Day: July 10, 2007

So the rain subdued and I went out for a walk and dinner.
Dinner proved to be harder than I thought… unlike Tokyo there are very few menus with pictures or any signs in English for that matter.
The lights, billboards and many stores and video game/slot parlors look just like Tokyo. Well, Hiroshima is a big city – 1.5 million inhabitants.
Anyway, ate some noodles, saw the A-dome and went into a video game place… off to another early start tomorrow to see the Peace Memorial Park and museum and then go to Miyama – one of the most visited/photographed sites in Japan. Let’s see 🙂

Just played around with the view from Max’s apt yesterday night.

Woke up early today and caught the train to Hiroshima… sounds simple? Not really… first went to the Shinjuku Station at 8am. The JR exchange office only opened at 11 so I had to go to Tokyo Station. After going into the wrong entrance, a very nice man lead me to the correct entrance. In the station I went to 4 different JR ticketing offices to finally get to the one that exchanged my purchased ticket into the actual pass.
With incredible punctuality, the train left at 9:36am. I happened to be sitting right where the train officer dispatches the train from the platform. He was looking at the clock (with seconds) and as soon as 9:35 flipped over to 9:36 he pressed a green button and 15 seconds later the train started moving. They say you can set your watch to the JR trains.
The ride is very comfortable and when you think it is going fast, it accelerates even more. The train I was in went up to 300km/h (188mph)!
The landscape, well, not much open country – all the way to Hiroshima (a 4 hour train ride) it is all built up with many rice fields in between houses and buildings. Very pretty how rice is always completely flat and level.
Into Hiroshima I took an old tram to the center of town and found a hotel that has internet in the room. As I was about to step outside rain started pouring down, so now I am here in the room blogging 🙂
For now, here is a quick video of the train itself:

Well, in China most of the bathrooms are crouch-down style.
In Japan it’s a different story…

Even the bike garage at Max’s place is pretty cool…

The packaging here is also awesome… it is all thought out… guess it comes from the Origami tradition 🙂