The Road Less Traveled

Hiroshima, Day 1: Travelling, travelling…

Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008 by Rintaun | Uncategorized

So we’ve been back from Hiroshima for a few days, and I figured it was about time to write a little bit about the trip. To summarize it really quickly, it was totally awesome. This past weekend I saw some of the most beautiful, some of the most sad, and even some of the most encouraging things I’ve ever seen. If you ever come to Japan, I have one piece of advice: visit Hiroshima, definitely.

I’m going to tell this in a series of three posts: one for each day. Days 2 and 3 were significantly longer, since Day 1 was mostly travel, but they’re all interesting. So after this one, stay tuned for more.

Anyway, Friday started off a pretty normal day; I got up at 7am like normal, went to breakfast at 7:30 like normal (like I will as soon as I finish writing this post), and went to my culture class at 9:30 like normal. Okay, that’s a bit out of the ordinary, since we don’t always have class on Friday, but whatever. The class was on Tea Ceremony; I get the feeling that I’ve mentioned it before… but please do correct me if I’m wrong. Anyway, after class I sat around for a while until the time we were all supposed to meet: 2pm.

All the guys got there early; the girls were a little bit late, but it wasn’t a big deal. Once we were all there, we hopped on the bus from Chubu University to Jin-ryo station, from which we took the train to Nagoya station. From there, we switched trains to the Shinkansen (bullet train) and rode it to Shin-Osaka. There we switched to another Shinkansen line and took this one to Hiroshima station. Finally, at Hiroshima station, we got on the local JR (Japan Rail) train line and took it to the stop where our hotel was.

We stayed at the Miyajima Coral Hotel. It was right on the coast, across the water from Miyajima Island. We got there around maybe 7pm (I don’t really remember…), checked in, dropped our stuff in our rooms, and went to dinner. We ate Okonomiyaki at a little restaurant near the hotel; since we had 15 people all told, we had to wait a while to get in and when we did, we had to go in small groups as tables opened up. If you don’t know what Okonomiyaki is, I wrote a blog post about it. Only this time it was slightly different. Okonomiyaki is generally thought of as a Kansai and Hiroshima food. Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki, though, has noodles in it, and at least at this restaurant, they made it for us.

After dinner everybody went to the bar on the top floor of the hotel. I went, but only drank pop. It was a good time; me and my roommate both get a kick out of the picture to the left… something about Dr. Thompson just makes it look hilarious.

Anyway, we had a good time. We got to hear a bunch of stories from Dr. Thompson, such as the festival he went to in Asuke (where we’ll be going in February). Much hilarity ensued. That’s all for now, because after that, we pretty much went to bed. Look forward to Day 2!

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