"A" is for Bomb

I know that's not the cheeriest title to an entry, but with what's going on in and around Korea right now, somehow I find it funny. Perhaps I should be taking the whole North Korean nuclear development a little more serious, at least in terms of how it will affect me personally, but at the moment I'm content and happy to be working and living in Korea now, and the idea of leaving hasn't taken up more than a slight flicker in my mind.

Shannon and I just had a week (almost) off for Chuseok, which we spent frolicking around in Japan. Wow, what a country Japan is. Everything about that place had something to it that made it just a little unique and special. Heck, even if you were just looking at a plain ol' can of beans, you'd still take a while to get over the bloody cost of them, as the cost of living in Japan is freakin' unreal.

We took a hydrofoil (some kind of jet-boat) to Fukuoka from Busan, and within an hour or two, we had caught a bus to Hiroshima. Over the course of our Japan trip, Shannon and I spent at least half our waking hours travelling from one place to another, which at times was perhaps not the best move as I'll explain later. Nevertheless, we were safely in Hiroshima, and our foreigner adventures were about to begin.

We hadn't done any real preparations for the trip, and had only booked one hotel for the 5 nights we'd be away (and even that we didn't know if they had space until the day before arriving). Experienced as we may be at travelling, it was constantly a challenge finding information booths around Japan, getting hotel info, finding cheap ones and making sure they had vacancy for us. Yep, almost everyday we did this, but it worked out pretty well in the end.

Hiroshima is an amazing and terrifyingly sad city. Our hotel was two blocks from where the atomic bomb was first dropped back in 1945. We spent nearly 4 hours wandering around Peace Memorial Park, looking at sights, taking pictures of one the building left standing after the A-bomb, and visiting the Peace Museum. I still can't quite come to grips with how dramatic and catastrophic the bomb dropping was to Hiroshima, but I've tasted a part of it, and travelling through the city now I noticed many of the remaining signs from that day, including what seems a very high number of people suffering health problems and physical dsifigurements or handicaps.

That evening we went to Miyajima Island, literally translated as Shrine Island. We had a cute little Ryokan to stay in, a traditional Japanese accomodation where we lay out mats on the floor and share a community bathroom (we had the building to ourselves though). Meals in Japan were wonderful up to and including our stay at Miyajima, though the night before arriving was especially noteworthy. Shannon and I walked around Hiroshima for an hour or so before finally deciding to enter this tiny little Japanese restaurant. The chef, who spoke a little English, was a giant ball of giggling, smiling Japanese delight. He talked, laughed and yelled around the restaruant, muddled through charades to figure what we wanted, and walked us out the door once we left, possibly to thank us for not complaining when the bill came out to be a shocking $50.

But, back to Shrine Island. We took far too many pictures I think here, though there was an amazing amount of (you guessed it) shrines and other sights to see. And the deer, the darn things will sneak up to you and eat your backpack while you're wearing it if you're not careful.

After Myajima we went to Nara City - an awesome little town with a ton of random events taking place, yet it was a little too remote perhaps and maybe we should have avoided it. It was a 5-6 hour busride to Nara, and we were only going for one night, so we took the bullet train. $210 later we were there, hunting for a hotel again (somehow this time we ended up in a travel agents office). We only came to see this giant wooden castle, but we did manage to find some other exciting things while in Nara, such as an evening boat ceremony (yeah, I don't really know what it was) and some traditional Japanese musicians. The castle itself was very impressive, with a 25 foor Buddha dwelling inside, however, did I mention the travel cost to get here? That was only one-way, so now we had to spend another $350 to get back to catch our boat. Whooooo, that was a fair chunk of change.

Our last night in Japan was spent at a Japanese Onsen - a natural hot springs bath. While not very "traditional", this bath did have an outdoor setting to it and was naturally spring fed. Since you do it completely naked, Shannon and I had to have our own separate Onsen adventures, but it was amazingly relaxing to just lay around and do nothing for an hour.