The Japan Trip - Day 05

Today was a sad day, as we would be leaving the Hikidas. Hikida-san made one of his infamous breakfasts, full of bamboo shoots and nori. I have to make an interruption here and just say that I LOVE nori. I never used to eat seaweed when I was younger, but now it's like one of the best foods ever. I would eat it as a snack everyday if I had enough nori lying around. It's just that good.

It's even bigger and better.

As we were getting ready to leave, Yumiko-san came to visit us one more time, which was weird because I thought she had to go to work. We all said our farewells again, and said goodbye to Benny/Benni, who Hikida san had taken out of her kennel and was running around exitedly. He fed her one of the onigiri rolls that we hadn't eaten, which confused me because I thought dogs shouldn't eat processed food, which I thought the nori certainly qualifies as.

Hikida-san also brought with him the photographs we had taken the previous night, as well as some good luck charms from the temple. There was one which was supposed to be for our mothers as well. We accepted the gifts graciously and presented him with the dried mangoes, which looked really incapable of compensating for all they had given us in return.

Aki-san drove us to the train station. He was quite quiet all the way, I think because he was sad too. At the station, he directed us to the restaurant which the Hikidas had recommended the day previously, which apparently sold another Hiroshiman speciality, tsuke-men, or maybe it's just the Hiroshima variant. We said our final goodbyes to Aki-san, and last bro-hugs as well, and watched him walk back out into Hiroshima.

We wandered around the station for a while before the restaurant opened. There isn't much shopping to do at train stations, unless you're of the type who needs to get a local souvenir for your family because you're here for a quick business trip, and no they haven't tried this local specialty before, and no I don't have time to wrap it in nice paper but hey look it's all wrapped up already. I have to admit that it's a very efficient system, and the Japanese have really streamlined the process to such an extent that there isn't even a gift-wrap counter; they sell non-wrapped and wrapped versions of all the biscuit boxes and treat baskets and other assorted edible keepsakes.

The front of Bakudanya. They have cute waitresses!

We had lunch at Bakudanya, and the tsuke-men was delicious. I regret that I didn't order the one with more noodles, though. The dip was slightly spicy and you can spam all the ground sesame seeds as you like, which makes it taste so awesome. I found it so thoughtful that they actually have a spice scale, so that customers can choose their appropriate spiciness level. If I remember correctly, Bryan took a Level 7 (out of 20; anything more than 11 was dangerous according to their chart). I took a nice and safe and comfortable 2. Bryan's dip was clearly red and seemed to ignite the air on contact. A level 20 dip would probably spontaneously combust wheen you dipped your noodles in.

So simple, yet so delicious.

The rest of the day was mostly travelling to Tottori, our next station. There was a delay on the train to Yonago, which was our first and only delay for the entire trip. It wasn't very exciting (delays rarely are), it just meant that we were late at our next station, and had to ask for the next train to our next destination. We were in really rural areas now, nothing much but farmland and small scattered houses along the rail lines. The train stations also started looking more isolated, like deserted islands of civilisation in the green ocean of nature. It's the kind of station where you set the dramatic and emotional ending of a romance anime, where the main character is on the platform and his love interest in on the train, and the train starts going off into the distance and he just stands there and the wind blows. That kind of train station.

It's amazing how much story one building can contain.

It's a good thing I didn't come with a girl, because she'd probably declare her undying love for me but with a dramatic plot twist to explain why we can never be together before getting on a train and disappearing into the sunset. Sigh.

We arrived at Tottori station in a very slight rain (two drops every five minutes) and were stranded. We had no idea how to get to Tottori; we were intending to maybe take a bus, but apparently there wasn't one. In the end, Xi Min ended up asking an old man with a dog, and he managed to call a taxi for us. The taxi driver was also an old man, and in a small town like Tottori, must have been one out of all five active taxi drivers. I was very interested in the small device on his dashboard, which whirred through a few unreadable kanji before settling on one, which must mean something like "booking", but I wondered why it was located all the way on the left, out of his reach and not seemingly connected to the fare machine itself, which was in the normal place under the dashboard next to the steering wheel.


