Summer 2019 (Cumulative)

The museum put on a really cool model train exhibition where some lady talked about all of the trains (I’m assuming that’s what she was doing...). The lights did cool things, different trains went around at different points, the signals and track switching all worked...it was pretty awesome. The people’s favorite train is a track maintenance vehicle that looks like a bullet train but is painted yellow. The train is called “Doctor Yellow” and all the kids love him. To me, that’s the most Japanese thing ever!

There were a ton of steam trains kept in the station. This is a train that they use to pull around tourists. As it was the end of the day, they backed the train onto a roundabout and rotated it around a few times so everyone could get a look. One of the drivers was hamming it up as well!

Before I headed back to Osaka for the night, I took a train over to the Fushimi Inari Shrine. This shine is a HUGE number of vermillion torii gates that surround a path going up Mount Inari (a sacred mountain). As you walk through the torii, they form essentially a tunnel at times...very strange feeling. The Torii are donated by people and companies. The words you see on each gate are who donated them and when. You can pay different amounts of money - starting in the thousands of dollars for a small gate to ten thousand or so for a larger one.

Along the path they had little areas where the small gates hung out.

Artsy-fartsy shot.

Before getting back on the train, I went to the top of an observation tower to get a nighttime view of the city of Kyoto. I feel like I did a lot in a full day and I’m glad I returned to see the city properly.

The travel day between different cities is always a little awkward. You’re never sure whether to spend all of your time in the first city, or travel to the second and see it. Plus, there’s the matter of luggage - what do you do with it? I didn’t have a big thing I wanted to see, so I did something silly. Osaka has a Universal Studios - including Harry Potter World! So I went to a Theme Park! It was awesome! It was funny how American the whole experience was. It was VERY similar to Universal in Orlando...including some of the same rides. I did the Harry Potter zoomy-around thing twice. It’s exactly the same as the ride you’ll find in Orlando with one key difference...the ride features video clips of several characters talking to you. In this park, the characters were the ones you’d know from Harry Potter - but they all spoke Japanese. It was slightly hilarious to see videos of these British actors with Japanese voices coming out. The funniest was Dumbledore. At the end of the ride, Dumbledore congratulates you on something you supposedly did. I just broke out laughing both times at that scene.

Japanese people have to get a shot with a train!

Hogsmeade - exactly what you’d find in Orlando.

Nice looking park.

They even had a Minion Park - it was quite cute.

My favorite ride was the Dinosaur Flight ride (Jurassic Park theme). This was a “Flying Roller Coaster”. The means that you sit in a seat of sorts, then before the coaster starts, it rotates you 90 degrees so you are looking at the ground. This means that you are going through the coaster head first. This is the longest flying coaster in the world, and it’s pretty intense at times. I think I rode it four times (gotta love the single rider line!) before I stopped due to my head hurting and losing my voice from shouting.

Waterworld - remember when that was a thing! They put on a really neat Waterworld stunt show with boats, divers, fires, etc...

The jet ski guy (I called him America Man because the two “hero’s” were obviously not Japanese) was really good at making a giant wave to defeat the enemies. I’ll admit, that I had trouble following the deep and nuanced plot, as it was all in Japanese!

A fiery plane appeared for some reason!

When in Japan, it’s important to drink the local drinks...Butterbeer in this case! Delicious!

Yeah...I thought it’d be fun!

A fun shot of the coaster. They are pretty strict about not having ANYTHING in your pockets for obvious reasons.

The second leg of my Japan part of the trip was based in a town called Okayama. I was never planning on spending a ton of time there, but it was a handy transportation hub to some of the places I was going to be spending more time. If you want to travel long distances in Japan, the Shinkansen (Bullet Train) is a great option. This is a pretty typical bullet train. I bought a magic 14 day rail pass which lets me ride pretty much every train in Japan. This makes exploring great because it cuts out the consideration of cost when deciding whether to have a quick visit at some small town you read about on Google. Certainly not all trains are like this bullet train - most are much more conventional - but the train system works amazingly well. I was shocked the other day when the train I was waiting for arrived one minute late...they are usually perfectly on time. In fact, I use the time to tell me which station to get off at when I can’t necessarily understand the announcements. On trains to tourist places, they make English announcements...but for several of the trains I was on, there was no English to be found.

The first day in the area was spent at Hiroshima. This is the one part of the trip that is a repeat from my Japan visit two years ago. While I had done Hiroshima before, I love the town and wanted to do it again. This is a picture of the “A-Bomb Dome”. The atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima detonated roughly 600m above this building. It stands now as a powerful witness to the power of the bomb.

