Hiroshima

In order to combat holiday loneliness, we decided to take a trip right after Christmas. Traditionally, New Year's Day is when you visit family. It is also important to go to shrines and temples early in the new year so that's when people take vacation. We planned our trip to beat the crowds and left for Hiroshima the Monday after Christmas. We took the Shinkansen (bullet train) to the city and the overnight bus home. Our train was an unheard of 100min late. We've been told if the Shinkansen is running just a few minutes behind schedule it is news worthy, so stations must have been interrupting people's soap operas to tell them about our train. We still don't know what the hold up was. It only took us an hour to reach Hiroshima. It was sort of like being on a plane but without security screening and way more leg room. The night bus took 5.5 hours but cost half as much.

Because of the delay, by the time we found our hotel and checked in almost everything was closing for the day - remember things close at 5pm or earlier here. We walked around the Hiroshima castle grounds. There were a couple of trees that survived the atomic bomb and marked with plaques but most stuff had to be reconstructed, repaired, and regrown. This is true for the city, not just Hiroshima castle.

Then we walked over the the A-bomb Dome. This is the epicenter of the attack, the atomic bomb exploded 600 meters above this building. The city keeps the remains as a monument to peace and the hope of one day there being full nuclear disarmament.

That evening we had Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. Every Japanese person who knew we were going insisted we had to try Hiroshima style. We're used to Osaka style where people mix cabbage into a pancake-like batter, fry that up, put some kind of topping on, and then slather it in sauce. In Hiroshima things are in layers. There is a bottom pancake, cabbage, noodles, top pancake, topping and then the sauce. I think both are equally delicious.

The next day we took a ferry to Itsukushima island, specifically Miyajima. This island is famous for being one of the three great views of Japan, a list that was established in the 1600's. The Itsukushima shrine has a giant torii gate which is out in the water during high tide and easily approachable during low tide.

We decided to climb to the highest point on the island via stone stairs. It was literally an hour and 40min of walking up stairs. There was a shrine on the top and a 360 degree view of the island.

The shrine at the top had lots of what we refer to as Japanese putti.

We opted to take the cable car down the mountain and were able to walk up to and touch the torri gate at low tide.

We went to Shukukeien gardens and the Peace Memorial Park and Museum on our last day. The gardens were originally established in 1620 and had your Japanese garden staples – stone lanterns, koi (carp) pond, trickling streams, elegantly placed stones, tea house etc. You could buy food to feed to the carp and they would pile on top of each other to get to it. We've decided that we are no longer going to refer to over eating as “ate like a pig” but rather “ate like a koi.”

After the garden we walked through the Peace park and took about 3 hours going through the museum - everything was written in Japanese and English. The museum began with a history of Hiroshima up to the bombing, then it went into the historical development of the bomb – they even mentioned Lise Meitner but gave Otto Hahn too much credit. They then showed and described the aftermath. This was the gory section. There was a photo of a woman who was wearing a kimono with a black pattern at the time of the blast. All of the black sections were burned into her skin from the heat of the explosion.

Every time a country does any nuclear testing the current mayor of Hiroshima sends them a letter expressing concern and a desire to end all nuclear weapons programs. Copies are hung in the museum and there are way too many of them.

Christmas Nihon Style

Christmas in Japan certainly has been interesting. I'd assumed that it would be sort of a non-event, since very little of the population here is Christian and people don't really get off work for Christmas. I was only partially right -- people definitely celebrate Christmas, but it's not a religious or family-centered holiday here the way that it is in the West. Instead, the big family holiday is New Year's (they call it sho-gatsu), and Christmas functions roughly like New Year's Eve does in the US -- people go out on dates and party with their friends. At the same time, though, people are a lot more willing to use explicitly religious music in public Christmas light displays than in the U.S. and that sort of thing, because Christmas is a foreign holiday and people just find it all kind of cool, without taking it as seriously. Definitely no one says "Happy Holidays"; it's all about "Merry Christmas" (or on occasion "Merry Happy Christmas" or some other variation). Think of how excited they'll be when they find out about Hanukkah and have *two* exotic foreign holidays in one month.

