Cherry blossoms

Day 8

Rise and shine and kaiseki breakfast before leaving for Kitakyushu.

The car was dropped at Kokura station in Kitakyushu very easily and we headed to the JR Travel Agency to swap our London bought exchange order for the proper Japan Rail Pass.

No more car from now on so carrying our own bags will be the order of the day.

The ladies working at the Travel Agency are extremely polite. They say 'hello' and 'goodbye' to everyone that walks in and out, even if they are seeing another client. Sometimes in unison! It is a very japanese thing.

We prepared for our first shinkansen (bullet train) trip. The pass is not electronic and it has to be shown to the station staff at the ticket barriers. Platform information is translated to english so it was easy to know which platform to go, however we double-checked. Just in case!

The platforms are extremely organised, they have information on everything you need to know (we headed to the non-reserved seats car), you pick the door and wait at the allocated space. Amazing!

We boarded the shinkansen Sakura and arrived at Hiroshima in under an hour. It is very fast but the route has many tunnels due to the hilly geography of the terrain which means that the view from the train is limited. I slept half the way as usual.

First trek with heavy backpacks: Hiroshima station to the hotel, about half an hour. Lots of cherry blossoms everywhere!

During check-in we discovered that the receptionist was Brazilian. I asked for the 'casa-de-banho' (toilet), she confirmed if I meant 'banheiro', same language but different vocabulary. Funny!

First stop in Hiroshima was the Peace Memorial Park. It wasn't The stop just for us. It was Saturday, the weather was nice and the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, this meaning pic-nic at the park. There wasn't a square meter by the river that didn't had a group enjoying food under a cherry tree. I was quite jealous!

As we were strolling at the Peace Memorial Park we were engaged by a couple of elderly ladies. They asked us where we were from, how long we were staying in Japan, etc. Then they started asking our opinion about universal peace and how we could achieve that. I wasn't suspicious by now as the japanese in Kyushu island had always been very talkative and talking about peace at the site of the dropping of one of the atomic bombs (6th August 1945) didn't seem too odd. The boys however picked up a Jeova's Witness approach straight away. They proceeded by showing us a video about peace which they had in an ipad in 700 different languages. Yes, the portuguese was brasilian as usual. They were lovely and one of them was really making an effort, successfully, to speak english so I kept up the conversation. Obviously, being a non-believer myself, they weren't heading anywhere and arguments were conflicting. Manuel decided to intervene and cool things up as he wanted a photo with them. There was an exchange of his e-mail for a picture with them and we parted in good terms. 

Nagasaki's Memorial Hall was closed but Hiroshima's wasn't so we went in. A really peacefull place, with a polite guard almost in every corner and some strong information (take a tissue!). Worth visiting.

Unfortunatelly, the A-Bomb Dome is up for repairs and is covered in scafolding. Can you see the hilarious side of a ruine being up for repairs?!? The ideal picture was impossible but how many people have a picture with scafolding?

There is also a Peace Memorial Museum where you can see pictures and remains from the explosion. It also explains how it happened and how an atomic bomb works. Very interesting! It is crowded though so be ready for queuing at each window display. It might not help the fact that it was the cheapest ticket I have ever seen: ¥50!!

Leaving the Peace Memorial Park behind we headed off to the castle's park for some more cherry blossom viewing. When in Japan...

Downtown Hiroshima is full of high rise buildings. There is also a big shopping mall undergroud. Similar to Canary Wharf in London. Manuel's camera needed TLC (battery was flat) and I needed to look for a card reader that allowed transfer of pictures directly to my iphone. Manuel has been uploading my pictures to his phone and e-mailing them to me. This is labour intensive and time consuming!

We found a huge shop that comprises of 2 buildings, one in each side of the same street with a multitude of options (see picture below).

I wasn't lucky but Manuel was. His old camera was in need of a bit of battery to return to the land of the living, but Manuel's cable wasn't doing the trick. It went from hand to hand of the store staff, who were really making an effort to solve his problem. They had an universal cable for the store use that was out of stock for sale so they offered to plug in his camera for as long as he wanted. And so they did. The camera came back to life and was now able to be charged by Manuel's cable.

This is an extremely good customer service. There was no payment, they helped for free.  Where am I going to get the same level of service in Europe?

It started raining half way to the hotel and we got quite wet. It's warm and wet!

After so many good hotels in Kyushu we were greated with a cheap hotel in Hiroshima. Small (6 tatami), windows couldn't be opened, metal door that was noisy opening and closing and it had a huge splash of an unidentifiable liquid on the cabinet door soaked into the paper. 

The toilets were in front of the room door so you didn't have to go far. The baths were onsen style on the 1st floor but of a very low standard. This must be the true backpackers experience!

We decided to have a shower before dinner and so we headed to the baths, followed by God knows how many girls dressed in identical track suits. We had seen some boys at he lobby wearing the same track suites. Some kind of team that had come to Hiroshima for a game?

I walked into the women's baths with 4 girls. They giggled a lot! Did I giggle this much when I was a teenager? Following japanese custom, I stripped and headed of to the shower's area. More giggles! Am I that fat? During the time I took to shower, only one of them came to shower, on the furthest shower from me, head down. I left the shower to enter the changing room and the others were still wearing their t-shirts, one of them pulled hers down as I came in. Maybe they were just shy and did not want to strip in front of a stranger. Anyway, I left as quick as I could as they were clearly uncomfortable. Teenagers!

Okonomimura, that was our destination for dinner. Apparently it is the meca for okonomiyaki, a japanese-style pancake with lots of vegetables (mainly cabbage) and egg, topped with spring onion and meat. We looked aroud for a while but couldn't find that name anywhere or any picture ressembling okonomiyaki in a menu or anyone eating it at all. 

It started to rain again and we were about to abandon the search when I noticed a very busy lift, with many people getting in and out. It could be a block of flats but it looked too busy for the time of night. We walked in and pressed 2nd floor (there was a japanese name encopassing the 2nd, 3rd and 4th floors). Bullseye! An okonomiyaki small stall right in front of the lift, looking very familial.

There was an elderly lady at the stall, clearly the captain of the ship, she was engaging the clients and directing them to her stall. She looked the type of lady not to argue with so we sat, asked for one of each type of the 3 types of okonomiyaki on the menu and waited. There was the regular as explained above, with a base of udon noodles and with a base of soba noodles. They were prepared on the hot flat griddle at the counter by a lady that looked like the daughter of the elderly one and she cut them in 3 peaces and put one piece in each plate (can't you tell she's used to tourists?). They were yummy!

On our way out we decided to walk around on the 2nd floor and discovered that the entire floor had okonomiyaki stalls, some of them with the same menu, same with different infgedients on the topping. We took the lift to the 3rd and 4th floor and it was the same. We had found okonomiyaki paradise!

When we left the building we realised that  the name Okonomimura was in a big light sign outside and we noticed there were another 2-3 restaurants doing okonomiyaki in the same street. 

If you are ever in Hiroshima and fancy okomiyaki, look for this sign: