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...

Home Again

And … I’m back. The return trip to Japan was much easier than the one going and held one huge surprise. Riding on the train from Narita Airport to Ueno Station, where I was to catch the Shinkansen back to Akita, I was shocked by how familiar Japan felt. It really did feel like I was returning home, rather than returning to a foreign country where I’d been hanging out for awhile. Didn’t expect that.

And finally, a few more photos from our trip with Meredith and Abe.

The cherry blossoms were just beginning to blossom while we were there.

One night, after eating sushi, Meredith and Abe hugged each other, and Jonas surprisingly walked over and joined in on the hug, grabbing both of their legs. We recreated the moment here.

Actually, Jonas got Abe and his Dad confused a few times. Seeing as he’s around the Japanese all the time, and Abe and I are the same height, with black hair and beards, I suppose this wasn’t surprising. There’s a joke that the Japanese think all Westerners look alike (we have a friend who lived here who looks nothing like Tom Cruise who was told by everyone that he looked exactly like Tom Cruise). Anyway, once when I left the room, Jonas continued playing with Abe. And when I returned, he looked at me, looked at Abe, and looked back at me. I think it blew his mind to suddenly see two of us standing there.

Before I left, Jonas had developed this exhausting habit of only wanting me to hold him, which is why in all the pictures of Jonas where he isn't standing, I'm holding him. I thought this might pass during my week back in America. It didn’t.

The alleged World’s Largest Wooden Structure.

The alleged World’s Largest Gilded Buddha.

In the World’s Largest Wooden Structure, there was a tiny opening in a wooden beam, I think supposedly the size of the Buddha’s nostril. Apparently, if you can squeeze through the opening, you get a lifetime’s worth of good luck, or something to that effect. Many people looked, but no one tried. That is until Meredith took the plunge and wriggled through. This set off a chain reaction of dozens of Canadian tourists giving it a try. So I couldn’t get a good shot of the opening, but here are Mer’s feet, and the layers she had to drop to fit.

Just outside of the alleged World’s Largest Wooden Structure was a flock of the World’s Mangiest Deer Who Live Off Handouts and Harass Unsuspecting Tourists.

Not sure what to say about this. I bet each of them got to work that day and said, "Oh no. So you're wearing the red rubber rain boats too? Doh!"

Another shot of the sumo. I can never get enough of it.

Other assorted shots ...

Our Trip South, Part 1: Ferry, Takayama and Gero

We began our trip by boarding a ferry on Thursday morning at 9 AM. I returned from the United States the night before, and only had time to pack quickly before leaving Akita again. The ferry was almost exactly like the one we took to Hokkaido, but was a longer trip. We slept on the ferry and woke up at 5 AM on Friday morning to drive off the ferry and into Tsuraga (only a train stop away from Obama, Japan). From there we drove through the mountains to Takayama, Gifu-ken which is in central Honshu. We probably could have driven to Takayama in couple of hours, but it took us five. We chose the wrong route…which is not unusual for us when driving through Japan.

Our newly married friends, Meredith and Abe met at us in Takayama to begin our 10 day adventure. We stayed at Minshuku Kuwataniya, which was a good value for Japan. We had fun visiting a sake brewery (no tour unfortunately, but we did taste some of the sake), visiting the morning market and walking around the town. We stayed across the street from Takayama’s oldest temple, Hida Kokubunji. Supposedly there is a 1200 year old gingko tree by this temple. Unfortunately we missed that.



Our first night we had a traditional Japanese dinner at the Minshuku, which included tofu, Hida beef cooked over a flame with vegetables, sashimi, pickled vegetables, rice and fruit.



The next morning we had a traditional breakfast, which is growing on me. It included cooked salmon, green beans, a hard-boiled egg, fruit, seaweed, miso soup and rice.



Our friends, renters and current Lou caretakers, Christine and Wellan, lived in Gifu-ken for one year on the JET program. Christine outlined a day trip for us from Takayama, which included seeing Gassho houses in Gero, eating ring toast in Hagiwara (their Japan home) and visiting an incredible onsen near Hagiwara. The ring toast is hard to describe, but it included a lot of bread and was very sweet. The onsen had every imaginable indoor bath contraption, including individual sauna boxes that you could sit inside.

Mer and Abe in Gero


More Gero



A Gassho house in Gero



Mer and a lucky cat in Gero. A smaller version of this maneki neko cat often greets you at restaurants in Japan or at Japanese restaurants outside of Japan.



Jonas playing with a rock that entertained him for awhile



We saw these "monkey babies" all over Takayama. I know this creature does not look like a monkey baby, but this is what more than one Takayama-ite told us they are called. It is not unusual for an area or town to have a mascot and Takayama has the monkey baby. Mer and I both bought mini monkey baby cell phone charms.



We bought apples from this sweet couple at the morning market in Takayama.



We spent two nights in Takayama and left for Kyoto on Sunday. Mer and Abe boarded the train with their handy JR passes and Jason, Jonas and I packed our stuff and ourselves into our Subura.

People often comment about determining the author of our blog entries…reviewing this one, I can’t help but think that is obvious that it is me (Tricia), because I am just not funny like Jason. The only funny story that I think of from Takayama makes me look a little crazy…and probably won't be funny in my telling...but it consists of me running down dark and winding streets pushing an empty stroller and asking every local I could find about the location of a Mexican restaurant that we read about in the Lonely Planet. Jason, Jonas, Mer and Abe all followed, cautiously. We eventually found the restaurant, and like most situations in Japan like this, a local walked us to the restaurant. If Japan would only use streets names…

Many, many pictures of Takayama and Gero