Weeks 4 & 5 in Japan because I fell on a bicycle last week and did something to my shoulder which made it difficult to type among other things. There's no extra comments or anything following below because there's so much stuff anyway! Hopefully next week I'll get back in the swing of things? If scrolling through photos is too boring for you then look at my actual G+ page or just my Japan Photos Photo Album because the pictures have captions (or most of them do).
So here are all my updates! The first one is back from Inashiki and then they go through our time in Hiroshima and finally catch up to where we are now in Kyoto!
See you next week!
Pictures from karaoke last night. The last time I went to Karaoke in Japan it was fun but this place was super awesome! We paid for 2 hours karaoke with free drinks 'included' and ate lots too!
Fiancé sang a lot and I did a couple of (anime) songs too including Youkai Watch Taiso! Everyone joined in with Choo Choo Train and I learnt about Wolf Boy Ken. Earlier in the day in the greenhouse Rin was playing Moves Like Jagger on her phone and we joined in so we all had to sing that together too!
At the end we tried to find a song that we all knew, there really wasn't one but we settled on "Country Road" because most of us knew it from Ghiblis's "Whispers of the Heart" but in the end we couldn't find it in time and our 2 hours passed by!
Karaoke was followed by Ramen and a visit to a store called Don Quiote, I know the book but this store sold everything apart from books! The closest thing I could compare it to would be Woolworths... But messier... And with more stuff...
On our way to Hiroshima now!
(( Extra photos courtesy of Kisama-Chan! ))
Fiancé gone to get lunch for the trip so I'm waiting outside opposite a store that sells "The Finest Teas of the world" I miss tea...
Some photos from this week. After we went for ramen lunch one day we ended up at the temple. I didn't have my phone on me at the time so these are Finace photos.
Final old photo, this is way back from Week 1 when we went to Narita on our day off.
End of first day in Hiroshima! Wifi here so please don't expect any calls from me this week!
90 pages / 50088 words later and Nanowrimo14 is officially over for me!
Today's photos from Hiroshima. We had fun trying to get our Residence Cards registered.
We took the tram to City Hall, like yesterday, who told us to go next door. Next door had no idea what we wanted but eventually told us we were in the wrong ward office. Que 20 minute walk to the South Ward Office which was actually a good walk since it helped us discover a beautiful view of the river and a creepy abandoned school.
In the afternoon we went to the peace memorial / atomic bomb museum which I'd been to before but was no less moving than last time.
First we went to the Atomic Bomb Dome which used to be a multi-purpose building that hosted exhibitions and the like. The entire peace park used to be a down-town shopping / leisure district which was completely flattened when the bomb went off 600m above the Dome and 100m to the left of it. Everything within about 2km of the explosion was destroyed apart from the Dome, what you can see now has been preserved from almost 70 years ago to the point where the rubble remains untouched.
Outside of the Dome someone had laid out some information and pictures of his mother and father who had been in Hiroshima at the time of the detonation. You can find his blog here: http://blog.livedoor.jp/mitokosei/
There was lots more information around the park and at the museum but what really struck me was the amount of young people aged 11-16 that died that day. There were warnings of fire bombs being dropped and so that day students of middle and high schools were gathering in groups to destroy buildings to create fire paths. When the bomb detonated at 08:15 lots of these students were already on site or going to their scheduled demolition site. If they had been in their classrooms at schools further away from the centre of the city maybe more of them would have survived. Inside the museum lots of families had donated the few belongings that they could find of their children and their stories. Most of them ran something like this:
"This is the sandal of Miyuki Tatsuya (aged 15 at the time) and student of Hiroshima East High School. On the 6th August 1945 she was at the building her group was to demolish that day in order to make a fire corridor. She was 3km from the epicentre of the explosion. She was covered in severe burns, especially on her arms and legs which left her unable to walk properly. She was taken to the nearest hospital by her friend Mei who was also injured and both of them received some first aid which proved to be inadequate. Both managed to get to Mei's house later that day. Mei and Miyuki died around 2am the next morning. Miyuki's family were unable to find any trace of her until her mother found Miyuki's sandal left in the hospital. She recognised it because the cloth of the sandal had been repaired by her mother with the cloth of her old kimono."
