Japan 2006 - Part 2: Japan Trip

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Japan Trip - April 2006

Okayama

Okayama is about four hours south of Tokyo by bullet train and where we stayed for four nights. From there we made day trips to Hiroshima, Himeji Castle, Miyajima Island, and Takahashi, as well as visiting Okayama's own Koraku-en garden.

A sign at Okayama railway station. Spelling mistakes in English signs are common, and can at times be amusing. I wonder if this is a place for desperate couples with nowhere else to go - or perhaps the budget version of a love hotel (love hotels are common in the cities too). The arrow doesn't look too promising for that sort of thing though...

Koraku-en garden, listed as one of Japan's top three.

One of this garden's features is large expanses of lawn, which is not very common in Japan. The castle is behind the garden, not in it.

One variety of the famous blossom trees, many of which were in full flower while we were there.

Okayama castle. We didn't go inside this one as it's a concrete reconstruction, but did take a look around the outside (it costs money to go inside).

The toilet seat controls at our accommodation. These are common on western-style toilets in Japan, and the seats are usually heated as well. Note the braille writing (at least I think it's braille), which I noticed is also common now in Japan - not only on toilets, but also in trains, elevators, and other public places.

A shop near our accommodation was selling these types of things, which all looked very nice. You may not be able to make out the price in this compressed photo, but it's ¥630,000, which was about A$7,300 at the exchange rate we got. Most of their other items like this were similarly priced.

Our bags waiting on the platform at Okayama station for our shinkansen (bullet train) to Kyoto. Everything about the trains in Japan is organised, right down to exactly where to stand on the platform for the door to your carriage. And when the train arrives, the door will be right in front of you, and the train will leave exactly on time (the express and bullet trains anyway, not so sure about the local trains and subways, although the few we took were all pretty close as far as I noticed).

On this particular shinkansen line there are three types of train: Nozomi, Hikari, and Kodama, in order of decreasing speed. Our rail passes didn't allow us to take the Nozomi trains, and they were by far the most frequent for longer distances, so we had to mostly use the Hikari trains, of which there was typically one an hour going to the places we wanted to go. The Hikari trains also come in two lengths: 8 carriage and 16 carriage, with different door positions on the platforms. In the photo, the sign on the pole near the noodle kiosk has colour coded indicators for Nozomi, Hikari 16 carriage, and Hikari 8 carriage trains, with matching indicators along the edge of the platform to indicate where the doors will be (one can be seen just near our bags for the Hikari 8 carriage train, indicating a door for carriage one). Other signs down near the tracks also show the carriage numbers and whether they are smoking or non-smoking. Not shown in the photograph, there are also electronic indicators listing the next two or three trains to arrive and which carriages will be non-reserved. Unless you have a reservation, which we never did, you need to line up for a door to a non-reserved carriage, preferably non-smoking - unless you're into that late-night jazz club atmosphere, but without the good music.

Another thing we noticed is that the Japanese always have lines (queues) for everything like this. They don't all just mingle in a crowd and then jockey for position, as we tend to do here in Australia. Whether it's waiting for a train, entry to a tourist site, or to buy something in a shop, there will always be one or more well-defined queues. Even on the Tokyo subway, where peak hour sees commuters squashed in like cattle, the platforms have markers to show the positions of the doors and people will queue up at those markers.

And in case you're wondering, the hiragana written on the noodle kiosk is advertising udon and soba, two varieties of Japanese noodle.

Hiroshima

For our day in Hiroshima, which was raining on and off, we visited the atomic bomb museum and memorial, and went for a stroll along Hondori Street - a long, covered shopping arcade.

The eternal flame with part of the museum behind in Peace Memorial Park. The eternal flame will supposedly stay lit until all atomic weapons have been destroyed, which I think means it will be going for an awful long time yet! The flame is not readily visible in the photo, but is located in that circular piece in the middle of the horizontal platform in the foreground.

The cenotaph for the victims of the atomic bomb in Peace Memorial Park. While it's not very obvious in this photo, further back through the arch is the eternal flame and behind that again the A-bomb Dome.

The A-bomb dome, the only building destroyed by the bomb that has been allowed to remain (the epicentre of the blast was very close to the dome, and about 600 metres up). The dome is actually on the other side of the river to Peace Memorial Park.

Our dinner being prepared. This style of food, with an egg base fried on a hotplate where you sit, is called Okonomiyaki, with the local version also being known as Hiroshima-yaki (according to the Lonely Planet guide book). This particular mini-restaurant was one of many on multiple floors of a building called Okonomi-mura, near one end of the Hondori shopping arcade.

Himeji Castle

Himeji Castle is Japan's premier original-state castle. Known as the White Egret castle, it dominates the city of Himeji and was a great place for blossom viewing.

Parts of the castle through the blossom trees.

The main donjon above the outer wall and moat, again with blossom trees. This moat is now the outer edge of the castle, but was originally the inner-most of three walls and moats. The original outer wall was located about where the railway station is now, a 20 minute walk from the current castle.

The main donjon from the courtyard just in front of it.

The small shrine on the top level of the main donjon.

Looking back down over the courtyard from near the top of the main donjon.

What you would see if you were attempting to scale one of the walls of the donjon (plus probably a pile of arrows and other nasties heading in your direction!).

Crests above one of the inner gates.

Miyajima Island

Miyajima Island is just off Hiroshima and has one of the most photographed sights in Japan: the floating torii gate of the Itsukushima-Jinja Shrine. The island also has a few temples and a cable car up to the top of the hill if you want a panoramic view (we didn't go up there though).

A typical souvenir store as found at any major tourist attraction.

A line of stone lanterns leading towards the shrine.

That famous floating torii. Of course it's not actually floating, and if you happen to arrive at low tide, I don't think there's even any water around it. The tide was partly in when we were there, giving water around the torii but not around the shrine itself (the shrine sits on poles over the water, but there's only water there at high tide).

The Itsukushima-Jinja shrine, sitting over the... um... mud flats.

Part of the shrine with a five storey pagoda in the background (the pagoda is not part of the shrine).

The two storey Tahoto pagoda, just up the hill a bit from the shrine - once again with those darn blossom trees getting in the way!

Part of the Daishoin temple, which is back up the hill a bit behind the shrine.

Another part of the Daishoin temple.

The thing to do when walking up the stairs towards one of the temple buildings. The green drums with writing on spin, rattling while they do so.

Behind the main temple building.

The five storey pagoda, which is not part of the Daishoin temple.

The pagoda again, this time with blossom trees.

Takahashi

Takahashi is a very small town in the hills inland from Okayama. Its main attractions are a small zen garden in a temple, and some old samurai houses - plus of course some blossom trees!

My wife enjoying lunch in the main street of town. Another thing I noticed in Japan is that garbage bins on the streets are few and far between. You can walk down a street packed full of food vendors, with all the associated fast-food containers and wrappers, and not find a single garbage bin. But then, you rarely see Japanese people eating while walking the streets, except for the occasional ice-cream, so perhaps that's why. After we finished our lunch here, I walked the whole length of both sides of the main street of Takahashi (which is only a couple of hundred metres or so) and couldn't find a single bin. In the end I had to return to the shop where we bought it and ask them to dispose of the rubbish, which they did.

The Raikyu-ji temple, which houses the zen garden. It's a little difficult to tell from the photo, but the small roof on the right covers the standard temple bell with its wooden log knocker.