Here, There and Everywhere!

Kokura, Hiroshima, and Kyoto

Oct 19th, 20th, and 21st

Woaaahoooieeee so much to tell you about....

After our 5 hour train ride from Tokyo we finally made it to Kokura. We were greeted by Ami, my good friend from Semester at Sea. She is now teaching English in Japan with the JET program and living in Kokura. Kokura is a city of about 1 million people. Although we were only there for a short period of time it seemed liked a great place, somewhere I would want to be if I was living in Japan. There was plenty to do there without the hugeness of Tokyo. We took a monorail from Korkura station (about a 4 minute ride) to Ami’s stop. She biked in a skirt and made it there just in time to meet us as we got off the train, she’s very multi talented and can fit right in with the Japanese. We walked to her apartment which took less than 5 minutes, she really does have a great location. We were warmly welcomed into her beautiful apartment that was a fun mix of Japan and America with lots of pictures and cute decorations from all of her travels. Both Jess and I loved it and agreed that we could easily live there! Want two roommates Ami? The apartment had a few differences from a typical American apartment. The overhead light in the living room/bedroom area looks much like ours but when you turn it off it shines a pretty bluish/green color that makes for a wonderful nightlight. Ami had heated floors throughout the apartment, I‘m so jealous. The bathroom was kind of broke up into 3 sections. The toilet was in its own room with a door. The shower and tub were also in its own room which was completely waterproof. The tub was designed to keep the water lasting for like 8 hours so that it could be reused to save water, although we didn’t give it a try. It seemed like a great place to live and Ami definitely did a wonderful job making it very homie. After changing our clothes we headed to an Izakaya which is a restaurant and bar where you can hang out and order all types of Japanese food and they have all you can drink for 2 hours costing $1000 yen if each person orders 2 dishes. We ordered a bunch of things and all shared. We tried shrimp flavored chips, edamame, pork dumplings, Chiizu-age (deep fried cheese), fried rice balls, raw horse meat and Yakitori which is chicken on a skewer, we had kawa (chicken skin), tsukune (chicken meatballs), chicken meat and chicken wings (tebasaki). I also tried their plum wine and a few of their “sour” cocktails, like mango sour and strawberry sour, which were actually very sweet. At the restaurant we had to take off our shoes before going inside the restaurant, so we ate barefoot! There was also call buttons which we could press to buzz our server to come back over to the table. It was a very fascinating experience. After diner we went to the Kokura Castle which was beautifully lit up with Pink lights (Korkura was doing a breast cancer walk and the Pink lights were to promote it).

By this time it was getting pretty late and we headed back to Ami’s where we used the internet while Ami wrote down a list of things for us to do in Hiroshima as well as helpful hints to get us where we were going. We all were very tired and passed out soon after. We all were off to an early start as Ami had to leave for work at 7:45am. Jess and I played on the internet for a little while longer while Ami got ready for school. Ami left and Jess and I stayed and showered then packed up for our trip to Hiroshima. Ami was a great host, I am so lucky to have a friend like her! She really showed us a great time in Kokura!
We arrive in Hiroshima at about 10am after an hour train ride. We found our way to the hostel and put our bags in a locker. We still had about 4 hours before we could check into the hostel so we decided to lighten our load then do some sight seeing. Since we had the whole day we decided to spend a majority of our time focusing on the Peace Park memorial.We first found our way to the Hiroshima Castle.

 

We even climbed the numerous stairs to the top! We certainly are getting good exercise on this trip! We walk more miles a day then you could imagine. Plus we are doing a lot more walking with our backpacks than we had planned. Oh, and, the Japanese love stairs we’ve quickly found out. Instead of putting in a simple cross walk, many of the streets have underground passageways that you must use to get across the street. Regardless we’ve been getting good exercise.
We decided to grab some lunch before heading to the peace park. We both were quite hungry and craved a bit of home. Its amazing how different the food is here. We’ve walked in many grocery stores since we’ve been here and there are plenty of foods that we cant even recognize. We have no idea what it is, when or how you’d eat it, or what you’d eat it with. Its crazy to think two cultures could have such different foods. Regardless we found a Subway and it was fabulous. I think that it was the best tuna sandwich that I’ve had in a long time. It was very similar to home with the exception of the sides. They didn’t have any chips instead they had oven potatoes were which were similar to french fries. Its also crazy how different the portions are. The drink that I got with my meal was considered a large, but it was definitely smaller than the “small” size at home. It’s funny how different things can be. After lunch we found our way to the Peace Park. We started by observing the “A-Bomb Dome” which is the main building that was left in shambles after the bombing. This building was once a symbol of hope for the city and was left to show the destruction that the bomb caused. It was one of the only buildings in the whole city that was somewhat recognizable after the bomb. From there we walked to the Children’s Peace Monument and rang the bell for world peace.

