From a city already blown up to one that might go any day...

In my quest to reach Yakushima, an island off the very southern tip of Japan, I was making my way south through the archipelegio, stopping off at Hiroshima and Kagoshima on the way. Both are entirely different cities, but linked by one common factor - explosibility.

Hiroshima is of course, synonomous with the atomic bomb dropped by the United States over the city to end the Second World War. Since that time, it has re-shaped itself as a self-proclaimed 'City of Peace', a witness to the destruction of nuclear war, and a focus for anti-nuclear activity. A large area that was at the epi-centre of the explosion has been landscaped into a 'Memorial Peace Park', with monuments to the dead and for the working towards of peace. However, having arrived there in the early evening after departing from Himeji ahead of time, wandering through the park at dusk, it was frankly very difficult to even envisage. The city has recovered so well, the rivers and landscape are so green despite that fact that it was believed that nothing would grow for 70 years after the event, that one can almost be forgiven for thinking that the bomb... well, can't have been that bad.

Hiroshima was the city where I was due to do my first ever couchsurfing, with an American chap called Adam who was living in the city teaching English to primary school children. www.couchsurfing.com is a website through which, by signing up and creating a profile, you become part of a global network of people who offer their couches to travellers who are coming to your city, and vice versa. Obviously I don't have a couch at present - as wonderful and accepting as my parents are, inviting home random strangers and putting them up on the sofa may have been a little much(!) However, I'd made this clear in my profile, and when I was requesting couches, and Adam had agreed to let me stay with him the following evening.
As I didn't want to put him in an awkward position by letting him know that I'd arrived a day ahead of schedule, I checked into yet another in the chain of the excellent K's House hostels that stretch across this area of Japan for the night, and then, as above, went wandering.

The following morning I headed off to the A-bomb museum, and saw how wrong my tentative conceptions of the previous evening had been. I won't say much about the museum (I don't want to preach, and anyway, I would feel like a massive hypocrite given my choice of profession), except to say that it was excellently done, and I felt physically sick after I emerged. I treated myself to a pizza in a riverside cafe, and spent the afternoon puttering about the city, walking down by the river and down by the reconstructed castle before I was due to meet Adam at 6. It was then that the thunder started. It had been that brilliant light all afternoon where its still really muggy and the sunshine is really intense, but oddly surreal because you can see the backdrop of pitch black clothes coming up behind it - I love that intensity of light! At first when the thunder started I was really excited, because I love thunderstorms. Then as it started to get louder and closer and I realised I was really quite far from the centre of town, and wearing shorts and sandals. Then it really started going for it, along with the rain, and there was an ever so quiet little voice in the back of my mind that was like "hmmm.... ok, possibly gonna get hit by lightning...". Lots of fun, though I was a *tad* wet by the time I got to the station to meet Adam.

Adam was actually a great first couchsurfing experience. The *epitome* of all that I fondly and sometimes not-so-fondly associate with Americans, he was forthright as hell, arrogant, dictatorial and would genuinely not let either me or his lovely Japanese girlfriend Mayumi get a word in edgeways for most of the evening. However, he was also a great cook and a generous host, and whisked up a fit spagetti bolagnese whilst I had a shower and we chatted. He and Mayumi were hysterical together, bantering back and forth, and as the evening wore on and more and more of the beer that I had brought was consumed, I started having to act as the emotional interpreter between them both, which was frankly hilarious. English people, we discovered, are like the cultural bridge between the reserved and loyal Japanese and the outspoken and fiercely independent Americans, and thus I was able to act as the therapist between them because I could understand both. Or so we surmised - we had drunk a lot by that point. Adam was also great because we were able to really get our teeth into the whole cultural differences/Japanese stereotypes topic, which we all know is my absolute favourite thing to discuss, and one of the main reasons I wanted to try couchsurfing in Japan more than any other. I had read 'Hokkaido Highway Blues' by Will Ferguson before I came, the experiences of a Canadian living in Japan, (and which I thoroughally recommend by the way, it's both insightful and hilarious) and I wanted to see how much of the stereotypes Adam thought were true, having been out here for 6 years. Far more of an insight than I could possibly get in the space of 5 short weeks of course.

The only slightly awkward moment of the evening was when Adam had entirely passed out and Mayumi was asking me genuinely for advice about their relationship. That was a little bad, because frankly from what I could see, Adam treated her with so little respect (he actually referred to her all the time as 'she', as if she wasn't capable of understanding what we were saying!) and let her speak even less than he did me. She was basically pointing all of this out to me and asking me if I thought this was normal for Western guys and was she being over-sensitive etc, which put me in a horrible position. I tried to gloss over it as much as I could without making her feel like she was a paranoid bitch, but I've got her email so maybe we can strike up a friendship that way. She really was so sweet, and I felt terrible!

The next morning, with Adam absolutely comotose, I followed their recommendations of the night before and headed down the coast on a day-trip to Miyajima, an island in the Japanese Inland Sea, and home of the famous floating torii. The island was considered so sacred that the temple was built out on a pier-like structure into the water, and commoners were only allowed to approach by boat, sailing through the gates of the torii itself. Today it is listed as one of the 'top three views in Japan', so I was a little worried about crowds of tourists. However, given that it came with such strong recommendations, I went along. The Japanese, by the way, are even more comulsive list-makers than I am - as well as a top three views, there is a top 100 bodies of water, top 50 waterfalls, top 50 street-scapes, top three 'disappointing' sights.... I wonder who spends their time selecting and voting for these?

