Trips to Japan

Hello from Narita Airport

I’ve been lazy about making updates for a few days.  I have much catch-up to do once I get home-in-America.  We just finished our very last shopping at the mini-mall in the airport.  The airport hot-spot is cheap-ish…  Compare to the Starbucks hotspot, it’s a bargain.  Our plane leaves in about 100 minutes.  We’ll be checking in soon-ish.  Bye-bye, Japan.  ???????.

Day 17 – Adventure World

I was expecting that the trip to Adventure World was going to be one of the highlights of this trip to Japan.  And it turned out to be true.

It’s an aquarium, a zoo and a theme park combined into one.  The whole park is not too huge.  It’s not much work to walk from one end of the park to the other end.  They still packed so much into the whole place.  Admission is not cheap (3800 yen for adults), and the rides aren’t cheap either (price varies – the big roller coaster is 600 yen, the giant Ferris wheel is 500 yen, etc).  There are still plenty of entertainment you can enjoy just with the general admission.

I saw more junior-high- and high-school students at Hiroshima Peace Park, but this place was filled more with younger kids.  It’s really a perfect place for a family.

We left the park at about 3:30.  We were pretty exhausted by then.  Evan and I still ventured out to Osaka Hard Rock Cafe on our way home though.  And there, I finally convinced Evan to get her own HRC T-shirt.

Day 16 – travel day

Does one really need a whole day to travel one spot in Japan to another?  We do sometimes.  This was one of those days.  Day 16 went…

8:00 – wake up late, start packing up.  We were up pretty late the night before, so waking up wasn’t very easy.  But it had to be done in order to stop by at Hard Rock Cafe in Osaka, and get to the next destination early enough to have some time in a swimming pool.

8:30 – breakfast, a part of the hotel package.  It was an average breakfast, I think, except for one thing – the server gave us free green tea ice cream.  She heard us talking in English, and wanted to give us a taste of Japan.

9:30 – We checked out and got to the train depot for the street car.  Waiting for the street car in the rain isn’t the most fun thing to do.  The train didn’t come for a while…

10:05 – We were back at Hiroshima station once again.  It was too late to catch 10:15 train at this point.  We had to wait until 10:48 for the next train.  We took this chance to take some pictures around the train station.

12:20 – We arrived at Shin-Osaka station.  There isn’t enough time to make a quick run to HRC.  Oh well.  Our next train leaves at 1:00PM.

3:20 – We arrived at Shirahama station, our destination for the day.  We waited for the ride from the hotel for a while.  It’s a pretty small place…

4:20 – We finished checking in to the hotel.  It’s another small hotel… but they have a swimming pool!  We took a quick dip before heading to the hotel’s onsen bath.

6:30 – Dinner time – make your own sushi.  They serve a plate full of fresh fish from the local sea, a bowl of vinegar rice and a bunch of nori sea weed.  It was soooo good.  Then we went to bed a little early to get ready for the long day the next day.

Day 15 – trip to Hiroshima

I really didn’t know what to expect out of this trip.  But how can a trip to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park go wrong?  I took the chance, and took this trip.  And it’s a success so far.  Success #1 – the train was awesome.  Success #2 – the A-Bomb Dome was pretty.  The whole Peace Memorial Park was somber, yet very pretty.  Success #3 – the Peace Memorial Museum was good too.  Success #4 – a short trip to Miyajima was good too.  Success #5 – the hotel we picked was good.

#1 – train.  Because we are using the Rail Pass, and the pass restricts us from using one type of bullet train “Nozomi,” we had to switch our bullet train in Osaka.  And this was actually a good thing.  The train we switched to had very comfortable seats, very relaxing atmosphere… and it still went very fast, topping at 300km/h (approx. 185mph).  Not as fast as TGV of France, but still very speedy.  After getting to city of Hiroshima, we switched to the street car.  We went from 300km/h to 30km/h.  It’s still so much easier than walking.  And watching all the trains are fun.  For me.

#2&3 – Peace Memorial Park.  At Hiroshima station, we hopped on the line #2 street car.  We got off at the stop called Atomic Bomb Dome.  As the stop’s name implied, the dome was right in front of us right there.  The train made its only English announcement at this stop.  It’s made easier for foreign travelers visiting this site.

The dome was… just an old building, pretty much destroyed, with some touch-ups done to have it preserved.  By this time, we’ve seen quite a few foreigners.  Obviously, it’s a popular tourist spot.  From there, we semi-aimlessly started walking around.

