Part 3: Himeji, Hiroshima and Miyajima

After leaving Kyoto, we headed to Himeji, to visit a 400 year old castle. It was originally built even earlier, but the existing structure is 400 years old. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site. You can see how old it is and low the ceilings are in this picture.

Again, Mer and Abe boarded the super fast train (shinkansen) and Jason, Jonas and drove our car. Again, we experienced some difficulties navigating the Japanese signs and highways thus it took us much longer to get to Himeji than we anticipated. Mer and Abe arrived in Himeji well before the 4 PM cut off to enter the castle; we barely made it and had a Chevy Chase moment. Japanese towns can be confusing to navigate, because the roads are not laid out in a grid format. One of my co-workers claims this is the case in cities with castles, because this made it more difficult for enemies to approach the castle. Well, now, after Himeji, I can see his point. We could see this huge castle, we approached it from many angles, and it took us awhile to actually find it, even though we could see it in the distance. We drove up at 3:59, I jumped out the car, ran breathlessly up to the front gate and asked for tickets. Both of the gatekeepers looked at their watches, indicated that we barely made it and told us we would have one hour to make it through the castle grounds. I yelled back to Jason that we were in, the guard at the gate let us park in some random spot that wasn’t really a parking spot and they shut the front gate behind us. The gate keepers followed us and shut doors and gates behind us. Jonas was happy to be free from the car seat and spent some time twirling in circles in front of the castle.

Here is the view from the top of the castle.

Jonas checking out the view.

That night we ate a delicious dinner at an Asian fusion restaurant that Mer found in the Lonely Planet, Len. Our nicest accommodation was the hotel we stayed at that night and we enjoyed the public bath. The public bath included these massage chairs that were unlike any massage chairs I have ever experienced. At times, I felt like a person was massaging me instead of a machine.

Jason and I somehow scored a room with an incredibly big bathroom, which is highly unusual in Japan. The bathroom was so big that we set up Jonas’s pack n’ play in the bathroom. It also included an awesome steam shower.

The next morning we left Himeji to drive to Hiroshima. We met Abe and Mer at the Hiroshima Peace Park. Seeing the remains of the structure that was bombed was powerful and incredibly sad. The day and the weather were perfect, sunny and warm, and the park is beautiful. Even though it is a memorial to a sad moment in history, and it is overwhelming to be there and reflect on what happened, the park is peaceful and pretty.

There were many men playing a Japanese board game, Go.

I am ringing the bell at the Children's Memorial which was surrounded by thousands of origami cranes.

Here are some of the cranes.

The A-bomb dome

From there we boarded a ferry to the island of Miyajima which has one of the top three views in Japan, the Itsukushima Shrine (the orange tori below). I am not sure how exactly the top trhee views were determined, but if I mention a Japanese person that I visited this shrine, they always tell me it is one of the top three views. Lonely Planet says this too. This shrine is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. This is the only group picture we had taken the whole trip.

This place was different than the cities we had visited and was a nice way to end our trip with Mer and Abe. The island is small and we never even saw a grocery store. We stayed at an old minshuku and had a decent dinner of udon and curry. Like Nara, there were deer all over the island.

Mer and Jonas trying to figure something out.

Abe was great at making up games with Jonas. This game consisted of putting rocks in a juice can.

Dekita! We did it! We did it!

On Saturday, we took a cable car up to the top of Mt. Misen. We had to walk up some hills to get to the cable car. Jonas wanted to walk by himself and we were afraid he was going to roll down the hill.

Here is Mer with the tickets for the cable car in front of the 'ticket booth.'

Mer, excited by the view in the cable car.

Here is one of the many monkeys that were at the top of Mt. Misen. We had to keep Jonas away form the monkeys. He does not understand that he should stay away from some animals.

After returning from the top of Mt. Misen, Jason, Jonas and I returned to our car to start our long drive back to Akita City (it took two days). Mer and Abe had one more night in Miyajima and then spent their last couple of nights in Tokyo.

The trip was great fun, and we are lucky that Mer and Abe traveled all the way to Japan. We enjoyed seeing southern Japan with them. We miss them...