Well the meeting itself went pretty well. No pictures as I figured it wouldn't be that polite to be snapping photos constantly be taking shots but the meal was definitely one of the best ones I have eaten like ever. The place was pretty damn fine looking. I felt positively badly dressed! Felt like place where you should be wearing full suits and tie. We ate lots of different meal courses. He drank beer while I had some sake. Have to admit I must have worst head for alcohol in Finland as even though there wasn't that much of it I felt bit light headed at the end. For food there was different types of sashimi, tempura, some sort of "soft bone" which did require some chewing but he said it's not REALLY bone. Also some calamari slices, soba noodles(basically like cold spaghetti. Funny thing in Japan you are supposed to slurp while eating it. What's rude in Finland is the polite way of eating in Japan. Go figure). Some other too but there was honestly so much to eat I can't remember it all.
Ashamed to say he didn't allow me to even pay at least for part of the meal. And it was not exactly cheap either. Hopefully he at least enjoyed chance to speak bit of Finnish with Finnish person. I know I enjoyed chatting in Japanese.
On Tuesday I headed toward Tokyo station to begin my first trip with JR pass. I had chosen Hiroshima as a target. This also marked first time I used Shinkansen train. Combined with JR pass this has to have been THE easiest and most convenient way of traveling I have ever used. Show the pass to station crew, you are shown past the gates, hop the train(though watch out you don't enter the best shinkansens. You have to pay the bill for those. But slower ones get you with extra change and about half hour slower to 900 km trip. I think that's good enough for me), show pass if inspector comes, hop out train, show pass again on gates and off you go. And the JR pass is ridiculously good value if you do more than 2 one way trips of any length...If you go to Japan just get one.
Below some random shots taken from the Shinkansen.
I had jolly good time enjoying the sights. Lots of mountains. Mountains after mountains.
Trip itself was pretty straightforward. One shinkansen took me to shin-oosaka(about 3 hours) and after half an hour wait second took rest of the way in 90 minutes or so. 894 kilometers in about 5 hours. With half an hour waiting and periodic stops over stations. I could get used to this speed!
Walking bit forward I then found map from which I realized I was walking EAST when I was supposed to go WEST. Bloody hell. I also realized I might have been pushing my timing bit too much as I had forgotten sun sets down pretty early here so I needed to move fast if I wanted to see all I wanted in daylight so grabbing my bag tighter I started to walk and walk fast. Thankfully once realizing which way was east and which way was west the first spot of visit, Hiroshima castle, wasn't too hard to find.
Unfortunately apart from the top(where last picture is from) there were no photograph signs everywhere so no pictures from there. Lots of swords, armours, paintings, explanation of history(even in English) and so on there.
Pretty impressive place even if it was replica. Original one was flattened by the atomic bomb.
Speaking of which next step was obviously the peace memorial area. Bit trickier to find. Maybe there's some route with decent guidings but I had just basically screenshot of google maps and my own sense of direction which is pretty bad as people who know me can verify so took quite a bit of oomphingh and aamphing but slow and steady got toward right direction.
First sight of the a-dome. But first I went toward the eternal flame part since it happened to be closer.
Unfortunately seems I didn't get any good shots of the eternal flame. Fire isn't easy target to shoot pictures of...
Very nice effect they created with very shallow water. Probably just few cm's worth of it.
And then to see the a-dome. Almost next to the ground zero so pretty amazing it survived even in this shape which the building is maintained to ensure it looks like it did after the blast.
Have to say standing there at almost exact spot(well except that explosion happened couple hundred meters higher) of world's biggest and most stupid weapon experiment made me pretty quiet fellow. Didn't feel like having much of happy thoughts while there.
By now sun was fast sliding down so time to search for place to sleep. I had took with me address of two ryokan's near the memorial park but despite walking around I could not find either of them. Uhhuh. I started to think this MIGHT be a problem. For breakfast I had eaten two rice balls and that's it. I was hungry as hell and had no idea where I could sleep. Luckily by random I happened to find another hotel(yey!) and it wasn't as expensive as I had feared(5000 yen for night. About 42 euros) and it even had place to eat! YEY!
The dinner was...Shall we say experience! Thing about ordering food here is I have no frigging clue what I'm ordering most of the time :D Even if I could read the text it doesn't SAY anything because I don't know names of Japan foods or names of animals so they could have name of fish as part of food name and I don't know I'm looking at some sort of fish food. So I basically picked tempura(only thing I recognized) and some other. Also drank ice cold oolong tea(starting to get real addiction to that stuff. Got to start doing that even on Finland but how hard can it be? I presume boil water, put some oolong tea leaves, then cool it down and serve with ice. Shouldn't be harder than that right?). Tempura turned out to be good but no idea WHAT sort of tempura it was. And maybe I shouldn't ask too much about that stuff anyway ;) In any case good thing I have got less picky over food items as I have gained years. I'm basically "let's order something at random and hope like hell it's good" mode here.