First thing we encountered was Children’s Peace Monument.  That spot was full of origami cranes.  I’m guessing there are around half a million paper cranes around that monument.  Many punches of the cranes are donated by schools around the globe, often with messages hoping for the world peace.

From there, we started walking aimlessly.  We saw the Peace Bell, Cenotaph for the A-bomb victims, etc…  It’s a pretty park.  Then we arrived at the Peace Memorial Museum.  It’s a pretty powerful place.  I think people can spend quite a lot of time here.  Evan spent pretty good time reading through the displays, which had both Japanese and English.  I thought the English displays here were pretty good.  I guess there are enough peace advocates to make this place more friendly for everyone, regardless of the language.  I think over half of the visitors I saw in there were foreigners.

#4 – Miyajima.  Miyajima is another tourist spot in Hiroshima, but less know to foreigners, I think.  There still were quite a few of them here.

Once we checked in to the hotel, we ventured out to Miyajima.  It was a bit late, but I really wanted to make this trip today.  The street car #2 takes us all the way to the ferry port.  We got back on that train, and of we went.  Looks like the street trains are really a part of the life for the citizens of Hiroshima.  Why doesn’t America have more public transportation…

The ferry ride was short.  And the ferries leave the port quite often.  Making the connection from the street car to the ferry was not a problem at all.  The island looked pretty.  I think it has many spot to visit… but we cut our trip short, and headed back to the hotel.  This time, we took the regular commuter train (JR) back to Hiroshima, and took the street car to the hotel.

Sidenote – If anyone ever wants to visit Hiroshima, I think it’s best to plan half a day at the Peace Park (for those who wants to learn more about Hiroshima and its history around the A-Bomb survival), and at least half a day at Miyajima (for those who wants to see more beautiful Japanese sceneries).

#5 – the hotel.  The hotel is kinda small.  It is dirt cheap at about 5500 yen per night.  Including dinner and continental breakfast.

The hotel doesn’t provide the dinner, though.  They ask some store to bring okonomiyaki to the guest room.  Hiroshima is known for its unique okonomiyaki.  You can’t complete a trip to Hiroshima without eating one of these.

The delivery was very fast, and food was delicious.  (Evan said she liked my version of okonomiyaki better…)

Cherries on top are – 1) I can see the Peace Memorial Museum from my window; 2) They have free internet, with which I’m submitting this blog entry.

Day 13-14

Day 13 is another Sunday.  We stayed at the church all day.  After lunch, they had potato digging in the garden behind the church.  Evan joined that for a bit.

Also, that afternoon, they had a gospel choir concert at the church, in which I played trumpet on one song.  I stayed in the sanctuary while my daughter was digging the potatoes outside, since they were holding a rehearsal.  I didn’t get to do anything during that though.  I played the song without any rehearsal.  On a song that I’ve never heard of before.  Without any musical score in front of me.  That was some experience…

Day 14 – One of the good thing about coming home to this family is that we get to enjoy the fine home cooking by my mom and fine Korean home cooking by my sister-in-law.  On Monday, she prepared samgyetan for us.  It is one powerful meal.  With stuff like genkoba, garlic and ginseng in it, it’s sure to energize us for the rest of the week.

Day 12 – making gyoza

Excitements of the day – making gyoza, and tanabata concert.

about tea …

The tea yucky yucky yucky.     ceremony some what boring.    sweets were ok.

Day 11

Today was another do-nothing day.

In the morning, I finished setting up the wireless access point.  This device also works as a file server, using external USB harddrive that we can attach—which is the part I worked on.  Now I can start dumping all the photos I’m taking on this network drive, leaving them for my family to enjoy later.

Right after lunch, we went to the hardware store again to buy some of the stuff we missed last week.  There, we ran into my uncle Shinsaku.  From that point, we went to his house for a while, killed some time…

Then we came home, I finished setting up the out door curtain (pictures coming later), ate dinner (yummy again), and reserved hotels for next week’s trips.

Day 10 – Tea ceremony

This was a unique day.

My aunt Noriko is taking Japanese traditional tea ceremony lessons.  We were invited to attend a part of the lesson.  I think it was quite an experience for Evan.

The experience started with wearing of Yukata, a casual version of Kimono.  We did wear yukata at the hotel the other day, but this version was more formal than that.

Then we attended the tea ceremony lesson held at a city-owned facility with nice big Japanese style room.  My apologies—I didn’t take the pictures or movies of the ceremony itself.

What daddy forgot…

At old town we had ICECREAM!!!!                          bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla bla … bye bye!