Hiroshima

The best part of the museum was actually watching videos of the survivors (they had a project a few years ago to video the old survivors while they are still around). The paper cranes are symbolic of the struggles of children in the bombing, and particularly the ones who suffered from radiation and later died.

The citizens of Hiroshima and Nagasaki didn't really blame the US for the bombing. They blamed their government, and some think the bombing is the only thing that saved Japan. Otherwise, they think the war would have continued until the entire country was destroyed, had the Japanese not been forced to surrender due to the overwhelming show of destructive force.

Last night the Hiroshima Carps played the Tokyo Tigers. These Carp fans are a dedicated bunch! It was a sea of red and everyone had their noisemakers and balloons.

We watched this game from our seats of the okonomyaki stall where we had dinner. It's one of Hiroshima's signature dishes, basically a pancake filled with cabbage, soba noodles, bean sprouts, pork, egg, sauces, 4 large oysters grilled and placed on top.

Sunday Morning Market Kanazawa

Fun and good food on Sunday morning, starting with this makeshift oyster bar set up next to a seafood stall. Actually you could get a lot of stuff - oysters, crab, sea urchin etc. around the corner there was this display for a sushi restaurant. An excellent example of fake food. Huge business here. This stuff is often rented rather than bought. Looks pretty real in person and it's usually soft, like silicone.

Breakfast of Champions, Omi-cho Market Kanazawa

Literally everyone at this market is having sushi and slamming back a beer. One unexpected thing (to me) is to see that most of the Japanese women are also doing it!

Well, we don't want to stand out like tourists so ...

Kanazawa 21st Century Museum of Contemporary Art

Nice indoor / outdoor museum space on yet another sunny spring day. The "pool" below is one of the installations, where people on the floor below are viewed through water floating on glass.  

Favorite thing was a special exhibition called "The Pen" which showcased hundreds of works by Manabu Ikeda.    The highlight was a massive (10x13) just-finished work called Rebirth.  Click the link to see a bit more.  This is art you really have to see as they are all pen and ink and the enormous pictures are made up of very small elements all done with a 1mm quill style. It takes him hours to do a 4x4 area.  You could stare at one of his large drawings for days and keep discovering new things.

Take a look at the link and see the short video as well.  He was artist in residence at the Chazen Museum of Art in Madison WI when he created this piece.  http://www.thisiscolossal.com/2016/11/rebirth-manabu-ikeda/

It's interesting to find an artist's work and think, "wow, I've never really seen anything like this" and his work certainly qualified in that category.

Pricey Kanazawa Market

We are in Kanazawa on the western coast of Japan. Took a stroll through the market and were surprised by the prices. Kanazawa is known for its crab. This is off season but still . . . A pretty good conversion to US dollars would be to just drop the last two zeros. I assume this is per kg but not sure. And yes, those are $30US melons!

Older Bathroom

Most places we've stayed have had pretty, stylin' bathrooms but this was at a very small ryokan (traditional Japanese inn) at a hot spring, way up in the mountains above Nagano (host of the1998 Winter Olympics). No toilets in the room, this was a shared bath. And when I say shared I mean both by different rooms and by both men and women. Fortunately with only about 10 rooms there was nobody else on our floor. There was a nicer bath on the next floor and of course the hot spring bath in the basement.

Green Tea Ice Cream

Very popular and very good. Not quite as sweet. Comes in many variations including half green tea and half vanilla.

What To Do On A Cat-In-The-Hat Day

Go sake tasting! We took a train from Hiroshima to Saijo, a famous sake brewing area (because of it's fine water quality). We stopped at all 8 places in town and learned a ton about sake. Also of note: beautiful manhole covers. You actually see these all over Japan, and each city has a unique design.

Miajima Island, Near Hiroshima

I Love Engrish

We have seen so many awesome examples of mangled English, I really wish I had documented them all. Today in our fairly Western Hotel, the Granvia at Hiroshima JR station, we checked out the translation on the bottle of Febreeze-type product. They have this product in many hotel rooms as, believe it or not, they still have many smoking rooms. We actually had to look very hard as in some cases, all the non smoking rooms were sold out. Oh, and get this: the non-smoking rooms often cost more.

It's illegal to walk down the street smoking - there are little designated cages for that purpose in the cities. But at many casual restaurants, you can just fire right up. Very strange. The nicer restaurants will always be non-making or at least have no smoking areas -- and many provide little rooms like you'd see in an airport.

The best are some of the t-shirts, where you really wonder if the person wearing it has any idea what their clothing says.

Hiroshima

An older museum (they are about to kick off a much needed renovation) and Peace Park outside the museum is very nice with many smaller monuments. It was a beautiful data again. At sunset, we took a picture of the dome below, which was one of the only things left standing and sat at ground zero. Because the bomb was detonated 600m in the air, the building directly below it only got downward vertical pressure vs everything else with multiple waves of horizontal pressure. Plus the building had a copper roof, which melted instantly, so there was never a huge pressure difference between the inside and outside. Nobody for km around survived for more than a day except one guy who was working in a basement of a building across the street.

