Tokushima: the end of Shikoku and adult cafes in Kobe

---

Well, I can't say I'm surprised, it had been chasing me all over the country, it was bound to happen some time wasn't it? Yep, the typhoon caught up with me. The last proper entry I wrote when I was in Takamatsu was the day it happened, after writing that entry I was about to make my way to the station to catch a train to Tokushima, but things didn't quite turn out that way. As I made my way back to the station from the internet cafe, I walked through the covered shopping arcades as that was the quickest way, and I noticed that a lot of the shops were closed and they had taped up their windows and doors and put huge sand bags out the front, I noticed that they had signs on their doors and when I had a look it said that due to the typhoon coming in the next couple of hours they had closed early. Well this made me slightly concerned but I thought maybe it was just a precaution that everyone was taking. However when I walked outside the weather had got considerably worse since before, raining much harder and the wind was so so strong, I made my way to the station as quick as I could so I could get out of there, but to my horror they had canceled all trains and buses and most of the major roads in all of Shikoku for the rest of the day. There was no escaping, all the routes had been closed, what was I to do?

I considered waiting it out at the station with a load of other people who had obviously been stranded too, but I asked the station officer when they would start up again and he said no-one could tell me that, they might be closed the next day too! So the only solution was to find somewhere to stay for the night, so I walked outside very unwillingly to try to find a cheap business hotel where I could stay, but I wasn't prepared to walk very far because the weather was getting worse and worse by the minute, it felt a bit creepy actually, there were hardly any cars on the roads except taxis and even less people, all the shops were closed, it felt a little like a ghost town, everyone was inside, and that was where I wanted to be too. I walked around the station area and asked a few cheaper looking hotels if they had room but no luck, I guess there were too many people in the same situation. So I had to go to the huge 5 star hotel that was right next to the station, and of course they had room, but man it was expensive! There wasn't much I could do though, the station was fairly open which meant that the wind and rain could enter it and I didn't have time to find other places. I quickly went back to the station to get my bags out of the locker and on my way back with them, I almost got blown over. The wind was blowing against me and this time I have to admit defeat, it got me, I couldn't move and then it started to blow me backwards! And this is with all the extra weight of my backpack and other bag!

When I finally got inside I spent the rest of the night watching it out the window and on the TV. They had one whole channel dedicated to typhoon information. Apparently it was the worst one they've had in a ages, I can't remember the exact time of the last one but it was some years ago. The scariest thing was seeing the pictures of it on the TV and the places where I had just come from (like Kagoshima, Miyazaki which I went through on the train, and Oita which is near Beppu) had it really bad. Flooding and landslides, and the last I heard there were 6 deaths and about 14 people missing, and over 300,000 people who were evacuated. Pretty bad, I'm not sure if they showed it on the TV over there, but it was big news here, and trust me to get caught up in it. Although I was lucky that I was where I was because we didn't get the worst of it. The strangest thing was when I woke up the next morning, there was no sign that there had even been a typhoon through there the previous day, back to sunny days and blue skies, and it has been like that ever since, the weather in Japan sure is weird.

So the next day I did eventually make it to Tokushima, and I was a bit annoyed because there were a few different things that I wanted to see in Tokushima which was why I had booked for two nights, but now I only had one day there. But you have to make the best of a bad situation don't you? Not that it was really that bad, missing out on a day of your holiday doesn't really rate too high in the scheme of things. So after arriving I went to an exhibition hall called "Awa Odori Kaikan", which is a place where they had a museum, shop, and theatre dedicated to the Awa Odori, or Awa dance. This dance, or more really a few different types, is done in one of the biggest festivals that is held in Japan every year. I would have liked to have seen the actual festival but it didn't coincide with my trip, it was early August and I was in different places. But at the theatre they had a few dancers who put on a presentation of the dances for people and that was pretty good. It was traditional style festival dancing but it was catchy and very dramatic. I really enjoyed the performance actually, they used the proper instruments and costumes and had special lighting effects which you wouldn't get at the actual festival. I also went to the museum that was there, which was basically a history of the festival, how it had developed and so forth and samples of the costumes and instruments and you could watch a video of the festival, that was good too.

After that I caught a ropeway to the top of a mountain called Bizan, and the view was really nice, all the city and even to the ocean where you could see the islands. For what was left of the afternoon I walked around Tokushima, and I really liked it actually, it has a similar atmosphere to Hakodate, but a bit bigger. I also found a book shop in Tokushima, well that's a bit of a lie, I went looking for it, I don't know why but I've always been drawn to book shops, could spend hours in there, and not many have English book sections in Japan, and when they do it's usually very small. But this one had quite a large section, so I was in heaven for a while and to my astonishment I even found a Cosmo, I was so excited! This was better than New Idea!

