Sunday, March 28, 2010
On the train, headed for Hiroshima.
So last night, we headed further south into Kyushu to a city called Miyazaki (Like the anime director). It was late at night and the youth hostel was full, so we wound up staying at business hotel. We got a twin room this time. It was pretty small, the bathroom was tiny. But it was enough to sleep and what not. It also had free internet which was nice. To be honest I wasn’t sure what all there was to see there. I had no idea before hand of what we were going to do, all I knew is that most people don’t even go to Kyushu, so I wanted to see it just to say I Had. On our way to the youth hostel by taxi, we passed a cherry blossom party that was going on despite the late hour. After we checked into our hotel we went back to find it, but it was packing up by the time we made it back there. So we got dinner at a local ramen restraunt and headed back to the hotel for sleep.
When we got up in the morning, I was actually a little worried that my whim of going further into Kyushu was going to upset my dad because there wasn’t anything worth seeing. Fortunately I was wrong. We decided to see what the city had to offer and walked off towards the temple marked on the tourist maps. On our way, we stopped by some other little shrine that was kinda neat, but we thought it was the main temple. We were wrong though. A few hundred yards up the street was the entrance to the main temple. It was a cloudy Sunday morning, and it was raining lightly so there was virtually nobody around. Once we got into the temple grounds though, we saw some people dressed in traditional clothing carrying babies. Apparently there was some kind of children’s blessing going on at the temple today, because we saw several groups walking up.
We continued walking around the temple grounds and found out there were some traditional style buildings that had been preserved behind the temple grounds. On our way around the grounds we stumbled upon something rather unexpected, but I think it made Dad’s whole trip a success. There was some kind of botanical farmers market going on. I saw it through the trees and we found a path and walked into a large dirt and gravel parking area where dozens of vendors had put out flowers and trees to sell. Pretty much everything there was oriented around gardens, but not just simple stuff. There were huge rocks with water wheels, large immaculately pruned trees, orchids, mosses, all kinds of stuff. What really made it for Dad though, was the Bonsai. There were a few guys who had 2 or 3 trees each, but there were 2 stalls that were all Bonsai. I don’t know how much you guys know about bonsai, but my dad is a bonsai nut, and he’s pretty good at it too. He was very impressed with the trees we saw there. He saw stuff that he didn’t know the names of (which is a big thing for my dad when it comes to plants) and I did some translation for him and got some information out of the vendors for him. (we are too far south at this point for us to expect people to know any English. They don’t get much in the way of foreign tourists in Kyushu. Heck, most Japanese people don’t even make it down here.) Since dad knows so much about plants, and the botanical names stay the same, he was actually able to communicate with some of the people about plants. He was also having fun showing the Bonsai vendors pictures of his trees. One of the vendors spoke a bit of English actually. We found him working on the roots of a tree at the back of his stall. Turns out they have a common aquantince, and this particular vendors sister travels to America each year to do something Bonsai related. It was pretty cool to see dad talking to somebody about something he loves so much, despite the language barrier. It was lots of pointing and botanical names. The Vendor seemed to be pleased to meet somebody who did bonsai from America.
(Click to embiggen)
After we got out of the garden market we found the traditional style houses. They were really cool. Aside from us there was just one woman who was doing some cleaning, and she actually beckoned us inside. Apparently these houses are not just preserved, but you can actually go in them and look around. So I took of my boots and walked around on the tatami floors of these places. It was great. I took a bunch of pictures, and got dad to take a couple of me as well. (being the one with the camera, I have hardly any photo’s of myself.
Afterward we went next door to the museum. Admission was free and it was a really well put together museum too. We only had time to look around on the first floor, but they had some really cool exhibits that probably would have been more enlightening if we could understand any of what was written. (It was mostly kanji, which I can’t read yet). But they had plenty of taxidermy, models, diagrams and holograms that were cool to look at. They also had some fossils and dinosaur bones/recreations.
We had to leave the museum and head for the train station so we could get to Hiroshima by a decent hour. Our train departed at 1:00, we were scheduled to be in Hiroshima at 8:00. I actually had to stop this entry as I was writing it, because my laptop was about to run out of battery. But while we were on the train, a Japanese fellow started talking to Dad and I. his English was out of practice, but it was a good conversation. He was a plumber who was on his way to an appointment. He told us that we had come to Kyushu at the best time of year possible. He also saved us a lot of hassle by telling us which station to get off and transfer. If not for him we would have probably wasted a bunch of time and over shot our station and wasted like 40 minutes. Fortunately we made our transfer just fine. Although I actually had us get on the wrong train. They both had the same destination, but we got on the one that stopped at every station, so it took longer then needed. Not too bad though. Now I know for next time. At any rate we are in Hiroshima now at another K’s House youth hostel. Dad is downstairs socializing, and I’m gonna go to bed I think. Hiroshima seems like a cool town. And based on the walk from the train station to here, it has the highest concentration of beautiful Japanese women of anywhere we’ve been so far.
~Daniel
P.S. The connection here is not very strong so I'm having trouble uploading images. I'll be sure to upload some later.
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