We entered the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum and spent a couple hours walking through and seeing all of the artifacts and reading the information. We both thought that the museum was nicely laid out and had tons of good information, but we were surprised by how little was mentioned about the bombing at Pearl Harbor. We left in a very somber mood.

We decided to head back to the hostel to check in. Our room was a 4 person female dorm. The room was quite small but very traditional Japanese. Each “bed” was just a small area of floor space with a folded up matt which when unfolded will be the sleeping arrangement for the evening. If all 4 beds were setup/unfolded there is only about a 1 foot border around the edge of the room to walk and move around. We decided to wait until the last minute to unfold the beds. Jess and I shared the room with two women, an American who married a Japanese man and who had been living in Japan for 3 years and is now traveling the country, and a woman from Spain- Jess bonded with her and spoke in Spanish for a while explaining how she studied abroad there. I listened, only comprehending about 1/3 of what was being said. Since the internet has been sporadic (and my internet card that I bought that is supposed to give me internet 24/7 doesn’t work) we decided to rest for a couple of hours and both used my computer to upload our pictures to our USB drives and put them on facebook. After showering and putting on real clothes (wearing jeans is one of the best feelings after being in yoga pants for days on end) headed out to check out the nightlife in Hiroshima. I am still in disbelieve about the shopping. There are dozen and dozens (maybe even hundreds) of covered roads with shop after shop selling everything imaginable. After walking around for a while we started to get hungry and decided to go to a Okonomi-yaki, (a type of restaurant that sells a type of Japanese food that is famous in Hiroshima, the food is described like a pizza-pancake, but the only resemblance is the round shape, it tastes nothing like either of those foods in my opinion) Okonomi-yaki is cooked on a hibachi grill with eggs, shredded cabbage, bacon, soba noodles and if you want you can add cheese, mayonnaise, dried squid, leeks, shrimp, etc. We added some type of Japanese herb to it. Jess ordered spicy raw squid I bravely tried a bit. It as okay, but I don’t think I‘d order it again. We left the restaurant and went to a local grocery store to grab some fruit and breakfast items. We decided that we should treat ourselves to a little local dessert. Jess was adventuresome and tried green at ice cream for dessert which neither of us liked at all. I had a more standard chocolate ice cream with chocolate Hershey pieces. I was grad to have something that tasted a little like home since dinner wasn’t my favorite meal I’ve ever eaten. Jess and I can not get over the food here, we both agree that were on a culinary adventure. We called it a night somewhat early at 10pm.
On Tuesday we woke at 7am because our roommates were loud packers. We slowly got ready and checked out of the hostel around 8am. We had some difficulties with our huge bags and needed to get a local at the train station to store them in. We took at 20 minute train and 15 minute water ferry to Miyajima Itsukusima Shrine which has one of the most famous pavilions in Japan.

We got lots of great pictures! We were surprised by the number of deer that lived on the island.

Some of the deer even went into the stores and the employees didn’t seem to be phased by it in the least. While on the island we also got to try Momiji Manju (cake in a maple-leaf shape) we tried ones that were filled with chocolate cream and cream cheese

These were delicious! I wish I could send some home for all of you to try. All of the shops seem to make them right on the island, it reminded me a lot of Golden Rods salt water taffy in Maine, all of the shops had a conveyer belts in the window making these sweet treats.

We then made our journey to Kyoto. We apparently got on the wrong train and sat in first class (which we weren’t supposed to do). We made it almost all of the way to Kyoto without anyone noticing. It’s kind of nice to be able to play the “were the dumb tourist” card and pretend we had no idea in these situations. We made it to our hotel in Kyoto about 3pm. We’re staying in a Ryokan, a traditional Japanese Inn.

