Day 5 - Travel to Hiroshima

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Before we move onto today's adventures I just want to put a plug in for a great little (or not so little) market area within Kyoto.

The main shopping street is Shijo-dori (about a 2 min walk from my hotel The Katasuma Kyto Hotel. Sub-note: A lot of the main hotels in Kyoto are close to Kyoto station. It is a good 10 minute taxi ride from Shijo-Dori, about 1050 yen allowing for traffic). About 5 mins down Shijo-dori (left hand side) is Teramachi street.
Termachi street is a market style side street. Lots of small restaurants, clothing and knick-knack stores. It takes about 10 mins to walk down without stopping.
This is a great place to spend some time and money if you want to get away from the 5th Avenue style shopping that is Shijo-Dori.
I had dinner at a pizza place (think pizza hutt style) called Shakers which was at the very end of the 2nd street of Teramachi.
It is an upstairs restaurant and again noone speaks any English. But the waitress points to the sign on the wall 850 yen all you can eat + 250 yen for a glass of softdrink (slightly more if you want beer). The place was occupied by mainly by young teens and the odd foreign traveler. The all you can eat pizza, noodles, salads and dessert was great, especially for the finance conscious or if you have kids in tow. Obviously I still haven't come our of my shell yet and ventured into a real Japanese restaurant, but i'll get there..... maybe.

This morning I left the hotel around 10am (check out at the Karasuma Kyoto is 11am. I recommend the hotel for proximity, space, helpfulness of the staff, allowance of early check in, it's on the tour bus route and only a shortish cab ride to the JR station).

I grabbed a cab and headed to the railway station. I spoke to the reception the night before to figure out what train I need to catch to get me to Hiroshima. The timetable at the hotel was all in Japanese, but the concierge was really helpful and circled the times the train departed. I decided to double check and got the English timetable off the following site http://english.jr-central.co.jp/info/timetable/index.html. The times he gave me were for the Nozomi train. This train is not covered by the JR Railpass.
To catch the Hikari train I actually needed to go to Shin-Osaka (the next major city from Kyoto) and change trains there.

The cab ride was a little slow as there was a bit of traffic around. However this allowed me to take in one of the more humorous moments of the trip to date.
There was an older gentleman standing in a garage. He was holding a broomstick (no broom on the end) up like a Samurai sword. His whole posture was such that he looked like he was about to "strike". Watching his eyes it was clear that he was attempting to swat a fly (or other small insect). It was hilarious. Mr Miyagi used chopsticks. He uses broomsticks. Brilliant. I think the fly left before he had a chance to attack it.

Towards the end of the cab ride (when the traffic was heaviest) the driver turned to me and said something in Japanese. I just shrugged my shoulders. I had no idea what he said. I think he may have been apologising or explaining that the traffic was heavy.

I boarded the 10:33 to Shin-Osaka (the train information at the train stations is brilliant once you get the hang of things) a 15 minute train ride. I wasn't paying attention to the car I got on until I sat down and the train started moving. I was in the smokers car. Yuck. This car stunk of stale smoke which quickly attracts itself to your clothing. Pay careful attention to the car you choose.
On the Shikansen (Bullet Train) the front cars are un-reserved cars i.e sit in any available seat, while the latter cars are reserved i.e you have a pre-allocated seat similar to a plane. JR rail passes only give you access to un-reserved. So far this hasn't been an issue as the cars have all been relatively empty as I have made an effort not to travel in peak times (before 9am).

I boarded the next Hikari train bound for Hakata. Hiroshima is the 5th stop on this journey. I nearly got caught out. Normally the trains have 16 carriages and the cars pull up alongside a corresponding number on the platform i.e car 1 pulls alongside space 1. I walked up to space 1 and waited for the train. The sign said the next train was the 11:22 to Hakata, but it stopped way back at space 5. The train was only 8 carriages long so doesn't use the full platform. Bit of a trap for young players. No issues though as I had plenty of time.

The ride to Hiroshima is around 1.5 hours long. The train was relatively empty. I again just switch on the ipod and watched the world go by (at a great rate of knots).
Pulling into Hiroshima station you pass the New Hiroshima Municipal Baseball ground or better known (and sign-posted) as Mazda Stadium. This only opened in the last couple of months. It is the home to the Hiroshima Toyo-Carps.

Hiroshima station is a pretty big station (it has 2 McDonalds within its compound) but again it is well sign-posted and easy to get around. My Travel Agent has given very good instructions thus far in the journey. The map and walking distance to my Hiroshima Hotel was spot on. Take the south Entrance and walk 3 minutes past the Fukuyo department store and you there. Hiroshima Intelligent Hotel (I don't think it's a reference to the type of guests they get there). Great instructions as it saved an unnecessary cab fare.

