Thursday, May 03, 2007
April 15,
We woke up, a couple of times, and eventually got back on the road. We dubbed this place the cutest hostel in Japan because it was just adorable all over. Nice beds, too, which was a definite plus. Then, off to Hiroshima!
Jess slept on the bullet train. She’s so cute.
We met a couple of fellow travelers on the way from the rail station to the Hostel; one guy who chatted about hostels, and another couple of guys who needed help getting to Peace Park. I felt soooo experienced when I got to explain how busses work.
Walked to the hostel from the streetcar stop, found the hostel was closed (grr), so dropped off our bags in a coin locker and walked off to Peace Park, a park in memory of the A-bomb dropping and in hope for peace. We ate first and I got to try some okanomiyaki, sort of a savory noodle/sauce/seafood pancake that I’d heard about. It was pretty good.
Fueled up, we made our way through the A-bomb museum, which documented the whole incident, lead up, and atomic war since with a decided (and justified) anti-war slant. Seeing watches forever frozen at 8:15 (when the bomb was dropped) was eerie. Hearing stories about the survivors and the victims of radiation later was pretty stark, too. I half-expected it to take a one-sided pro-Japan anti-America stance, but it was surprisingly even-handed.
We strolled through the park afterwards, seeing the eternal flame which is supposed to be extinguished only when all atomic bombs are dismantled.
The Cenotaph was also nice to see, as was the children’s peace memorial, with thousands and thousands and tons of paper cranes all in display cases. You could even sign up to make your own ‘1000 paper cranes’ and have it housed there.
We also saw the a-bomb dome. Almost right under the blast and it remained standing, though gutted. It’s the one part of the city that wasn’t restored afterwards, and I think that’s what surprised me the most about the city. The bomb wasn’t dropped that long ago, 1949. That’s less than 60 years ago that the entire area where we walked through was leveled absolutely flat. Our hostel was built on land that was scorched clean only 55 years ago. To look at Hiroshima now, you’d never know. The city is alive and breathing just fine. 55 years! That’s not bad!
After all of that, we checked in at our hostel and then took a stroll through the shopping district.
I got to play at Japanese arcades! I knew they were bigger over in Japan, but good gravy! I have a theory as to why, by the way. In Japan they have 100 yen coins, which is, roughly, a dollar. It’s much easier to pop in 100 yen and think: ‘oh, it’s just one coin’ than to pop in four quarters. Four quarters? That’s a dollar! No way! So they can make more money. They certainly made some off of me.
(I love that picture). Each arcade (and there were several) had multiple floors. There was usually a floor for prizes with those grippy-arm things that never work, a pachinko/gambling for prizes floor, plenty of arcade games, and a floor where girls would go and take pictures in photo booths. Jess and I explored those, but we couldn’t quite figure the system out. We think it involved cell phones.
I spent some time and energy and yen there and had a ton of fun. Jess relaxed and played the DS. (She’s really nice to me). There were some fantastic-looking card-game based arcade games too. The arcade machines had a surface where you would place your cards and some sort of either ID chip or encoded image on the card would let the arcade machine know where the cards were. Then you *moved the cards around* and tried to beat your opponent’s cards with yours. It’s amazing. You can see a video of it here. I would have paid more attention…and a LOT of yen, I’m sure, on the game, but all the text was in Japanese, and I wouldn’t have been able to understand.
I played some drum-mania too, but I can do that at home.
We also visited a model shop. There’s a level of model-collection and creation that I’m just not able to bring myself up to. That store was that level.
Also, another bread store. We went nuts again, but that was some seriously good bread.
Lots of, I’m sure, very impressive cell-phone technology, but I really only use mine for calling people, telling time, and occasionally for calculating a tip. More than that just doesn’t appeal to me.
On the way back, we saw bats! Jess noticed them first. I tried to get a picture, but it was at night and they wouldn’t hold still. The peace flame looked nice at night, though.
Next day we would travel to Osaka, but as for where we would stop…who knew?
