Day 8: To Hiroshima!

Well, I'm falling way behind on these. As predicted, I lack motivation to sit at my computer and type when there are other things to be doing.

After our day in Fukuoka (the furthest we could go on that side of Japan... easily), we were ready to start heading back to Tokyo, and eventually to Hokkaido. For our return journey, we decided to head to Hiroshima. I don't remember much of the day up to reaching Hiroshima, so I'll assume nothing exciting happened. We walked to the local train station, rode it to Fukuoka terminal, and hopped onto the shinkansen to Hiroshima.

We knew the name of the hostel we wanted to stay at, and even had some basic directions saying the place was no more than 7 minutes walk from the main station. While we didn't know exactly where the hostel was, we figured we could just walk in a random direction from the station for 7 minutes and stumble upon it. About 30 minutes later we returned to the station. Sean was complaining about the heat more than usual and was becoming frustrated, I think, and thus difficult to deal with. At the station, I tried asking one of the workers in one of the gate offices, thinking that a hostel so close might be common knowledge. I was wrong.

When I turned around, I didn't see Sean anywhere. He had been wandering in and out of stores looking for freezers to cool off in front of, so I checked a few stores, but to no avail. When I finally spotted Sean, it was in the last place I expected to see him, outside. He had asked some lady where Hana (the name of the hostel) was, and she had marked it on our map for him. We headed off toward the nearby fish market.

After walking up and down several roads, we finally said screw it, and asked a nearby bait and tackle shop owner if he had heard of the Hana hostel, and after finally understanding that I wasn't asking where I could find some flowers, he said he didn't know. With people who supposedly work right next to the place not knowing where it was, we were beginning to think the place didn't exist.

Again, we returned to the station, this time to the tourist information center. She was able to provide us with not one, but two maps to the place, in a spot different from where we had been told earlier.

This time, we were able to find the place with no problem. We checked into our room to find we had a female guest staying with us, though we never saw her until that night. We wandered around the town and by the river for awhile before returning to the hostel and hanging out in the dining room.

Afterward, we returned to our room and went to sleep early, about 10pm.

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For the first part of our stay here in Japan, Christopher has been mostly useless, which is interesting seeing that he's the one unhealthily obsessed with Japan. He's mostly failed to add anything truly helpful or signification to our trip and until now ive let this slide. Now that im being targeted and portrayed as the lesser contributor, i feel its time to unveil the truth. This is essentially a response to his slander and lies. So basically a blog argument....everybody loses....its blogging. Ok so some background information thats important in revealing his true uselessness. He studied japanese(the language and customs and what not) in school and continued a study of the language through some program at home. He watches anime, which means something im sure, and has wanted to go to japan for years. Basically he explodes over the thought of japan. So with that, one would expect Christopher to be a fairly solid japan backpacking partner. I mean for starters he can speak japanese right? Lie. Or at least he never does. We've been lost pretty much the entire trip and im pretty sure he hasn't said anything important in japanese yet (which is fine and mostly awesome) but when sleep, or especially food is on the line it would be nice if the person familiar with the language would at least attempt to ask for directions or suggestions or something. Of course that's too much to ask of Christopher. Apparently he's not comfortable speaking the language in front of Japanese people (who else is he going to speak japanese to?), so that leaves me to completely butcher the japanese language as i cycle through my five phrases/word combos (most only pertain to food). And honestly if he's not comfortable asking someone for help or whatever thats fine, but if he's not going to do that, i would appreciate it if his more adventurous/problem solving side would shine through....and to his credit he it is happening more often.

I guess Hiroshima is a decent example of his original worthlessness and slight shift towards contributing. For starters I'll admit i was definitely frustrated as he accurately mentioned above. But that was because Christopher took us on a random, useless journey around the station in search of the hostel while the humidity was easily at 1000%. And the frustration didn't stop me from trying to find the Hostel in a much more productive manner (after a quick wonder through the frozen goods section...crazy hot). So i found this lady and managed to get a map with the hostel's location. We walked to where the hostel was supposed to be and it definitely wasn't there. We continued past the hostel's fairy tale location and into the nearest post office (post offices in japan are supposed to be solid with directions) and they hadn't heard of the hostel that was supposedly on the same street. They did, however, direct me to the nearest police box (which are supposed to be even more bossy with directions). Went to the police box and they too had no idea where Hana Youth Hostel was. So we once again headed back for the train station, christopher following adding nothing aside from a few snide comments here and there. One of which caused a slight rage/attack. Basically i very politely and respectfully pointed out some flaws i felt my brother may or may not have had. Overall i'd say the rage session was beneficial because once we returned to the station christopher stepped up his game. I wondered off to satisfy my needs (i enjoy food) and christopher scurried off in the other direction. I pulled up a nice cozy piece of wall to rest on and a short while later christopher returned looking very pleased with himself. I was impressed, he had not one, but two maps of the area and directions to the Hana Youth Hostel. So i was pumped to try searching again and im sure christopher was bursting inside with joy and pride. Finally with accurate directions and maps we found the hostel. Turns out we passed it at least three or four times.

Jumping ahead, Hakodate is easily one of my favorite towns. The low temperatures and humidity % ensured Hakodate a position near the top of my favorite town list and as an extra bonus this was the place christopher magically decided to like food, meaning i ate. The town itself was awesome too. Ocean near by, sandy beaches, mountains for hiking, a boss hotel manager, and a bro mart.

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Part of trip: Japan: Do I Eat or Do I Sleep?

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