Miyajima (宮島)

My first stop in the country was the island of Miyajima, aka Itsukushima, which is home to the famous torii gate in the harbor. Before I get there, though, there were a number of things that were new and exciting to me along the way. First of all, it was the first time Sarah and I had stayed in a hotel together, and second, I was receiving my intro to Japan: My very first night there, we went to a combini (コンビニ), which is a convenience store, sort of like a gas station grocery, minus the gas station, and my first exposure to Japanese bread. There are lots of appealing-looking Japanese breads there, the surprising part is how many of them have hot dogs inside of them, or things like that. Much to my chagrin as a vegetarian, Japan likes putting meat in everything. EVERYTHING.

The next morning was an introduction to some more food, as our hotel provided some breakfast, and that morning, we were up early enough to eat it. There was passable, but different, french toast, tea, rice and other things I can't now remember. Then, we walked across the street to the train station. This is where I first experienced the efficiency of Japanese public transportation - you put money into the ticket machine, and buttons light up for the stops you've inserted enough money to get to. Then, you get a tiny ticket, which you slide into the turnstyle as you walk through, and it punches a little hole in it and pops up waiting for you at the other end. At every stop, the conductors (all in matching uniforms with gloves - something I'm still not completely used to) preformed the same ritual of checking that nobody was still trying to get on the train - complete with hand motions - before getting on and going to the next stop.

From the train, it was a short walk to the ferry, and from there, just a ten or fifteen minute ride to the island, with the o torii in view from the boat for the last few minutes. It was a short walk to the beach that the o torii is in, and there were plenty of other people there to see it, many of them seemed Japanese and this was my first confirmation that Japanese people do make the peace sign when being photographed. I still don't know why, but, it seems to just be part of the process. The gate itself is quite impressive, and was only a little diminished in my mind when I found out that the Japanese government has replaced it a number of times when it was damaged or destroyed in storms. Any which way, it's quite pretty out there in the water. On the land in front of it, sits a building that is mostly on stilts. The tide was about half out when we were there, but when the tide is in, the building also looks like it's floating, which must be quite neat to see. Apparently, one little building in the complex was a stage for No plays, so the audience would sit on the walkway and look over the water to the stage ten feet away. It sounds like a pretty way to watch theatre. It all made me think of how rarely I've seen things in America accommodate nature, building to fit it, rather than landscaping it to fit the construction afterwards. I really liked the effect, and wish I saw things like that more.

The island is, like many places in Japan, famous for one thing or another - in this case, it is famous for the rice paddle and manju (まんっじゅ). Manju are little maple-leaf shaped cakes that have a filling. We tried a couple while we were there, but I can't remember what flavors other than the kabocha (かぼちゃ) squash one. This is perhaps a good time to mention the deer. When you sit down in Central Park to eat a soft pretzel, you attract the attention of lots of pigeons. When you sit down on Miyajima to eat a manju, you attract the attention of the free-roaming, sacred Sika deer (しか), who are like pigeons in the area. That said, we also saw one pigeon.

When it came to finding other things to eat, we were rather lost, as the island boasted a lot of things with fish or meat in them; a trend I was going to learn to be really annoyed by. Eventually, we settled on one of the two places in town that offered hyatokeki (ホャトケーキ), better known as pancakes (hotcakes).

One last note on the Island of Miyajima: Apparently, this is where the rice paddle was invented. Some buddhist monk came up with it, and started sharing it with people. Because of that, they have what I like to call "The Fuck-Off Huge Rice Paddle," seen here:

Moments of understanding

I've always been impressed that people could ever understand each other at all. It seems like we, to this day, understand so little of how language works, but, have managed to teach each other most of the ones we've come up with. Yesterday's moment of understanding was brought to you by the word はっしん - rash - which is what we went to Sundays (a drug store) about yesterday. Thankfully, I have Sarah to handle most of the translation, though, I'm slowly learning the words to deal with some of the allergies it seems I have to things here. This is rather surprising, since I didn't really have anything I was allergic to at home, but, two days after I got to Sarah's apartment, my mouth swelled up and was itchy, and I was quite uncomfortable to varying degrees after that. I seem to also be allergic to fish - something I didn't plan on finding out because I don't eat fish, being a vegetarian, but Japan and the Nomura's had other ideas.

My great moment understanding for this adventure was when the pharmacist at Sundays was picking out a rash cream for me, and was miming rubbing it on his arm. (Miming is a rather important part of communication here) Just to make sure he was getting the full picture, since I didn't want anything that would make my nether regions more unpleasant, I gestured to my crotch and said "ここです" - "it's here."

The look of comprehension on his face was beautiful.

Sarah assured me his parting "get better soon" was really sincere...

Pre-Semester Abroad

While I am going abroad next semester, I am lucky enough to have started my travels abroad before I need to start taking classes. Since Sarah is living in Japan, I got to come here to Japan and visit her! I'll be going to the Universität Freiburg after this, but, I still have a bit to go before that.

Last Thursday, I got to JFK at 7:30 AM EST and checked into All Nippon Airways flight 9 to Narita International Airport, Tokyo. Sometime around 11:40, we pulled away from the gate, and I left the United States for the next 7 months, and the ground for the next 14 hours. 14 hours. It takes forever to get over Alaska. Being from the mainland, I don't really think about the place much, but we were over Alaska forever, it seemed. On the flight, I watched Public Enemies (in Japanese - I'm sure I missed a lot of the plot, but, I learned the word 'ginko' (銀行) which means 'bank,' from all the bank-robbing and -robbers. I also had the time to read Logicomix and to listen to a whole bunch of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe and didn't really manage to sleep at all.

Finally, we get to Tokyo, and my name gets announced over the PA. My first thought is "Oh no, nobody asked about my one-way ticket and they're not going to let me into the country" or something similarly irrational. Turns out, an nice All Nippon rep was waiting for me and told me they'd found a flight to Hiroshima leaving out of Narita instead of the one leaving from Haneda that I'd booked, which is altogether a lot easier to handle, what with Haneda being an hour and a half bus ride away, and it being just about 2am EST at this point (around 16:00 Japan time). So, I was led through a maze of Narita, into customs lines and drug-check lines, by my very polite and efficient guide, who utterly failed to point out any of the forms I needed to fill out before sticking me on the lines for handing them in. Eventually, though, around 17:30, I was on a bus that took me out to the little plane that would take me to Hiroshima airport at something like 19:15 - about an hour before Sarah knew to come and get me.

After waiting an hour, I had a mind-shatteringly-awesome reunion with Sarah, who took me out into the rather chilly, Japanese world outside the airport. Cars are boxier, drive on the left, and we parked in some sort of magic car-elevator/storage system at the toyoko inn in Higashihiroshima-sho (東広島). Here's the view from our room!



I think I've been at this long enough now, so, Miyajima and further shenanigans will come in their own time.

-Matt