We arrived at the rental cottage and were surprised to find it empty. The cottage was huge, but also very dark and devoid of human life. We went in and called out a couple of times, but no one came to answer, even though there was clearly someone around because there was a pair of shoes at the front door. We walked around the back to see if there was anyone there. It really was a big place, very green, with a patio and a wire arch which in warmer spring would be a very beautiful floral corridor, but since it was still winter in the mountains, was just a very bare wire arch.

Great. A large abandoned cottage in the middle of nowhere.

It was about twenty minutes before someone pulled up on the neighbouring tennis court. It was the cottage owner! Apparently, she was waiting at the station, and because of the delay, must have missed us somehow, and went back looking for us after we left the station. It was really nice of her to do so, since the drive back to town is about twenty minutes of difficult country road and sharp bends and steep cliffs overlooking vertical drops to the jagged rocks below.

She lets us into the house and explains some ground rules, in a mix of English and Japanese. In such a rural country town, there isn't much English anywhere. We dropped off all our bags and she offered to drive us somewhere for dinner.

The unexpected beerhouse in the middle of nowhere.

It turns out she brought us to a nearby beer house, which also specialised in pasta and western dining. She didn't join us for dinner though. We all ordered pasta, and before it came Bryan and I went out to take more sakura shots, in the slight drizzle. It was very, very cold: the rainy weather, coupled with the altitude, made it incredibly freezing indeed. My pasta was a dish of cream sauce with prawns and broccoli and it was delicious.

After our dinner the owner (who was called Inoue-san) brought us into town so that we would patronize the convenience store, which I assume also doubled as their supermarket. We bought food for the next day, because we were going on our hike, and wouldn't have any access to food the next morning. I tried a microwavable yakisoba and a normal soba for lunch the next day, and got a chocolate bun and some milk. Bryan and I also purchased some instant noodles, the Cup Noodle brand of Curry Cheese, and it was ABSOLUTELY DELICIOUS when we had it later that night.

As recommended by two out of four gaijin.

Exploring the cottage was the next item on the agenda. It was huge, and probably designed for those kinds of school class trips where you get twenty or more people squeezed under a single roof. There were so many rooms. It seemed like there was a second cottage stuck together with it, like a semi-detached bungalow, but semi-attached as well, with a door connecting the two. There were countless beds. There was even an attic, but we didn't explore much because there were these insects that were crawling in to escape the cold. I couldn't identify them; they weren't cockroaches, but they were large and woodlouse-y, and even though I have never seen a woodlouse before that's how I would describe them. They were all sluggish though due to the cold. We found rooms on the second floor which were mercifully insect-free, and traversed the rest of the apartments. There was a number of study rooms with the classic Japanese heated table thing, kotatsu I think they're called. There was a room without beds, just futons folded up on one wall. There was a room with volumes of Shonen Jump!, a manga compilation magazine. There was a really creepy looking tradational Japanese girl doll, the kind that would turn its head to follow you around the room if you were playing Fatal Frame or something. There were three kitchens. I counted.

A narrow hallway with tons of indoor slippers. Note the save point.

The huge empty bathroom, with authentic stone bath.

You can tell this house was designed for more than the four of us.

A small study-area-slash-lounge.

A real kotatsu!

Bedrooms with tons of beds and insects.

The second kitchen. Yes, I said second.

Tatami mats and futons for the traditional touch.

HOLY CRAP THE DOLL IS WATCHING

The stairwell brings you to the dim, dark second floor.

One of the rooms, which shared a bathroom with another similar room.

That is a lot of Shonen Jump that I can't read.

A narrow bathroom, a squeeze to bathe in and keep out the bugs at the same time.

One of the many washrooms scattered around the house.

The insect-infested attic.

Bryan, still high from the karaoke machine at the Hikidas, wanted to try out the machine here. We switched it on and sang English songs into the middle of the night, which was about 10pm because we weren't supposed to disturb the neighbours after that.

We mostly only knew English songs.

*All pictures in this post courtesy of Bryan.

The Japan Trip - Day 04

Twas the last day in Hiroshima; but also, the day of Miyajima!

A breakfast fit for a priest.

