My brain has taken a few days to reboot properly into Japanese mode. After two full days, it at least felt like my mouth remembered vaguely how to make Japanese sounds and my brain remembered a ton of vocabulary and how to make my sentences intelligent.
なんとなくできた！ May my Japanese professors be ever proud.
There were some things that fell back into place right away – like getting around and living. I made attempts to let my traveling buddy know what to expect, but some things were still so commonplace that I simply forgot to mention them. For example:
- The shower. He asked me if there was anything to keep in mind when using the shower the first night and I said “No, nothing special, that’s a normal shower.” He stuck his head out seconds later and went “Wait, I don’t shower in the tub?!” Showers in Japan are generally separate from the toilet, are a room to themselves, and you don’t take them in the bathtub – that’s for bathing only (duh, since it’s a bathtub).
- If you take your shoes off at a temple, never let your shoes touch the wooden part. He stepped on it accidentally and a nearby lady lost her mind.
- Always chuck your change in for bus fare at once or it doesn’t count your fare properly.
- Don’t touch taxi doors, they’re all automated.
To make up for my ineptitudes, here is a list of ways I did not fail my travel buddy (yet):
- I reminded him to stand on the left on the escalator. Always on the left or you will disappoint so many Japanese people.
- I have reminded him to duck a few times since he is a giant compared to the people here.
- I use my powers of Japanese to fix train tickets and order food and stuff.
- I only got us lost once so far despite my usual knack for disorientation.
Friday morning was our last morning in Kyoto before heading west to Hiroshima. Notably this morning, I solved my ATM woes before we left. Japanese ATMs are not hooked up to the global ATM network and have rules unto themselves. Apparently, this means that chipped mastercard debit cards will only work in a few places – which is of course the card I have. Seven-eleven bank ATMs to the rescute, which are plentiful and only moderately fickle. I finally withdrew money, replenishing my dwindling cash stocks. Yay!
Higashi Hongan-ji
The last time we were in Kyoto, I am pretty sure we went to this temple because we needed something close to the station to do while we waited for our shinkansen back to Tokyo. It was the same reason we visited this time.
This temple is mostly free and the grounds are impressively spacious. We strolled around for a bit, learning about the Nenbutsu sect of Buddhism and admiring the levels of preservation of the massive wooden buildings adorned with gold.
Before leaving for Hiroshima, we stopped at Yodobashi Camera since I needed an overpriced SD card (I needed to be able to download Pokemon!). Yodobashi is a large electronics retailer that plays a jingle over and over when you’re inside the store. This jingle is so pervasive it will occasionally still get stuck in my head, opening apparently deep psychological wounds caused by hearing it over and over and over again in college.
In case you too would like to suffer along enjoy this marketing masterpiece, here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a4QSu1ZHunw
I paid double the price of an SD card back home but I didn’t care – worth it for Pokemon. Next stop: Hiroshima.
Peace Park and Atomic Bomb Memorial
In 2008, we were here in mid-July. It was incredibly hot and humid and we were awkwardly interviewed by Japanese schoolchildren about what we thought about the atomic bomb. I mean, there is only one answer to that if you are an educated human being, and doubly so if you’ve been to the memorial and its exhibits: it is an absolute atrocity.
The park itself is peaceful, with broad, tree-lined sidewalks and beautiful memorials both to those whose lives were senselessly lost and to creating a peaceful future together, without atomic weaponry.
August 6, 1945, 8:15 AM marks the detonation of the atomic bomb over Hiroshima.
The museum is everything you’d expect it to be: raw, emotional, compassionate, hopeful for a peaceful future. Exhibits feature graphic images of victims who were burned to death by the rays, dioramas of children with their skin melted and hanging off their bodies, and of vicious keltoid scars removed (including the actual scars). Clothing, watches, skin, hair, fingernails and other donated mementos from victims are lined up on display around the museum, along with the stories of those who died wearing or carrying the items. Some of them returned home to die despite ministrations of loved ones, and of others, all that remained to identify them was a sandal and a memory.
The museum features the story of Sachiko, a little girl who died of leukemia years after the bomb dropped. I remember reading a book about her when I was in middle school. Sachiko began to fold 1,000 cranes while hospitalized for leukemia, but sadly died before she could complete her cranes. Sachiko inspired the memorial to children in the park built through international cooperation and her story has been told many times over around the world.
At the end of the museum, they had a segment about the history of the park. Obama had been there in May of this year, and I learned he was the first leader of a country with nuclear weaponry to visit Peace Park and the memorial. As in first ever.
I found that to be equally shocking and saddening. The park and its memorials should be required to anyone who leads a country in possession of nuclear weaponry, in hopes of passing on even a small fragment of the horror of the atomic bomb’s impact on innocent civilians.
The museum is currently under reconstruction, and I was disappointed to learn that one of the most impactful exhibits from my past visit was not open at this time. It was an audio and visual recreation of the hardships the victims experienced, with haunting audio that I can still recall to this day.
All that was left for us on the grounds was the memorial hall, which contains information on all victims, some of their stories, and a library for more information on the 300,000+ victims.
Sad but necessary visits over, we somberly shuffled back to our Air B&B before dinner: Okonomiyaki!
Hiroshima’s food thing is okonomiyaki. You can think of it like Japanese pizza, with tasty sauce on top and generally filled with cabbage, a flour mixture, and some kind of protein. We went to Okonimi-mura to get our fill of this fantastic dish. As soon as we got off the elevator, an enigmatic okonomiyaki maestro gestured us over to sit in his restaurant.
There was a documentary about okonomiyaki on the nearby TV and I learned from our cook that about fifty years ago, okonomiyaki in Hiroshima used to be folded in half and then eaten while holding it in your hands. Crazy! I’d like to try it.
On our way to and from the okonomiyaki place, we stumbled into a festival for Ebisu, god of commerce. Stands lined the streets and we got our fill of desserts on the way back from dinner. I got cheese taiyaki. CHEESE. Maybe I am daft, but I have never seen that before. It was delicious if you like weird Japanese cheese (I do, because cheese, yo).
The festival runs all weekend, so we’ll stop by tomorrow and see if we can catch some more of the festivities!