Harajuku, one of the many downtown areas of Tokyo, is known throughout Japan as a place where teens with a "different" fashion sense congregate on the weekends.
The main attraction for the teens is a big shopping street with tons of clothing stores with ridiculous outfits. The main attraction for the tourists, both foreign and Japanese, is to see people wearing some of these things.
From what I've been told, most of the people who go there all dressed up are high school girls from the suburbs who are outcasts where they live. However, on the weekend they come into the city, and because of their "interesting" clothes, people pay attention to them and take pictures of them.
On these girls, I think the butterflies were an especially nice touch ;)
The Fudges and I decided to hit the aquarium because I'd read that it was really amazing. It was.
You start out on the 8th floor, and then walk your way down through about 10 different zones, each one being a different area of the earth's oceans. In the middle of the building, and about 4 floors high is a huge tank full of many different kinds of fish and rays, with the main attraction being a whale shark. Unfortunately, none of my pictures of the whale shark turned out.
On the bottom floor they had a jellyfish exhibit, and there was a tank with 3 of these suckers. They were quite big, with a diameter of about half a meter, and the picture doesn't do it justice because their colour was amazing.
Just outside the aquarium they were having a big busking festival, and so we watched the bottom guy for awhile. The Japanese sign you can see on the bottom left is his name, Hangerman. This was because he would launch a wooden spool about 50 feet in the air, and then catch it with a regular hanger - pretty impressive. Although we were the only foreigners in the crowd, he decided to add some English commentary for our benefit.
I realize everyone has seen lizards before, so normally I wouldn't post this, but this was the first time I'd ever seen one with a blue tail. It's called a five-lined skink, and we saw it in Arashiyama, near Kyoto.
Fudge and I were wandering down a side street one day and we came across this little gallery that had a few sculptures on the wall. Bizarre is the best word I can think of to describe them.
Although I'd been to the castle grounds many times, I'd never actually gone inside. This was partly because I'm cheap, and partly because I'd heard from several people that it wasn't that interesting, at least compared to Himeji castle.
However, when the Fudges were here, they decided they wanted to go in so we checked it out. Apparently everyone else had also been told it wasn't worth it, because even though we went during Japan's peak travel season, we had the castle virtually to ourselves.
It only took us about 15 minutes to go through the whole thing, but there were a few interesting exhibits and some good views across the river of Korakuen, Okayama's famous garden.
As you can see in the first picture, there is a carriage of some sort that was used to carry people a lot more important than us. And in the bottom picture are a couple of really cool suits of samurai armour.
After Hiroshima, we headed to Shiraishijima, a beautiful, tiny little island about a 40 minute train ride and 25 minute ferry ride southwest of Okayama City in the Seto Inland Sea. We had a couple of rooms booked at a villa that is owned by Okayama prefecture. The villa is up on a small hill overlooking the main beach, and only a 2 minute walk down to the perfect water.
Our first morning there, we went out fishing for a couple of hours with an older Australian guy who spends his summers on Shiraishi and his winters in Bali. Becky was the only one who caught anything, although it was tiny (about 5 or 6 inches). Fudge and I spent our first full day relaxing in the water, without thinking about the consequences. We each ended up with a severe sunburn, although being a white dude, his was much worse than mine.
Shiraishi was great, just so laid back and quiet, I will definitely be returning.
The first picture I took from the cemetary overlooking the main beach.
The second picture is of a little shrine on an island you can swim to from the main beach.
This last picture is of a German girl who was also staying at the villa. Because it was so hot and humid, Fudge and I were able to sweet-talk her into fanning us. She claimed she didn't want to do it, but c'mon, is that the face of someone who is NOT enjoying themself? She loved it!
On our way back from Miyajima, Fudge, Becky and I stopped in Hiroshima, which is now a pretty big city of about a million people, to visit the main tourist draw - the Peace Memorial Park and its museum.
The museum, although very sad, was full of very interesting information, not only about the bombing of Hiroshima on August 6, 1945, but also about the development of atomic weapons in general. It discussed the problems experienced by survivors of the bombing in very graphic detail. It also mentioned that most of the casualties were women and children, as well as Korean slave labourers who had been brought over to help in the war effort.
I liked that the museum was quite objective in its treatment of the bombing - rather than pointing fingers at who was to blame, it simply laid out what happened. It was also nice that every exhibit was in both Japanese and English. Most major tourist draws in Japan will have some token English, but they don't give you a real understanding of what you are looking at. And the price was great, too - only 50 yen (50 cents).
The top picture is the A-bomb Dome, which was almost directly below the bomb when it exploded, but somehow miraculously survived even though almost everything around it was completely obliterated.This bottom picture is the Children's Peace Memorial, which was inspired by a girl named Sadako who developed leukemia after the bombing. While in the hospital she decided to fold 1000 origami cranes, a symbol of longevity and happiness in Japan, believing if she achieved her goal, she would recover. Unfortunately, she died before reaching the goal, but her classmates folded the rest. Ever since, children from throughout Japan have folded tens of thousands of paper cranes in her honour and they are displayed at this Memorial.
Miyajima is a small island about half an hour west of Hiroshima. It is famous because the view of the tori (top picture) is considered to be one of the three most beautiful views in all of Japan, the other two being the sandbar at Amanohashidate in Kyoto prefecture, and the islands of Matshushima in northern Honshu.
I took the Fudges here for our first day of travel, and after seeing the tori, we decided to climb Mt. Misen, the highest mountain on the island. It's not that high, but because of the humidity, it was a good, sweaty workout. There's a shrine on top of the mountain, and there are excellent views from the peak of the Inland Sea. It was also excellent practice for our trip up Fuji.
The picture below is of a pagoda, near the famous tori.
Harajuku, one of the many downtown areas of Tokyo, is known throughout Japan as a place where teens with a "different" fashion sense congregate on the weekends.
From what I've been told, most of the people who go there all dressed up are high school girls from the suburbs who are outcasts where they live. However, on the weekend they come into the city, and because of their "interesting" clothes, people pay attention to them and take pictures of them.
