The White Heron (Part 1)

Well, I survived the night. I ended up getting virtually no sleep, and spent the night looking for an outdoor outlet to recharge my computer and just lying there staring at the sky. At one point I came across a 24-hour McDonalds, so I had some chicken nuggets too. Around 5:00am I headed back to the train station and rented a locker to dump my computer in backpack in. They clean them out every day at 4:30am, so I had to lug them around until that point. Even though the castle didn't open until 9:00am, I had nothing better to do so I headed in that direction and just started wandering along the path around it. That walk is one of the most amazing experiences I have ever had. When I started it was completely dark, and I watched the entire dawn while walking along a path along the outer wall, right next to the moat. I can't really describe it properly, and the pictures I took couldn't capture it, but the combination of the sun rising, the soft mist coming off the water, the green lichen and rounded rocks of the wall made it feel like a set out of Lord of the Rings. Everything just had this aura around it. So, I ended up wandering around the castle for something near 3 hours (I ended up walking around the outside 3 times), and then headed back to the main entrance to get ready for the actual walk up to the castle.

The White Heron (Part 2)

The entire tour took about 1.5 hours, and you follow it up through the fortifications, through one of the long buildings that would have been housing as women's quarters (and for defense when needed), up past various storage buildings, through the large inner courtyard, and finally up through the castle itself. I took a bunch of pictures of all the fortifications and details inside the buildings, but it would take me forever to upload everything, so I'll just include the main shots right now.

First the bridge aross the outer moat.

The castle from up close.

Looking down at the fortifications and city from the top floor of the castle.
From a different window...

A model of the city as it would have been when the castle was in use.

After finishing at the castle, I came across a pottery fair/festival going on in Himeji, so I hung out there for a bit. I decided there wasn't much left to do in the city, so I got my train ticket to Nara. I got a bit lost along the way in Osaka, when I took the wrong train by accident, but eventually got everything figured out. I wandered around Nara a bit today, but didn't do anything very exciting. I hadn't slept in a couple days, and I was starting to get extremely sore from lugging around my laptop, backpack and coat around everywhere, so I got a hotel room to relax in while in Nara. It was pretty cheap (about $40 cdn/night), and while it's compact, it's really hi-tech which is fun. Going to get up early tomorrow morning and go siteseeing after breakfast.

Cross Country Voyage - Beginning

Well, here I am, sitting in the middle of a park somewhere in Himeji, at 1am, stealing internet from some nearby resident. It's pretty chilly tonight, and I have to lug my laptop and backpack with everything in it all over the place, but at least I'm out of Hiroshima and on my way. I took a train to Okayama, and then transferred to another train to Himeji, which went relatively smoothly. I don't have a place to stay here though, and I figure I'll just hang out outside and sleep under a tree for the night. I tried to find a place to get a late night meal, but instead ended up in the red light district being asked if I wanted massages every 5 minutes. One of them was rather persistent, but finally gave up when I told her "I worked for Nova, no money." This city in general seems a lot shadier than Hiroshima, but I'm only here for a day anyway. I'll do the castle tour and check out the gardens tomorrow, and then onwards to Nara.

The Plan

Due to issues with money and random loose ends, it has taken a bit longer to get going than I had hoped. My ticket is paid for now, and I have a loose plan as to how I'm going to spend the time until I go home. I need to wait until November 3 to get my ticket and get underway. Here is my rough itinerary:
November 3:
Train from Hiroshima to Himeji
November 4:
Check out Himeji Castle, which is likely the most famous castle in Japan
Take train from Himeji to Nara
November 5,6:
Hang out in Nara, visit temples/gardens, etc.
November 7:
Train from Nara to Kyoto
November 7,8,9:
Spend time in Kyoto. Lots of temples, shrines, gardens and other historical things. Still haven't really decided exactly which ones, but I'll whittle down the list I have now before I get there.
November 10:
Shinkansen (bullet train) from Kyoto to Tokyo - pricey, but taking regular train that far requires like 14 transfers and around 9 hours, while the Shinkansen is 1 train the entire way, and under 3 hours.
November 11,12,13: In Tokyo. Sightseeing, hanging out, spending the remainder of my fictional money. Maybe a day trip to Nikko if I have time.
November 14: Fly out of Narita Airport in Tokyo at 5:55pm, transfer planes in Chicago, and hopefully landing back in Toronto at 6:26pm. (Yay! 31 minute flight across the world, silly time zones.) I'll try to get in touch with people shortly about giving me a ride somewhere from the airport.

I'm going to have somebody in Hiroshima use the parcel delivery service to send all my luggage to the airport in Tokyo. Hopefully that goes smoothly, as it will suck to get there and not know where my luggage is. If anybody has any requests for anything, let me know!