So after another huge breakfast done by culinary artist Hikida-san, we walked to Hiroshima station to take a train to the ferry station. I remember querying in the underpass whether Braille (which is also prevalent in Japan - score another one for the disabled) comes only in English, and whether there are any other language versions of it. The answer was apparently that all Braille, uh, "speakers" must know English, since there are only so many variations on six raised dots that you can have.

Why can't our manhole covers be this beautiful?

The ferry ride was enjoyable but short. I can't remember exactly what it was like now, since when I search "ferry Japan Miyajima" in the Google of my mind, it only throws up the more recent memories of the Hakone ferry ride. I wrote "serene" and "breezy" in my notebook, which on hindsight isn't much of a description when attempting to narrow down ferry rides. I remember the ferry station quite well though: a nice wooden structure with two huge monoliths at the non-watery exit.

Hooray for image search, at least.

Miyajima is apparently famous for three things, and we met the first one when we were merely five minutes out the gate. We saw a couple wild deer cross the road, and thought that it was a one-time thing. But apparently Miyajima's wild deer population is very docile, and visitors are advised by large multilingual signs not to touch them or feed them, which is of course the best way to get them touched and fed. We took pictures with a very lethargic one lazing about under the shade of a tree. They seem to be very desensitised to human contact, and they mostly concentrate around the ferry terminal exit area. There was one looking expectantly at a shopowner, staring at the bottles of water she just put out (we were there really early in the morning) and the shopowner was just trying to talk to a customer and push the inquisitive nose out of the way.

"So, uh... you come here often?"

We walked down the main shopping street Omotesando, which was full of souvenir shops and food stalls. We had been advised to try the age momiji, which is the momiji manju deep-fried. We didn't manage to see one on the first round that morning though. We passed the second thing Miyajima is famous for though: rice scoops. Apparently, Miyajima is the birthplace of the rice scoop, and they are the proud owners of the world's biggest rice scoop, which is a bit impractical because they don't have the world's biggest rice bowl to put the scooped rice in.

Now to invent the world's biggest rice grains...

We got to the major landmark we were hoping to see that day, the floating torii gate to Itsukushima Shrine. It's this giant torii gate that is halfway out into sea, and at high tide looks like it's floating on water. We managed to get a couple of shots in before some workmen came in to do some repairs (as we worked out at dinner that night, it was because of some damage which had been done to the gate). Bryan was pissed off about all these workmen and scaffolding in his pictures, so we decided to move on and come back later.

And the latest Spring design in torii gates, as modelled by Xi Min.

We wandered over to the giant temple which is huge, and there was a wedding photo shoot taking place in one of the more outside corridors. We didn't go in because there was a pretty hefty entrance fee. We climbed some hundred-step staircase to get to the five-level pagoda, which was towering over the landscape, and then went over to a blossoming sakura tree to get our fabled sakura shot, the one with the petals wafting in the wind dramatically.

Wouldn't it be nice to get married in a different culture every year, say on your anniversary?

A dog, a plan, a canal: pagoda!

Sakura shot!

Around lunchtime we walked back over to the floating torii at low tide. There were lots more people now that the water had receeded a bit, and the workmen were busy ruining Bryan's photographs again. I wasn't very interested in the gate itself; it was huge, but with workmen around it you can't really go up and touch it or anything. So I wandered around the beach, looking in rock pools for any interesting creatures. I think I'm very hydrophiliac; I love looking at flowing water and marine life and stuff (as long as it's clean, dirty water is just disgusting). So I was looking at the variety of tiny hermit crabs scuttling along with their tiny mollusc shells, and larger crabs which shrink into their holes in the sand, and tiny fish spawn that dart around the rock pool looking for an exit.

The torii gate at low tide. Billions of blue blistering barnacles!
*Photo courtesy of JX.

Xi Min, JX and I noticed a bunch of people digging up stuff on the beach and throwing it into buckets, so we wandered over to the sea-washed breakwater and asked (got Xi Min to ask - same thing) what they were doing. Apparently they were harvesting clams. There were about twenty of them, and I think the youngest was a little girl about five or six. The old lady we talked to had a small collection of the shellfish already. I was wondering what they'd do with their catch: would they eat it themselves, or sell it to some of the restaurants? Either way, we affectionately gave them the name, "clam wranglers" after that.

