Back to Tokyo. This morning I got up nice and early and headed down to the hotel restaurant for another Japanese breakfast. This time the fish was salmon and there were no fish ovaries, just some extra pickles and an umeboshi.

One more night and I head back home. I’ve really liked visiting Japan, but I’m getting a little tired of living out of a suitcase, unpacking and repacking at every stop. I make my way over to the train station and pick up my express tickets to Nagoya, then head back to Teman’s place in Tokyo on the shinkansen.

After burning most of the day traveling, I head out to do some last minute gift shopping for when I go back. When Teman and Sayaka get home we head out for sushi which was great. Quality fish for not that expensive, a nice change after the so-so sushi I had in Kyoto.

Today I got up somewhat early and hit the hotel restaruant for my free breakfast. I went for the japanese option and had a huge meal with a large piece of white fish, a couple of cubes of the sweet scambled egg you get in japan, rice, several kinds of pickles and vegetables, miso cooked on a hoba leaf (a local specialty), miso soup, what appeared to be some sort of fish ovary, and a cold lightly poached egg. With the exception of the egg and fish ovary everything was really good, epecially the hoba miso.

After breakfast I spent a bunch of time exploring the town. There is a big festival twice a year where they parade these ancient floats through the town. You can view a number of these huge intricate floats in a couple of museums. There are also a number of temples and shrines but by now I’m just about templed-n-shrined out. The the town is also know for its woodworking and lacquerware so there were some a number of shops showing this off. The highlight of this for me was some of the nice wood furniture shops they had showing off very impressive pieces.

I also swung by the two daily morning markets. People come from all around to sell vegetables, pickles, and various trinkets to locals and tourists alike. There are little stands where for a paltry 60 or 70 yen you can get 5 small rice balls roasted on a skewer. The balls have a salty, slightly soy flavor to them and weren’t bad.

After spending a number of hours in town I make the short trek down the road to Hida Folk Village, a small museum of sorts nestled on the side of the hill where they have collected a number of examples traditional architecture used in the mountains. They have actually moved a number of 100-400 year old buildings to the site where they maintain them in a beautiful park like setting. You are free to wander about inside the buildings where they have added glass showcases where they display some of the traditional tools and artifacts used by villagers. They also build fires occasionally in the fireplace to help combat the humidity to preserve the structures, leaving them with a wonderful wood smoke aroma as you wander around.

I headed back to town for a late late lunch and found a little place with what looked like a traditional sansai ryori set meal. I had more of the hoba cooked miso, some soft tofu, a number of local vegetables stewed in various ways, konnyaku in a very sweet sauce, a tuna fish like dish that had big pieces of what was seemed like a very mild onion, more local pickles, rice, and miso soup. The miso soup they do around here is different, they use a lot more onion, cabbage, and mushrooms in it making it a bit heartier.

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Today I made the journey from Hiroshima to Takayama, a small town up in the mountains. To get there involved taking a shinkansen from Hiroshima to Shin-Osaka, then catching another shinkansen from Shin-Osaka to Nagoya, then catching a 2hr 20 minute JR express train from Nagoya to Takayama. There are other ways to go but for JR rail pass holders this is the free way.

For most JR routes I’ve taken you can just flash your pass and hop on since there are no reserved cars. Technically you can do the same for the shinkansen, but since you get free reservations with the Rail Pass I’ve always hit the ticket office first and used the reserved cars. This time around I noticed the ticket machines were a bit different than normal so I hit the manned ticket office just in case to verify my train pass was OK for this line. There are a handful of lines where the JR trains go onto tracks owned by another company and you have to pay a surcharge. Turns out this line has reserved cars like the shinkansen so I was able to reserve a seat. The ride up was extremely scenic, probably the nicest views from any of the train rides I’ve taken so far. You climb up into the mountains following this beatiful green river with scenery that reminded me somwhat of going across one of the scenic passes back home in Washington.

I rolled into Takayama about 4:30 and headed for my hotel The Hida Takayama Washington Hotel Plaza. Actually, first I stopped by the helpful information desk right in front of the train station which was able to give me an english map and let me know that my was just across the street. For as many words as it has in its title the Washington Plaza is actually a pretty small business hotel. As a business hotel like the JAL City Hiroshima that means I got a little cube of a room for cheap, except this time around it actually comes with either a Japanese or American breakfast. The minibar isn’t even stocked, instead they refer you to the vending machines on the next floor - which is as bad as it sounds since I checked them out and they don’t actually gouge you like the normal minibar would.

On my trip I’ve seen probably 1000’s of drink machines, 100’s of cigarette machines, and maybe 5 beer machines and probably about the same number of ice cream machines. Here in Takayama I did run into battery vending machines for the first time, but I have to say I’m a little disappointed, I thought there was a wider variety of things they put in vending machines from what I had heard.

Anyway, back to Takayama. After dropping my stuff off I decided to wander around town for bit. Takayama has this small tourist town feeling, although its not really that small. At 5:30 most of the shops where already closed or closing up already so the streets were a bit empty but there still a number of tourists like myself out and about. Takayama has preserved or rebuilt a number of the old style wood buildings giving some of the sidestreets a delightful ambiance.

