The day after Nikki's birthday we had a wander round a small park in northern Hiroshima (Shukkien Park). It represents a part of Chinese landscape in miniature, including a small mountain that we conquered. In the centre of the garden there is a huge lake with lots of friendly terrapins in who came to say 'Hi' to us whenever we stopped at the side. After making our way back through the city we hopped on the Shinkansen up to Kyoto.
When we got to Kyoto we got a local train close to where we were staying, then tried to walk the rest of the way with our backpacks, then we got lost. Once we found our way we were shown to our room, a 22 bed dorm, that was virtually full! It had been a long day so after a chilled evening we tried to get some shuteye, only to be woken by a bunch of rowdy Aussies in the middle of the night/morning!
We got up the next day and went and had a look round Nijo Castle, the place where the shogun would stay. It was pretty good, but the thing we liked best was the musical floorboards that would alert the guards when someone was sneaking around. We went to check out the Manga museum, only to find it was closed on Wednesdays, so had a walk around Kyoto city centre. After so many descriptions of it being a spiritual city it began to feel like we were in the wrong place surrounded by tourists, skyscrapers, Starbucks and McDonalds.
The following day we planned to do east of the river, which is where all the temples and shrines hang out. Starting out in the south we visited the temple of 1001 Buddhas. 500 kannons (The Goddess of mercy) line up in rows on either side of a giant Buddha in the middle, each one has 40 arms holding something different and each kannon is unique. Along the front were the 28 guardian Buddhas. It was a pretty impressive sight especially viewed from either end of the giant wooden hall (supposedly the longest wooden structure in Japan).
We then took a walk up to Kiyomizu-dera Temple at the top of a hill, the temple itself was quite understated but the walk up took us past a hillside graveyard that seemed to go on forever. Once up the view from the temple's balcony over Kyoto was a great sight, the trail then led us back down past a waterfall that is said to cure all illnesses (although we decided not to as there were hundreds of people doing so and we didn't want to catch their diseases!) and down the paths of 2 and 3 years. If you fall on these paths you are said to get 2/3 years bad luck. We took a stroll through Gion which is old Kyoto with small wooden houses and bars lining the streets. We finished the day with a visit to the Manga museum which turned out to be more like a library. Some 200,000 manga titles (with a small English/foreign languages section) line the walls and visitors are allowed to take them out to read in the garden (a large AstroTurf pitch) or in one of the many seating areas.
The next day we took a trip to Himeji, a small town about an hour and a half away from Kyoto on the Shinkansen. We had heard it was possible to rent bikes for free but were disappointed when informed that they had run out. We started to walk up to Himeji Castle which dominated the landscape and came across another tourist information centre who were more than happy to give us bikes which we rode up to the castle. The castle was never used in a war, but is supposedly one of the finest examples of its kind in Japan. Afterwards we went through the miniature gardens next door and participated in a tea ceremony. Basically you wander in and are served something incredibly sticky and sweet then a bitter bowl of green tea that tasted similar to grass. We hopped back on the bikes and spent the afternoon riding the roads and dodging the traffic of Himeji.
We had planned to spend the next day in Nara, but after a tip off we went to a small peaceful garden in the north-east of Kyoto where we saw some crazy trees and a bird (a heron apparently). We did some deep thinking whilst walking down the path of philosophy then hopped on a bus down to the Fushimi Inari shrine. Thousands of torii gates are packed in along the paths creating tunnels that almost completely block out the sunlight in places. Each gate is paid for as an offering by a company who wish to do well in business. One of the most impressive things we saw in Kyoto and well worth a visit.
On Sunday we spent the day travelling up to Tokyo where I (Mark) unfortunately spent the evening bed ridden with some kind of flu and a fever. We stayed in the Asakusa area, which had lots of small market stalls lining the streets around the Sensoji Temple. The following day we looked into getting out to Mt. Fuji as I was planning on climbing it. That evening we went around Akihabara the discount electronics area that is awash with neon signs and cafes where girls dress up as Manga maids to try and get business.
We got up early the next day to explore Tokyo's fish market, rows and rows of merchants line the giant warehouse and crazy 4-wheel drive buggies whizz past ferrying goods back and forth. We got some good pictures of various sealife (both dead, alive and twitching) but unfortunately Nikki's camera packed in half way round.
