August 17th, 2016
It was the hottest, sweatiest part of summer. Classes had finished a few weeks ago, but I was still living in the dorm with a few more weeks to go. The summer had been packed with plenty of fun and social activity. There were a lot of farewell parties for fellow exchange students heading home which at times lasted well into the next morning, the effects lasting well into the next evening (二日酔い). But there was a lot of boredom to contend with, too. Without classes and with friends gone away there were extra days to fill, long, hot, slow summer days that never seemed to end. And on one of those days, after a few days of rowdy farewell parties, I got the idea fill my time with a spontaneous solo trip and decided to visit the city of Hiroshima which I had yet to explore.
I decided to make it interesting, though. Rather than just take a bullet train and get there quickly, I thought it might be interesting to take a string of local trains and get there slowly; slowly enough to fill up a long summer day (and cheaper, too!). At something like 400km (250mi), the trip would have taken maybe 2 or 3 hours on fast trains, but it took a full 8 or 9 hours on five local trains for me.
On the way, I gazed out the windows, never growing tired of the passing scenery of rural Japan. Small hamlets of buildings in disrepair surrounded by neatly plotted rice fields and flanked by green mountains bulging out of the landscape with patches of bamboo forest nestled among the trees. I stopped first at a tiny station out past Himeji, though I can’t remember the name of the town. Then I transferred again at Okayama, then Mihara, and from there went all the way to Hatsukaichi Station on the far side of Hiroshima.
When I finally arrived it was about 9 o’clock at night and I may have been just about the only person in the station. I tried to exit the wicket, swiped my ICOCA (transit fare) card and the wicket locked and stopped me, indicating that I needed to go see a station attendant. I went over to the window and handed him my card and he checked it. The guy was dumbfounded when my card told him I had come from Kyoto. He said, “Kyōto? Shinkansen?” I said, “no, futsū (local trains),” and he was like “whaaaaaaaaa??” He actually went and made a phone call or something; he stepped into the back for a minute before he finally came out with a calculator to add up the fee. For a cool $64 I commuted from Kyoto to Hiroshima, at least half of what it would have cost me to take the fast trains.
My hostel (Omotenashi Hostel) was on the outskirts of Hiroshima, situated on a little marina about halfway between the city and Miyajima, where the famous torii of Itsukushima Shrine is located. I went directly there, took a shower and went right to bed. It was VERY nice; I highly recommend it if you are going to Miyajima, and sitting outside on the seawall in the peace of night, gazing at the full moon and its reflection on the still, black water of the harbor was a priceless moment for me.
(remember to click on the images to get a better look)
広島駅 Hiroshima Eki
I woke up to a beautiful day and made my way back to the station where I took the Dentetsu (electric railway) into Hiroshima. I found Hiroshima Station to be impressively large and, with the renovations taking place at the time, terribly confusing. I basically got lost for at least an hour trying to find my way out, and ended up walking through it more than once, as well as around it several times, trying to find the front so I could get my bearings and go somewhere. It was exhausting, but at least I got a look at some interesting backstreets nearby, and backstreets are what I’m all about anyway, so…
広島城 Hiroshima-jō
Having finally found my way out of the labyrinthine station and its environs, I made my way over to Hiroshima Castle. I can’t remember if I planned any of this or just figured it out on the fly. I think it was the latter, haha! The castle was very beautiful, the wooden exterior being unpainted, and featured a really cool museum inside. There were also nice views of the city from inside.
原爆ドームと広島平和記念碑 Genbaku Dome and Peace Memorial Park
Planning my next move, I realized I was walking distance to the Genbaku Dome—the standing remains of the exhibition building left after the bomb—and the Peace Memorial. On the way I stopped at a Family Mart for lunch and ate hiyashi chūka, a chilled meat, veg, and noodle salad, perfect for a hot summer day. The Genbaku Dome was an arresting sight as I approached it from the north. It’s situated next to a river with walkways along both sides. It was a sober and relaxing area where I spent a lot of time taking photos and resting. At one time I was a approached by a small girl who offered me a gift of a tiny origami paper crane. The paper crane has some significance in this context, as a young girl who survived the bombing but died later of her wounds, Sasaki Sadako, famously folded 1,000 paper cranes before her death. The paper crane is thus meant to remind us of the innocent victims of the atomic bomb and symbolizes a wish for peace. So, I think they have children handing these out to tourists in the area, and it was really a touching and moving gesture.
The rest of the park was world-class in its beauty. A sprawling and well-maintained park-like campus meanders from the Genbaku Dome over to the Peace Memorial Museum. I entered the museum and, while it is a very important thing for all people to experience, the exhibits felt to me a little bit like disaster p*rn. You spend the entire time gawking at the horror and destructive power of the atom bomb, almost glorified in these displays. It was difficult and gave me mixed feelings. I don’t mean to offend, I’m just saying that this is how I felt about it. But I guess that’s the whole point, right? To shock anyone who sees it into becoming firmly resolved in their opposition to something so terrible as nuclear weapons, or war in general.
お好み村 Okonomi-mura
As the afternoon faded into dusk, I walked toward what looked like the nearest commercial district on Google Maps (you can tell because the area is color-coded in… orange-ish pink?). It may have been called Horikawa-chō, but within it I discovered an area called Okonomi-mura, a hub for okonomiyaki dining. Okonomiyaki is, of course, the delicious, savory egg batter pancake, of which Hiroshima has its own famous version with noodles. There must have been 100 okonomiyaki-ya in the area, including one ten-story building packed entirely with okonomiyaki stalls. I chose the giant, well-lit one at street level. I ordered a beer and a pancake (Austin Powers, anyone?), but the heat and the first beer must have dampened my appetite and I could barely stuff down half of the huge, dense and filling okonomiyaki. I tried to eat as much as I could because I didn’t want to be the only foreigner in the room (I was) and be the guy who “didn’t like” his Japanese food. I stumbled out of there, about to burst and sat around in the square, people-watching, and then continued to wander around. In my wandering I think I happened upon Hiroshima’s “naughty” district. I wasn’t feeling THAT adventurous that night, and besides, I was an okonomiyaki bomb waiting to go off, so I turned around and made my way home.
This concludes the first part of my Hiroshima and Kōbe adventure. Check out the second part here, where I travel to Miyajima to see the famous torii at Itsukushima Shrine and inadvertently ascend to the top of Mount Misen!
And while you’re at it, go check out my translation website, Davetranslates.wordpress.com, where I translate Japanese news articles into English for fun and practice, and see what I’m capable of in J – E translation.
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