There isn't a lot around the hotel. It appears to be other hotels and office buildings in the vicinity. Looking at Tourist map I in 1 corner of the city. The main city (appears) to be about a 10 min car ride away. A good point for people considering travel. Close proximity to the Railway station isn't likely to put you in the city, so be prepared for some cab, subway or bus rides to get you into the main part of town. Point to note is Subway is not covered by JR rail pass.

Walking around I passed a large Pachinko & slots arcade. Most travel guides warn you against visiting these places. Not for safety but more for financial reasons. Pachinko is a type of gambling in Japan. It is very popular.
The arcades are very noisy and it would be near impossible to hold a conversation in them.
I broke the rules for interest sake and went in to have a look.
It is set up very similar to the pokie areas in casinos. Lines and lines of Pachinko machines. I really don't get how it works. Pachinko is (to me) a cross between pinball and those old school marble games where you navigated a ball through a maze that has holes in it. Your best to google it to understand it, because I don't. I just saw a lot of people with buckets full of little steal balls.

I headed down one floor to the slots. This looked more familiar... slightly. These are different to the slots you see in casinos. They have screens in the middle and 3 rows of spinning wheels.
I broke another rule and decided to give it a go. I put a 1000 yen note into the machine and it spat out quite a number of tokens to play the slots with.
It works like other slot machines in that you decide if you want to bet 1, 2 or maximum for each spin.
then you push a little lever to start the wheels spinning. There are 3 buttons. 1 below each wheel. You push each button to stop each wheel. A bit of a variation to the normal slots, I assume to give the facade that there is an element of skill involved (I can tell you there's not as the wheels spin so fast there is no way you can see the individual symbols to line them up). That sucked up my 1000 yen in around 5 mins. I got out of there. I can see why travel books discourage entering these places. I don't think there was an age limit either.

I decided to take a wander out to the Baseball stadium. It was reasonably close (probably a 2k walk in the end) and I always like to support a sports team in my visiting countries.
It's not a bad walk to the stadium, you head into an older part of the city. Not a lot around but on a nice day it's a good way to kill time. The road is well marked (even has a dedicated footpath for the baseball fans to walk along) and the walls have pictures and biographies of members of the team (in japanese of course). Even the sewer man-hole covers have the team logo on it!

I spent about 30 mins in the souvineer shop as I wanted to pick up a team jersey for a friend (he is baseball mad). I asked one of the cashiers who the big home-runner was for the Carps. She looked stunned told me wait there and ran to get someone else. She came back with another attendant. I asked her the same question. She laughed and told me number 5 Kenta Kurihara. She then turned to the other assistance said something in Japanese and they both laughed. I hate not being able to speak Japanese!

I brought a team jersey and left. I asked the information desk lady when the next game was (if it was tonight I was keen to get to the game), unfortunately she struggled with my question. I wrote it down and she wrote something back. I still don't know what she wrote. I don't think there was a game on tonight.

You can't access the ground but I managed to get a couple of photographs from the outer concourse.
There was a couple getting wedding photo's taken outside the main entrance. They must really love baseball!

I wandered back to the hotel and more or less spent the balance of the afternoon there. It gave me a chance to catch up on some laundry. Thankfully some hotels provide a washing machine and dryer. It costs about 600 yen to wash and dry a load of washing. Much cheaper than the 4000 yen charge to get the hotel to launder it for you.

All hotels to date have provided free internet access in the room. If you don't have a laptop you can hire then for 1000 yen a day (but my suggestion is take a laptop with you). The connections are fast. I used mine tonight to skype with a friend back home, it keeps cost down for those phone calls home. Not to mention providing those daily travel blog updates.

Tomorrow I have a full day tour of Hiroshima and neighboring Miyajima. I'm really looking forward to this as the tour takes in many of the memorials associated with the tragedies of WW2. Also tomorrow is my last "assisted" day in Japan. I still have a travel day and overnight in Tokyo on Monday but this is my last tour.

So tomorrow look out for a history lesson, some opinion and emotional rantings as I try and give an written and visual representation of Hiroshima's history.

Sayonarra

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Photos

Nose of bullet train
Waiting to board from Kyoto to Shin-Osaka

Looking left outside Hiroshima station
Older part of town, heads out to Mazda stadium

Mazda Stadium
Opened in April / May 2009