Although I was still running a bit of a fever I decided to go out to Fuji anyway. I took a highway bus out to Kawaguchi-ko then a local bus to the Sengen Shrine at the foot of the mountain. As it was outside tourist season there weren't regular buses up to the 5th station which is about 2300m up the the 3774m mountain and I had missed the last one. Therefore I would have to climb the whole way which I would be doing at night to get to the top for sunrise.
Now this may be hard to believe but I left my camera on the highway bus which fortunately I got back the next day, but have no evidence of my climb! I started at around 6.30pm by following the road as the mountain trail looked a little dangerous, somewhere I took a wrong turn and ended up going around the mountain but eventually found my way back onto the forested Fuji-Yoshida trail. The trail is separated into 10 stations at which I had planned to rest along the way. I realised this plan was not great when I approached a run down shack with broken benches stacked up inside signposted as '1st station'. I carried on climbing and thought of getting to 5th station as I knew this was more major with 24 hour toilets at least. As I made my way up (listening to Red Dwarf spoken novels on the iPod) my flu kicked in and I felt I would have to give up once I reached fifth station. Eventually after stopping just past fourth station I had one of the two Snickers I had brought with me, and it tasted so good I decided to save the other one in case I did make it up. During this rest I also realised my bento box that I had packed had exploded, and was now inedible! Along the path on trees were hung small pieces of paper that were counting down to something, and as I passed 4th station I realised they were counting down to fifth station. The map indicated it would take around 45 minutes to walk between 4th and 5th station so I was surprised when I came across a sign for five station. My heart sank as I realised it was yet another run down shack that was all locked up, but then I saw another small piece of paper that was tied to a tree that still wasn't at 0, so kept climbing. Eventually after 6 hours of climbing I came across what I thought was the real 5th station, with toilets and a rest room. I sat on a warming toilet seat for a while, put on some more clothes, filled up my water bottle and freshened up. After a brief stop I decided to try and make it to the top.
It was around 1am when I set off from 5th station so I figured I had around 5 hours to make the rest of the climb. Soon the trees thinned out and down below I could see the small towns lit up at the base of the mountain. Progress was good at first but slowed when the air became thin at around 3000m and I was stopping at almost every bend in the path that zig-zagged up the mountain. As I approached the last base before the summit I saw the sun starting to poke up along the horizon and stopped to watch it rise. It was an awesome sight, that was truly unforgettable. I tried to climb the remaining 250m but the flu along with the wind made be begin to shiver and I though it best to descend again (after consuming my second Snickers). I went back down to what I thought was 5th station where I intended to catch a bus back to Kawaguchi-ko. As I sat there sipping a cold coke taking in the view I asked someone when the first bus was, they told me it would be in 3 hours, but it went from 5th station about 1km across the mountain. I felt my muscles groan as I stood up and walked over to 5th Station where I made a phone call to Nikki and posted a postcard to my Mum and Emma. Once back at Kawaguchi-ko station I picked up my camera and got a train back to Tokyo, struggling to keep my eyes open all the way.
We spent the following day exploring central Tokyo which was more of what we expected out of the city, tall skyscrapers and bright lights. We were on the hunt for a new pair of flip-flops for Nikki when we saw a sign for H&M. Following the stream of people coming towards us with H&M bags we eventually found the shop down the street with a HUGE queue of people in front of it. We followed the queue past one block, then another and a third, before it went round the corner as far as the eye could see. Insane! We gave up on H&M and explored the awesome 7 storey toy shop across the road instead.
The next day was a dead, spent travelling back down to Hiroshima where we spent the night in a Ryokan style B&B, the best nights sleep we had in Japan! Not too difficult after nights spent in 22bed dorms. After catching a train back to Shimonoseki we got the ferry back to Qingdao in China where we've spent the last few days. We're now just about to get a taxi out to the bus terminal to get a 14hour sleeper bus across to Xi'an to see the terracotta warriors.
Wednesday, 24 September 2008
Tuesday, 23 September 2008
Turning 22 in Japan.