Frustrations

Grahh. It seems the entire world conspires against me at times. Today I went and after wandering a good portion of the city found a travel agent and got a ticket from Tokyo to Toronto really cheap. It costs more to pay directly onto credit card, so I told them I'd come back with cash. I need money from my visa to get through the next couple weeks anyway, so I went to an international ATM to take money out on it. At this point I am told by the machine that "Your card issuer has declined your transaction." I asked the people at the bank if they could call the number provided with the message and try to straighten it out, but they wouldn't do anything. I'm guessing it's flagged as suspicious because it's a withdrawl in a different country than Canada, but I called just before I left and told them I was moving so things like this wouldn't happen! My original plan was to leave for Kyoto tomorrow, but now it's looking like that might be impossible. Now that I have a date booked for my plane home, I don't want to waste that time dealing with all this mess when I could be seeing more of Japan. What a hassle. I can't call the Visa people for a few hours because they're closed right now (2:30am in Canada), and by the time I *can* get through to them, the bank and travel agent will be closed. Hopefully things come together tomorrow and I can get an overnight bus out. Still need to figure out what to do with my luggage (I called the embassy in Tokyo, and they were pretty much clueless, and just redirected me to someone's voicemail).

Intersection

Short post. Todd mentioned before that he'd like some pictures of an intersection, so as I was wandering today I came across a Y-intersection with a small bridge across it, so I took pictures of the various roads joining together. Not the most interesting of intersections I'm afraid, but here it is. (The last one is from the ground, looking up at the bridge the others were taken from.)

Food Festival Revisited

Here's the account of yesterday. Mark and I returned to the food festival. There was a big international food area that wasn't set up Saturday, so we wandered around there a bit and had lunch. (For me, lunch was a Brazilian sausage and some Indian curry with naan). Then we went back to the part of the festival next to the castle, split a cheap bottle of sake, and just sat there hanging out in the sun for a few hours. When it got dark out we got Craig to join us and sat next to the river at the Peace Park and drank some beer. Then we wandered to a game complex and had a round of bowling. Not very exciting, but it was one of those relaxing days where you really appreciate what's around you.

A musical performance at the festival. Interesting, but not really my cup of tea.

The infamous bottle of sake we sat on the grass drinking.

Mark reading the various thank you notes Nova students left taped to the door of the Honko office.

A little mini night festival going on at one of the shrines. More food vendors around it.

The A-Bomb dome as we sat in the Peace Park drinking.

Hiroshima Food Festival

This weekend is the Hiroshima Food Festival, which is set up around the Hiroshima Castle. I wasn't really sure what to expect, but it was free to go check it out, so I decided to take a look. As I got closer to the area it was in, I could tell by the massive number of people moving about that it was probably bigger than I initially thought. I also soon learned that it was more than just a festival for food, although food was certainly the major theme. All told, I think there was more than 400 food vendors set up, and probably another 50 or so booths selling used clothing, plants, appliances, and all manner of other odds and ends. There were also various entertainment set up in the area - some directly part of the festival and others I think just taking advantage of the number of people in the area for the day.
You can kind of get an idea of the crowds from this. This picture has 3-4 vendors though, and as I said, there was probably over 400, so you get an idea for how massive it was in total.

An okonomiyaki vendor.

I'm sure there is an appropriately Japanese name for this that I don't know, but for me, it's fish-on-a-stick. Yummy?

Some wandering guys dressed up as samurai. It was a pretty hot day, so they must have been boiling on this outfits.

I boat that circled the moat around Hiroshima Castle all day. I think you could pay to sit on it as the rowed it around, but I was far too cheap to do that.

The Food Festival Continues!

Yakitori grilling. Those Japanese like their skewered meat.

Some performance involving like... giant snake dragon puppets, and a guy with a sword at one point, and some dancing... I'm sure there was a story involved, but I have no clue what it was.

They had a big section with a bunch of plant displays. I think it was a sort of plant exhibition going on as part of the festival, but a lot of them were really impressive.

Some music. I actually thought this band was really good. I find much of the music popular with Japanese people pretty boring and much of it is too much the same, but this was a bit rockier and had more edge to it. Good variety in their songs too. Too bad I don't know their name.

The garden show center piece. It was this huge garden made in the form of a model of Miyajima. The torii and everything is on the other side (I have pictures of that side too, but I'm only going to include the one here). Pretty amazing though.

I didn't really have much to eat at the festival... I bought some orange icecream which they make right in front of you, squeezing the orange juice and everything, and I had a few miniature okonomiyakis which cost 100 yen each.

Plans

Well, I've learned now that beginning in November I either need to start paying rent here, which I can't afford without using my credit card, or leave the apartment. Nova is shut down for restructuring for at least the next 10 days, and after that it's still awfully iffy. So, assuming I haven't found a job by the end of the month, I see myself with 2 main options. First, I could just buy a plane ticket, and head home, probably losing about $4000 on this venture. Other choice is that I can spend a couple weeks running about Japan and actually see the country, and head home, probably losing $5000. For the extra $1000, I'm thinking it's probably worth seeing the country and getting a bit more mileage out of this experience. I'll start deciding things and hopefully have a plan one way or the other by the end of the week.