Astroboy in Asia: My road trip to 広島市

This is what I did over the past five days

I just got off from a little three-day vacation (Mon-Wed). As usual, I had an awesome time.

After waking up at the un-godly hour of 5am on Saturday morning and beeting my friend Rob at his place shortly after, we caught the early bus to Busan. We had eaten breakfast and were in downtown Busan by 7am. We wren't exactly sure where we were going to go, so we decided to pass the time by just looking around downtown Busan.

Let's Have a Morning Adventure in Busan!

Hey, downtown Busan looks pretty nice today! They've started construction on one of the world's highest skyscrapers, Lotte World Tower 2, at 465m. In comparison, the Petronas twin towers in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia are 452m. That would make this the second tallest skyscraper in the world after the huge one in Taipei. I think that's interesting.

Downtown Busan #2

Downtown Busan #3

Downtown Busan #4

Hmmm.... where are we? Let's check this map out and find the "you are here" part. Hmmm..., where is it now... Wait! What's this say?

"The Present Situation"

What the hell? Who wrote this? Welcome happily into the Corea!

This looks like a good road to walk around on.

Here's a pretty cool view of Busan.

We found this pretty trail up a hill in the middle of Busan. Let's see where it leads. There's probably a temple or a shrine at the top of the hill. There's always a temple or a shrine at the top of a hill in Korea.

So let me get this straight; we climb halfway up a hill, getting plenty of exercise, just so that we can get even more exercise on some cheap exercise equipment? At least Rob seems to think that this is a good idea.

ARGGG!!! More excercise equipment! Why, why, why?!?

We climbed up the hill for this!?!, to watch a few old ladies walk around some dirt in their bare feet? What a silly climb! Where's the temple? Where's the shrine? Where are the hot tubs full of beautiful Korean girls wearing shoe-string bikinis?

I've had enough of this. Let's go to Japan.

We went to the ferry terminal and had our tickets for the 2pm ferry to Fukuoka, Japan. This would be a 3 hour trip and cost $170 US for a round trip. Add to that hotels, renting a car, food, enterance fees, and way too much beer and sake, and the final bill came to about $670 US for five days in Japan.

During that time, I would meet many cool and crazy people in Japan. Most of them were hippies and listened to Bob Marley. They acted suspeciously like Canadians when they weren't drinking beer, yet they were still partying. I will not talk about those people on this site.

Renting a Car/ Playing with Vibrators in a Love Hotel

We wanted to stay in a regular hotel in Fukuoka on Saturday night, but every single one that we looked at (over a dozen) were full. As should always be a last option when you have two guys in your party, we ended up staying at a love hotel. It was embarassing trying to explain why two guys were sharing a room in a love hotel. At first they didn't want to let us stay in a room, because we were two guys. Thank goodness Rob knows how to speak Japanese (well, some Japanese). He was eventually able to convince them to let us stay and that all we would be doing would be sleeping. I think he snagged the condoms that come equipped with the room when we left though, so I'm sure that they might have some funny ideas.

So that we wouldn't get locked in our room, I remembered to put a pen in the door. It worked like a charm. I was able to go to a 7-Eleven for some beer and get back into the room without any trouble. The room even had a nice jacuzzi to relax in. The other love hotel didn't have that. This was a much better love hotel experience. One other thing that this one had was an honest-to-goodness vibrator(!). I made sure to get a picture. It had both a high and a low speed.

You can read about my first experience in a love hotel HERE.

We rented a nice new 4 cylinder Nissan Note. It costed us about 5000 yen, or about $50 US, a day. Not bad! Rob has a Japanese drivers license, since he lived in Okinawa for seven years.

The interior of our car. It even has a GPS/DVD player!

The Road from Fukuoka to Kitakyushu/Shimonoseki

"Hi girls!!!" They seemed to enjoy having their picture taken as much as I enjoyed taking it.

Just a random view of the roadside between Fukuoka and Kitakyushu.

The Japanese seem to like their pachinko as much as North American Natives seem to like bingo. Huge pachinko halls are everywhere!

Somewhere between Fukuoka and Kitakyushu... The doesn't seem to be any distiction between the two cities. They are so close together.