Artsy-fartsy shot of the dome reflected in a lily pond.

Inside the museum about the bombing, they included a large mural showing the town of Hiroshima shortly before the bomb was dropped. You’ll notice the building on the left which now stands as the ruined domed building. The island in the center of the photograph is now the Peace Memorial Park - a beautiful landscaped park with many memorials for different victims of the bombing.

Another shot of the A-Bomb Dome

One of the main reasons I wanted to return to Hiroshima was to get some Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki. This is a delicious Japanese dish that combines a ton of stuff (batter, cabbage, bean sprouts, onions, meats of various types, egg, etc...) into one delicious combination. What makes the Hiroshima-style Okonomiyaki different from the more traditional Osaka style is that instead of a ton of batter making it a “meat pancake” of sorts, the Hiroshima style uses Soba Noodles. Very delicious. The Okonomiyaki is cooked right in front of you and get a little spatula to cut off pieces to put on your own place to eat with your chopsticks.

Yummy! It might not look like much, but trust me - it is delicious.

Later in the day, I took a ferry to Miyajima Island, an island just a few minutes ferry ride from Hiroshima. It famously contains the “Floating Torii” that you have likely seen in Japanese ads before. Unfortunately for me, the torii (which you can see on the right) is currently undergoing renovations...and I came at low tide when it’s not as much “floating” as “standing on sand near the ocean”.

Torii

Pretty little shine scene.

Big pagoda on Miyajima Island.

I had planned to hike up to the top of the mountain and then ride the cablecar back down. Unfortunately, the cable car was also closed for maintenance. So instead of doing a big hike, I hiked around the city some and found this neat view.

On my circuitous route back to the train station, I took another shot of the A-Bomb Dome in the background with the main reflecting pond and memorial for the deceased (144,000). On my last visit, I attended a Hiroshima Carps baseball game - which was a ton of fun! They were indeed playing at home that night, but I decided not to go...I needed a good rest for my next day’s fun!

The next morning, I woke up very early and caught an early train to Onomichi. Onomichi is famous for being the start of the Shimanami Kaido - a famous bike ride from Honshu (the biggest island in Japan) to Shikoku (the southeastern island). The ride is supposed to be 45 miles...if you do it correctly... As you travel over Japan’s inland sea, there are several large bridges to cross as you hop from island to island. I rented a bike - and I was off!

The bridges were no joke. Riding on the bridges themselves is no big deal. The tricky part is that you’ve got to climb up pretty high to get to the bridge. I didn’t exactly have the best bike in the world, nor am I the most experience biker in the world (pretty much no experience), but I got it done!

Ten miles in, I heard a quick “pssssst” and all of the air in my back tire was all of the sudden gone. Now, you may have thought through a plan on what to do if you are in the middle of an island in Japan and your tire explodes, but I certainly didn’t. Thankfully, I was close to a Lawsons (a convenience store found all over Japan, very similar to a 7-11). Through much gesturing and luck, I was able to communicate what I needed to the very sweet lady who was the cashier. She called the rental company and arraigned for them to come by and switch out bikes for me. It all worked out great! The only problem with the new bike is that the bike seat was forged in the fiery pits of Hell by Satan himself!

Another bridge.

As I was struggling through a tough part of the ride...when I mistakenly took the “Advanced” path that included a ton of hills, I heard a saxophone from down the road. I rode up and found this old gentleman playing his saxophone by himself looking out over the ocean. It was quite nice.

Another bridge!

The great cyclist!

Roughly halfway through was a nice place to stop and get a bite to eat.

After miles and miles, I came upon the final bridge to Imabari - it was a bit intimidating!

Before tackling the final bridge, I met up with a group of Japanese friends (a few of them spoke good English) to have a “barbecue” at a restaurant. The way this place worked is that you picked out a ton of raw food, and then they would set up charcoal grills and you’d grill the stuff yourself. Being Japan, there was a huge variety of seafood ready to be cooked...many of it still swimming around. They even had live octopus ready for the grill! Suffice it to say, I didn’t have any of these options.

Grilling it up! I was blessed to have met a very fun group of friends (the picture makes them look much more serious than they actually were). It was a nice experience when you are in a country where you are very isolated.

Finally, it was time to attack the bridge (you can even see the little circular ramps to take the bikes up to the bridge.

The other side of the bridge - I made it! The bridge wasn’t actually that big a deal since I had just filled myself with food...funny how eating give you energy!