This is me slowly catching up with myself. After this trip, I only need to tell you about the farming experience I did, and then we're writing in real time! And there's a lot going on - the cherry blossoms are blooming, everything is coming alive. Including my hayfever, which meant a slightly baffling trip to the drugstore to get tablets (the lady was very friendly and understanding, my Japanese just wasn't quite up to the task. Though I've now got something which appears to be working, so, you know, sort of a success).
I went to Okayama and Hiroshima on a 5 day trip at the beginning of the month. You can get a train ticket for just over 10,000 yen that gives you unlimited travel for 5 non-consecutive days during the spring holiday. The only condition is that you have to travel on local trains. But, while the shinkansen may well have been more comfortable, I really enjoyed watching the landscape slowly change as I journeyed west. You wind through little valleys that have been levelled for fields, but the impossibly steep hills have been left covered with trees, so they look like islands rising from a sea of grass. Sometimes you see the entrance to the shrine creating a gap in the trees, and a stone staircase that disappears quickly into the forest.
(In short, it feels like My Neighbour Totoro country).
My first stop was the city of Okayama. This was mainly to give me a place to stay before getting up super early and going to Naoshima, the art island. But since I was there, I had a little look around.
They have a bike hire scheme like the Boris Bikes in London. I couldn't help but adore the pun of the name: bikes like this with a little basket are called 'mama chari' in Japanese, and Okayama is famous for being the home area of the legendary Momo Taro. So, these bikes are called 'Momo Chari'.
This is the castle in Okayama. It's painted black and must have been pretty intimidating for would-be intruders. They had a few interesting exhibits about the history of the castle inside, but the best thing was the view from the top.
Next stop was the garden across the river, called the Korakuen. It's described as one of Japan's best three landscape gardens. (But seemingly everywhere you go is one of the best three something-or-other. I wonder who decides these things?) It was pretty lovely, anyway, despite the fact that the grass lawns that truly make it spectacular in the summer were a bit dead.
Everything was pretty dead, in fact, except for the blaze of white and pink plum blossoms at the end of the garden.
After a lovely evening with the very friendly owners of the guesthouse where I stayed(
http://toriikuguru.com/), I headed out bright and early to get to Naoshima just in time for the art galleries to open. You head out of Okayama for an hour, and then jump on a ferry. This is the view across the Inland Sea.
The island's main sources of income are the many art galleries that have sprung up (mostly created by Tadao Ando, also known as the architect behind the Tokyo Sky Tree) and also the large waste disposal facility. The sign next to this sculpture by the side of one of the roads crossing the middle of the island said that it was built as a merging of these two factors. I was just a little surprised to find this kind of modern sculpture on a quiet wooded road to the side of a lake...
This garden outside the Chichuu Museum is inspired by the Waterlilies painting by Monet that are displayed inside. No waterlilies to show this early in the year, though the other flowers were lovely.
I found this cat outside one of the Art House Projects. They're how I heard about the island. The towns there were just your normal island towns, slowly becoming abandoned as people moved away to the mainland for jobs etc. but a couple of them were bought by this project and transformed into spaces for modern artists to display their work. I enjoyed stepping over the threshhold not knowing what was inside, so I won't spoil that for you, in case you go. But I did have my favourites, and one of them was the converted temple outside which this little cat was sunning itself. (The other was an old-style house just down the road).
This is a view over the town from the shrine that's part of the project.
After I got back to the mainland, I hopped on and off trains for four hours to finally make it to Hiroshima. The dormitory there was comfortable, and I spent an interesting time there. I met a Japanese lady who told me that she had been living in Fukushima and now has no home to go back to, so she lives in that dorm. She was very lovely, gave me lots of tips about my visit, and at the end presented me and another travelling student with a little necklace each. I was really glad I got to meet her.
I walked over to Hiroshima Castle the next morning. In truth, it was pretty similar to the one in Okayama, just a little bigger. I think I prefer my castles ruined and somewhere remote in Scotland, but in Japan they rebuild them to show you exactly what they would have looked like from the outside. I liked the moat, anyway, because it was a lovely day.
This is the A-Bomb Dome, after I went to the Peace Museum. It was a pretty tough museum to walk through, though I'm glad I did. I feel sorry for the security guard who was standing at the end of some of the most emotionally painful exhibits. He must see a parade of depressed faces all day.
The next day I wandered over to Shukkeien Garden. It's much more compact than Korakuen (and surrounded by modern buildings on all sides). Its name actually translates to 'Shrunken Scenery Garden', and I loved the way they've created little mountains and valleys.
Naturally I had to have Hiroshima okonomiyaki at some point during the trip. It's a bit different to the Osaka version, though I can't decide which one I like better. The Hiroshima ones do at least make for nicer pictures, to show how tasty okonomiyaki really is (the Osaka variety tends to look like a hot mess).
Having fueled up on okonomiyaki I made my way down to another port, this time on the way to Miyajima. This is the island famous for its shrine gate that stands in the sea. I didn't know when I went, but apparently it's not actually fastened down to anything. It's just a master work of careful balancing (how they did that with the tide and all, I do not know). At very low tide you can even walk out to it.
I stayed over on the island at a ryokan (traditional guest house) and had food so amazing that I forgot to get you photographs, as I was too busy tucking in. The ryokan was in a little bay, and the views were amazing out across the sea to the lights of Hiroshima on the mainland.
In the morning, I decided to climb the main mountain before I had to leave at midday. Mt Misen has a long history as a sacred place, in part due to the big boulders that are lying about. On the way up, there were a few of these overhangs, and if you look closely, you can see that people have left tiny Buddha statues and offerings underneath.
There's an observationa platform from the top with phenomenal views. It's the highest point on the island, and may well be the highest point for a good few miles, so you have a perfect view of the islands that are scattered around.
The climb up is supposed to be about 90 minutes to 2 hours, and I'd done it in 1 hour (as I sat panting on a bench halfway up, a very energetic old Japanese man came striding past, commenting on how well I was doing. As he sailed past. And I slumped on a bench. It was nice of him to say so, anyway.). Given that, and the fact that I had to make it back to Kyoto on local trains that day, I chickened out of the walk back down and took the cable car instead.
Next time I'll write about the other trip to Hiroshima, this time farming in the remote countryside!