I proceeded to make my way to the youth hostel where I was staying and it was a long way out of town so I caught a taxi. Well that was interesting, when I got in the taxi I told him the name of the youth hostel and he started driving so I took that to mean he knew where it was, well actually he didn't. He knew the suburb if that helps, but not where the youth hostel was. The whole way he wanted to talk to me, which I didn't mind but I couldn't understand him! He mumbled so that I couldn't make out the words he was saying properly, which is hard to do in English, so in Japanese it was impossible. I did get a few sentences but not the majority. Anyway, when we arrived in the area he drove around and after a while asked me if I knew where this place was! Do I look like a taxi driver? That was his job, so after another 5 minutes he went into a a hospital to ask and they told him, but I made a point of saying to him that the meter was very expensive and I wasn't happy about paying that because he didn't know where he was going, well he turned it off and when we EVENTUALLY found the place he gave me a discount and loaded me up with lollies and biscuits that he had in the car, you could tell he was embarrassed and sorry, so I forgave him! However the next morning I caught the bus!!!

Like I said there were a few other places that I had wanted to see but didn't end up having the time. I had wanted to go to a place called Naruto which is famous for the whirlpools that occur naturally in the ocean just off the coast, you can take a boat trip out to see them, so that would have been good but I had no time.

So that morning I left the island of Shikoku and headed back up to Honshu the main island of Japan and to a city called Kobe by bus. Kobe is a big city, in fact from now on it's all big cities, of course ending with the mother of all cities: Tokyo. A bit sad cos like I said before the small places have so much character.
Anyway I arrived at the bus station and put my bag in a locker (again, I know!) and went to get a map of Kobe and went to a cafe/bakery to decide where to go for the day. I ended up going down towards the waterfront to a museum about the huge disastrous earthquake that hit Kobe in 1995. It was a really really good museum, and I had no idea about how bad the earthquake was. I remember vaguely seeing news of it on the TV when it happened but I would have been what? 11? So didn't really take much notice of it. But the museum filled me in. It wasn't a museum that you were free to walk around as such, it had stages that you go through. The first was a sort of mini re-creaction of the earthquake, you stand in these stalls and there is a big screen that surrounds you, about 180 degrees, and they show film of what it would have been like to be there, and the floor shakes and stuff. It was unreal, the process I mean, the images were very daunting and scary. Skyscrapers crumbled, roads had massive craters, even the overhead expressways, with huge concrete pylons collapsed and thousands of people were killed and even more were left homeless. The city was demolished.

The next stage was a theater where a young girl told the story of her ordeal, very sad, they had cassette headphones for me so that I could understand everything (in English). This particular girl was trapped in her house and all of the family were pulled to safety except her older sister, not only was there an earthquake but a huge fire broke out as a result too so the rescue efforts had to be stopped. This girl had to watch her sister be engulfed by the flames because no-one could reach her. Very sad.

The next part of the museum was a section of photographs and other things that had explanations about what happened and also how they dealt with it and rebuilt the city. It had some very interesting information about how they dealt with all the newly homeless people. Within a week, the government were constructing temporary housing for them, and after about a month they moved in. It made me think of all those people in America who are homeless now because of Hurricane Katrina and have no food or water etc. Why hasn't the government done something similar there? Build temporary housing, the houses in Kobe were only small and simple, and all clustered together, which they built in the city because like the Americans they didn't want to leave their homes. Of course they still had troubles with water, although the electricity and gas were fixed within 2 weeks and so it was just the issue of clean water, which they were being delivered in the mean time. However the government set to work straight away.

They had other sections of the museum where they demonstrated the things they do to buildings to safeguard them against earthquakes. You know all the engineering stuff and so forth, actually quite interesting, who would have thought?

In the afternoon I decided to find an internet cafe to write another diary, and the one that my guide book told me about I couldn't find but after walking the streets for a while I saw a sign that said internet so I rode the elevator to the top level and stepped off into this small shop that was lined with bookshelves with manga or comic books, which I didn't think much of cos most of the cafes have comic books, I went up to the counter and asked to use the internet. Well he looked at me strangely but agreed anyhow, but it wasn't until he was showing me to my booth that I noticed all the posters of naked girls on the walls and I realised the comic books were porno ones, this cafe was actually an "Adult cafe", I was soooooo embarrassed! The guy even told me that I could lock the door to my booth and have some real privacy if I wanted, how could I explain that I was here innocently to write a diary entry on the internet??!! I had already paid but after my time was up I left as fast and discreetly as possible!!!

After that I collected my bags and made my way to the youth hostel where I was staying, catching another taxi because even though it wasn't too far away it was a really steep hill to climb. At the hostel I met a Canadian guy called Kyle, and we were leaving at the same time to go and get something to eat so we went together, which was good cos I didn't really know where anything was and he did, although he had only been in Kobe the one day. We went to Chinatown and had dinner there and then he showed me the waterfront area, which was really pretty, boardwalks and shops and a little fair ground with rides and things. Unfortunately we had a 10pm curfew at the hostel so we had to go back early, but it was a good night anyway. He is a really nice guy, and told me about a few places where I intended to go and he left to go to Hiroshima this morning so I told him about that, it's good when you can pass on your travel information and experiences. We went back to the hostel and met a Swiss guy, who described himself as Santa Clause because he has a white beard. I suppose it's not really a YOUTH hostel. But he was really nice and funny, and his English was excellent. The 3 of us stayed up late talking about, well anything really. I love meeting new people from all over the world, it's so fascinating to hear about their life and where they live.

OK, that's all from me today. Oh, and by the way, I found a proper internet cafe, an innocent one!

---

Photos

Awa Odori performance
Japanese summer festival

View from Bizan
Tokushima