"All right, boys, time to rustle us up some shellfish."

We went back to Omotesando for lunch, and I had a delicious curry udon which I am dying to have again. Oh, Xi Min bought some grilled oysters for about 400 yen from a roadside shop, and he claims that they're both delicious and worth it. I'm not a seafood guy so you'll have to take his word.

One of the most delicious things in the world.

After this delicious interlude we walked through Momijidani Park, the forest up the slopes of Mt. Misen, which is the highest point on the island. We were promised that the path would be teeming withmore of the wild deer. There wasn't a single deer, but we did visit a small shrine. I had previously resolved to cleanse myself at every single shrine we visited (so I'd have something to do instead of marvel at the architecture or pose for photos), so I did. The shrine reminded me of the snake shrine from Bakemonogatari, with its stone torii arches and long steep path and absence of people.

With a creepy snake shrine at the top.

On our way up we were intending to take the Ropeway, which is the Japanese word for our "cable car" because their cable car is the San Francisco word for "cable car" which we don't have in Singapore. And as we walked through this street wondering if we needed to get the tickets at the station itself, who else do we see bu Cruella de Vil herself, selling the tickets from her shop. Well, when I say Cruella de Vil, I actually mean a Cruella de Vil cosplayer, albeit an unintentional one. She had the big white hair, the long leather overcoat and the knee-high leather boots. It was only after we bought the tickets and walked a distance away, did Bryan turn to ask, "Did that lady remind you of Cruella de Vil...?" and the instant chorus was "yes".

Oh, you park rangers and your sense of humour.

So we went up the Ropeway, and the images that pop up in my mental Google search are that of the Hakone cable car ride, so I can't describe it in much detail. I wrote down "vertigo" and "acrophobia" in my notebook though, which, once again, fails to be any useful description whatsoever. I do have an innate fear of heights though; not one of those you-can-overcome-your-fear-by-staring-it-in-the-face types, but one of those primal, survivalist things that your brain tells you to keep you alive. I even have jolts of terror when playing Portal. That's how primal it is.

What a wonderful three-hundred-and-sixty degree view of the - HOLY CRAP HOW HIGH ARE WE AGAIN?

The view from the top of the hill was excellent. You could see the surrounding islands, and they had little tubes which pointed towards the island and a little name plate next to it so you could identify it. I could understand the kanji on some of them, and I remember that one of the islands was "Big Black Monster Island", or something to that equivalent.

"Konasamijima", which means "that small sandy beautiful island", if the kanji is similar to Chinese.

On our way back we stopped for the age momiji, which is one of the most delicious things in the world. I kept the stick as a souvenir. I also bought a tiny deer figure and a small towelette depicting the island's moe deer mascot, who has a Twitter account called ___honoka___, which I'll assume is her name.

This is the result of culinary genius.

Little Honoka-chan.

We got back to the temple grounds a bit later than expected, but Hikida-san invited us into the temple itself. We didn't know exactly what for; the assumption was that he was going to show us around, but apparently we were invited to take part in a ceremony. Through Aki's broken English we discovered that his grandmother, Hikida-san's mother, had passed away the week previously, and this was a death ceremony. We sat at the back for most of the ritual, while the priests got on with their chanting, but we were required to perform one small rite, just bowing to the ashes (I think) and sprinkling some spices (I think) onto the incense. I think we all were very honoured and priviledged to be considered part of the family, such that we were allowed to partake in what must be a very personal and exclusive ritual. Aki-san even blessed us at the end with a lot of chanting that I didn't understand, and they gave us paper-cut lotus leaves and a small charm for good luck.

Blessings.

The Hikidas then brought us to this restaurant (which they must have booked out for the whole night, since it was a two-table establishment and we took up both). There was what was becoming the traditional Japanese dinner feast, which included multiple appetisers before we were introduced to the main course, whose name was sukiyaki. We talked a lot in both English and Japanese, and around the fifth or sixth beer they were telling jokes with the restaurant owner and waiter/waitress as well.

Brimming with nutritional and tasty goodness.

