Hiroshima still has trams, (like Nottingham wooo) so I boarded, sat down, and only realised halfway through I was riding a bus instead. They are quite similar. Checked out the Peace Museum. Seriously sobering stuff, but the millions of elementary school kids running around in their cute yellow hats seemingly oblivious to the sombre tone of the place made it less heavy. Don't want to get too far into this as it's kind of obvious and it's more being there than anything I can say about it, but really hits home about what happened here and really makes you hope the joker in charge of N. Korea doesnt ever get so ronery as to be in a place where he can hit the big red button. I've heard different arguments about whether it was necessary or not to drop the bomb, but the museum isn't about that at all. It reports both the facts of the war and the science behind the bomb quite dryly - and that is emotionally heavy enough. (The little red warheads on the globe represent the amount of nuclear weapons in the world.)
Then wandered through the end of the museum and through the Peace Park, based at ground zero of the explosion. There's the burnt out A-bomb tower as it's called, one of the few buildings that (barely) survived the flattening of the city, and its been preserved exactly as it was. Don't know if it's the done thing to take your pic in front of atomic ruins, but here it is. Some hippies were singing loudly and badly under the bridge.
At lunch I had Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki. I think I mentioned it before, round here we have Osaka style which is fantastic, over there they put noodles in it and it's more eggy. Sorry Hiroshima, yours is okay, but nothing on Kansai style. Had more plans to wander down past the shopping area to a big park where there's a museum of contemporary art and a cool sounding manga library, but got stuck firstly in the shopping area trying to work out how to send stuff at the post office and then in
Oh Tower. How I missed you since you shut down your London branch. I spend close to 2 hours browsing the jazz and hip hop and club jazz and broken beat and I love this place. It's in a large department store building on the 9th floor with a club on the next floor up. I don't think I would find this very cool in the UK but this is Japan and it works (can you imagine drunk punters taking a department store lift to the 10th floor for a club - and down again after the night's over?). Then it was time to take a more conservative shinkansen over to Fuk.
First night we went out, Rose my friend from the UK, Yann her French boyfriend, and 4 teachers that she works with, 2 guys 2 girls. She had trouble recognising one of the teachers at first cos he was dressed like a little wannabe rudeboy, with a cap off to one angle and baggy sportswear. Even the other guy looked like a teenage dressing up for a night out, little ring on a chain etc. Anyway, we went to an izakaya (eaty drinky place for groups) and had loads to drnk, eat and was fun (rudeboy teacher turned out to be hilariously addicted to Pachinko. We were talking about birthday celebrations in Japan and he was like 'This year birthday, Pachinko. Last year's birthday.... Pachinko. One year my birthday was on my graduation! ............. and then pachinko.' - Pachinko is a dull as shit gambling game that looks superficially a bit like pinball.)
Next day hung around with Yann and Rose in Fukuyama. Really nice to see people who you met before Japan, it's almost like going home in some little way. In the evening another UK jet came down, Hannah, and we went out for some Fuk people's birthday to an izakaya..... that turned out to be the same one as the previous night. Hehe. Food was all different though. Loads of JETs there, maybe close to 30 or 40? Big noise big atmosphere. At times a bit in your face for the European contingent but we all had a good time overall, good food good drink with friends. After we headed out of there, headed out in Fukuyama and had a fantastic night, met some wicked people.
Cool things about Fukuyama: BATS. Loads of bats. Coming back next to the river one night there were loads swooping and soaring around. Next day next to the station there were MASSIVE flocks of what looked like birds doing their formation thing but on close inspection it seemed to be bats...woah. FUTARINORI. Like a lot of cities here, it's a bike place. 2 to a bike is technically illegal here but very popular and it's called futarinori and Yann and Rose quickly became masters at it, leaving me to ride the badass girls bike with two baskets you see above. BREAKFAST. Okay so this isn't a Fuk thing, more Yann's French influence but brioche and drinking chocolate for dipping is a hell of a step up from the sub frosties Calpee stuff I normally eat. Oh and check this building: Looks like a church, right? It's a fake chapel where they have weddings and functions - and they hire a western guy to dress up and pretend to be the priest! That's just beautiful.
Everyone on JET has a different experience. We're all in different situations in different schools in different sized places in different regions (I could almost feel some difference in being out of Kansai) and we all make different lives out of it. Mine's like the traveller, living out of a suitcase and getting around - which is really fun, but feels kind of transient. It was really cool to visit Yann and Rose who have more of a 'place' set up (in an awesome apartment), a dose of normality in crazy Japan.
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