Funny thing about at least this restaurant. Customer walks in, somebody from crew spots and says out loud greeting. This greeting is picked by REST of the crew as well who shout out same greeting out loud so every time customer enters in there's chorus of "IRASSHAIMASE!" going in the restaurant. And this happened constantly. Don't think I have ever witnessed similar in Finnish restaurants. And when I say shout I do mean SHOUT. They are not shrinking back in use of their voice!
And then it was time to head to room. Well I just dropped off bag(surprisingly heavy) and headed toward out. Walked around bit and found yet another book store with used books. Picked up "tonari no seki-kun" which is basically comedy manga about school boy who rather than studying in school does all sort of weird things which the girl next spot finds rather distracting. Buying these proved particulary useful next day when I was going back. What I had took with me actually ran out as I decided to try not using dictionary at all(mainly because I wanted to keep phone off. I had my travel plans IN phone so having battery run out could be bit inconvenient). This speeds up reading obviously but of course side effect is I don't understand 100% but surprisingly big part anyway. Actually this COULD be better way to practice anyway as it allows me to get through more text.
Anyway after spending rest of night reading bit of manga and watching japanese tv for first time(didn't see anything that particularly caught my attention. One channel showed baseball and another seemed to have some sort of school graduation going on which I found bit odd but might be some tv-drama or something.
Next day I woke up nice and early and headed toward station nice and early. Wednesday plan was to visit Okayama. This time one shinkansen took all the way in about 45 minutes.
Now one thing I found funny in Shinkansens is that the moment train takes off you have Japanese grab out bento boxes or lunch boxes. These are pretty popular in Japan and often school kids have ones for school lunch(often hand made by them or mother). And when traveling it seems it's like required tradition to take one(often local speciality) and eat it when train takes off. Well since I hadn't eaten breakfast I decided to join in the fun. No need to let Japanese have all the fun to themselves ;)
Weirest part was eating the whole damn fish tails and all.
At the Okayama I started to head toward direction I thought was east but eventually decided that better to ask for sure since I didn't see any maps. This time I actually WAS heading toward right direction. Above stature was where the coffee seller I asked had taken location.
On my way I also saw store which sells kimono's and stuff for them. Quick look at price tags showed I could afford nothing here. Hand bag cost like 1000 euro's(and sitting there on shelf OUTSIDE the store. Not worried about thieves clearly!). Okay. Nothing for me from this shop for sure!
Then to the Okayama castle which I happened to find first(wasn't sure was I north of park or south of castle). Unfortunately apart from few spots photographing inside station was again forbidden. Bummer.
Have to say the size of the thing was pretty impressive.
The idea of being military commander in periods when these were built trying to attack these castles would not be particularly fun experience. Well built death traps with pathways leading toward main keep narrow and zig-zagging nicely. Attackers can't bring full weight of numbers against defenders so with well trained and motivated defenders it would be hideously expensive assault.
With castle visited time to head one of the 3 famous parks kourakuen(en meaning park) which was located across the river from the castle. When I arrived it seemed like there was school excursion from some girl high school going on. That or army of school girls had decided to invade the place! There was probably more of school girls marching in parade than Hanko has in grades 7-9 plus high school together!)
Silly looking bird :D There was "no flash photographs" for obvious reason but without flash is fine by me.
Wasn't sure is going there okay and no Japanese were going so I didn't go either.
These must be the famous japanese carps.
Some tea fields.
Then I found some more trees. This time plum trees.
See? Clearly reads plum(ume) big in center :D
There was even small water fall.
These were actually used...I decided to brave them myself too after seeing couple locals walk through them. Not that it was scary. They didn't shift even when I tried to push hard.
Finally time to head back to Tokyo. First though I went after some food. Found some small family restaurant looking place that sold curry and rice(karee-raisu as it's said here). 500 yen for the meal.
After shinkansen took me to shin-oosaka I switched for train to Tokyo and again participated in the Great Ritual of Bento Eating.
Box even contained tooth pick with some detail work on one end...Sheesh. Why waste time devising that intricate details on a TOOTH PICK!
And one of the better tea's I have found in vending machines(wonder how many different drinks there ARE in these machines? Don't think I have yet eaten same drink twice). Also visible is one of the manga's I mentioned earlier.
And finally short film taken aboard the shinkansen. Maybe gives some idea of the speed it was going. Then maybe not. Not sure how well film succeeded or how well it compares to really looking out from the window.
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