Our Japan trip! (part 2 - Hiroshima and Miyajima)

We didn’t have an alarm clock in the spa, so we didn’t quite wake up in time. Chris woke up with a half hour to go, but fell asleep again afterward. Me, I was totally zonked! Chris eventually woke up about a half hour late. We wanted to be picking up the rental car by 8am. We cleaned up quick and caught the second bus to Hakata Station. We were trailing a bit behind. We transferred to a taxi at Hakata Station and pointed out our destination to the taxi driver. He didn’t understand where we wanted to go. It took some time for him to figure it out, but we did eventually get there. He had to make some calls to find out the location of the Mazda Rental place. We arrived there at about 8:45 or so, the car was still waiting for us. We did a little paperwork, got a very short briefing on how to use the Japanese Navigation System (GPS). The man showing us how to use it couldn’t speak english, but he did have a small vocabulary, so we were able to point and say basic words like "car", "start", "area", "go". With the little vocab, I think we did alright. We somehow portrayed to them that we wanted to drive to Hiroshima so they set up the navigation point in Hiroshima. The only problem was that it was a random location in Hiroshima. We didn’t know how to adjust it, so we just left it like that the entire time and worked with it. We just had another map to compare it with. We were, however, able to reroute our navigation system to the highways instead of expressways. That was very helpful. We wanted to take the highways to see the countryside and to avoid tolls.
It was about 9:30 now and we were ready to go. It was so weird being in the drivers seat on the right side of the vehicle. Everything in the car was completely reversed. It was really simple, yet very had to get my head around. The automatic transmission shifter was on the left side of me and the signal stick was on the right of the steering wheel. Simple right? Not! Not when you are busy trying to feel normal about driving down the wrong side of the road! I think I hit the wipers about 3-4 times before I realized that the signal control was on other side. It was pretty hilarious when I was about to turn or change lanes and the wipers would turn on. It was always a good laugh when it would happen. It was definitely an adjustment to take righthand turns across traffic and immediate lefts. I could not compute my lefts and rights properly the entire trip. I would call my across opposing traffic turns "lefts" and my immediate turns "rights" because that is what they are in Canada. Even though I knew it was backwards, I couldn’t get used to it. It was a little awkward, but very simple and safe.
Anyway, we headed down the road and followed the GPS. It was pretty cool. I hadn’t used one before this so it was a novelty. It took us to a toll booth. We weren’t sure what was going on so we pulled over. We walked up to the tolls and proceeded to have a 10 minute confusing conversation with the toll guy, if you can call it a conversation. He spoke ZERO english. He pulled out a map and we mumbled back and forth for way too long to find out what we had already discovered at the start of our talk. This was an express connector. We needed to pay about six bucks to use this short connector that would link us up to either the expressway or the highway. The map was in Japanese but we could see the highway numbers. It was really hilarious trying to communicate with the guy because stood there while he spoke Japanese at us for 10 minutes and pointed at the map. A waste of time, but funny.
So we connected up with the highway no problem and were on our way. It was about this time that Chris found out how to get the navigation system to keep us off the expressways. Beauty! That was sweet!
The drive down the coast was really beautiful. We weren’t very close to the ocean but it was really gorgeous countryside. It was so different than what we had expected from being in Korea the last 6 months. It was really open and clean. There were some really traditional looking homes as well as some really western-like homes too. It felt a bit like Canada but with a Japanese twist, if that makes any sense. It’s modernized, but not westernized. It was really nice.
We were told that the drive would take about 5-6 hours. It ended up taking us just under 8. At some points we were going about 30 km/hr. There were a lot of small districts or villages along the way to pass through. We made a stop in one of them. We found these old fashion canons outside a restaurant on the seaside. We thought we might as well take a break and check them out. Chris and I got some shots of us sitting on the canons. Pretty sure we shouldn’t have been on them since they were made of a really weak material. But we managed to complete the photo shoot without breaking them.
From there, Chris took the wheel for the first time.
It was pretty funny! I think we saw the wipers more than 6 times in the first 10 minutes! It was great! It was funniest for me because I understood his confusion. We always had to remind each other which side of the road we should be on just to keep us alert. Fortunately driving in Japan is not like Korea, it is very orderly and tame. It’s actually slow! 80 km/hr is maximum even on expressways! I was surprised.
I forgot to mention that we made a wrong turn at one point in our travels. I followed a sign to turn left but apparently it was informing me of a turn that was about 400 meters ahead. It was a cool mistake though. We drove by a cool mountain village. If we had time we could have hiked it, but we just checked out the shops and looked around quickly. It was a cool building with a waterfall in the background. I think it was a nice mistake.
We finally rolled into Hiroshima around 4:30-5:00 and navigated our way to the train station. We found the train station on the G.P.S. by following the train lines until they met at a big gray square. We assumed this was the station, and our assumption was correct.
We found ourselves a parking spot right out front of the station. It was surprisingly cheap parking in the end, we really had no idea and didn’t care at this point. We were in a hurry to get some information about a place to stay and information about the island. We were planning to make a day trip to Miyajima the next day. We thought about driving out to the island. But I was thinking about the wrong island because you can’t drive to this one. It was a 2 hour drive just to get to the ferry. We were a bit discouraged by the travel time until we were informed that we could take the train for 400 yen ($4). We were shocked! We had assumed that train rides were killer expensive, but this was cheap and only took 15 minutes. We also found out that we could park at the station overnight for only $15 bucks too! We were stoked! We didn’t have to make the drive and we could get there sooner and for cheaper. That was some good news!
The tourist info lady was really helpful. We plastered her with questions and she helped us out quite well for such little english. We had a bunch of maps and brochures and were ready to find a Ryoken. A ryoken is a traditional Japanese motel. In traditional ryokens you can get full service apparently. They will fluff your pillow, bring you food, do your laundry and things like that. There are also different kinds and different price ranges. The ryoken we ended up finding wasn’t a full service one, but it was quite nice. You sleep on floor mats with huge blankets. It is really comfortable. You also get to wear the traditional robes! Pretty cool!
In the morning we got up bright and early to catch an early train to the island. We arrived there with lots of time to spare. The 10 minute ferry was short and sweet. It gave a nice veiw of the island from the middle of the water. The ferry did a loop near the Torii gate for us to take some pictures and get a nice veiw. The Torii gate is said to be floating in the water by its own weight. It’s was really big and fascinating! (picture at top)
We got there around ten o’clock in the morning and had a whole island to tour. It was a good size island and would probably take us a full day to see it all. We were greeted at the island by a bunch of deer. Similar to the deer back at home but a little different. I’m not sure what they are actually called. They were interested in my peanut butter sandwich though.
We wandered around the village looking at different shops along the way as we headed towards the Torii shrine. The Torii gate and shrine are the main attraction on this island, it is considered to be a "sacred island". Traditionally you would enter the island through the Torii gate and dock at the shrine. Now it’s a big tourist area and a great place to spend the day hiking and relaxing.
Looking on the map, we saw some nature walking paths. Thinking that the map was "to scale" we headed up a short nature path up the mountain. The "short" path turned out to be about an hour and a half of climbing up paths and stairs. It was really awesome in there though! There were cool looking trees and boulders everywhere, staircases chiseled into large rocks, mysterious animal sounds, and amazing mountainside views. We were panting and gasping for air most of the hike. It really was straight up the mountain.
After after I had repeated the phrase "we’re almost there" about a dozen times, we finally found the top. It was well worth the hike. The view was really something. We could see the Torii gate way down below. We couldn’t believe we had just walked that far. Wow! We stopped for a bit of lunch there, relaxed, and enjoyed the view.
After that we unanimously decide to take the cable cars down the mountain. So we headed in that direction. To our surprise we ran into a monkey on our path. It was moving quite quickly toward us. We remembered that we had food in our bag and we quickly tucked it away. The monkey was freaking us out and I’d seen some discovery channel before. Monkeys can be fierce! We were backing up and getting ready for a fight. But, it turned out that the monkey didn’t want to eat us. He actually fought with another monkey instead.
We rounded the bend and found ourselves surrounded by monkeys and deer. I guess this was their hangout. There were a few other tourists there taking some shots of the monkeys. We realized that they must be safe if tourists can walk around with them so we took some good pictures there. It was pretty neat. Monkeys are really quite interesting to watch.
The cable car down was a relief. We couldn’t imagine walking back down. The veiw was really cool and was well worth it. It was a good 10 minute ride down.
When we reached the bottom we headed into the village to check out some shops. Along the way we walked by the Torii gate. Something was totally different. At first glance something seemed strange. "What the . . .?" The Torii gate was standing there on the beach and people were walking around it. "Wait a minute, there was no beach there before!" It took me a second to realize that the tide had gone down about 5-6 feet and you could walk right out to the Torii. It was phenomenal!
People were all over the sand digging for oysters. This island was famous for the oysters, and we realized why. There were hundreds of people out there digging in the sand and collecting oysters.
Chris and I didn’t waste any time getting down there for some pictures. Christine, on the other hand, wasn’t interested in getting her shoes wet and dirty, neither was she "shopped out" yet. So Christine did some more shopping, while Chris and I hopped and skipped across the seaweed and sand to get some snapshots of the Torii Gate.
That Torii was HUGE! We looked like ants compared to it. It didn’t seem as big from the sidewalk, but it was really big. We only measured up to where the water reaches on high tide (the black marks on the base of the Torii - that's me leaning on it on the bottom right). It was fun. We also watched some ladies digging away in the sand.
We were about ready to leave the island but realized that we were all getting very hungry. We thought we might as well eat there and head out afterward. So we found a restaurant that served oysters and rice. We might as well try the "specialty" while we were there. Since Chris isn’t a fan of seafood, he opted for the pork cutlet. I’m not a huge oyster fan, but these were big, juicy, and delicious oysters. I was quite surprised. I’m not a big oyster eater, but these were definitely the best I’d ever tried. With our bellies full, we headed back to Hiroshima to check out the Atomic Bomb Dome.