I wasn't quite sure what to expect of my 22nd birthday spent in a strange country without my family, most of my friends and only Mark who knew anything of the occasion. In a country where if you want to order anything other than Coke (a universally understood word apparently) it involves a lot of pointing and gesticulating wildly or mumbling a badly pronounced (rarely understood)sentence from the phrasebook.
We were Hiroshima in the South of Honshu island, Japan; the city where America had dropped the first atomic bomb at 8.15am on August 6 1945 during WWII (that trip to the museum really paid off!).
We'd arrived the afternoon before and arranged some last minute accomodation at the information point in the train station. We got a good deal to stay in Comfort Inn Otemachi, a comfortable double room in a standard hotel (it could have been in any city around the world!) We spent the afternoon in the Peace Park; a park created as a memorial to the A-bomb which is surrounded by a river on either side. We went to the Peace Memorial Museum which stood near the entrance to the park and saw the devastation of the bombing to both the city and it's inhabitants, with scaled models of the city before and after the bombing - certaining a sight to behold.
Once outside the sun was so hot we were dodging from shade to shade through the trees. We walked up to see a memorial placed for a young girl who had survided the bombing only to be diagnosed with lukemia a few years later caused by the radiation. There is a story that says if you make 1000 origami cranes you wish will come true. The girl made cranes, hundreds and hundreds of them, wishing with each tiny crane that she would survive her illness. She made over a thousand cranes but unfortunatly died a while after. Now school children around the country make thousands of paper cranes which are placed in about 10 huge sealed glass boxes standing about 7ft high, 5ft wide and 3ft deep surrounding a statue in memory of the of girl. Thousands and thousands of cranes all wishing for the abolition of nuclear weapons and peace around the world.
The next morning after a birthday breakfast in the hotel of cereal and baked things (mmm, baked things) where i opened my birthday cards (thank you) we made a slow start to Miyajima; a small island about 10 minute ferry ride from Hiroshima. We got on the streetcar (tram) and headed towards the port, we arrived about half an hour later to realise we were at the wrong port and had to get an hour long tram ride all the way to the other side of the bay (doh!)
When we finally got to Miyajima we were starving, (it was about 2.30 in the afternoon) so we went and got some lunch of Okonomiyaki (a mass of noodles, chinese cabbage, beansprouts and pork cooked on a flat griddle in front of you with lots of flair and clattering of spatular things, then placed under a pancake with an egg and weird soy/bbq sauce on top - tastes a lot better than i've described it, trust me :)). We had an ice cream for dessert with chocolate biscuit thing on which we thought would be nice to eat while sitting in the sunshine in a park area - bad choice. There are lots of wild deer around Miyajima and Mark made friends with them quickly as his ice cream melted and all the chocolate bits fell off, one even started to eat his shirt while he was trying to run away from them, ice cream held above his head.
We walked around the coast of the island towards the infamous O'Torii gate and shrine. It would be high tide at 4pm (the best time to see the gate) so we decided to walk round a bit and take in the sights before paying to go into the shrine to see the gate from the, apparently, best view. After seeing the gate we went to an aquarium (they have some weird sort of draw for me - i blame dad) then went to catch the cable car to the top of the mountain to watch the sunset. Unfortunatly the last cable car up the mountain was at 5pm and the last one back at 5.30, we'd missed both, we decided to go back to the O'Torii gate to watch the sunset.
It was beatutiful. The sunset behind the hills surrounding Hiroshima in the distance and with the O'Torii gate in the foreground, it was a photographer's heaven. Mark and I, and apparently the rest of the tourists in Miyajima that day, have the photos to prove it.
When the last traces of light from the sun disappeared we headed back to the ferry and our hotel. For our birthdays Mark and I had decided to buy each other dinner and take it from there. Mark found a restaurant that served yakisoba, a noodle dish (a Fuji Hiro favourite) and gyoza, either Chinese or Japanese dumplings (depending on which country your in they belong to the other - no one wants to claim them!)