For dinner, I decided to try a place in the guidebook that was supposed to be a small family run establishment where you could savor some of the local fare. I went in to Suzuya a little weary but it turned out great. I had the sansai miso nabe, a hotpot dish they cook at your table filled with chicken, several kinds of mushrooms and local vegetables, a couple of rice balls, and these really long strands of konnyaku. On the side (besides rice) they served some of the best japanese pickles I’ve had, they tasted like they must make them there they were so fresh, crisp, and only slightly salty. To wash it down I had a korikori, a local beer that isn’t quite up to the microbrew level but slightly better than your average nama biiru.

On the way home it was dusk. When I crossed the river heading back to my hotel I noticed the sky with filled with little bats feasting on the evening’s insects. Bats are on the rare side back home so it was a treat to watch them swoop to and fro for a while.

Today I took a day trip out to Miyajima. Its very easy to get there from Hiroshima, you just take a train from Hiroshima station out to Miyajima-guchi (about 20 minutes if you catch an express), and walk 2 minutes over to the ferry for 5 minute ferry ride over to the island. If you have a JR Rail Pass its good for both the train and the ferry, assuming of course you take the JR ferry.

Miyajima is home to the O-Torii, a big red gate out in the bay as well as Itsukushima Shrine which is notable in the way it’s built out over the water. Even packed with tourists it has a bit of a small town feel to it and walking past ryokan after ryokan I regretting staying in Hiroshima instead of Miyajima. Along the shopping street they had store after store selling this maple leaf shaped cake that were packed with different kinds of filling. At each one the baking area was glassed in so you could watch them using these special machines to make them. I tried a chocolate cream and a cream cheese one - scrumptious. I also tried another snack food they were selling, these fish cake sticks that were stuffed will all sorts of stuff (shrimp, cheese, octopus, asparagus, etc) and then deep fried right before they served them to you. Since it was still early I had an egg and bacon one that was a bit greasy but still good.

For lunch I stopped by a little family restaurant where I had cold buckwheat noodles with a tempura assortment. The buckwheat noodles they topped with some small strips of seaweed and then had both a dipping sauce and a little plate with some wasabi and thinly sliced green onions. It was a little tricky to roll up just the right amount of noodles so you weren’t dipping this huge dangling mass but managed with some practice.

On the train back I got the 5th degree from another outgoing little 8 year old. He would gather questions from his classmates in Japanese, then pass them on to me then relate back the answers. What’s my name? Where am I from? Do I speak Japanese? What’s my favorite color? Favorite sport? Favorite subject? What food do I like? It seemed like half the train got a kick out of when I told him I liked okonomiyaki. How old am I? Do I like pizza? Spaghetti? Umeboshi? Natto? I have to say conversing with friendly little kids who want to practice their english never gets old.

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Next stop, Hiroshima. After getting all packed up I headed down to the ticket office to reserve my shinkansen seat. The ticket officer went to his books, hemmed and hawed a little bit, and let me know the quickest way there was to catch a train to Shin-Osaka and then transfer to another train that would take me all the way to Hiroshima. The catch? I had 3 minutes from when I train got in to when my transfer took off. Feeling up to the challenge I said that was OK and headed over to the track for my first leg.

Rolling in to Shin-Osaka I gathered my stuff and first checked the track reader-board to see if my train was possibly the one on the track adjacent to the one I got off at. No such luck. Remembering where the closest master reader-board was I headed downstairs and found that my train was only a couple tracks over and made a quick dash for it. I hopped on the train with more than a minute to spare feeling pretty happy with myself, that is, until I realized I left my umbrella on the previous train. Of course, 10 minutes out of Shin-Osaka the rain starts coming down again.

After picking up yet another 500 yen umbrella from a convenience store at the train station I headed over through the rain towards my next hotel, the Hotel JAL City Hiroshima. The hotel was only about a 5 minute walk away and luckily it was even marked on map right there at the station. The people at the hotel were nice enough to let me check in 30 minutes early so I dropped off my stuff and got ready to head over to the peace memorial park. The room was much smaller than my last couple of rooms but then again, it was cheaper as well. The TV only got Japanese stations, which was fine since by this point I’d gotten really tired of the talking heads on CNN.

My room arranged I headed through the downpour over towards Hiroshima castle and then down towards the atomic bomb dome and then through the peace park. It was pretty a pretty weird juxtaposition standing in front of an symbol of the immense destruction caused when the US dropped the bomb and having little Japanese kids come up all smiling and saying hi.

The museum was not a very uplifting experience, especially as an American. Its one of things I’m glad I did but I have no inclination to ever repeat. They do a good job at explaining the history leading up the event on both sides, then show some before and after scenes using both pictures and dioramas to convey the area of effect the bomb blast had. They then go into nuclear weapons and Hiroshima’s role as a center in the anti-atomic weaponry movement before getting into artifacts section. This is where it really gets disturbing, as they show a number of items donated by impacted families such as carbonized children’s lunchboxes, burned clothing, sloughed off skin and fingernails - each with a name and unhappy story attached. They show pictures of a number of the burn victims, examples of warped girders, melted roofing tiles, even a section of stone steps where the shadow of sombody is burned in. They then go into the effects of radiation and described the agonizing deaths of those “lucky” enough make it though the initial explosion. It’s easy to think of nuclear weapons abstractly as the ultimate in destructive power but once you see impact of that terrible power applied I think its nearly impossibly look at them in the same way.

By time I got out of the museum the rain had completely stopped and I headed over to the nearest shopping area to find something to eat. I had okonomiyaki, this time Hiroshima style where they fry up a number of ingredients in between two thin crepes. I had one with cabbage, pork, squid, soba noodles, egg, and cheese and it was delicious, I definitely think I like Hiroshima style much much better.

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