Okay, part two! So, yesterday I went to Hiroshima. 3 and a half hour bus ride each way and almost $100, but I wanted to see my friends and take an actual trip on my holiday, so yeah. Woke up at 6 and headed for the train station. Roads looked slightly less post-apocalyptic, but I think that's cause I'm used to things appearing abandoned when it's dark.
Snow house in a park on the way! I totally wanted to go in, but I didn't have time and I would have gotten covered in snow :(
Plus, this dude probably lived there. Pretty sure I shouldn't mess with guys that have a weird lump on the top of their heads. And sticks for arms. Just sayin.
Remember this dude? He looks a bit chilly.
This is one of my all-time favorite snowmen. Seriously, look at it. The sad little wings that look shredded and a few sizes too small, the eyepatch, the look of innocent confusion and sorrow. The maker probably intended none of these things, but that's how I see it. In my mind, this is one of the few snowmen that understands his impending doom. His sorrow is because he knows how quickly he will melt, and his tiny wings represent the fact that he cannot escape. I never thought to say (write) this, but I sympathize with that snowman.
Just a random picture I liked. Also, you can tell how long my walk took. Dark when I started, kinda light when I got there. Yeah...
I went to the onsen station to get picked up by the bus! I'm pretty sure this is the kami of the onsen, not sure though.
So yeah, my bus left at 7:30, and I got there at about 10:45. Uneventful ride. A lot of really beautiful scenery with some cool misty mountain scenes, but the pictures wouldn't really turn out well :/ There was a little bit of confusion finding each other when we first got there, but it wasn't too bad. Eventually, we all met up and had some Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki! It was decent/good, but nothing great. Oh well, at least it wasn't awful. After that, we decided to go sight seeing for a bit.
A large memorial dedicated to the student-workers who died from radiation sickness after working to clean up the city. The colorful things are massive amounts of folded paper cranes sent from schools all over the world.
The whole monument, as well as the heads of Ryan and Joanna.
Some of the cranes were ridiculously small. Seriously, how would you even go about making them like that?
The Genbaku (atomic bomb) Dome. It was pretty damn close to the epicenter of the blast (everything else near the center got pretty much vaporized) and is now a really well-known symbol. There's big peace rallies here every year.
All of these are cut paper. Freaking amazing.
There was a big peace bell in the park that you can ring for peace. There was a Japanese family there when we arrived with two kids. One of them rang the bell, and it was kinda weaksauce. It took the poor thing a few times to even get it to make a sound. The dad was hella cool though, cause he started clapping, then turned to us and got us to join in. It was really cool. Afterwards, we decided to ring the bell too.
The wind up...
and the pitch! Luckily, I'm marginally stronger than a little Japanese girl, so I made a gong. I was really worried it wouldn't XD
The thing vibrated for hella days, and the vibrations were really strong. Even if you put your head against it like Ryan here, it just kept on going.
Those pictures? Made out of paper cranes. Holy. Shit. The kanji says heiwa (peace), by the way.
There are two long rows of very unfortunately shaped shrubberies near the eternal flame...
You have no idea how excited I was when I realized this random lion head spit out water. It's even better 'cause it looks like it's just barfing at first (hungover lion is hungover), then it just kinda slows to a drooling dribble.
The eternal flame!
Under the eternal flame! It was raining a bit at that point, but not much. That's the museum that depresses the shit out of everyone back there; figured we shouldn't visit it on that day. I'll probably go alone to visit sometime. I already read and saw most of what will be in there during my senior seminar though.
After the peace park, we headed towards Hiroshima castle. We found this awesome shrine on the way.
Ancient Japanese derp face?
There we go. Now THAT is an intimidating guardian. Show ol' Derpy over there how it's done! (I'm just kidding Derpy, you know I love you. BFF?)
This is a vending machine. It sells charms, wards, and fortunes. Classy. I bought one.
Dude, this guy is even more intimidating. I like to think of him as the master guardian of this shrine.
That's an "I'm gonna eat choo!" face if I've ever seen one.
There was a huge pile of these inside a side building. They might look like normal garbage, but they're not. They're charms, wards, and sacred arrows from last year. You see, there's a lot of superstitions here in Japan. Some of the ones around New Year's revolve around buying things like this (I'd actually never heard of the practice of buying the arrows before I came here. The ones for this year have rabbits instead, cause it's the year of the rabbit). After the year is up, you need to get rid of them, right? But you can't just toss them, that's bad luck. You take them to a shrine, and they burn them with the proper ritual and reverence. In the case of this shrine, that ritual and reverence involved a priest, an empty oil drum, some pine wood, and a lot of fire. I support this.
