and received dirty looks from the locals. Although it wasn’t the cheapest place we had visited, I enjoyed my stay there and was very glad that I did not get back on the ship between Kobe & Yokohama. As the last major part of the journey, I was glad I traveled with Ben & Lacey – it really put a nice end to the travel through Asia. Although it was stressful at times trying to read train maps and figure out the schedules, overall it was a pretty stress-free port and we met some really friendly people who helped us along the way. Japan is definitely a country that I would like to visit again one day (It seems like this is a trend after most of the countries that I have visited….)
No comments:
Post a Comment