So here we are in Japan, our last stop before home. It is vastly different to China and Korea, but it hasn't met our expectations. We were expecting some techno wonderland, but instead we've just found grey cities. If anything, it looks like it's behind Korea in terms of the technologies that we've seen. That might all change once we hit Tokyo though.

Wednesday 27th July - hydroplane from Busan to Fukuoka. When we got up this morning there was a massive storm going on, heavy rain, thunder and lightning. It was still going four hours later so we were getting worried about our ferry crossing. Fortunately it eased off half an hour or so before we left so we had a nice, smooth journey. Phew!

We weren't able to get a hostel for our two nights in Fukuoka so we stayed at the Hotel Sunline. It was just as much as a hostel, but had the added advantage of being a very nice hotel! You could buy a card from a machine so you could watch a movie in your room. The brochure featured about a dozen movies... and four times as many adult movies! Suddenly the card machine for movies makes sense - the payment won't show up on the receipt and have to be explained to the expenses department!

Thursday 28th July - around Fukuoka. We didn't plan much for today as we had to sort out bits and pieces like picking up our Japan rail passes, booking trains and finding somewhere to get some yen. Once we'd got all our chores down we just wandered around the shopping malls, of which there were plenty.

The malls were quite amusing. You keep going up and up on the escalators and there's no telling what the next floor will bring - a pet shop selling hairless guinea pigs, a day school for cookery lessons... Even the shops themselves are full of surprises. Turn a wrong corner in the DVD store and you find yourself plunged into a very adult section, with little warning! And this is just Fukuoka, it's only going to get more mad as we near Tokyo!

We finished our wandering in a sushi bar, where we got talking to a very nice Chinese man. At the end he wanted to have a picture taken with us - you can take a man out of China but you can't take the China out of the man!

Friday 29th July - train to Hiroshima. Things don't seem quite as mad here, thank goodness! Our hostel, Hana Hostel is near the train station, which is convenient but it does mean we can hear all the trains rattling by at night. Because the hostel is so busy we're having to change rooms three times over the four nights we're here. Tonight we had a Japanese style room, which meant we slept on the floor.

In the evening we went to our first ever baseball game. Go Hiroshima Carps! It was a really good evening, even if the Carps did lose. The atmosphere was great and the match was quite exciting. It was funny to see people munching on sushi and noodles using chopsticks during the match. At one point towards the end we suddenly realised everyone in the stadium had inflated pink balloons. The man sitting in front of us kindly have us a balloon each from his stash so we duly inflated them and waited to see what was going to happen. Next, everyone sang the team anthem and at the end they released their ball pond. For a few seconds the air was teeming with pink balloons whizzing about! 

Saturday 30th July - the A-bomb dome, memorial park and museum. You would never know from wandering around Hiroshima that the entire city had been decimated just a few decades ago by the world's first atomic bomb, dropped by the Americans on 6th august 1945.  However, as a monument to this event they have left the ruins of one building standing. The former city hall was almost directly below the bomb when it went off, and amazingly it wasn't completely destroyed. All that remains is the shell of the building. 

The rest of the area around it has been turned into a memorial park full of statues dedicated to various groups who died in the bombing. In the middle of the park is a flame that they say will keep burning until every country has got rid of its nuclear weapons. There are also several glass cases filled with paper cranes. These are in memory of a little girl who was diagnosed with leukaemia as a result of the residual radiation. She believed that if she could make a thousand paper cranes then she would survive. She died 8 months later. The story seems to have captured the heart of a lot of people though, and all these paper cranes are sent in, or brought in, by people from all over the world.

Inside the park is the museum dedicated to the bombing. It begins with an overview of Japan and Hiroshima building up to the bombing, but the centrepiece is the results of the bombing itself. Harrowing stories of people searching rubble for lost loved ones, finding a lunchbox or pair of shoes that they think belonged to them and then collecting whatever bones lay nearby for burial, together with horrific photos of victims, made this museum very distressing. The message from the people of Hiroshima is 'never again'. Apparently every mayor of Hiroshima writes letters to every government that is planning to test nuclear weapons or technologies involved in nuclear weapons imploring them to give them up.  There were a lot of letters to the USA, UK, France and Iran!

Sunday 31st July - Miyajima island. A short train trip and ferry ride away (all free courtesy of our Japan rail passes!) took us to Miyajima. The main attraction here is a shrine that was built right at the water's edge so that at high tide it appears to be floating. Unfortunately high tide at this time of year is early in the morning and very late at night, so when we got there it was sitting on a muddy beach. this did give us the opportunity to walk out in front of it to the massive gate, which otherwise wouldn't have been possible. 