The sandal story is a real one although I think the mother of the girl who owned the sandal never found her body. The hospitals at the city centre really were overrun and most people treated there had to be given further first aid at home. When I say 'severe burns' I mean that the bomb had ripped people's clothing apart and left people wandering around with strips of flesh and clothing coming from their body. It really was difficult to go through some of the exhibit and 2/3 of it was closed for renovation!
Tomorrow if the weather is good we will try heading to Miyajima so more pretty pictures and fewer sad stories!
Also, here are some other pictures courtesy of Fiance from Inashiki
Yesterday we went to an island near Hiroshima called Miyajima. I've been there before but instead of looking at the regular things (apart from Itsukushima, the floating torii gate) we ended up taking a 90 minute hike to the top of the mountain and then riding the ropeway down again.
It was pretty fun but really tiring! The first 1km seemed to go really slowly but after that it was okay. That first 1km was probably slow because we were messing around bouldering and climbing over the river... After that we realised we still had over 2km to go and got to it. There were lots of steps but they were so steep I'm not sure they helped...
One thing I wanted to do while we were there was eat Hiroshima's famous 'Momiji Manju' which is a soft cake shaped like a momiji leaf with a soft filling. We bought a set of 5 which came in chocolate, green tea, custard cream and two different types of red bean paste.
Last night we went to the FRIGGIN DREAMANATION LIGHTS. THEY WERE AWESOME! Warning. If you click through the photo comments be aware that there is OVERUSE OF CAPS LOCK BECAUSE I WAS REALLY EXCITED ABOUT THE LIGHTS AND YESTERDAY WAS THE BEST DAY EVER!
Today we went for a bike ride! I fell over! My shoulder really hurts when I stretch it over my head. Typing kinda hurts if I move my shoulder but it's mostly fine since my palms rest at the bottom of the keyboard.... If it still hurts tomorrow I've been told we're going to the hospital... sigh
We visited the Manga Library and sat there to read for a while. We also ended up in a department store where Sandy the mini-guitar joined us on our trip. Boyfriend without guitar was sad and constantly singing. With Sandy he's much happier already....
The kitchen was really full today, I think the hostel is completely full? So we got McDonalds. I ate my meal in about 5 minutes and then played with the box for 15.
One month in Japan passed without a blog post! We're staying in tomorrow so I'll do it tomorrow!
So typing has been quite difficult for the past week but my shoulder feels better now. We've been in Kyoto for a few days but here are some more pictures from Hiroshima taken by Fiancé.
Sorry if I've already uploaded these! They're in my 'to upload' folder on my computer. More updates to follow later today probably as I catch up on the stuff we've been doing!
So here's a few photos from our first couple of days in Kyoto. We didn't really do much, we just walked around and enjoyed the change of scenery.
09/12/14 We walked around the Kyoto National Gardens which used to be a town itself where the Emperor and the nobles lived until the capital was moved to Tokyo. We did lots of walking and sat together reading in the park. It was pretty cold outside though!
We got there early enough to sign up for a tour of the old Imperial Palace. It's not in use any more but it was really interesting. Although it was a large area the Emperor would probably have grown up and lived here without going much further afield. This was also the site that the last Shogun of Japan gave up his powers and restored the Emperor to the throne.
After that we took a look around the 'National Museum of Kyoto'. We learnt more about the history of Kyoto and saw some beautiful works of art which I tried to take pictures of but they were all terrible photos.
They have a great 'volunteer guide service' mostly made up of older males and one of them took us around the main exhibit. He was very friendly and wants to visit London in the future. There were a lot of guides around so I wished I had more questions to ask him etc because after that he just went back to wandering around the exhibit. He was very cheerful and interesting!
And this is what we've been doing today! We visited the Toei Movie Park which is / has been used as a working movie set so we got to walk down the streets of Kyoto as they used to be!
We visited the Anime Museum there, went through the Amazing Maze and went through a haunted house that was way too scary... Seriously... Japan knows some stuff about haunted houses... Way graphic with random things moving, puffs of air and creepy children laughter... Lots of actors inside too.... shudder
We saw a great sketch about how sound effects, lighting and the actors all contribute to setting the scene on set so that less has to be altered and saw a completely 100% accurate sketch show about how the ninja Goemon used a secret ninjitsu technique to steal Oda Nobunaga's sacred urn.
It was a really fun day! We spent most of the day there and now I'm really tired!
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