Side note: I got to be super touristy! People also come to these temples to get blessed for the New Year. Remember the bells and boxes I showed from other shrines? They all have them. During New Year's, there's a shrine maiden or priest there. You go up, put money in the box, ring the bell, bow twice, clap twice, bow once, then stay bowing while the person "blesses" you with a stick that has white paper tied to it. I'm sure there's a word for the stick. I choose to call it the blessinator. Well, we weren't going to do it because we all agreed we didn't know the significance, so it'd be rather empty (although to be fair, I think it's just one of those things that people do nowadays. Many Japanese people probably don't even understand the exact significance). However, one of the elder shrine maidens (there were a bunch, as well as a few priests) really encouraged us to do it, and even showed us how. Pretty sure she just wanted the money >< Didn't take any pictures of that or the shrine caretakers, because that'd be TOO touristy and I figured it'd probably annoy me if I was in their position.
Hiroshima castle from across the moat!
There were A BUNCH of stalls lined up on the path leading in and around the castle and temple grounds. Reminded me of 4th of July in Lake of the Pines when I was little, only without the games and stuff. Just lots of food and souvenir stands.
Want to get in and do the blessing ceremony at this shrine? Tough fucking luck.
Inside the castle, a suit of awesome armor!
I'm a samurai now! I'm very angry about all these damn foreigners mucking around in my castle!
A more serious samurai. Should have gone for the vaguely menacing samurai look instead; not really a fan of how this one turned out.
I lied about being a samurai, I'm really a ninja! Time to assassinate me some actual samurai with my imaginary knife! True story, ninja don't actually need real knifes; they kill with the power of awesome.
These were some very exclusive stairs.
View from the top, so to speak.
An awesome mask stand! See the Goku mask? The eye holes are in his bangs.
I don't even like small dogs, but this is just freaking adorable.
I had a lot of fun hunging out with my friends yesterday :D
Look at all the fun we had! You can tell it was fun because of the decorations and crazy big eyes. Yeah, there's photo booths over here they make your eyes super big. Mostly they're used by girls trying to be sexy or couples trying to be cutesy. Screw all that jazz.
After that, we had some curry and I headed home after a minor fiasco of finding some motion sickness pills. Now, I think I might have another episode of Thomas does something dumb for you, but maybe not. I'll let you decide, but I'm leaning towards yes. Here's what went down: My bus was scheduled to leave at 7:05 PM. We got to the station at 6:58 (I know cause I was frantically checking my iPhone clock), and the station information dude said my bus was at gate 9. I went to gate 9 and saw me a bus, so I got on. It didn't look like the bus I came in, but I've traveled by bus a few times in the states and sometimes they switch up, so whatever. It didn't have a destination on the side, but the sign for gate 9 had Matsue listed as a destination. Well, I was a little worried from the get-go that I was on the wrong bus. Something just felt off. When we left the station (at 7:03), I didn't hear Matsue listed as a destination. In fact, I was relatively sure they had said it was the Izumo express bus (Izumo is near Matsue, but not super close). I told myself to just relax, and chilled until we got to the rest stop (long bus ride = midway rest stop). Went to the bathroom, came back to the bus, saw another bus pull in with big glowing letters on the side that announced it was going to Matsue, and quietly freaked the fuck out. I had to stop the bus driver right after he had announced we were resuming our trip and hold up both buses for 5-10 minutes so I could make the switch. So fucking embarrassed. Amazingly, I only hated myself for about a half an hour. After that, I kind of just... let it go. I don't think I've ever done that before. Think it has more to do with the relief of not having to deal with getting home from Izumo at 11 PM though. So yeah, I dunno. What do you guys think? Stupid or no?
Oh yeah, this is the charm I got. Now to just figure out what it's used for...
Thomas' Play at Home Food Challenge Day What Fucking Day Am I on Now?: Tori no kara-age
Oh man did I fuck this recipe up. So bad. It should have been so simple and good. I overcooked it I think. The outside was just pure gross. The inside was decent, but overall, just gross. Damn you food gods, why must you be so vengeful?!
Score to Date: Thomas - 3 Vengeful Food Gods - 4
That's all I have for this week. Looks like the tie has finally been broken in the Food Gods' favor. Dick move Food God's, dick move.
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