From Japan to Shanghai to Cambodia

Wow… Sorry again about the long gap between updates. It’s a catch 22 really. The more things that happen means more to write in the blog but it also means less time to write it. If we weren’t doing anything noteworthy, I’d have all the time in the world to write, but nothing to write about.

For the sake of continuity and record keeping, I’ll stick to the chronological order of things despite the space it will take.

From Tokyo, we left for a small town called Takayama. With less than 50,000 people, it was a huge size difference than Tokyo and a very welcome change. By the time we took the 3 hours worth of trains to get there it was dark and freezing cold, but the small town feel and empty, quiet streets were such a relief. Alexa had booked us into a traditional Japanese room in one of the local boutique hotels called the Rickshaw Inn. The proprietor showed us to our room and we were very impressed with how authentic it was. The floor was covered in those grass fiber mats and our beds were thick pads on the floor called tatamis. We had a table at which we had to sit on cushions on the floor. The window covered in a rice paper screen and the exposed wooden beams rounded out the feel of the room.
After dropping off our bags, we hit the nearly closed town to find some dinner. We had read about a Mexican restaurant in town and were dying to check it out, so we headed in that direction. When we arrived, we were delighted to find a tiny, hole-in-the-wall place decorated in a very authentic Mexi-nese style and run by a young Japanese guy who had studied cooking in Guadalajara. The food was even better than the novelty of eating in an authentic Mexican restaurant in the middle of nowhere Japan. With stomachs full of a good meal, we retired for the night and actually slept pretty well despite the unusual sleeping arrangements.
We hit the town the next day, enjoying the few sights and soaking up the small town atmosphere. Many of the buildings and main streets were preserved in their original style and it made for a very quaint feel that we enjoyed very much. It was so nice to be out of the bustle of big cities for the first time in months that it really started to turn our overall impression of Japan around. The weather was nice, there was no smog and hardly any people (relatively speaking – this was still Japan afterall).

From Takayma, we headed south for a town called Nara. It’s a town known for its large temple and shrine filled park and hundreds of wandering and friendly deer. This time we stayed in a business hotel near the train station that proved to be very convenient. We visited a temple that is the current record holder for largest wooden structure in the entire world and also holds one of the largest statues of Buddha. I definitely believe the claims as I was very impressed with the size, detail and grandeur of the place. We trekked across the park to see a shrine famed for its famous entrance path lined with stone lanterns. This was definitely the best sight in Nara. The lanterns lining the path were old and moss covered and looked exactly like you want them to. There were hundreds of them of all shapes and sizes lining the path and each one warranted a good look and a photo. The shrine itself wasn’t particularly special, but the lanterns made it worth the walk.
The deer were a really fun addition to the experience. They were miniature by American standards, but not nearly as skittish and liked to eat right from our hands. We fed them some of our leftovers from our convenience store breakfast from the day before in addition to some stale sour cream and onion Pringles we had in our possession from Kyoto a week prior. So do us a favor, if the city of Nara ever calls you wondering what happened to their deer, deny everything.

From Nara, we made a brief stop in Himeji to see the famous castle there. It dominates the city, sitting high above the main boulevard and acting as a focal point. Alexa and I decided to trade cameras for the day, so I had her digital still camera and she had my video camera. It was a lot of fun to trade jobs for the day and I really got into taking pictures of the place. We took a tour of the inside of the castle, but it turns out that the outside is much more photogenic. Even still, we took our time touring the place and documenting it before we headed on to the nearby gardens. The castle gardens were almost as impressive as the castle. Impeccably manicured and thoughtfully arranged into 12 parts, each with a different theme, they were well worth the extra several dollars on the admission ticket.