We were also introduced to Hikida-san's business associate, whose nickname was Tako-san, which means "Mr. Octopus", and I could see why he got that moniker: his eyes were huge, like an octopus's. I say "business associate" because Tako-san is an undertaker, and Hikida-san owns a temple with a graveyard out back. And, just as with the Hikidas, Tako-san didn't live up to his stereotype. You'd expect undertakers to be solemn and quiet and serious, but he was laughing and joking and drinking, like his job requires him to be so grave (haha) that he takes advantage to be outgoing when he's off duty.

This was the first time we sat down with the entire family at a meal, and this included the extended family of Aiko-san's producer, who was taking a video of the whole thing. Some time in the middle of dinner, I was tasked with the pouring of the wine, and I topped up the glasses of the two ladies, which was met with much enthusiasm. I also spent the second half of the dinner being taught how to say dou itashimashite, which means "Thank you very much". I kind of mastered it by the end of the night.

After driving us back to the temple, we wanted to take some photos of the whole family to remember them by, but it was dark and Aiko-san was tired and wanted to go rest. We managed to take a couple of shots though, with a lot of weird and funny poses from the brothers.

That's Hikida-san in the centre.

Then they ushered us into their giant practice room, and tired though they were, the Hikida brothers, or should I say, Hikida Brothers, put on a performance for us. They sang three songs plus an encore, all in Japanese of course, but with such skill and emotion that the lyrics didn't matter. Aki-san was the main singer, with Ren-san on the guitar and harmonies. It was spectacularly awesome. Their second song was an ode to their grandmother, which although had inexplicable lyrics, was very powerful and emotional. Their last song was exciting and energetic, and Yumiko-san went to flicker the light switch like a real concert. It was a magical hour, and we all left stunned by their awesomeness.

The Hikida Brothers: Live in Concert April 2012

There was a short video segment as we were making our way back, like a short testimonial for their promotional video. We were their first homestay family, after all, and I guess they wanted a good review. Or perhaps they were just doing it for their memories' sakes. I don't know.

Then the three kids (I use kids in the loosest sense of the word; the oldest of them is over 30) came back to our rooms, just to generally hang out and spend the last bits of time with us. There was much laughing and fake arm-wrestling, and it was generally hilarious. We got them to promise to come to Singapore sometime in the future, and they said they'll be going to London this year, so Bryan and JX said they'd host them there (from their school, since they'll be studying there). We also got their emails, and promised to write soon.

After they left, we spent the rest of the night (morning - it was past midnight) just writing well wishes and thanks. I tried to write something nice on the tag on the dried mangoes we gave them as a present we brought from Singapore.

I think I want to wrap up with a shout out to the Hikidas. Even though we knew each other for only three days, we became like family, and I think that's the important thing. A big shout out to the kids, Yumiko-san, Aki-san and Ren-san, for being such great and hilarious friends and for taking the time to spend it with us. I'm definitely going back to visit them one day. Definitely.

The Japan Trip - Day 03

Perhaps I should take some time to introduce the Hikidas.

Xi Min was intent on a homestay somewhere in Japan, and the agency he liased with settled on the Hikidas. Hikida-san is a Buddhist priest, and his wife Aiko-san is a popular opera singer in Hiroshima. His daughter, Yumiko-san, works at a university giving teaching instruction, and is also a ballet dancer. His two sons, Aki-san and Ren-san, both followed in their father's footsteps, going through rigorous and demanding training to become priests.

At first I wasn't too keen on staying at a temple. I had the presumption that priests were all stiff, stuffy, the not-a-toe-out-of-line kind of people, and I expected to have to be consciously polite all the time, eating modest food and sleeping in a modest bed, and watching my every move in case I insulted someone's religion and started a holy war. Or something.

It's wonderful when you lower your expectations, because after that you can only be pleasantly surprised.

In this case I was more fantastically stunned. The Hikidas were extremely friendly, pulling out all the stops to make us feel welcome, and were as stuck up as confident police officers in a bank full of ineffective robbers - that is to say, not at all. I thought there was things you couldn't do as a priest: abstain from alcohol, for example. The Hikida brothers were downing it like water. I guess it's a Japanese culture thing. They were also chatting about pop culture and telling jokes and calling themselves Brad Pitt and Johnny Depp.