After the meal we went for a drink. Bars in Japan are odd to say the least. With little space to spare they cram bars into appartment buildings (where each appartment door opens into a different bar) we found one we thought sounded like it had all we needed 'Cocktails and Drums' unfortunatly the sign was blocked and we realised it was actually 'Cocktails and Dreams'. We tried it anyway. We walked into a tiny, empty (apart from the millions of spirit bottles) bar and a little old lady who didn't speak a word of english beyond 'england' and 'sweet'. There was no menu, therefore no pictures to point at and no phrasebook; it was going to be a interesting night. We decided after trying to ask for rum without successs that I would try a 'sweet' cocktail. Not bad, made with cassis and juice of some sort. After some trying conversation that mostly consisted of silence while she thought up the right word in english (pretty impressive with our immensly poor attempt in Japanese!) She made another and Mark managed to explain, somehow, that it was my birthday. We chatted while she disappeared, returning with two glasses of cava on the house :). Mark, unfortunatly doesn't like cava so I had to drink his - so as not to appear rude of course :P A while later, after the woman had put on a dvd of some Royal Family music event consisting of Elton John and the like, some girls came in and the woman told them it was my birthday, then a glass of 'prum' arrived in front of me, possibly bought by the girls. We eventually worked out it was a type of plum wine, tasty but not like Fuji Hiro's :) We were asked if we wanted to try some (we think) saki. It was ice cold and sweet and tasty - possibly why we think it might not have been saki...
A group of business men entered, order beers and sat smoking cigarettes (no smoking ban here but you can't smoke on the streets in the main parts of town) another guy came in who turned out to be the woman's son and owned the bar. He spoke some english and the woman told him it was my birthday. After he asked my name and got everyone to practice (after being told i was called Nikki-san) the guy pulled out a harmonica and started playing 'happy birthday', the whole bar joined in singing! I sat there grinning like an idiot with no idea what to do. When they stopped i said 'aragato', thank you, a lot and bowed (you get used to it - i'm still bowing now) soon after we went to leave, the owner asked if he could take our picture to putting on the bar's blog. We checked a week after but the blog hadn't been updated.
After Cocktails and Dreams we went to another bar high up in a building over looking a small park and some of the city. Mark insisted i try a cocktail called a grasshopper which tasted exactly like mint-choc-chip icecream (drool). After that we headed home and I promptly fell asleep, luckily waking up without any trace of a hangover :D
It certainly was a birthday I'll remember for the rest of my life :D
We were Hiroshima in the South of Honshu island, Japan; the city where America had dropped the first atomic bomb at 8.15am on August 6 1945 during WWII (that trip to the museum really paid off!).
We'd arrived the afternoon before and arranged some last minute accomodation at the information point in the train station. We got a good deal to stay in Comfort Inn Otemachi, a comfortable double room in a standard hotel (it could have been in any city around the world!) We spent the afternoon in the Peace Park; a park created as a memorial to the A-bomb which is surrounded by a river on either side. We went to the Peace Memorial Museum which stood near the entrance to the park and saw the devastation of the bombing to both the city and it's inhabitants, with scaled models of the city before and after the bombing - certaining a sight to behold.
Once outside the sun was so hot we were dodging from shade to shade through the trees. We walked up to see a memorial placed for a young girl who had survided the bombing only to be diagnosed with lukemia a few years later caused by the radiation. There is a story that says if you make 1000 origami cranes you wish will come true. The girl made cranes, hundreds and hundreds of them, wishing with each tiny crane that she would survive her illness. She made over a thousand cranes but unfortunatly died a while after. Now school children around the country make thousands of paper cranes which are placed in about 10 huge sealed glass boxes standing about 7ft high, 5ft wide and 3ft deep surrounding a statue in memory of the of girl. Thousands and thousands of cranes all wishing for the abolition of nuclear weapons and peace around the world.
The next morning after a birthday breakfast in the hotel of cereal and baked things (mmm, baked things) where i opened my birthday cards (thank you) we made a slow start to Miyajima; a small island about 10 minute ferry ride from Hiroshima. We got on the streetcar (tram) and headed towards the port, we arrived about half an hour later to realise we were at the wrong port and had to get an hour long tram ride all the way to the other side of the bay (doh!)
When we finally got to Miyajima we were starving, (it was about 2.30 in the afternoon) so we went and got some lunch of Okonomiyaki (a mass of noodles, chinese cabbage, beansprouts and pork cooked on a flat griddle in front of you with lots of flair and clattering of spatular things, then placed under a pancake with an egg and weird soy/bbq sauce on top - tastes a lot better than i've described it, trust me :)). We had an ice cream for dessert with chocolate biscuit thing on which we thought would be nice to eat while sitting in the sunshine in a park area - bad choice. There are lots of wild deer around Miyajima and Mark made friends with them quickly as his ice cream melted and all the chocolate bits fell off, one even started to eat his shirt while he was trying to run away from them, ice cream held above his head.