You can't have heaven without 7-Eleven! That's a view of the back of our car. A Nissan Note.

Rob, didn't your mother tell you not to eat sushi and drive?

Downtown Kitakyushu. There's even a monorail! This city has just over one million people living in it. It's sister city, Shimonoseki, has about a quarter million. A fairly bit city be any standard. Very futuristic-looking, expecially with the monorail. A little further down the road, there's a monorail and two elevated highways on top of each other. Including the ground road, that's four layers of things. It looks really freaky, but cool.

Kitakyushu was actually the primary target for the August 9th, 1945, atomic bomb. The city was called "Kokura" at the time. Due to heavily clouds causing a reduced visual over the city, the plane carrying the bomb continued on to it's secondary target of Nagasaki. There is a term in Japan meaning "Kokura's luck" that is used to describe a time when someone unknowingly escapes a bad situation.

A Mitsubishi car plant in Kitakyushu.

Kitakyushu is on this side, and Shimonoseki is on the other side.

The trainyard in Kitakyushu.

Looking down on a train in Kitakyushu.

Driving on the suspension bridge, over the strait seperating Kyushu (Japan's south island) from Honshu (Japan's main island).

Honshu, here I come! Shimonoseki looms under the bridge.

Heading into Honshu island, the mainland of Japan.

The Road from Yamaguchi to Miyajima

I love this GPS. It was great to have. Everyone should get one for their vehicle. You can plot out your route, look at a map of the area from any angle (overheard, 3D, etc.), listen to a female guide voice that tells you when to turn (if you know Japanese). It was a real life saver, and it beats the hell out of using those giant folding maps. We were never lost because of this thing. You can even watch DVD movies on it!!!

When we were driving though the city of Yamaguchi, we saw this van. He must've been on "Pimp My Ride: Japan Edition". We ate lunch at a KFC here. We were needing some chicken. This city is probably about the same size as Regina.

We passed this restaurant on the highway. It was so cool that we had to stop and check it out.

This water seems to clean, that you could make beer out of it.

We got a couple of cute girls to take our picture. I think I need a pair of sunglasses. It's so bright out!

This kind of reminds me of Canada.

What a cool place to eat!

What a cool little town!!!

We spend most of the time driving on some secondary highways in Japan. There was a lot of awesome countryside.

Hiroshima: turn right.

Some factories in a town south of Miyajima.

Miyajima and the Famous Floating Ttori

The next few pictures were all taken while on the ferry ride from Miyajima town, on the mainland, to Miyajima Island. The island is home to the famous Itsukushima Shrine and the famous floating ttori gate that accompanies it. If you've ever seen pictures of Japan, then you've seen this shrine and it's ttori gate.

#10

Miyajima Island has a ton of beer on it. It also has a lot of small deer running around. I had to watch were I walked. One little Japanese kid was running around screaming in a herd of deer, not knowing what to do. He was scared shitless. Everywhere that he ran to, there was another deer. I was laughing my ass off. Don't worry, the kid was okay. I saw him later, happy as heck and eating ice cream.

Here you go little guy, have some beer. This marinate make you taste real good... err... I mean the beer. The beer tastes real good.

Here I am, at the enterance to Miyajima village. I probably should've taken more pictures... It really was a cool place. I was just facinated walking around and exploring. They have monkeys!!!

If this isn't familiar to you, then you've never seen pictures of Japan before. It's the famous floating ttori! I was here!!!

Rob, in front of the super famous Miyajima Ttori.

The main island of Honshu is on the right, while Miyajima island is on the left. If I'd never been to Japan before, I'd think that this picture was of Lake Okanagan in British Columbia.

Hiroshima can be seen if you look north (I think) from Miyajima Island. This must've been quite the sight 6o years ago...

Welcome to Hiroshima

We're in Hiroshima! It looks like a super modern city to me! I wish that I took some pictures of the street trollys here. It seems like a Japanese version of San Francisco here. Four of the trollys are amazingly pre-atomic bomb. They still run. After the war, cities thoughout Japan donated their trollys to Hiroshima in order to help re-built the infrastructure.

Japanese highways are fun!