As it was, Miyajima was really nice, the day was hot and we arrived at high tide so the temple and torii looked at their best. It was almost tropical with the clear water and the tree-covered mountains behind. I even took off my socks and shoes and paddled around in the sea a bit, wondering slightly why no-one else was doing the same, until I saw all the small jellyfish that were floating around me! There were lots of tourists, but actually I've found that Japanese tourists don't tend to bother me at all. Yes they have tour groups and take a lot of photos, but there weren't crowds of them and they're polite and quiet and don't drop litter or have obnoxoius kids. Most of all, a tourist attraction here does not mean loads of touts! It's times like this when I realise just how much of an occasional negative impact India had on my attitudes. I got far more hassle from the overly tame deer than I did from the shop-owners, two of them ganged up on me and almost forced me off the breakwater as they spied the food in my hand (that is, the deer, not the shopkeepers).

Kagoshima, at the very southern tip of Japan and the next stop on my itinerary after Hiroshima, is much more off the tourist map than any of the places I had been to thus far, and the difference was immediately visible. I had noticed from talking to gaigin I had met so far that, even though I thought 5 weeks was such a short time to have in Japan, I was there the longest by far. Most people were here on holiday for 2 or 3 weeks, doing the usual circuit of Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka-Hiroshima, with perhaps Mt Fuji or Nagoya thrown in. Japan is just way too expensive to attract the short of long-term backpacker I had met all the time in India and who made me feel so narrow in my travels - those who were going for 16 month trips or whatever. Away from this well-beaten Kansai and southern Honshu path, the gaigin numbers dropped considerably, as did the English language ability. However, this was of course another reason for the couchsurfing...
Of course, it might also have to do with the fact that Kagoshima is built pretty much on the slopes of an extremely active volcano, which showers the city with fresh ash on a weekly basis. Everyone knows that the volcano will blow at some point, and there's nothing they can do about it, so they just accept it. I will admit it was with an air of slight trepidation that I viewed the drifts of ash under my feet as I walked the streets however...

Andrea, my new host, was much quieter than Adam, which made things a little difficult - Adam may have not let me get a word in, but at least we weren't struggling to keep the conversation going. Anyway, we dropped my bag back at her apartment and went for sushi, where we were met by her friends Chienni and Paula, the latter of whom is this extremely friendly and very cool phd student from Colombia, who was a lot more confident in her English, which made things easier. Andrea had warned me in advance that her apartment was small, and obviously I didn't care in the slightest where or on what I slept, but wow. The bathroom was the size of an airplane toilet. No, really. And I had wondered why she didn't have any furniture in her tiny living room, until she actually started rolling her sleeping bag out onto the floor too and I realised that she didn't have a bedroom. Teaching English in Japan pays surprisingly well, but city property prices are city property prices...

For the following day the English owner of the bar at which Andrea chef-ed had organised a coach trip to the beach for all employees, regulars and miscellaneous who wanted to come along, so we had booked ourselves places on the bus. When we rocked up at 10 in the morning and people were already on their second can of beer I started feeling at home, and the rest of the bus trip merely confirmed the impression. A friendly, loud crowd of Europeans, Americans, Africans and Japanese, all around my age, mostly teaching English as a foreign language in Japan, a few studying out there - it was great after the isolation of travelling alone. We ended up on this beautiful beach with a bar, with no-one else besides ourselves, and jet skis and a banana boat driven by the aforementioned bar's owner; to disturb the raucousness. The weather was scorching, the water ridiculously warm and the beer cold. Good stuff all in all!

It was quite funny to see the Japanese girls sitting under the shade in the bar, umbrellas up and long gloves on to protect them from the sun and a tan, whilst the rest of us were pretty much doing the opposite down on the beach. One chap Alma had brought snorkalling gear and asked me if I wanted to give it a go, and it was incredible! I wouldn't have dreamed that we would see anything on a normal beach, but there were sea urchins, some type of skates or rays, jellyfish, sea cucumbers, loads of different types of fish... I'd definitely like to try it again. Apart from the usual Westie mishaps - falling asleep on the beach in the shade with suncream on and waking up several hours later to find myself in the full sun and an attractive shade of lobster; being the ONLY person on the whole trip to get stung by the poisonous jellyfish even though I was in a crowd when it happened (hurt for a few hours and has left a mark, but otherwise ok) - it was a great day! Even though I didn't get to see much of Kagoshima (though we managed to walk across the entire city back to Andrea's apartment), I'm so glad the trip was happening that day. Not only was it a great way to relax after a couple of weeks of non-stop sightseeing, it saved any awkwardness that might have occured with Andrea (even a babbler like myself can only start up 75 or so conversations y'know).

Plus, it was a nice breather before I headed south onto the next part of my trip; the island of Yakushima...

Places stayed: K's House Hiroshima. Near to the station, although further away from the main sights of Hiroshima. The least well equipped of the three K's House hostels I've stayed in so far, but still with all the ridiculously useful maps and information, plus internet, kitchen etc. Having since stayed in Japanese youth hostels, these rank way waay above them.

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Part of trip: Japan and Vietnam

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