We walked around the coast of the island towards the infamous O'Torii gate and shrine. It would be high tide at 4pm (the best time to see the gate) so we decided to walk round a bit and take in the sights before paying to go into the shrine to see the gate from the, apparently, best view. After seeing the gate we went to an aquarium (they have some weird sort of draw for me - i blame dad) then went to catch the cable car to the top of the mountain to watch the sunset. Unfortunatly the last cable car up the mountain was at 5pm and the last one back at 5.30, we'd missed both, we decided to go back to the O'Torii gate to watch the sunset.
It was beatutiful. The sunset behind the hills surrounding Hiroshima in the distance and with the O'Torii gate in the foreground, it was a photographer's heaven. Mark and I, and apparently the rest of the tourists in Miyajima that day, have the photos to prove it.
When the last traces of light from the sun disappeared we headed back to the ferry and our hotel. For our birthdays Mark and I had decided to buy each other dinner and take it from there. Mark found a restaurant that served yakisoba, a noodle dish (a Fuji Hiro favourite) and gyoza, either Chinese or Japanese dumplings (depending on which country your in they belong to the other - no one wants to claim them!)
After the meal we went for a drink. Bars in Japan are odd to say the least. With little space to spare they cram bars into appartment buildings (where each appartment door opens into a different bar) we found one we thought sounded like it had all we needed 'Cocktails and Drums' unfortunatly the sign was blocked and we realised it was actually 'Cocktails and Dreams'. We tried it anyway. We walked into a tiny, empty (apart from the millions of spirit bottles) bar and a little old lady who didn't speak a word of english beyond 'england' and 'sweet'. There was no menu, therefore no pictures to point at and no phrasebook; it was going to be a interesting night. We decided after trying to ask for rum without successs that I would try a 'sweet' cocktail. Not bad, made with cassis and juice of some sort. After some trying conversation that mostly consisted of silence while she thought up the right word in english (pretty impressive with our immensly poor attempt in Japanese!) She made another and Mark managed to explain, somehow, that it was my birthday. We chatted while she disappeared, returning with two glasses of cava on the house :). Mark, unfortunatly doesn't like cava so I had to drink his - so as not to appear rude of course :P A while later, after the woman had put on a dvd of some Royal Family music event consisting of Elton John and the like, some girls came in and the woman told them it was my birthday, then a glass of 'prum' arrived in front of me, possibly bought by the girls. We eventually worked out it was a type of plum wine, tasty but not like Fuji Hiro's :) We were asked if we wanted to try some (we think) saki. It was ice cold and sweet and tasty - possibly why we think it might not have been saki...
A group of business men entered, order beers and sat smoking cigarettes (no smoking ban here but you can't smoke on the streets in the main parts of town) another guy came in who turned out to be the woman's son and owned the bar. He spoke some english and the woman told him it was my birthday. After he asked my name and got everyone to practice (after being told i was called Nikki-san) the guy pulled out a harmonica and started playing 'happy birthday', the whole bar joined in singing! I sat there grinning like an idiot with no idea what to do. When they stopped i said 'aragato', thank you, a lot and bowed (you get used to it - i'm still bowing now) soon after we went to leave, the owner asked if he could take our picture to putting on the bar's blog. We checked a week after but the blog hadn't been updated.
After Cocktails and Dreams we went to another bar high up in a building over looking a small park and some of the city. Mark insisted i try a cocktail called a grasshopper which tasted exactly like mint-choc-chip icecream (drool). After that we headed home and I promptly fell asleep, luckily waking up without any trace of a hangover :D
It certainly was a birthday I'll remember for the rest of my life :D
Thursday, 4 September 2008
Almost Japan...
