By Roz
Back in our room, we did a few chore type
things before for a delicious and cheery Indian dinner in a nearby restaurant
and then a couple of drinks in our new favourite wine bar, and then bed. This morning we’re en route to Tokyo –
our new home, which I’ve never been to – but I have to say I liked Hiroshima
and its delightful daytrip opportunities much
I didn’t have particularly high hopes for the Hiroshima leg
of our holiday. We didn’t have particularly exciting Hiroshima plans. In fact
I’d planned for us to stay there for two nights mainly to break up the looong
journey from Yakushima to Tokyo (more than 12 hours!). Reading about the city beforehand, I
feared it would be (understandably) only focussed on its sad past without a
great deal of fun. But I was pleased to find myself proved wrong.
We got up at a horribly early hour to get the bus to the
port in Yakushima - the first leg in our four leg journey: bus, ferry, taxi,
train. The journey was uneventful
– though pleasingly did involve a quick diversion via the delightful grassy
area outside Kagoshima station that we’d found on our way there to buy muffins
to sustain us on our journey.
Arriving in Hiroshima just after lunch, we met a glorious innovation in
travel-with-several-giant-unwieldy-bags: a hotel attached to the station!
Hooray. After dumping our things, I persuaded Layla that we should shun the
free bus that we could get into the centre of town in favour of walking - a
plan her legs objected to vigorously after all the hiking over cedar roots of
the previous couple of days but she agreed nonetheless.
The walk was not necessarily through Hiroshima’s most
glorious streets, but as we crossed the river into town, we were met with a
shocking reality: we hadn’t missed the cherry blossoms after all! For this
entire holiday we’ve travelled south as the cherry blossoms travelled north, meaning
that before we left, everyone said “wow, so jealous: you’ve timed this trip
perfectly for the cherry blossoms!” but when the harsh reality of our route set
in, we have since had nothing buy people saying either: “shame you weren’t here
last week, the cherry blossoms were terrific” or “shame you aren’t staying till
next week, the cherry blossoms will be amazing”. But now, there the blossoms
were in all their pink fluffy glory. We walked amongst them, taking photographs
with similar enthusiasm to the ten thousand other people standing next to us
taking the same photos, and musing that at least this means that I won’t have
to lie when I’m asked about what I thought of the amazing cherry blossoms
whilst we were on holiday…
En route to the Peace Park we stopped off in a delightful
coffee shop – something Japan seems to do especially well – and read a little
of our books (indeed Layla complained that I should stop reading books that are
“so exciting you don’t want to do anything but read…”). After she dragged me
away, we walked to the Peace Park. For a memorial of something so horrible, it
was indeed peaceful and beautiful, and it was lovely to see everyone both
acknowledging the horrors, and simultaneously being able to line the riverbank
by the Peace Park, which was particularly drenched in cherry blossoms, with
umpteen picnic blankets, with happy groups drinking and eating and chatting and
taking photos. It was a really positive experience.
From the Peace Park we wandered around the moat of
Hiroshima’s castle and then went to Shukkei-en garden “shrunken-scenery garden”
which was well named and a delightful place to meander around. Japan, of
course, does an excellent line in landscaped gardens! Layla was particularly
charmed by the jumping koi carp in the pond, who were reaching a metre or more
out of the water!
By this point, it was time for dinner. Well, time if you like eating early and
are going to the cinema at 7pm. We
started off in a wine bar which didn’t live up to its online promise but which
made me very happy for having the Guinness-marbled cheese which I ate in
Veritas winebar on our very first night in Washington (ah, sentimental as
ever). Amusing that we’ve both coveted this cheese ever since Washington but
never yet found it again… til now!
From there we headed to what I think was described somewhere
as a theme park for okonomiyaki-lovers.