On Christmas Eve we went to a big Christmas light display in Osaka that was pretty impressive. However, the ones in Kobe were much better.

This is a picture from the hand bell concert outside of one of the department stores in Sannomiya. We got all our shopping done in one day and then got to hear a free concert.


Before we went to the Osaka Lights we decided on Mexican food for our Christmas eve meal. We just want to show you all that it is possible to find good Mexican in Japan. There was even live music. At one point I said to Craig "If you told me I'd be spending Christmas Eve in Osaka Japan eating Mexican food while listening to a Japanese guy sing Christmas carols in English with a heavy accent, I'd never believe you."

And here are highlights from the lights. The display was on an island in the middle of the river that runs through the city. It begins with a lighted walk way, and then displays on park grounds. There was the usual Santa Claus, reindeer, and trees decorated with lights, but they also included dolphins, Pooh-san (Winnie the Pooh), Mickey-san, Minnie-san etc that kids could take their pictures with. There were also decorated boats making circles around the island.

Kobe Ruminarie

As a memorial for the victims of the major earthquake that struck Kobe in 1995 the city puts on a huge light display in December. It was described to us as organized line walking for a half an hour and then 10 minutes of seeing lights, which was pretty much how it went. The city blocks off streets to accommodate the line of people waiting to walk through the display, yes the line is two lanes wide. Cutting is also a major no-no here. All along the path there are people in security uniforms wielding orange light-up batons to make sure no one is jumping ahead.


The crowds were crazy, even by Japanese standards. After the 30min line and the 10min display, the lights open up to a huge circle. At this point there are no longer men with orange batons telling you where to go and it all turns into chaos.

Fukuchiyama Madness

So... I've been a little slow about writing this, given that it actually happened two weeks ago. Wednesday I had the day off work for Labor Thanksgiving Day, and we celebrated by heading up to lovely Fukuchiyama so that I could run in the annual Fukuchiyama Marathon.

Fukuchiyama is a small town and we didn't think we'd manage to find a place to stay there (we did see some tents set up in the part with the starting/finish area, so I guess that's an option), so we got up early (4:30am) in order to catch the first train out of Kobe. We'd picked up various delicious baked things at a bakery the night before for an on-the-road breakfast, so we set right out. (Incidentally, eating on trains is very uncouth, so I try to do it only when I'm really hungry.) The first couple of trains were OK, then at Takarazuka we transferred to the train that would take us the rest of the way to Fukuchiyama. This was our first taste of what was to come -- the train was absolutely packed full of runners who'd gotten up too early to shower, with a special claustrophobic feeling added by the fact that all the windows were fogged up. It was a happy ride. I should add that when (eventually) a seat freed up near us, Quinn insisted that I sit down, since I was going to be running in a few hours. Someone else would have taken it if I'd stood there arguing with her, so I left chivalry by the wayside and sat down.

When we arrived, we stood in line for what seemed like a very long time to catch the shuttle bus from the train station to the park where the race would start. Things were apparently running late, and we boarded the bus well after I was supposed to have signed in. Once we got there, I signed in in a rush, stood in line for half an hour to use a (squatter-style) portable restroom in a rush, changed my clothes in a rush, and headed down to the starting line. Meanwhile, we were treated to loudspeakers all around the park treating us to the (loud, shrill) contributions of a woman who was running some kind of raffle or something. It was quite a relief once I actually started running and I could finally relax a little. Quinn, meanwhile, stayed behind with warm clothes, Atlas Shrugged, and the loudspeaker woman.