From Himeji, we continued on to Hiroshima, a city we were both very keen to see. I’m a bit of a history nerd at times and I was thrilled to see such a significant site from both WWII and human history in general. We arrived in town early and left our stuff at the hostel to head out to the peace park and museum.
Our first stop is the Atomic Bomb Dome – essentially the remains of a city administration building that was almost directly below the bomb blast (the detonation was about 600m overhead to maximize its effectiveness). Because the shockwave came down from overhead, the building’s structure survived surprisingly intact. What remains is a bizarrely twisted frame of a dome and some brick walls preserved exactly as it looked after the bomb went off. It’s left as a memorial to the victims and a reminder of the devastation of nuclear weapons.
From there, we visited the children’s memorial dedicated to all the young victims of the bomb. It was erected in honor of one girl in particular who was two years old at the time of the blast and was exposed to high doses of radiation. However, she didn’t see any effects until she contracted leukemia at the age of 10. When she was diagnosed, she became determined to live and started folding paper cranes (a symbol of longevity in Japan) in an effort to pull through. Her goal was to fold 1000 of them, but died before she could finish. Her classmates were aware of her efforts and, in honor of her, finished folding the cranes for her. Ever since, students around the world have folded cranes and put them around this memorial to promote peace and remember the children who died as a result of the bomb.
We moved on to the peace flame – a flame left burning until the last nuclear weapon has been destroyed. I think it’s a nice idea and I hope and yearn for that as much as anyone, but I just don’t think that it will realistically ever happen. There are just too many people who see possession of such a weapon as a safety measure or ticket to power. It’s very sad thought, especially in a place like Hiroshima whose residents still carry the memories and scars from that day.
Just beyond the flame is the Hiroshima Atomic Bomb Museum. It starts with a very informative account of the events leading up to the bomb including Japan’s involvement in the war and the Manhattan Project (the codename for the development project in the US). Then the feel changes when you walk to the next display – two scale models of the city, one before and one after. It is truly frightening to see the damage wrought in three dimensions. The bomb reduced a bustling city into a flat plane. There was simply nothing left in a multi kilometer radius save the burned out shells of some concrete structures. Many of the casualties were instantly vaporized. The temperature at the center of the initial fireball was millions of degrees, or to put it in another way, several magnitudes hotter than the surface of the sun. The heat blast caused surfaces to blacken and consequential shadows where there was something in the way. One of the most poignant was a staircase from a bank with the shadow of a man etched permanently onto the stone. The man was incinerated and left a heat shadow of himself on the stone behind him.
The museum continued on in this manner for quite a while and finally dumped us on the other side with quite heavy hearts. It was very, very moving to be in Hiroshima in person and witness firsthand the destructive power of those weapons. I’ve studied WWII history, with an emphasis on the atomic bombs no less, and had always held the academic opinion that the bombs were necessary to end the war. After being there and witnessing the surreal suffering inflicted on the citizens that day, it’s tough to remain so detached. So many people who were completely blameless suffered so terribly and that’s not condonable regardless of the outcome. The bomb was so indiscriminate in its victims and the radiation had such long term effects that it was much more than a weapon. After seeing that museum and hearing the stories, seeing the pictures and experiencing the museum, it’s hard to imagine weapons like that ever being used against humans ever again. I sincerely hope that it never happens.
That day was Thanksgiving for us, so we decided to go out to a nice dinner. We found a quaint Italian place near the museum and had a 3 hour long meal and great conversation. We lasted that long due to a cold and steady rain that threatened the walk home.

The next day, we headed to a nearby island called Miya Jima. Jima is the word for island in Japanese, hence the bells ringing in your head and connections made to names like Iwo Jima. It’s famous for a large wooden archway (called a torii) that sits out in the water off the coast of the island. It was believed that the island was sacred and that commoners were unable to set foot on it before traversing through the archway. Even then, they were confined to the shrine on the shore. Nowadays, we commoners can enjoy the natural beauty of the island, so that’s what we did. We checked out the beautiful shrine and its floating torii, then headed up the mountain in a cable car. The fall colors were really starting to come through with the crimson Japanese maples and maize gingko trees stealing the show. We made it to the top of the lift and were greeted with stunning views over a vast bay filled with smaller islands. We took lots of pictures, did some light hiking and enjoyed a long view from the coffee shop before heading down again. All in all, a really nice day.

