Japan Day 2
Posted By Mike Gfeller on August 17, 2014
Woke up at 3A and started getting organized for the day while Wolf was sleeping. Besides, I was wide awake. It gets light very early here which also throws one off. We packed 3 days worth of clothes and our necessary items into our backpacks and headed down to check out. We had our bags shipped (common in Japan) for about 3200 yen. They shipped them to the Kyoto hotel where we would be Monday night. That way we don’t have to lug our baggage around the country. We checked out of the hotel and now it was off to meet John.
While waiting for John I looked around for coffee. It was 630A on a Saturday morning and nothing was open. Starbucks opened at 8A…what? John arrived a little after 7 and we headed to the train station. I was glad he was with us because I would have not been able to navigate this maze without him. We made it about 7 stops from Ikebukuro station to Tokyo station (I think one of the main ones, though the one we’d just left was crazy). We found a JR office, exchanged our documents for two official JR passes, and then John had to leave, leaving us to navigate the madness to find our gate.
I’ll explain more about Japanese trains in another post, but there are many flavors and sizes. We wanted the bullet trains, or Shinkansen. Our final destination for the day was Hiroshima, but we were stopping at the station known as Shinfuji to exit the train, take pictures of the mountain from a distance, and then hop back on another train. This is a logistical challenge because the fastest trains have less stops, so if you want to stop at Shinfuji, you take a bullet train that has a lot of stops. Hiroshima is far south, so you take a bullet train with a lot of stops to get to Fuji and then try to find a faster train from there to Hiroshima. Add to that reserved/non-reserved seating and you can see the learning curve imposed on us. We got to Shinfuji around 9:30A but there were clouds covering the mountains. In the meantime, my camera strap (from my Panasonic from which I posted the first round of pics yesterday) broke. Since we had an hour to kill before the next train (where we had reserved seating), we decided to venture out and find a camera shop.
Here we are, two Americans with backpacks and such walking through the backstreets and alleys of Fuji looking for a camera shop. We passed by one small shop with some cameras in it and walked in. The young kid went and grabbed his mother, who also couldn’t speak English. I showed them the broken camera strap and she went on in Japanese and I got nothing out of it other than they didn’t have what I needed. But then she drew a map and I am good with directions! We bowed and took our leave and ambled further away from the JR station. We got to the camera store, bought a new strap, and headed back to the JR station without incident, though I quickly found out about the usefulness of those towels John gave us.
So now we jump back on the bullet train headed for Shizuoka. That is only one stop away. We get to Shizuoka and switch trains to head to Osaka. This is where it all fell apart. Turns out there were heavy rains and while these trains are punctual, they don’t drive them in heavy rains. Something about 182mph and a rain soaked track…will have to investigate that one further. So we literally stop for minutes at a time…start…stop…start…stop…until we get to Osaka. We get to the platform 2 minutes late but the train is gone. Now what?
We go down to get new JR passes. It is hot, humid, we are literally drenched in sweat, and have just missed our train and have a language barrier. Just a little stressful. The time is now 1:00 or so. We get our new tickets and the earliest we can get is for around 1520. We have time to kill. It’s time to people watch!
A few observations and I am not judging: the men here carry man purses, not sure why exactly. Maybe to haul around the towels they need to wipe their brows or to hold all the train passes they need. By the way, they have iPhone apps in Japanese to let you know how to find the right train and everyone has them (I saw it on many phones). Lots of what I would call hooker heels but I don’t think these young ladies were of ill repute. Establishments that have doors (in the train stations most do not, it would be an inefficient choke point) often have doors that open by touching them. Pretty cool, as I hate the energy required to open a door…I also have seen very few tats here. I am sure they must exist but not where we’ve been. There isn’t much cleavage displayed by the ladies compared to Texas. Very conservative in that respect. The beds in the hotels are hard and the pillows even harder. Makes you wonder what the hell the point in having one must be? They love sweets and bakeries. Wolfgang noted a 2:1 ratio of sweet shops to any other type of shop/store in the train stations. Also, I think the drinking age is 20 or 21 but there are drink machines everywhere that sell water, coke, various Japanese drinks and BEER! It is ubiquitous in the vending machines!
There are very few places to sit unless you want to go to a restaurant to eat, which we didn’t because we didn’t want to wait an hour to be seated. I’ve battled plantar fasciitis for years and this was going to be a problem. Walking I knew would be excessive and anticipated, but standing around with no place to sit was not. We finally got on the train to Hiroshima. Wolfgang slept much of it. I didn’t. We got to Hiroshima and hailed a taxi. For $10 he got us to our hotel, the Hiroshima Sunroute. The staff were courteous but this was no Hotel Metropolitan. Still, it was nice enough and we had breakfast included for half of what we paid at the Tokyo Met. It was about 5:30P by the time we got to our room. We just sat and decompressed for awhile. They had free wifi so we both charged our devices and caught up on posts.
Note: keeping devices charged is a challenge. If you have a window seat on the Shinkansen there is an outlet at your feet but if you don’t you will lose battery strength quick. This IT Director was quickly schooled by his eighteen year old on all the tricks to conserve battery life.
I can’t remember when I booked the hotel what criteria I chose to determine the hotel but I made a good call on this one! We were as close as you could get to the Peace Memorial, which was good, because we were supposed to hit that on day two and because of our rain delay in Osaka, that meant we would now be behind on day 3, which was meant to be spent in Osaka.
I started searching for a good restaurant. John told me one of the foods Hiroshima is known for is oysters. It turns out one of the highest rated restaurants I could find was located about 100 yards from the entrance to our hotel. Mind you, we were in shorts and t-shirts and I had a fluorescent yellow Nike ball cap on (so I would be readily visible if Wolfgang and I became separated), so I was unsure if they would even let us in the place. We walked across a gangplank to get to it as the restaurant was on a boat on the river next to the hotel. They did let us in, and it was one of THE best dining experiences of my life. It was very traditional. The dining areas were hidden from view by screens. We had to take our shoes off. They showed us a menu with prices. We ordered two oyster/fish dinners at about 6000 yen each. There were something like 5 courses, each one as good or better than the last. There was soup, salad, ramen, oysters fried and steamed, sashimi, and Asahi! Wolfgang had coke. It was about $150 total USD but worth every penny for the experience. Wolfgang loved it too. It was a bargain for the memory. The three servers (female) walked us up the gangplank turning every 10 feet or so and bowing. We walked across the small street next to the river to our hotel and they were still standing there waving saying things we didn’t understand but I’m sure were kind based on the tone. They were still there as we turned the corner…
And just like that, what was a challenging day ended on a high note as the frustrations of the day were washed away by the incredible experience we had with the people and the food. This trend would continue, except from an unlikely source.
I stopped by the vending machine, picked up a couple of beers, went back to the room, drank the beers and went to sleep with Wolfgang laughing while watching YouTube videos. With all devices charging, day two had come to an end.
Sounds like a great meal! Very reasonable price considering what you got.