Compared to the hostels that we have been staying in this so luxurious! This was our major splurge for this leg of the trip. We’re each paying about $215 for the one night. We had some time to kill before dinner in the room. We decided to walk around and were again amazed by how large Kyoto was. There are tons of shopping areas and restaurants. We’re excited to have 3 days here. We came back to the room around 6 and had an hour to kill before our 7pm dinner. The Hotel staff brought our 8 course dinner (Kaiseki-meaning many courses) in and set everything up for us, including, miso Soup, white cowder-ish dish, Tempura fish (cod?) some type of green pepper I do not know the name of and a potato?, sashimi - tuna & two other white/clear fish. These were all served with soy sauce and green horseradish, There was also a simmered dish called takiawse, with a carrot & some other vegetable served with meat and simmered in a plate on top of a small flame on the table. We enjoyed a bowl of rice, Japanese pickles (kounomono), a grilled dish that included piece of fish, gingerroot & pearl onions wrapped in a leaf of some sort, for dessert we had fruit including melon, peach, Japanese plum and tea. Each dish was beautifully arranged/presented . Some dished had flowers or leaves on them as garnishes.

 

I was very adventurous and tried a lot of things that I normally wouldn’t go near. I didn’t LOVE anything, but I was glad I tried it. The tuna sushi and the rice were my favorite parts. After dinner the staff came in and moved the tables that we had eaten on off to the side of the room then set up our beds for the night.

Jess and I changed into the bathrobes that they provided for us then went to the basement to use the public bath.

We had to shower well and rise our bodies and hair before entering the bath. We joked that after this experience we’d be much closer. Luckily there wasn’t anyone else in the bath with us, so we were able to be a little prude and cover ourselves quickly. We spend the rest of the evening relaxing and got to bed early knowing that we would be having breakfast prepared in our room bright and early plus a full day of sightseeing.
We woke at 7:30am with housekeeping banging on our door. They wanted to put the bedding away and make room for the meal that was being delivered at 8am. We were both groggy a little startled. We had our 5 course breakfast, again trying everything but having no clue what we were actually eating.

We have decided that the theme of our stay in the Ryokan has been “I don’t know” we tried tons of things but didn’t know what anything was. We asked for my towels to use in the public bath and the hotel staff didn’t know what we were talking about. There were various buttons on the toilet sets that we didn’t know what they did, but after some trial and error we figured it out. All in all it was a very traditional Japanese experience. I’m glad that I did it, but I’m not sure if I’d spend the money to do it again.
We checked out of the hotel and bought a day pass for the Kyoto bus and were off to check out Kyoto’s many temples and shrines. Little did we know that would be the start of an annoyingly long day of waiting for ever to get the bus. I kid you not, we must have missed the bus by 30 seconds at least 5 times. We saw in total 2 shines and were so annoyed and famished that we gave up. Since we couldn’t find a restaurant with recognizable food we both opted to grab a snack at a local convenient store. I had a waffle that was folded in half with wipped cream and banana in the middle. It was delicious- who knew you’d find that in a convenient store in Japan? We went back to the Ryokan and grabbed our bags and headed to our hostel. We lucked out with this hostel, it seems bran new and everything is so nice and clean. We are happy to be staying here for 2 nights. We are in a 6 person dorm with bunk beds. Jess and I are the only girls. Three of the guys are European (2 from France, 1 from Whales) (the other bed seems to be empty) they all seem like great guys. After getting ourselves situated at the hostel Jess and I went to find the Geishas on a popular area (Gion) where they are known to walk around. We had no luck- seems that we missed them by a few minutes. We saw 2 women in traditional komonos all dressed up, but aren’t quite sure if they were actually Geishas or not. We went to a restaurant that a lady in our hostel recommended (which happened to be literally 50 feet from the Ryokan- typically we’d move across town and then end up walking all the way back to where we’d slept the night before for dinner. Anyways, the restaurant was a kaiten-sushi,

meaning that they put different pieces of sushi on plates and it goes around on a conveyer belt and you can take as much or as little of every kind of sushi that you like. Luckily, this restaurant had pictures with the English words of all of the different choice so we knew exactly what we were eating We had such a great time seeing all of the different types of sushi and trying different things. I had salmon, tuna, tuna rolls, and lobster salad. Everything was delicious. When we were finished the server counted our plates and charged us $137 Yen per dish, so cheap! In total it ended up costing us less than $10UDS and we got to try exactly what we wanted we were pleased. We came back to the hostel and each did a load of laundry, it feels great to have clean clothes. We also grabbed a drink downstairs at the bar with the two French guys were dorming with. Both seem to be about 25 and have recently lost their jobs and have decided to travel. Its now midnight and I’m scrambling to finish this blog and get to bed. I’m exhausted. My good friend Regina, from Semester at Sea, is meeting us tomorrow morning at our hostel at 5:30am!I think I’ll be needing a nap tomorrow! We’ll off to bed!
Love,
Katie