Two weekends ago, Victoria and I took a long 4-day trip to the west of Honshu, the main island in Japan. We took a limited express train down to Kyoto (nearly 3 hours). Then we took a shinkansen to Hiroshima. We rode on the Nozomi shinkansen, which is slightly more expensive but is the fastest shinkansen in service. The Nozomi is the only one that is not included in the Japan Rail Pass, so my family has never ridden one. The shinkansen got us there in under 1.5 hours, which is quite impressive since the distance from Kyoto to Toyama and Kyoto to Hiroshima are about the same. We were going nearly twice as fast.

Normally we would've taken the cheaper and slightly slower shinkansen, but it was Friday night, so we were arriving quite late (11pm). The slower shinkansen would've gotten in after 11:30pm, so we figured we'd pay more to get there on time.

I found a hotel on the internet called Flex Hotel, that had really good prices, so we had a reservation there. We checked in late, but didn't go to bed immediately. Across the street was a Royal Host, an awesome family restaurant. They had a drink bar with fresh hot cocoa and coffee, orange juice, and pink lemonade. We ordered some tacos and sandwiches and had drink bars. It was great.

The hotel was quite nice, too. It was spartan, but very affordable (7,350 yen for a double). That's about a little under 60 dollars.

The next morning we started out the day with a pancake, bacon, egg, and yogurt breakfast at the Royal Host for 5 dollars. It was very good, and we had the same breakfast the next day. While we were in the restaurant, we noticed a lot of Mormons walking around below. We saw about 5 of them, which is a lot more than we normally see, thought there are some in Toyama. We thought maybe there was a church near the area our hotel was in.

We walked down the street towards the Peace Park. We ran into three high school girls and I thought I heard one of them say hello. But when we looked at them, they were just talking in Japanese. I said something to Victoria about if they said hello, and then they stopped and we were very friendly. They pretty much just talked to Victoria, but I followed their conversation. They were making all sorts of cute girlie noises upon hearing that we were boyfriend and girlfriend. They were 17 and 18 years old, in their last year of high school. They asked us if we were in high school, too! I was really surprised, since that was the first time I was asked that in Japan. It turns out that there are a lot of foreigners living in Hiroshima, and some of them have kids in school. In Toyama, it is rare to find foreign kids in school, especially past elementary school. Still, I don't know that we looked that young. They were shocked we were teachers.

After talking to them for a little while, we let them go to school, and we kept walking down the road. We passed by Hiroshima castle, but didn't go in. It was rebuilt in concrete after the war, so it's not very authentic. Toyama castle is the same way. I like visiting the wooden ones though, they are impressive.

We made our way to the Peace Park through an underground shopping mall that followed the tram line for a ways. We found a 300 yen store there (normally they are 100 yen stores) with slightly nicer stuff. We also found a great foreign food store, with lots of different things in it.

The first thing we saw in the Peace Park was the Genbaku Dome. It was one of the only buildings left partially standing after the bomb hit. It was brick and concrete, so it didn't catch on fire like the wooden houses did. It was very close to the epicenter of the blast. It is falling down, but they have propped it up. They want it to remain in the condition it was in after the blast forever.

After looking at the dome, we went across the river to the main part of the park. We saw the Children's Memorial, where a group of kids were convincing people to fold paper cranes for peace. They cautiously shyly approached us and asked us to fold one. So we asked them how. One girl demonstrated and we folded them. It was a lot of fun, and they seemed really happy to be able to communicate with us. At the children's memorial, they hang paper cranes, because a girl who got leukemia from the radiation had folded 1,000 paper cranes. It is superstition that if you fold 1,000 cranes, you get a wish. She hoped to get better, but she didn't, unfortunately. So they ended up building a Children's Memorial, and collecting cranes sent from around the world.

Nearby was a peace bell, which we both rang. It reverberated for a long time. Then we walked past the cenotaph, where a flame will burn until all nuclear weapons are abolished from Earth. Next we visited the atomic bomb museum. It is very cheap (50 yen) so that everyone can afford to go. I rented a headset, but Victoria said she didn't want one.

