A Golden Week with Mama Terman

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May 26th 2008

Published: May 29th 2008

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Jennie T

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city girls in Hiroshima

The first week of May is a chain of holidays (including Showa Day, Constitution Day, Greenery Day, and Boy’s day) that are strung together to form what the Japanese call, “Golden Week.” It is one of the only times most people have a break from their jobs throughout the whole year, so everyone flocks in huge masses to vacation spots. The chaos of it all reminds me of “moving-in” day at West Virginia University, when everyone knows better than to go out in their cars or visit any shopping centers. During Golden Week, the only way you can avoid traffic or getting trampled by the stampede is to hide in the safety of your own home. This, of course, is not what I did. My dear mother came all the way from West Virginia to visit me. She flew across the big blue all alone to visit me and my home in Yuge.

A welcoming committee (three of my obaa-san friends) and I drove to Hiroshima airport to pick her up. She was very jetlagged when she first got here, so I gave her the first day to relax at my apartment while I went to work. After work, however,

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me, my mom, Eri, and her mom at their home in Imabari city

we began the forced march of vacationing in Japan. First we went to a city south of Yuge on mainland Shikoku where my friend Eri’s family lives. To get there, we took an hour ferry ride through the Inland Sea to Imabari port where Eri picked us up.

My mom and I had a nice time with Eri and her mom (who is hilarious) that night, and the next morning they took us to some interesting places in Imabari. One of which was the towel museum. Yes, that’s right; a museum for towels. Imabari happens to be the home of a big towel industry that supplies much of the rest of Japan with very beautiful, high-quality towels. I was a little unenthusiastic about visiting the museum, but to my surprise (or maybe not), my mom loved it and started spending her yen like it was monopoly money in the gift shop.

We took the ferry back to Yuge that night to get a good sleep, because the next morning we headed out for Hiroshima and Miyajima. This is when Golden Week madness hit us. We got in a major traffic jam during the two-hour bus ride there, and

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At the towel museum in Imabari there is this huge display of the cotton they use in their towels. That califlower is made out of fluffy cotton. Weird.

finally, upon arrival, exited the bus into a sea of people. Actually, Japan’s cities normally resemble a sea of people, but during this particular week, it was more like a tsunami of people. First we went to the Hiroshima Peace Park and the Peace Memorial Museum. I had been there before, but it is a must-see for anyone’s first time in Hiroshima. The Peace Park includes sights such as the A-bomb Dome, which is the last standing building from the atomic bomb; the children’s monument for Sadako, a young girl who died of leukemia after being exposed to the atomic bomb’s radiation; the memorial cenotaph; and the eternal flame.

We ate a small lunch in the park and continued on with the flow of the crowds into the Peace Memorial Museum. What should have taken us about two hours to make our way through the museum took us about four hours due to the amount of people inside. We were forced to wait in long lines just to see some of the exhibits in the museum. But, it was definitely worth it to learn about the appalling event that occurred there on August 6, 1945 and to hear Hiroshima’s

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Eri's mom, Nagako, took us to her favorite spot in Imabari where people were picnicing with a beautiful Inland Sea backdrop.

message of peace.

After being thoroughly depressed from the museum, we cheered ourselves up with some Mexican food at my favorite restaurant in Hiroshima, “Otis." And then we ventured out into the endless streets of high-rise department stores, shopping malls, and shopping arcades. Yes, we were in consumer heaven (or rather consumer hell, in my opinion). Japan does have a lot of good shopping even though prices are often outrageous (My mom and I spotted a melon at a gourmet fruit shop for about 150 dollars!!!). So, we looked a lot and bought a little. That night we stopped in good old Mr. Donuts before heading back to our hotel and sleeping like logs.

The next morning our plan was to take a half-hour train and ten-minute ferry to a nearby island off the coast of Hiroshima city in the Inland Sea called Miyajima. However, when we woke up it was raining and the forecast didn’t look good for the rest of the day either. I was hoping to do some hiking on Miyajima Island, so we decided to wait until the next day, and stay another night in Hiroshima city instead. This meant…more shopping!

Actually, first

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Me at the a-bomb dome in Hiroshima city

we visited Hiroshima Castle, which is a reconstruction of the original castle that was there before the atomic bomb. That day was Boy’s Day, so there were some festivities going on inside the castle grounds. Babies were being brought up to a platform in pairs for nakizumo (crying sumo). I described this game in an earlier blog, but basically there is a man who gets in the babies faces and yells a lot to try to scare the babies. The babies compete to see who can hold out longer before bursting into tears. Boys’ day is all about a young son’s bravery, so the baby who holds out the longest is supposedly the braver of the two, and wins. It sounds like child abuse, but it’s actually the most entertaining thing to watch. The confusing looks on the babies’ faces are hilarious!

We spent the entire rest of the rainy day shopping, hour after hour. My feet started killing me halfway through the day, and by the end of the day, my mom’s foot actually had a blister from shopping so much! We literally shopped till’ we dropped.