-N
We woke up, a couple of times, and eventually got back on the road. We dubbed this place the cutest hostel in Japan because it was just adorable all over. Nice beds, too, which was a definite plus. Then, off to Hiroshima!
Jess slept on the bullet train. She’s so cute.
We met a couple of fellow travelers on the way from the rail station to the Hostel; one guy who chatted about hostels, and another couple of guys who needed help getting to Peace Park. I felt soooo experienced when I got to explain how busses work.
Walked to the hostel from the streetcar stop, found the hostel was closed (grr), so dropped off our bags in a coin locker and walked off to Peace Park, a park in memory of the A-bomb dropping and in hope for peace. We ate first and I got to try some okanomiyaki, sort of a savory noodle/sauce/seafood pancake that I’d heard about. It was pretty good.
Fueled up, we made our way through the A-bomb museum, which documented the whole incident, lead up, and atomic war since with a decided (and justified) anti-war slant. Seeing watches forever frozen at 8:15 (when the bomb was dropped) was eerie. Hearing stories about the survivors and the victims of radiation later was pretty stark, too. I half-expected it to take a one-sided pro-Japan anti-America stance, but it was surprisingly even-handed.
We strolled through the park afterwards, seeing the eternal flame which is supposed to be extinguished only when all atomic bombs are dismantled.
The Cenotaph was also nice to see, as was the children’s peace memorial, with thousands and thousands and tons of paper cranes all in display cases. You could even sign up to make your own ‘1000 paper cranes’ and have it housed there.
We also saw the a-bomb dome. Almost right under the blast and it remained standing, though gutted. It’s the one part of the city that wasn’t restored afterwards, and I think that’s what surprised me the most about the city. The bomb wasn’t dropped that long ago, 1949. That’s less than 60 years ago that the entire area where we walked through was leveled absolutely flat. Our hostel was built on land that was scorched clean only 55 years ago. To look at Hiroshima now, you’d never know. The city is alive and breathing just fine. 55 years! That’s not bad!
After all of that, we checked in at our hostel and then took a stroll through the shopping district.
I got to play at Japanese arcades! I knew they were bigger over in Japan, but good gravy! I have a theory as to why, by the way. In Japan they have 100 yen coins, which is, roughly, a dollar. It’s much easier to pop in 100 yen and think: ‘oh, it’s just one coin’ than to pop in four quarters. Four quarters? That’s a dollar! No way! So they can make more money. They certainly made some off of me.
(I love that picture). Each arcade (and there were several) had multiple floors. There was usually a floor for prizes with those grippy-arm things that never work, a pachinko/gambling for prizes floor, plenty of arcade games, and a floor where girls would go and take pictures in photo booths. Jess and I explored those, but we couldn’t quite figure the system out. We think it involved cell phones.
I spent some time and energy and yen there and had a ton of fun. Jess relaxed and played the DS. (She’s really nice to me). There were some fantastic-looking card-game based arcade games too. The arcade machines had a surface where you would place your cards and some sort of either ID chip or encoded image on the card would let the arcade machine know where the cards were. Then you *moved the cards around* and tried to beat your opponent’s cards with yours. It’s amazing. You can see a video of it here. I would have paid more attention…and a LOT of yen, I’m sure, on the game, but all the text was in Japanese, and I wouldn’t have been able to understand.
I played some drum-mania too, but I can do that at home.
We also visited a model shop. There’s a level of model-collection and creation that I’m just not able to bring myself up to. That store was that level.
Also, another bread store. We went nuts again, but that was some seriously good bread.
Lots of, I’m sure, very impressive cell-phone technology, but I really only use mine for calling people, telling time, and occasionally for calculating a tip. More than that just doesn’t appeal to me.
On the way back, we saw bats! Jess noticed them first. I tried to get a picture, but it was at night and they wouldn’t hold still. The peace flame looked nice at night, though.
Next day we would travel to Osaka, but as for where we would stop…who knew?
-N
Labels: Arcades, Bread, Hiroshima, Japan, Peace Park
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