Nikki arrived in Beijing on the 26th and we spent 5 more nights there. We went out to the Great (signposted Grart) Wall. After an early start we had arranged to meet a member of Ting Tours to take us there. Whilst stood on the street corner waiting for some form of minibus to pull up we noticed a shifty looking character strolling up to us. He spoke no English but gestured for us to follow him, we assume his air conditioned mega van must be parked around the corner. As we crossed the road we realised that our transport for the day was to be a knackered old Lexus coupe "parked" at (on) the side of the road.
It took a couple of hours to get to a section that was brandished in signs proclaiming that "This section of the wall is closed to the public." and "Closed for refurbishment". We turned onto a small dirt track, fearing for our lives (and bruised buttocks), where our mystery guide parked up and we followed him up a steep bank to a broken section of the wall. We climbed up a dodgy 3 rung ladder (and were charged 2yuan each for the privelege by a hermit living on the wall) saw the climb was not yet over. We clambered up broken steps and mounds of vertical rubble to the top of the wall where we had about a 750m stretch of wall to explore, either end of which was impassable. After a couple of hours we headed back to the car and our guide (we'll call him Bob) took us back to Beijing. We payed Bob then parted ways, only to find out later he'd overcharged us!
After a lazy afternoon, we went to the night market where we tried sea snake.
Over the next few days we took in Forbidden City, Tian'anmen square, and some tranquil parks in the middle of the hectic city roads. On our last full day in Beijing we took it easy and went to a teahouse in the afternoon where they put on an hour long show with as much green tea as you could drink. We saw a shadow play, Sechaun face change opera, acrobatics, singing, a comic double act, a magic act and a special olympic tea dance.
We took the train down to Qingdao (about 6 hours) on the east coast to catch a ferry to Japan. We've been here for the past few days enjoying the beaches and the hot weather. The food has been an experience as there are less English speakers here so we have had to play a game of pointing and hoping and on one occasion we were forced to resort to McDonalds (it's just as bad here as it is everywhere else)!
We're catching the ferry this evening (8pm local time, 1pm GMT) to Shimonoseki on the southern most tip of the Honshu island of Japan (the big one with Tokyo on). It's a 40 hour journey so we've stocked up on snacks and the local version of pot noodles (which are a hell of a lot nicer!) to keep us going. We plan on spending a couple of weeks exploring Japan using the railways before returning to Qingdao to continue our Chinese adventure.
Off to catch a taxi now, we'll post again soon.
Love N&M
It took a couple of hours to get to a section that was brandished in signs proclaiming that "This section of the wall is closed to the public." and "Closed for refurbishment". We turned onto a small dirt track, fearing for our lives (and bruised buttocks), where our mystery guide parked up and we followed him up a steep bank to a broken section of the wall. We climbed up a dodgy 3 rung ladder (and were charged 2yuan each for the privelege by a hermit living on the wall) saw the climb was not yet over. We clambered up broken steps and mounds of vertical rubble to the top of the wall where we had about a 750m stretch of wall to explore, either end of which was impassable. After a couple of hours we headed back to the car and our guide (we'll call him Bob) took us back to Beijing. We payed Bob then parted ways, only to find out later he'd overcharged us!
After a lazy afternoon, we went to the night market where we tried sea snake.
Over the next few days we took in Forbidden City, Tian'anmen square, and some tranquil parks in the middle of the hectic city roads. On our last full day in Beijing we took it easy and went to a teahouse in the afternoon where they put on an hour long show with as much green tea as you could drink. We saw a shadow play, Sechaun face change opera, acrobatics, singing, a comic double act, a magic act and a special olympic tea dance.
We took the train down to Qingdao (about 6 hours) on the east coast to catch a ferry to Japan. We've been here for the past few days enjoying the beaches and the hot weather. The food has been an experience as there are less English speakers here so we have had to play a game of pointing and hoping and on one occasion we were forced to resort to McDonalds (it's just as bad here as it is everywhere else)!
We're catching the ferry this evening (8pm local time, 1pm GMT) to Shimonoseki on the southern most tip of the Honshu island of Japan (the big one with Tokyo on). It's a 40 hour journey so we've stocked up on snacks and the local version of pot noodles (which are a hell of a lot nicer!) to keep us going. We plan on spending a couple of weeks exploring Japan using the railways before returning to Qingdao to continue our Chinese adventure.
Off to catch a taxi now, we'll post again soon.
Love N&M
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