A surprising highlight of the trip were the deer on the island. They are well used to tourists and were happily wandering through the crowds, sniffing people's bags for goodies. They meandered about the streets almost as if they were tourists themselves! There was even a moment where two of them stopped at a shop door, seemingly gazing at the souvenirs in the window. It turned out one of the staff was feeding them bits of carrot though. 

Monday 1st August - the Mazda museum and Hiroshima castle. Yes, the Mazda museum. Well it was free and it features the world's longest assembly line. It was quite interesting as it turns out. The tour bus took us through the huge Mazda compound, past massive car parks full of newly-made cars, accommodation blocks for workers who live outside if the city and Mazda's private port. We then got to see early Mazda cars, watch cars being made on the assembly line (workers installing various things only have just one minute and forty seconds to finish and move on to the next car!), before finishing with a couple of concept cars which looked suitably futuristic.

In the afternoon we went to Hiroshima castle. Rebuilt in the sixties, the main feature is a castle tower which you can go up for views over Hiroshima. The floors inside are a museum all about the history of the castle, with very little English signage. The best bit for us was the dress-up corner. There was a samurai warrior outfit as well as typical dress for a man and a woman. What fun!

Tuesday 2nd August - train to Osaka. Just in case we were wondering if it was just Fukuoka that was random, the first thing we saw when the stepped out of the subway was a building with a roller coaster running through the middle of it and out over the streets. Yup, the whole of Japan is crazy!

Our first stop here was to a market that the guide book claimed sold those plastics food models they have outside all the restaurants. This didn't appear to be the case, but it did turn out to be one of the best markets we've been too! The shops were full of everything you could possibly need to start a restaurant in Japan - chefs outfits, chopsticks, pots and pans, plates, low tables and cushions for sitting on the floor, even stickers for putting on the toilet doors! It was fascinating. 

We then went to Dotombori, a bustling area of shops, restaurants and gambling houses. The gambling houses are very odd. Not only do they feature row after row of slot machines, but there a several times as many pachinko machines. We have no idea how these work, but it seems to be a process of pouring ball bearings into a machine and hoping to get more ball bearings out at the end! These are then exchanged for prizes. The noise from these places is incredible! When the sliding doors open all you can hear is the roar of millions of ball bearings rattling around. We went inside one of them to have a look and had to shout at each other to be heard!

With all the pachinko machines, flashing lights from shops and restaurants and the squeaky voices of cartoon characters calling out, just wandering around is quite an overwhelming experience!

We're staying at Hostel Raizan Kita, which is more like a budget hotel than a hostel. We weren't able to get an ensuite room, which wasn't a big deal. However, there were only two showers for the whole building and these were right by reception on the ground floor. We were staying on the fifth floor. The cooking facilities consisted of a kettle and microwave at reception. It was very cheap though!

Wednesday 3rd August - Osaka aquarium and ferris wheel. Another country, another aquarium! What? We like fish! This aquarium happens to be one of the largest in the world though. It didn't have as many exhibits as we've seen inn other places, but the tanks themselves were enormous. Some of them were three floors deep so from the top all you could see were the creatures disappearing into the deep. As you walked round you got to go down and see the creatures swimming. They had a couple of animals that'd we'd never seen in real life before, including sea otters (which are huge!) and white-sided dolphins that we'd never even heard of. 

Just outside the aquarium is one of the world's largest Ferris wheels. We waited to get the see-through cabin, where the roof, floor and even seats are clear to give you completely unblocked views. However,  the wheel is near a port, there wasn't really much to see!

Thursday 4th August - Osaka-jo castle, Museum of Housing and Living and the Sky Tower. Again, this castle is a fairly recent reproduction of the original, having been destroyed and rebuilt several times over the years. As with Hiroshima castle, the main feature is a tower that you can go up. And again, the museum inside feature little English. It was all set on nice grounds though, and there is a moat surrounding it all so it looked pretty.

We then went to the Museum of Housing and Living, which was interesting. There is a small exhibition about housing as it changed from just before the war to more modern times. The exhibition is on some kind of a timer, guiding visitors around the displays, so one display will light up with a voice explaning what's going on, then it dims as another one springs to life. The displays moved and lit up, and sections lifted up to reveal different things underneath. It was fun to watch even if we couldn't understand the narration. There is also a mock street set up, and, for free, you can dress up in traditional kimonos and wander around for half an hour. Well obviously we leapt at that! It was quite funny to see half a dozen or so other tourists also teetering around in kimonos.

In the evening we went to the Sky Tower for night views over Osaka. The journey up the tour was fun as you go in a glass elevator most of the way before taking the last two floor via a glass escalator stretching between the two towers of the building. The observation deck is a loop joining the two towers, and is completely open-air. It was very peaceful looking down over the glittering lights of Osaka. 

Bye!
Lindsay and Chris