After leaving Hiroshima, we headed for the other city with a similarly dark past – Nagasaki. We arrived mid-morning and checked into our hostel. Upon entering our room, we were greeted with the quite unpleasant smell of old tatami mats used as a floor covering. The room was Spartan at best and looked as if no one had stayed there since 1973 or so. We had to make our own bed, the heat didn’t work, the sink had separate faucets for hot and cold water, and the shower didn’t have hot water until 8:15am when they turned their boilers on. The bed was tucked into a nook in the room with nearly no space on either side, so getting in or out of bed was something more akin to a gymnastic routine than a graceful egress. Nonetheless, it was cheap and close enough to what we wanted to see.
The first day in Nagasaki was full of colonial era sightseeing. It was one of the only places that Europeans were allowed back in the 1800’s and there was a small settlement of traders and merchants. There is a collection of European style buildings clustered on a hillside called Glover Gardens – a sort of outdoor museum – that we wiled our afternoon away visiting. It felt like we stepped out of Japan momentarily and into colonial Europe. It started to get increasingly cold, a change for which we were not dressed, so we headed back not long afterwards.
The second day at Nagasaki was what we were really there for. Although we had visited the sites in Hiroshima only a couple days before, we wanted to see the museum and monuments in Nagasaki as well. Given such grave and important events, we felt it necessary to see both cities and their memorials. And I’m really glad we did. Hiroshima definitely seems to get more of the attention as the first city ever attacked with a nuke, but I think that Nagasaki does a much more respectful and professional job remembering the victims. The bomb dropped there was much further off target than the one dropped before and instead of hitting the naval dockyard, it landed in a residential area north of the city. Out of the 70,000 or so killed, almost all were women and children. The memorial in the city consisted of 4 parts. First was a statue park with pieces donated by all manner of countries and cities from around the world (including the now non-existent USSR, Czechoslovakia, and the German Democratic Republic). It was really interesting to see how each place decided to design their small monument to peace. From a sphere of nude bronze children holding each other’s hands and ankles from Minnesota, to a simple cutout of Brazil from, you guessed it, Brazil. They were all donated for the mid 80’s opening of the park to promote peace. The second monument was a large, black stone obelisk in the middle of a large open space designating the hypocenter. It was very moving to stand right there where the bomb hit, but more so by what happened while we were there. As we were taking pictures and taking it in, we were approached by an old Japanese man handing out flyers. He was a survivor from the bomb dropped there. His English was basic, but he told us a bit of his story. He was 8 years old at the time and he and his family lived just outside of town. When the bomb went off, he and his family were too far away to be hurt, but because they were able bodied, they were conscripted to help clean up. He didn’t get into much detail, but I can only imagine the unspeakable and grotesque horrors he must have seen as a child. 64 years later, he was there at the park to give flyers to tourists advertising a website where survivors had recorded their testimonies about the bomb. I couldn’t believe that despite what he had witnessed, he was able to stand there in that place with a soft smile, encouraging passers-by not to forget what had happened. I was already emotional from the gravity of the monument and his courage and dignity to keep those distressing but important memories alive, but was all I could do to hold the tears back when, with a nod and a look in his eyes that spoke volumes of emotion and forgiveness, he told us to have a nice day. I thought that seeing the museum in Hiroshima had made the tragedies real to me, but until I shook hands with that man, I really had no idea. With just those few moments of interaction, I knew that I could say that I really understood what had happened there.
After the hypocenter monument, we continued on to the third memorial, the actual bomb museum. It was more spread out and had a much better design than the one in Hiroshima. The layout had a logical flow and the short films they displayed were really top notch. The second atomic blast was much more documented and the museum is testament to that. As you exit the museum, you are directed toward the fourth memorial, the remembrance hall for the victims. It’s constructed completely underground as a type of catacomb, but is absolutely beautiful in its modern architecture. The main hall is several stories high and has 8 illuminated pillars through the center. At the front is a floor to ceiling glass case filled with the names of those who died as a result of the blast. It was so peaceful and tastefully done that we hardly spoke a word the entire time. Overall, quite an amazing set of memorials that is worth a pilgrimage.
After our long morning of touring the memorials, we grabbed a late lunch and set out to find a book store. We were looking for a couple of Lonely Planet guides for some future travel and hadn’t had much luck in other cities. We happened upon a department store but our luck ran out when we found the English book section to be only a few square meters and mostly filled with books designed to teach English. The experience wasn’t a total loss though. Throughout the store, Japanese style Christmas music was being piped at ear shattering volumes. Just imagine your favorite Yule-tide melodies digitized and laid over an incessant techno beat. Pure magic – if you want to induce a pounding headache. Even still, worth the cultural experience.

We left Nagasaki the following morning for a town called Kumamoto. We arrived at the station and asked the information desk for directions to the Kumamoto Station Hotel. As promised, it was only a couple blocks away, but my…what a few blocks they were. If Japan had a Detroit, Kumamoto would be it. Graffiti, boarded up buildings and trash all greeted us on our 5 minute walk. Our hotel was clearly constructed by someone with a penchant for Stalinist concrete architecture. It was stark and austere and featured no English lettering for identification. The old woman at the reception desk was quite nice though. She spoke no English but checked us in without much fuss. We had a large room (the largest we’d had in Japan) that was actually quite well equipped. We even had access to free laundry facilities, albeit they were outdoors and quite beat up.
Kumamoto was to be our base of operations for 2 days as we did some laundry and headed off to see the Aso-san volcano. The laundry went without a fuss and the day at the volcano proved to be an expensive but unique experience. We took two trains, a bus and a cable car to reach the summit of a steaming, active volcano. You could see right down into the crater to the steaming sulfuric water down below. Because of the toxicity of the gasses coming out, they keep constant measurements. If the levels get too high, they close the summit and everyone is evacuated. Additionally, if the volcano ever decides to erupt, as it occasionally does, they’ve constructed small concrete huts to shield any unfortunate souls from the rush of lava. I don’t know about you, but sightseeing is almost always better if there’s an element of danger.