There were a lot of people running. These pictures Quinn took are downright panic-attack-inducing, if you don't like big crowds. Fortunately it was a big crowd that was all moving in one direction, and once we'd sorted out so that everyone around me was going more or less the same speed it was OK. For the first half hour or so, I never could really just relax and take my mind off of crowd navigation, because whenever I did that it was only a few seconds before I'd nearly collide with a very slow runner who managed to place themselves right in front of me. The weather was good; cloudy and a little on the cold side, but no one had to worry about heat stroke. No rain until we were on the train home.

The first 10km or so of the race made a loop through the town, and it seemed like the whole town had turned out to watch the race. There were groups of people playing taiko drums (one had scary monster masks to add to the fun), people of all ages yelling "Ganbare! Ganbare!" (go! go!), and a few high school bands from the area. One was playing "We wish you a merry Christmas" when I passed them. There was one guy in a samurai costume giving everyone high-fives. Once we'd looped through the town, we turned and headed along the Yura river until we reached about the 25km mark; after that we headed back to the park.

The Fukuchiyama marathon is specifically set up to be a blind-friendly marathon and I saw quite a few blind runners. Blind runners get a guide (with a special guide number) and they both run while holding on to a little strap that keeps them together and synchronized. If you're blind and you're in better shape than all your friends and loved ones, then you can have multiple guides who take you like a relay; I often saw groups of guides standing around waiting for their running partner to show up.

It didn't take long to realize that I was running much faster than my goal pace, so I figured I'd just go with it and see if I could keep it up. My final time was 3:17:04 -- 13 minutes faster than the goal I'd set for myself and 18 minutes faster than my previous time. Crossing the finish line was sort of interesting; there was a big area where everyone just sort of stopped, and you saw a bunch of people standing around just looking stunned. I felt fine as long as I was running, but as soon as I stopped all the lights got too bright and I felt sort of odd for a while. Fortunately, there were volunteers keeping us supplied with sports drink and hot soup to help us get to feeling human again. Quinn and I went to a ramen place for lunch and then began the long trek back home again.



I'd like to do another one in the spring and I found a (rather extensive) list of marathons in Asia online: http://runningscientist.blogspot.com/p/2012-marathons-in-asia-and-australia.html ... who knows?

Fall Colors

Observing nature is a common past time in Japan. There are, of course, the spring cherry blossoms. There's also insect listening parties, watching snow falling parties and appreciating fall colors. In honor of being in Japan, the first enrichment I organized as Relief Society President was to go see the momiji, the red maple leaves of fall. I decided we'd go to a park famous for momiji, Minoo Park. The day we decided to go was Nov. 19th and it poured rain all day. Three adventurous ladies decided to go with me and we swam up the trail to a 90ft water fall. I tried taking pictures but they're all spotty because of rain drops falling through the pictures. One good picture I took was of Rachel holding up momiji tempura - a specialty of the park and it is exactly what it sounds like, battered and fried maple leaves.



Some of you know I don't like monkeys, so this story is especially funny. Two days before our trip I had my one-on-one Japanese lesson with Sakamoto-sensei. She told me that two years ago there was a story on the news about the monkeys of Minoo Park. "The monkeys!" I exclaimed since in everything I read about how beautiful the park is there was NO mention of monkeys. She told me that two years ago the monkeys had gotten so aggressive that it made the news and said we shouldn't have a picnic because the monkeys would probably try to take our food. I was not pleased. I was actually glad it was raining since I had a big umbrella that not only protected me from the rain but could easily be used to bat monkeys away. Luckily there were no monkeys and just sings everywhere telling people it was a (translated from yen) $100 fine for feeding monkeys.



Because of the rain Craig and I went back to the park the next weekend. It was beautiful weather and shoulder to shoulder crowds. Craig also agreed to be my 'monkey repeller" but there were no monkeys to repel. Perhaps they culled the Minoo Park monkey herd.













Can you see all the other photographers?


I found it crazy that there was a pink flower blooming bush next to the trees turning red and yellow.





The first day I noticed that leaves were falling was Nov 30th. I can certainly get used to a long fall and, hopefully, a short winter. This is the view from our front door on Dec. 1st.