I'm here in a nice hostel, arrived yesterday quite late from Kyoto, another great Shinkanson experience. It's a J-Hoppers hostel and in a more traditional style. That means no shoes and non western toilets. I'm just about to go for a run round town, finally saw off my jet lag with some saki.
Table Of Contents
- Japan Blog 1 Getting There- The Hardest Part
- Japan Blog 2 - Roppongi by Night and Hugh Heffner's Bodyguard
- Japan Blog 3 - Meeting Tsutomu again in Tokyo
- Japan Blog 4 - The Onsen
- Japan Blog 5 - To Kyoto on the Shinkansen
- Japan Blog 6 - Kyoto Japan
- Japan Blog 7 - Miyajima and Star Trek Toilets
- Japan Blog 8 Hiroshima
In tradition you must not wear your shoes past the front area, and there are slippers available for the house areas an example being the toilet. This leads me on to the Japanese toilets, they are like a startrek toilet. They have a couple of jets for rinse and a blow dry, how the hell you know when you are clean I don't know, I think it might be an experience thing.
J Hoppers the hostel in Hiroshima..
I was immediately greeted at the hostel by the girl working there and Britta a German girl who never stopped talking seemingly. I was pretty tired and there was some talk because we both wanted the last bed, but for tomorrow but we were going to sort it as there was a storage room that I got. Also saw a familiar face a swiss guy called Marcus I had met in Kyoto at the backpak hostel Kyoto in Gion, Kyoto, and later met up with a German guy called Christian. They were going to do Miyajima at 12.00am so that the timing was correct for the tides. What is this Miyajima? I will get to that.
I was going to do the Atom Bomb Museum of peace and the survivors museum, however I could do that anytime tomorrow and then get away early afternoon, if the Miyajima is tide dependent it makes sense to do that with these guys and it was going to be more fun too. So I spent some quality time socializing in the hostel and it has been a very encouraging part of the trip, the backpack community is awesome, it isn't blighted by everyman and his dog here in Japan, you get an upper class kind of backpacker. Thailand on the other hand in my opinion saw all kinds taking advantage of hostel services for cheap prices and something was lost. It has been many years since I have seen this community working very well.
Miyajima
There is a massive Torri gate, these gates are the entrances to Shinto shrines in Japan. What has made this one particularly impressive is that it is out in the water, next to the island that it is a part of. This island is across from the mainland and a train ride from Hiroshima. Its a half day trip and there is a very pleasant hike to the top of mount mise or something like that. Well we had a lot of fun chatting and doing the hike, We took some great photos, which I will get round to adding. We finished the evening by going out, but I was so very tired I was falling asleep in my guiness.