From Kumamoto, we headed for Beppu, our final stop on our 3 week Japanese adventure. The town is famous for its “onsen” – Japanese hot spring baths and we thought it fitting to end the trip with some relaxation. We’d opted to stay just one night at a hostel with its own onsen built in which was simple but still did the trick. We did check out another onsen outside of town as per a friend’s recommendation which was also quite good. It was a very back-to-nature type place with natural looking rock pools and facilities integrated into the landscape. Aside from some spa hopping, we really didn’t do much besides relax and recover from our trip.

We left Beppu the following afternoon to get to Osaka again to catch our flight to Shanghai the next day. We stayed in the Ramada airport hotel and transferred flights and airports in Korea on the way back. Arriving in Shanghai was a very bizarre experience. Having lived there for 3 months, then being gone for a month to other (frankly, much better) places, we had a strange sense of familiarity but not really a sense of home. We needed to come back to Shanghai to swap suitcases for the second phase of our trip to warmer weather. Thankfully, our friend Wei Tan, whom we like to call the nicest woman in China, agreed to hold our bags for us. We dragged our stuff to her place, swapped stories and clothes then headed down the street to the hotel we’d booked. We had seen this hotel many times before but had never gone inside. We booked it because of its proximity to Wei’s but were delighted to find that it was infinitely classier than we had expected. The room was huge and very well decorated. Everything was modern and elegant and we had a great view of the city. Unfortunately, we didn’t have long to enjoy it. We left for our long night out of dinner at Element Fresh (one of our favorite restaurants in SH) and foot massages at our favorite massage parlor. It was so nice to be in the city but of the city, so to speak. We could treat our brief stay there as former residents – taking the best of, while not being bothered by the host of annoyances we faced while living there. Unfortunately, the freezing cold weather put a damper on things and I started to catch a cold.
The next morning, we got some breakfast and headed to our old apartment to meet our leasing agent one last time. He had a gift of some really nice Chinese tea and was genuinely sad to see us go. He really was a great guy and worked so hard to get us into that great apartment. After he left, I went and got a haircut while Alexa stayed with our bags in a Starbucks. From there it was a quick stop at the pearl market for some last minute gifts, then off to the airport again to fly to Cambodia.
I honestly think that China is out to get us sometimes. We had a stopover in Guanghzou (southern China) on our way to Phnom Penh, Cambodia where, for some reason, we would have to re-check our bags and re-check in ourselves. Unfortunately, our flight out of Shanghai was late by about 30 minutes which left us absolutely no time to make our next flight. I was feeling pretty miserable with the cold I had come down with in SH the night before and we were way overloaded with bags but there we were literally running down the corridors of the airport trying to make our connection. When we arrived at the check in desk about 20 minutes before scheduled departure, the agent told us that the flight was closed and we would have to go to the manager’s counter for rebooking. Miraculously, with begging, pleading, and a promise to give them our firstborn, we were allowed to check in. We literally threw our luggage on the conveyor and pushed through security as fast as we could without looking dangerous. Because I was carrying on an extra bag, Alexa beat me in the dash for the gate. When she arrived, she asked if she could still board the plane and was told that it was impossible. I watched her from afar, still dragging my bags, as she nearly collapsed in disappointment and exhaustion. I knew we had missed the flight and we were stuck in China again. However, when I arrived, I too asked the agents about the status of the flight and they said “10 minutes,” which of course I took to mean that we were 10 minutes late. Just then, I realized that I was being stared at. I turned around to see a group of very tan and confused south east asian looking faces looking back at me. Then I realized what was happening. I rephrased my question to the ticket agents and they explained, very matter of factly, that the plane was being cleaned and we couldn’t board for another 10 minutes. Now I want you to imagine that you are a Cambodian family on vacation in China and you are on your way home. You’re waiting patiently for your flight to begin boarding when two crazed, sweating and generally disheveled looking white people come running toward you at full speed as if being chased. They come to a screeching halt at the counter only to explode in anger for no apparent reason. As one of them starts crying, the other looks at you blankly, then as if something has just clicked, his expression changed from bewilderment to puzzlement. Then as he addresses the agent again, the emotions change almost as quickly as the two came running down the moving sidewalk. They start to laugh and hug each other and strip off several layers of clothing, releasing a thick cloud of BO throughout the area before standing in line behind you.
Needless to say, we made the flight and arrived on time and with our bags to Phnom Penh, the capital city of Cambodia.