Day 3 was exciting and disorienting at the same time, because I remember being woken first by Bryan's obnoxious alarm which set off ten minutes before mine was supposed to; then by JX (who generally wakes up earliest) who said that Hikida-san was making breakfast for us in the kitchen. I was like, "Wha-?" (Actually I was more like, "Go away, five more minutes..." but you get the picture.)

When I finish washing up I sit down at the dining table in front of this massive spread of food which was doing its best to rival the dinner of the previous night. Rice and seaweed (nori) and steamed bamboo shoots and a beef stew called nikujaga and raw egg and milk and orange juice and onigiri rolls and natto, if I remember correctly. We ate as much as we could (and felt really guilty about the stuff we couldn't finish).

In the morning Yumiko-san gave us a lift to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. She was extremely nice; she had taken the day off to bring us around wherever we wanted to go, and dropped us off there. We spent the morning wandering around the park and taking pictures and looking at the architecture and monuments. The A-Bomb dome was particularly interesting, as it shows the extent of damage an atomic bomb can cause to structures. (The graphic image didn't really hit home until we went the museum, however.) The Memorial for the Mobilised Students was decked out with garlands of folded paper cranes, which I am told are a symbol of peace.

"I survived a nuke and lived to tell the tale."

We wandered around the park quite a bit before stopping at the nearby Rest House. I remember remarking upon the gigantic crows which seem to be native to Japan. They're huge, the size on a small chicken, twice as big as the average Singaporean mynah. You read about how crows and ravens are supposed to be intelligent, and you can't help but wonder what the effect of the increased background radiation must have had on the previous generations.

Overlooking the river running through the park.

I also remember passing an American tour group which was made up of students, and trying to stand nonchalantly nearby to eavesdrop on what their teacher was telling them. We were unsuccessful though.

The Memorial for Mobilised Students. If it's symbolic of anything, I can't see it.

We waited near the Memorial to Mobilised Students for Yumiko-san to pick us up, and as we passed the busker we noticed what seemed to be Yumiko-san's car passing by. And we deduced that she'd been circling the block for a while, hoping to pick us up in case we were early but not being able to stop and wait at the pick up point. Once again I felt guilty for causing extra trouble to our hosts.

"Quick, get in the car. No time to explain!"

For lunch Yumiko-san brought us to a small restaurant to sample the cuisine known as okonomiyaki, which is a bunch of ingredients fried together with batter. (My description doesn't do it justice.) Specifically this was done the Hiroshima style, which meant that the ingredients weren't mixed with the batter but fried separately, then put on the fried batter and the whole thing put on fried noodles. It was delicious. I've had similar yakisoba in Singapore at Takashimaya's basement, but it cannot compare to the exquisite meal I had that day. Yumiko-san offered to pay, of course.

A culinary master at work.

After lunch she dropped us off at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. That was a highly informative yet depressing place. I'm in two minds about it, really. I mean, on one hand, if it wasn't for the atomic bombs Japan might not have surrendered and Singapore might still be under the bootheel of cruel and sadistic tyrants, but, on the other hand, well, nobody deserves to be nuked. I was walking through the exhibits and reading all the little captions next to charred clothes and battered furniture and they all said something along the lines of, "So-and-so was a junior high student mobilised to clear debris from the streets. She was badly burnt by the blast and stumbled through the city for days looking for her family. They eventually found her two days later and sought treatment, but she succumbed to her injuries the next day." And they're all like that, or very similar. So many normal people, going about their own lives, children just clearing rubble off streets, and then a nuclear bomb drops on your head and the explosion has the cruelty not to kill you instantly, but just cook you from the inside and leave you conscious enough to feel pain and wander around practically dead on your feet, enough for you to find your family and fill them with hope and dread at the same time because they know you're going to die but you're not dead yet.

Wise words.

It was drastic, yes; and it worked, yes; but there are some depths you should not stoop to when waging war against evil. Never again. There's a thing about not doing something for a good reason, because once you do it for a good reason you'd do it as well for a bad one. No reason would justify it. Bryan was sure that if the bombs didn't work the Allies, all the way from Truman to Einstein, would be tried for henious war crimes on the part of Japan. History is written by the winners, after all.