This GPS system is sweet. When you get into a city, you can switch to 3D mode and get a digital 3D map of the city. If you mark your destination, it gives you arrows on the map telling you when to turn. As an added bonus, a Japanese girl in a sexy voice tells you something too. I'm not exactly what she says, but I'm pretty sure that she's recommending me to the nearest geisha girl house.

Something is very wrong with this picture...

Is this legal??? Where is his helmet??? Police!!!

The "suburbs" of Hiroshima.

A cool area of downtown Hiroshima.

A photo of an outdoor mall. Most of the malls that I've seen in Japan (and Korea as well) are actually just city streets that have roofs built over the road and allow no traffic. This mall had airconditioners blowing thoughout, making it a nice place to be on a hot day. The temperature when I was in Japan was seldom below 30 degrees.

A random street in downtown Hiroshima.

SEGA! How can I come to Japan and not play some video games? This arcade had five levels. Two were for video games. Two were for pachinko and slot machines and one floor was for those silly games where you use a crane to pick up a stuffed animal. I played a game of Outrun2 (a racing game) and one of the new versions of Street Fighter. I beat it with one coin, using Ken. The Japanese guy sitting next to me must've been amazed that a white boy was so good. Either that, or he didn't notice me at all and I came to the realization that I played way too many video games as a kid. Oh well, at least I'm good at it!

A common noodle/rice/sake/beer bar that we went to. I love the atmosphere in them.

Japanese Baseball!

I got to watch a Japanese baseball game! The Hiroshima Toyo Carp were in the red, while the Yokohama Baystars were in the blue.

The Carp won the game 6-3.

Here's the mascot for the Hiroshima Carp. Does this look like a carp to you? This seems a little fishy to me...

Here are a couple of cuties that we made fast friends with at the game. They didn't speak English, but that was okay. We were able to figure things out.

Hiroshima Peace Park

Crossing a bridge into the Peace Park.

This is a burial mound. A very large number of the victims were buried here. While walking around Hiroshima, I often had the feeling that I was walking on a huge graveyard. It was a very solemn experience.

Here is a memorial dedicated to all of the Koreans that were killed by the atomic bomb in Hiroshima. Due to a large amount of Koreans being forced to work for the Japanese during the war, many Koreans were in Hiroshima. It is estimated that about 10% of the well-over 200,000 people killed in the bombing were Korean.

A close-up view of the Korean memorial.

The A-bomb dome. This was a major administrative-type building before WWII. It was one of the only buildings that was still standing (sort of) after the atomic bomb. The city of Hiroshima decided to preserve the building in it's current state, as opposed to tearing it down, in memory of what happened.

The A-bomb dome #2

The A-bomb dome #3

The A-bomb dome #4

Looking down a river beside the Peace Park. You can see the A-bomb dome on the right.

Looking across one of the rivers away from the Peace Park. The walkways along the sides of the river are lined with statues, memorials and some relics from 6/8/45.

Looking on to a peace memorial and the nuclear bomb museum.

Here is the statue of Sadako Sasaki. When the bomb fell, she was only two years old. She survived the bomb and seemed to grow up to be a normal girl, having friends and taking up

track in school. When she was eleven, she collapsed when while training for a race. She was diagnosed with leukemia, which was brought on by the radiation in her body from the atomic bomb.

Her best friend told her about an old legend that says if you were to fold 1,000 cranes of out paper (origami), you would be granted a wish. Little Sadako's wish was to be cured of her cancer. Sadly, her wish was not fulfilled and she passed away at the age of twelve. One version of the end of the story says that she had completed 1300 cranes before she died. Another says she was only able to complete 644 cranes, and that her friends finished the rest of the 1000 and buried them with her. Either way, children (and adults as well) from all over the world now send in strings of cranes (usually in 10 strings, each with 100 cranes) to this monument in Hiroshima.