Okonomiyaki – just in case you are not a connoiseur of this dish – is a
kind of pancake with a huge amount of cabbage and noodles, topped with an egg,
which are made on a hot plate in front of your eyes. This place turned out to be an indoor food market, with lots
of vendors over several floors of an old building and had a cheery ambience
(which had been notably missing from the wine bar other than my joy at the
cheese). We had half of one
okonomiyaki each and agreed that we’d had a good multi course and multi venue
dinner… Embarrassingly, it was
still a bit early for the film so we went and hung out at the delightful cinema
café / bar for a bit so Layla could round off our meal with an ice cream
dessert (and ha, I got back to my book!).
The film – Five Flights Up – wasn’t particularly good, despite having a
fairly good cast. But oh my, it
was a delightful experience, with comfy seats and not having to think about
stressful Japanese things at all for two hours. Leaving the cinema, we resolved to go to the cinema more
often in the next few weeks to help block out the consistent and unproductive
low-grade anxiety that keeps impinging on our holiday as we intermittently
remember that we’re actually in the process of moving here…
Walking home we weren’t quite ready for the evening to be
over and so went in to a delightful wine bar for sparking wine and compliments
(Layla was told she was beautiful and that her Japanese was great…Me, not so
much).
Next morning we had a gorgeous lie in, not waking till 8.30.
The decadence! And the bed was so comfy – all the more so after numerous nights
on futons on tatami mat floors.
However, once we were up we headed straight out of Hiroshima to Miyajima
– a seaside island town near Hiroshima famed for its red gate that appears to
be floating on the water at high tide: officially designated one of Japan’s top
three views! Off the train, our first stop was a coffee and snack stop in Blue
Bird Coffee, a cute place near the station. Then, onto a ferry and our first sight of the floating
gate. I’m afraid that I didn’t do
enough research to work out why there is a red floating gate in this particular
place. We saw it both floating
(high tide) and not (low tide) and it felt to me as though I was in a
post-apocalyptic novel, and the gate was a remnant of a previous civilisation
before sea levels had changed or some such. I think this would be a niche perspective though…
Miyajima turned out to be lovely. The sun shone (indeed I was surprised to find later that I’d
almost got sun burn on my shoulders), friendly deer roamed the streets (in a
much nicer way than in Nara) and there was a generally jolly atmosphere. We wandered through town on a doomed
attempt to hire kayaks and then sat under some cherry blossoms by a canal (and
deer) to reconfigure our plans.
And then we were on a cable car, soaring to the top of a mountain (this might
be an over-generous description of what could also be seen as a very big hill)
shrine and 360 degree views over the Inland Sea. Regular readers will remember that we cycled over a number
of Inland Sea islands last week and so we felt extra fond of it seeing it
glistening in the sun from far above.
The cable car ride was surprisingly long (not least surprising since I’d
seen a number of hikers shunning the cable car in favour of walking – Japanese
hikers must be hardier than us).
At the top, Layla tried to persuade me to go into the temple of love to
make a local cookie, do something with the eternal flame, and declare eternal
love, as couples were being encouraged to do, but I was not absolutely enthused
by the requirement to declare our gayness quite so vigorously (an approach I
shall have to depart from when we get to Tokyo). However, she got distracted by an unlikely enthusiasm to
hike to the very top of the mountain (entailing going down a bit and then
uphill a lot). I’m always game for
such things, and very much enjoyed both mocking Layla for her unlikely
enthusiasm for hiking uphill (and her predictable regrets that started three
minutes into the enterprise), and the views that we were rewarded with at the
top.
We stopped for a while at the top of the mountain / big
hill, until hunger lured us to start the long descent to the bottom of the
mountain. The walk down was
lovely, though by the time we reached the bottom at 2.30 I was
over-enthusiastic about food. We
ended up having another okonomiyaki and then went for coffee in yet another
nice café where Layla got the news that someone is willing to pay for her to go
to Washington / Philly in June for a conference (inducing much enthusiasm and
envy in me). We concluded our
delightful day trip with a walk along the sandbar to the no-longer-floating
gate and then further along the beach before catching the ferry and train
home.
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