Thankfully, the next day was sunny and beautiful, so we

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amazed at the thousands of paper cranes at the children's memorial for Sadako in Hiroshima

took the train and ferry out to the island called Miyajima. The entire relatively small island is considered sacred in the Shinto religion, and is covered with tame deer that are thought to be messengers of the gods. The main attraction of the island is a large floating Shinto shrine called Itsukushima Jinja. It is completely built on the water, and the torii gate entrance is positioned out a ways in the Inland Sea. During high tide the torii gate can only be reached by boat, but during low tide, people can walk out to it. This floating torii gate is one of the most famous sights in Japan.

After we roamed around the shrine a bit, my mom and I decided to avoid the crowds and hike up the sacred Mt. Misen. It wasn’t a very long hike (maybe three hours?), but the ascent was basically steep stone steps for about two hours straight. The view from the top was worth it though, and there were some other interesting shrines and monuments at the summit too. After a little break, we hiked back down and heard monkeys all around us, but didn’t see any. Finally we took the

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classic Japanese plastic display food. My mom just had to take a picture.

ferry back to the mainland and got back to Hiroshima city in time to catch our bus back home.

The next day my mom came to school with me. That day I worked at the elementary school, so my mom got to meet all my cute little kids. It was nice to have my mom there, because she took lots of pictures. I never took any pictures of my classes at school because I never have time while I’m teaching. In my third and fourth grade classes all the students gave self introductions to my mom in English, and then we played some games. Then, my mom and I put on a little performance in the gym for all the kids. I played some tunes on my fiddle and my mom did some flatfoot dancing. After playing a few tunes for the kids to watch, they all came up and danced with us too. They loved it and tried really hard to imitate my mom’s steps. Cute!

I took off from work in the afternoon, and my mom and I went to eat lunch at one of the few hole-in-the-wall eateries here. The restaurant is called “Hamaya” and

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me and a big inflated lucky cat. These cats are often displayed at shop enterences because they are supposed to bring good business.

serves okonomiyaki (a cheap, easy kind of savory pancake). There’s only room for about six or seven people to sit inside at the bar where Hamada-san makes the okonomiyaki in front of you on a grill. I warned my mom before we went that eating at Hamaya is like going out to eat with Hamada-san instead of the person who you actually go with. And sure enough he didn’t stop talking the whole time. He’s a great guy though, and always has good stories to tell and pictures to show of life in Yuge fifty years ago or the thirty years that he ran a restaurant in Osaka. I can’t say my mom enjoyed the conversation too much, but she definitely enjoyed the okonomiyaki (one of the few Japanese foods she likes).

I forgot to mention that this day was my mom’s birthday too! So, that night at my adult English conversation class we had a big party. I had casually mentioned to the class a week before that it would be my mom’s birthday, and, in true form, they all showed up with gifts and food. The size of my conversation class somehow doubled that night as many

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entrance to Hiroshima Castle

people with no interest in English showed up just to meet my mom.

The next day was my mom’s last full day in Yuge. I think the best way to see the island is to take a bike ride on the only road that goes all the way around the island. It only takes about an hour to cycle all the way around the island, but we made many stops and took lots of pictures, so it took a few hours. Our first stop around the island was at my favorite beach, Takahama. It is a beautiful beach, but there usually isn’t anybody there.

Next, we cycled around the bulk of the mountainous part of the island (there was a lot of pushing our bikes up hills), and made our way to the other side of the island where hardly anyone lives. In a very small village, called Karyo, on that side of the island, lives my friend Yamazaki-san. He built a small cabin there just for himself after retiring from his sea captain career, and spends his days farming and making pottery now. I thought my mom would like to talk to him since he survived the

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Hiroshima Castle tower

Hiroshima bomb and has some stories to tell about it. Sure enough he had some stories to tell that left my mom and me speechless. After talking and drinking some tea for a while we continued on our journey, but both my mom and I agreed that Yamazaki-san reminds us of my dad!

On our way out of the tiny village, Karyo, one of the obaa-chans came running out of her house to say hello to us and give us a big bag of mikan citrus fruit from her garden (not like I don’t already have a ton at my apartment). She told us that she’s so happy we came to visit Yamazaki-san. Finally we made it back to the so-called “civilization” on the west side of Yuge. We were tired from our trip, but we stopped by the preschool I teach at to say hello to all the little kids there. They were adorable as usual, and when I told them that my mom had come to visit all the way from the U.S., they couldn’t comprehend. They insisted that the Philippines are much farther away that the U.S., so I just said, “Oh, really?” They were right

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Nakizumo inside Hiroshima Castle grounds. Looks like the fellow on the right won this round.

in the middle of snack time, which reminded my mom and I that we were starving too. So, we stopped at the grocery store before returning to my apartment to cook a feast.

The next day we had to go back to Hiroshima prefecture to spend the night at the airport hotel, as my mom’s flight left too early in the morning to make it from Yuge. The night was uneventful (except for the outrageous room rates!), and the next morning I once again said farewell to my mama and watched her plane fly away. I had a good time with my mom, and I’m glad I could share some of the wonderful place where I live and the wonderful people that I know here.

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