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Published: February 17th 2009
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OK day four in Hiroshima over and its still hot and I'm still having fun! Not as hot as the last few days have been but still hot. The Japanese people carry around sun umberellas and hand towells that they use to wipe their body with when they sweat too much, when I first saw it I thought it was a bit too much but after the last two days of sweating so much I took a hand towell with me too today! Gotta fit in you know! Actually at the moment its raining, still really hot but raining none the less, there is steam coming off the ground. So I decided to retreat to the trusty Internet cafe and write about my days adventures.
I went to a place called Iwakuni today which is about an hour south-west of Hiroshima by train, well by the local train. As you know Japan has some of the fastest trains in the world: Shinkansen, but also very expensive so I took the old rattler that took 3 times as long because it stopped at every station but cheap! Before I left Hakodate I bought this special train pass called Seishun 18 kippu,
which means youthful 18 ticket but anyone can use it. You pay ¥11,500 and you can use the ticket on any local or rapid train anywhere in Japan for five full days, getting on and off as many times as you want. If you use it extensively and especially over longer distances, as I plan to, it pays off.
Anyway Iwakuni is home to a wooden bridge called Kintaikyo which is the drawing card of the region. It was built years ago as a means to cross the river when the river flooded and is an architectural marvel, or so I've heard. I'm not much of an expert on that side of things but as a future tourism professional I can say that it is definitely a good place to visit as a tourist! The bridge is made of wood and crosses the river in five arches, and considering the river really isn't that wide, about 200m and the bridge is about 250m or so, it means the arches are actually quite steep, anyway from a distance it looks really amazing. It is the only one like it in the world. You can cross the bridge but you have
to pay a toll, but in my guide book it said if you ask for the bridge toll, entry to the castle and ropeway combined ticket you can save a great deal of money, which I did. And I'm glad I had that guide book because nowhere near the ticket stations did they have that little piece of information displayed, you can't trick me!
Anyway I walked over the bridge and then walked around the little village that is on the other side, it was liked I stepped into a time machine. The houses were still old fashioned Japanese style and the gardens were immaculate and they had dirt roads and stone bridges over the small rivers and ponds, if it weren't for the people who were dressed in western style clothes it would have been exact. No other foreigners today though, well not ones that stand out anyway, the majority of the tourists were japanese people from other parts of the country. I did meet a Spanish family this morning on the train to Iwakuni, they were going to Miyajima where I went yesterday and they had limited time so they were asking me to tell them the
best spots on the island to see. It was a bit difficult because the parents only spoke spanish so the daughter who was about 15 or so was translating for them, she could speak really good english. They are going back to Spain tomorrow and she told me that she was sort of looking forward to it because she was sick of being the translater, especially in a country where only half the signs are in english. I suppose being around that age it can be a bit of a drag travelling with your parents.
Back to Iwakuni, after I explored the gardens I went to see the "Shirohebi" which Iwakuni loves to advertise. Shiro means white and hebi is snake, yep you guessed it albino snakes. They were really quite cool to see actually, not poisonous and indigenous to this part of Japan, they're also considered lucky. After that I headed up to the top of the mountain by ropeway to see the castle. The top of the mountain was really gorgeous, its a nature reserve and you can do a nature walk around the top which not only has beautiful wildlife, at times it felt like I
was walking in a rainforest back home, but it also has spectacular views of Iwakuni and the ocean in the distance. I did the walk and then visited the castle, which was actually better than Hiroshima's castle I think, and you can't beat the view it has from the top floor! Inside the castle there were a whole heap of samurai swords that were used years ago, the biggest one about 2.5 metres long! It's wierd to think that Japan has such a long history, compared to Australia who is relatively young, and that all these artifacts were used hundreds of years ago. You know what though, I did wonder how they got all the material at the top of the mountain to build the castle, the mountain is really steep and they wouldn't have had a ropeway to use! Well maybe they did, one that was man-powered.
I headed back to Hiroshima after that and decided to do some more shopping but it started raining so here I am. You know what though I went into a chemist and bought some sunscreen (at last) and while I was there I had a look at the sunscreen I saw
the other day, you know the SPF 50 stuff and it actually says on the body whitening cream!!! See I told you it would have turned me white.
Well thats all for today, going to Onomichi on another day trip tomorrow which is a little port town that has lots of religious sites. Write again soon!
Alana
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