Thursday, May 10, 2007
April 16, ‘O’ cities.
Well we slept in this morning, all the way to 9:00! Which, by the way, is 4 in the afternoon back home. Yeesh. Got out of the hostel and took a streetcar back to the rail station, thus completing the list of every kind of public transportation known to man.
We had some time before our train left so we walked around Hiroshima station and found a supermarket. I got some rice…things. Seaweed wrapped triangles of rice with stuff in the middle. I really liked the one with fish. Yummers. Unfortunately, I can’t read the label, so the stuff in the middle is always a surprise.
The plan for the day was to make our way slowly up to Osaka, stopping at whatever little place we felt like. Our first stop was Okayama.
Okayama’s main attractions are a castle and nearby gardens. The castle exterior was very nice, but we had our backpacks on and didn’t feel like marching all over, up and down floors, having to take off our highly complicated hiking boots.
We saw this cat on the way up to the castle. It was really friendly and was super-pleased to let Jess pet him. Then, right when we left, another Japanese family tried to go up and pet him. Cat wanted nothing to do with them. Jess has super-cat-powers.
The garden, on the other hand, was gorgeous, huge, and well worth the effort it took to lug our bags around. There were all types of different section with different plant types. We just caught the end of the cherry blossom bloom so the ground was all carpeted with pedals. There were also immaculately groomed bushes, trees, islands and the like. Really pretty.
We stopped to eat lunch under a branch by the lake, which was really picturesque and nice until a swarm of pigeons descended upon us. We kept them away, though.
There was a larger building with lots of arts & crafts inside, huge lake and waterfalls, and even a tea house with a river running through the middle. That was my favorite, I think. I want a river running through my house.
We went back to the station and decided that little stop-offs weren’t quite worth the effort, what with backpack-lugging and figuring out public transportation at every little different city, so we just made our way up to Osaka. Jess, adorable again, fell asleep on my chest.
We found our way to the JR local lines and took the main loop to our hostel. A businessman chatted with us about our travels (in English) which was pretty nice. Jess gave him one of the little American keychain trinket things we brought to give away to people. Jess is getting pretty good at handing those out to helpful people.
The hostel was pretty acceptable, but the beds felt like they were just boxsprings.
We went out to look for dinner and passed a bunch of cheap business hotels, stand-up udon eateries…pachinko parlors…transient-looking types…a homeless shelter… Suddenly I’m quite glad that Jess and I are together. I wasn’t really expecting anything dangerous, Japan being what it is, but the safety in numbers felt nice. I imagine we would have felt a lot better if I could speak the language. Imagine a dirty-looking old Japanese man comes up to us and starts jabbering at us in Japanese. “Aaah! Help! We’re being robbed…I think!” Meanwhile:
Eventually we found an eatery, even thought the menu was all in Japanese. I’ll just eat anything, so I asked for a recommendation and the guy pointed at something at the menu. Sure! I’ll eat that. Jess got some rice and vegetables and the recommendation turned out to be Kobe beef! The place was what I would normally think of as a ‘Korean BBQ’ in America where there is a grill in the table and you cook your own food. In Japan, though, who knows what they call it? Anyway, we grilled our beef and tried it out, and it was some really good beef! We ordered a second set. Yum!
Then on the way home we stopped at a ‘mart’ for some desert. Came back to the hostel, took a nice, hot, long, Japanese bath (and sauna) and then fell asleep.
Tomorrow…fish! Live ones, though!
-N
Well we slept in this morning, all the way to 9:00! Which, by the way, is 4 in the afternoon back home. Yeesh. Got out of the hostel and took a streetcar back to the rail station, thus completing the list of every kind of public transportation known to man.
We had some time before our train left so we walked around Hiroshima station and found a supermarket. I got some rice…things. Seaweed wrapped triangles of rice with stuff in the middle. I really liked the one with fish. Yummers. Unfortunately, I can’t read the label, so the stuff in the middle is always a surprise.
The plan for the day was to make our way slowly up to Osaka, stopping at whatever little place we felt like. Our first stop was Okayama.
Okayama’s main attractions are a castle and nearby gardens. The castle exterior was very nice, but we had our backpacks on and didn’t feel like marching all over, up and down floors, having to take off our highly complicated hiking boots.
We saw this cat on the way up to the castle. It was really friendly and was super-pleased to let Jess pet him. Then, right when we left, another Japanese family tried to go up and pet him. Cat wanted nothing to do with them. Jess has super-cat-powers.
The garden, on the other hand, was gorgeous, huge, and well worth the effort it took to lug our bags around. There were all types of different section with different plant types. We just caught the end of the cherry blossom bloom so the ground was all carpeted with pedals. There were also immaculately groomed bushes, trees, islands and the like. Really pretty.
We stopped to eat lunch under a branch by the lake, which was really picturesque and nice until a swarm of pigeons descended upon us. We kept them away, though.
There was a larger building with lots of arts & crafts inside, huge lake and waterfalls, and even a tea house with a river running through the middle. That was my favorite, I think. I want a river running through my house.
We went back to the station and decided that little stop-offs weren’t quite worth the effort, what with backpack-lugging and figuring out public transportation at every little different city, so we just made our way up to Osaka. Jess, adorable again, fell asleep on my chest.
We found our way to the JR local lines and took the main loop to our hostel. A businessman chatted with us about our travels (in English) which was pretty nice. Jess gave him one of the little American keychain trinket things we brought to give away to people. Jess is getting pretty good at handing those out to helpful people.
The hostel was pretty acceptable, but the beds felt like they were just boxsprings.
We went out to look for dinner and passed a bunch of cheap business hotels, stand-up udon eateries…pachinko parlors…transient-looking types…a homeless shelter… Suddenly I’m quite glad that Jess and I are together. I wasn’t really expecting anything dangerous, Japan being what it is, but the safety in numbers felt nice. I imagine we would have felt a lot better if I could speak the language. Imagine a dirty-looking old Japanese man comes up to us and starts jabbering at us in Japanese. “Aaah! Help! We’re being robbed…I think!” Meanwhile:
Eventually we found an eatery, even thought the menu was all in Japanese. I’ll just eat anything, so I asked for a recommendation and the guy pointed at something at the menu. Sure! I’ll eat that. Jess got some rice and vegetables and the recommendation turned out to be Kobe beef! The place was what I would normally think of as a ‘Korean BBQ’ in America where there is a grill in the table and you cook your own food. In Japan, though, who knows what they call it? Anyway, we grilled our beef and tried it out, and it was some really good beef! We ordered a second set. Yum!
Then on the way home we stopped at a ‘mart’ for some desert. Came back to the hostel, took a nice, hot, long, Japanese bath (and sauna) and then fell asleep.
Tomorrow…fish! Live ones, though!
-N
Labels: Castle, Garden, Japan, Kobe Beef, Okayama, Shopping
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