Inside the Atomic bomb museum at the peace park (unpictured), there are many other monuments and relics from that day. Some relics include burned clothes that some victims were wearing, toys, children's lunchboxes complete with charred food, household goods, melted rocks, and even some skin and a finger nail, donated from the parents of a child that died as a result of his burns the day after the bomb. Many of these items were found on children who were so badly burned that the only way they could be identified was by the items that they were carrying. It must've been horrible for a parent to recongize their child's lunchbox under the burned arm of an otherwise unidentifiable child. One ghostly relic is of a brick monument that someone was sitting on when the bomb fell. Due to the intense heat of a couple of thousand degrees celcius, a shadowy image of the person can still be seen burned into the bricks. One story that really got to me was of a three-year-old boy that was riding his tricycle when the bomb exploded over the city. The father found his child and gave him first aid, but he passed on the next day. He buried his boy with his favorite toy, his tricycle, in his backyard so that he would have something to play with in the next life. Decades later, the father dug up his son and the tricycle. He buried the child in the family plot with the rest of his family, and donated the tricycle to the museum. After reading that story, I had to stop reading the stories so that I wouldn't shed tears in front of everyone. Then I noticed that the lady beside me was crying. When I talked to Rob later, he said that he left that section of the museum early for the same reason.

Since the bombing of Hiroshima, the city has transformed itself into a city dedicated to peace. The Peace Park in the centre of the city is absolutely awesome, having more memorials to the bomb and tributes to world peace than I care to count. Every time that a country uses a nuclear weapon for any reason, whomever the mayor of Hiroshima at the time is sends a letter of protest to that country. These letters can be viewed in the museum.

A close up view of the origami cranes.

This is downtown Hiroshima before 8:15am on August 6, 1945...

... and this is it after 8:15am on August 6, 1945.

Hiroshima Castle

Here is the enterance to the Hiroshima castle compound. The site is surrounded by a moat and houses the enterance gate and wall (seen here), a temple, a large military compound (that has been left in ruins since 1945), and Hiroshima castle.

Here is the temple that is located inside the castle compound.

A closer view of the actual temple.

This used to be a huge Japanese military compound until the end of World War II. There's not much left of this base. The bomb did it's job. The huge base here was one of the reasons that Hiroshima was picked out to be the site of the first nuclear bomb.

The pathway leading up to Hiroshima castle; which has been rebuilt and turned into a museum following it's complete destruction in 1945. It was originally built by the Mori clan in 1589. It is sometimes called Rijo, or Koi Castle. Koi is Japanese for carp, and, as far as I know, it was built on carp island. This explains the odd name for Hiroshima's baseball team, the Hiroshima Toyo Carp.

A nice view of Hiroshima castle.

Looking up at Hiroshima castle from the base.

I took four pictures, on in each direction, from the 5th floor of Hiroshima castle. Here is the first view.

View #2

View #3

View #4

The Ryokan Sansui house

Here is the hotel that we stayed at on Monday night in Hiroshima. This is a more traditional kind of place called a Ryokan. It costed about Y8000 between both of us.

Here is the few looking left from our ryokan. The orange ttoris leading up to the small shrine on the other side of the river looked very neat.

After walking down a very narrow path between two buildings (maybe 2.5 feet wide), we went thought a door, took off our shoes, put on some slippers (well, we were probably supposed to), climbed a set of steep stairs up to the second floor and entered into this apartment. Quite a nice hotel room! This was the kitchen area. That door that leads to what looks like a closet is actually the toilet room. The shower was in the main floor of the owners house. It was shared between all of the guests.

Here's the toilet room! Just so that everyone that has not been to Asia is clear here, this picture is right side up. It's not much different than squatting in the forest.

This would be the dining room. It was complete with tatami mats! They were surprisingly combortable to sit on.

The sleeping room. We had a couple of futons, equipped with sheets, that we laid out on the floor. It turned out to be quite comfortable, especially after sleeping in a car the night before.

Here we are on Monday night after lots of sake. We decided that it would be a good idea to put on our bath robes and slippers and walk around the street. We visited the sake and noodle resturant across the street. The ladies there seemed to quite shocked, not to mention a little embarrased for us, that we were wearing such clothing in public. We got the owner to be in the picture for us.

The next day, we made our way back to Fukuoka. We saw some really beautiful scenery on the drive back there. Unfortunately, the memory on my camera was full. You'll just have to be jealous of me because I got to drive around in Japan and you didn't.