The museum was very complete, with some video footage, and tons of pictures. The before and after the bomb pictures were very shocking. Nearly the whole town was completely destroyed. A handful of concrete buildings were about all that were left standing. Schools, a hospital, and a bank, were most of the buildings left. The enormous heat generated by the bomb burned up the wooden houses. Apparently a lot of people survived the bomb, but died trapped in their houses, caught in fires. It was very sad. There were many parents who lost their children. The children weren't going to school. Instead, the classes were used for war preparation, like destroying houses to make fire lanes. So a lot of children were downtown when the bomb exploded, but their parents may have been in the outskirts of town and survived.

The thing that was surprising at the museum was the list of telegrams. The mayor of Hiroshima always sends a telegram to the leader of any country that performs a nuclear test, asking them to stop nuclear testing and disarm their weapons. I was surprised to see a number of recent American tests. Apparently we are performing what they call "sub-critical tests," where there is no detonation. Some of it is computer-based. I fear we will see another nuclear explosion within the next 50 years, based on the number of countries that seem to want the bomb right now.

I find the world stance on nuclear weapons a little questionable. It seems like the purpose of many world treaties is to prevent new countries from gaining nuclear weapons, not to try to dismantle any of the existing ones. Basically, the countries with nuclear weapons want to preserve the status quo. I hardly find it surprising that countries like Iran or North Korea, that feel threatened by America want nuclear weapons. It seems like the only thing that might deter the U.S. Or course, America doesn't want them to have the weapons, since that would pose a threat to us. But it is hardly fair to say that Iran can't do nuclear tests, while America continues them.

After the museum, we were pretty hungry and drained. So we got a snack to tide us over for dinner. Then we wandered around the covered shopping street (there's one in every city) until we got to the restaurant area. We had hiroshima-yaki for dinner. It's Hiroshima's speciality. It is onomiyaki (kind of like an omelette) with yaki-soba (fried noodles) on the inside.

After dinner, we wandered around looking for a bar that was in our guidebooks. It was called Snappers. We went to where it should've been, but couldn't find it. Eventually we asked someone. They said it had closed down a couple years ago. Darn out of date guidebooks! They recommended we go to a place called Mac. It was close-by and very cool. It was run by two Japanese hippies. They spoke English very well, and had a very large CD collection. We even made some requests. The guy in charge of the music was very funny, and when he found out I was from North Carolina, he secretly put on "Carolina in My Mind" by James Taylor to see if I would notice. I thought it was funny. Anyway, we met some Japanese women there and a guy from New York, Dale. This guy was pretty intense. He was an ex-Nova (a private English language company in Japan) teacher. He talked a lot about how much he hated Nova. I think he was there for only 8 months before leaving. Dale was heading back to the U.S. Before he went back, he was travelling around Japan for a month. He was very friendly though. I think he was a little lonely since he was travelling by himself.

The next morning we checked out of our hotel, but left our bags there. After another great breakfast, we took a train to Miyajima Ferry. The ferry took us across the bay to the island Miyajima. It is famous for being one of the most beautiful places in Japan. There is a torii there that floats in the water (during high tide). Also, the island is filled with deer, like in Nara. The deer come up to you and eat out of your hands. Or, in Victoria's case, they rip the tasty tourist map right out of your hands and eat it in front of you, ignoring your pleas for them to stop. I guess they deer thought paper was tasty, because after eating Victoria's map, we saw another one being lured by two Japanese girls who saw Victoria's map get eaten. They were using the map as bait to have the deer get close to the camera for a picture. It was pretty funny. There were lots of baby deer around too, so they were very cute.

We went to the torii, but it was low tide, so you could walk right out to it. We also visited the shrine, which was built on stilts and by the water. There was a traditional wedding going on at the shrine, which was cool to see. Most Japanese don't do traditional weddings anymore, instead preferring the Western-style wedding.