City population is 1.3 up to 2 million in metro area, so it feels small compared to where we have been. More friendly and helpful people than you can imagine.

It's Not All Glamour

Drying laundry washed in the bathtub and hanging from the window (which I'm sure the hotel appreciates even if we are on the 14th floor!), suitcases in the middle of packing for a move tomorrow, electronics plugged in everywhere. Still fun but home is starting to beckon.

Three trains, a ferry, a walk, bike rental, hotel shuttle.

Getting to Naoshima, an art island off the coast of Japan in the Seto sea. The transportation systems here are a thing of beauty.

Inari Shrine, Kyoto

Touristy (this shot and the bamboo forest shots must be on every camera in Kyoto) but spectacular to see the torii (there are 10,000) that stretch up the mountain and date back to the year 711.  There are 32,000 lesser shrines around the mountain.

This shrine honors the Shinto god of rice, and is protected by many fox sculptures who carry a key in their mouth. It's a very popular destination for school trips!

One of the funniest things

Surprise in Our Rice Snacks

And yes, they were good. They just can't resist throwing a fish onto or into a meal or snack.

Naoshima Island, Japan

Elizabeth M Walter's Location

2$ Per Strawberry. Worth it!

Strolling the Nishiki Market Kyoto. The fruits and vegetables are PERFECT specimens almost everywhere, and you pay for it. Japan apparently started serious cultivation of strawberries after 2005 but they took it on with gusto! The berries are unbelievably delicious. Not like anything we get in the US.

Egg McMuffin vs. Raw Fish at 7am.

Guess who won?  

We like the salads and soups common in Japanese breakfasts, but we just haven't warmed up to the fish for breakfast. You can have your fish raw, pickled, dried and all other preparation methods. But still not that appealing to us.

Tonkatsu in Kyoto

How could a deep fried piece of pork possibly be bad? It can't.

Incredible Bamboo Forest

Bamboo as far as the eye can see. Each one about 10-12" around.

A Geisha's Commute To Work

They really try to avoid the crowded streets as the tourists can be a pain trying to get a shot. We were getting lost on purpose roaming around the back alleys in Kyoto (and happened upon this beauty. By the time she got to the end of the street, she was seen by about 25 aggressive camera-wielding tourists and scurried quickly into a building. Note the signs. While on the street, don't touch the geisha is numero uno. Also don't sit, lean, eat or drink, litter, smoke or use a selfie stick. Got all that?

Interestingly, most public places in Japan prohibit walking down the street and smoking. There are special areas for people to smoke. Some are actually quite cage-like.

But walk into a restaurant and most of them allow smoking anytime and anywhere. Hotels also have mostly smoking rooms so you have to really try to find non smoking rooms and they often cost more.

I'm sure the Olympics here in a few years will give the government impetus to reform the smoking situation which is pretty tragic for an advanced country. That said, average life expectancy is 83, among highest in the world.

Bring on the sake! Who says rice makes you fat? Maybe it's just a lot of good genes.

Best Sushi ... So Far

First victory with any restaurant search is actually physically finding the place. It is usually quite difficult wandering through back alleys with no numbers or street signs in many cases. This place (Wasabi) in the Gion area was beautiful inside, and served the most delicious sushi we have had to date. It disappeared before our very eyes. Many restaurants have some seat/cover charge usually about 3 to 5 dollars per person, which they just add onto your bill, and they often give a small snack. In this case they gave us about 10 edamame pods each. Many people think they are just getting ripped off, but it's a normal practice called otoshi or tsukidashi.

Reactions to Deer in Nara Deer Park

Until 1637, it was a capital offense to kill deer in the one-time capitol of Japan, about an hour from Kyoto by train. Reactions are mixed. The deer are EVERYWHERE. Instead of them running from humans, humans run from them as they sometimes get aggressive looking for food.

Tea in Bamboo Garden, Arashiyama Kyoto

A Picture of Our Luggage - Really??

OK, so this is huge. Three days ago we left Osaka to make some short trips by train where bringing all our luggage was going to be a real pain. Just think a few overnights where the things you needed to bring were minimal. But no choice, right? Wrong. Because train travel is so popular and easy in Japan they have created a miracle - Takuhaibin!! When we left our hotel in Osaka three days ago we just took our bags to our hotel bellman, gave him the name of our next hotel where we wanted the luggage and the day we would be checking in, and just walked away. Three days later we arrived at our hotel in Kyoto and there were our bags waiting for us!!! The big tags are the shipment identifiers. You can do this all over the country. You usually have the bags the next morning, or amazingly, your new hotel will just hold them till you get there - for us that was three days later. Now I realize you can do anything for a price but let me tell you the entire cost - $12.50 US per bag shipping, including three days storage! Longer trip maybe max out $20 per bag. Yes, for the traveler this is the greatest thing since sliced bread. No lugging the bags on the train is sooooo nice.