The other thing that struck me was the scientific rigour of the analysis of the explosion. I'm surprised that they could determine exactly where the bomb detonated, how high up in the atmosphere, and how far away from the only surviving structure, the A-Bomb Dome, and they had models of pre-explosion and post-explosion to depict the extent of the damage. And the statues with one side in shadow because the radiation decoloured the rock facing the blast.

See that red ball? That's the point of the explosion.

I scribbled a small line in the visitor's book as we left the museum. It was the age-old adage: "War does not determine who is right. War only determines who is left."


After the museum and its peripherals (the Memorial Cenotaph, the Peace Flame, the Pond of Peace and the Peace Bell) we went to visit the Hiroshima Castle (Hiroshima-jo). On our way there was a Japanese busker busking halfway across the bridge. He was playing what I believe (after performing research) to be something similar to a yamagoto, like a zither crossed with a xylophone crossed with a pipe organ, and he had bells strapped to one foot and jingles strapped to the other, so he was being a literal One Man Band. His music was nice, and XM bought a CD.

I remember thinking, with a name like Houribe Lou, you're going to need a lot of work.

Hiroshima Castle was quite empty and very peaceful. There isn't really much actual castle left, but there are a lot of ruined foundations and old stone stairs. We walked up a small hill to the pagoda and just sat there for a while.
 

It's an actual moat! Wow!

I remember the reflection of the sunlight off the nearby moat was blinding, but it added to the overall effect of serenity. There was a balloon floating above the city, to mark the spot of the atomic bomb detonation.

Depending on the day's prevailing wind, the could have bomb blew up anywhere around a city block.

Yumiko-san picked us up nearby at the naked lady nature flower fountain thing, and it was kind of a mix up as we didn't know which street she was waiting at (it was at a junction), but we managed okay in the end. She had invited some of her friends to join us for dinner, and we were introduced to Hiro-san and Kanae-san. Hiro-san was from Tottori, and he was working in Hiroshima now, and had studied in Canada for a year, which is why he had some English. I confess I don't know much about Kanae-san because I couldn't talk to her much on the account of the language barrier. Dinner was take-out sashimi, which apparently involved some preparation.

The spread before we devoured it all.

Dinner was a delightful affair. We were invited to another building, which apparently houses their practice room on the first floor and a large dining and entertainment area on the second. We sat on the floor and there was a large karaoke machine nearby. We were joined for dinner by Kanae-san's husband (whom we didn't know was her husband until much later on in the night), Satoru-san. We spent the evening eating and talking and showing around our pictures which Xi Min had brought, and generally making friends all around. I do want to recount the story, though, when Satoru-san told us that Kanae-san was his (second) wife. I remember looking at Xi Min and I started to laugh discreetly, because he was sitting right in the middle of them, and at the start of dinner he was confused as to where to sit down and eventually settled on that seat. I dunno why I found it so hilarious, but I did.

After most of the food was gone, I shamelessly asked if we could try out their karaoke machine. Being the courteous and hospitable Japanese hosts they were, they agreed, and we spent the rest of the night singing it away. I attempted some English songs which I thought even Japanese people know, but apparently we are of different age categories and do not follow all the same famous songs. Xi Min and Bryan were gung-ho about trying some classic anime theme songs though, and Hiro-san was belting out those like a professional. Satoru-san was the enka singer, which is a modern traditional genre, much like our "oldies". We had great fun but were tired out at the end of the day.

Hiro-san and I trying to find a song.

Oh yeah I forgot; Yumiko-san and her friends gave us a present of cream puffs and another of Hiroshima's specialities: momiji manju, which is manju, a type of sweet cake bun thing, shaped like a maple leaf, which is not only Canada's national symbol but Hiroshima's as well.

I think I should probably not end each day with a "we went to bed" line, so I'm considering doing a sort of wrap-up at the end of each day, with a couple more impressions or thoughs I had throughout the day but at no specific time. I remember this was the day that I started appreciating the separated lanes for pedestrians and cyclists, and the divider was raised to assist blind people. It seems to be on all sidewalks in Japan, and goes all the way down into the underpasses and train stations. I thought it was a very good idea.

Well, that's Day 3. Day 4 is when I started writing things down proper.

*All photos in this post are courtesy of Bryan.