There is a "mountain" on the island, which is 540 meters high. You can either hike up one of several trails to the top, or hike part of the way and take two cable cars to near the top. We were a little short on time, so we took the cable cars up. It was very pretty there, and the weather was great (it rained the day before). Victoria concluded that we chose the best days to do each of the activities. At the end of the cable cars was a monkey viewing area, but the monkeys were "in the forest feeding." Several people who went there recently told me the monkeys were in the forest when they came, too. Oh well. Instead of monkeys, there were some very funny signs about the monkeys which I hope to put on my website.

To get to the top was a twenty minute walk, because you had to go back down a little way before you could go up. We just walked a little bit of the trail then turned back. After we took the cable cars down, we bought some omiyage (customary gifts) for our teachers and headed back to the ferry. We went back to Hiroshima and collected our stuff. Then we were off to Fukuoka / Hakata, the last city (with two names because two cities merged) on the shinkansen line. It was about an hour away. We stayed at a Toyoko Inn. Toyoko Inns are a chain across Japan that are really cheap, with good service. Many of the hotels are very new looking, also. Plus they have an English reservation service online. With all these benefits, we always look for one. We first stayed in one in Sapporo, and have been hooked since. There's even a Toyoko Inn, Jr. in Toyama that I didn't know about.

We went to a place called Canal City for dinner that night. It was built next to a river, and contained a lagoon between the three or four shopping buildings in the complex. The lagoon shot up an impressive display of water jets and had some cool fountains. We found a nice looking Italian restaurant next to a bar with a live singer. This made for a very enjoyable evening. We were going to go to the bar afterwards, but the singer finished right when we were going in, so we decided to go back to the hotel.

In Fukuoka, there aren't many obvious tourist attractions like in Hiroshima, but it is a nice city with some things nearby (a famous temple). We decided to skip the outskirts and just enjoy the city, though. We first went back to Canal City. We discovered some of it that we hadn't seen before, and went shopping. I found a 300 yen ($2.50) shirt at GAP. It was marked down from 4,000 yen to this clearance price, so I couldn't resist. Victoria bought a nice pair of pants to wear to school. Afterwards, we had lunch at Wendy's (yes, the fast food chain). I hadn't eaten at a Wendy's in over 14 months, so I couldn't resist. Victoria had never eaten at one. Actually just like at home, as far as the menu goes. KFC and McDonald's have many different choices, and don't have some of the same stuff as at home, so I was surprised that Wendy's was the same. Of course, maybe this approach isn't working well, since I've only seen Wendy's in Fukuoka and Tokyo.

Afterwards, we headed toward the Asian Art Museum, which was on the top floors of another shopping center. The museum was quite interesting, but small. I tend to get a little overwhelmed by museums after too long, so it was the perfect size for me. It meant I could see a lot but not get too tired.

Then, we went to the shopping center where the Asian Art Museum was located. It was filled with really expensive designer stores. Every one of the stores seemed to sell expensive handbags. They had Louis Vitton (very popular in Japan), Gucci, and some other ones, whose names I don't remember. We didn't buy anything (obviously), but we had fun marvelling at the price tags that were half our annual salary.

Then we walked further north to the harbor. There we found the harbor tower and went up it (free). It was actually quite a cool thing to see the whole city laid out. They had a free telescope/binocular thing which we used to look at things that were very far away. The airport is actually quite close to the city, and you could see planes taking off and landing with some regularity. Plane-watching is one of Victoria's favorite pastimes.

After around an hour in the tower, we walked to Tenjin Station, a private station, and another central commercial hub. Fukuokans really seem to like shopping. The station was about three shopping malls put together with a train and bus station also. From there, we started looking for ramen stalls (yatai) by the river. We found one with a small line (we were afraid to go to an empty one) and they gave us ramen and were very nice to us. Fukuoka specializes in tonkotsu ramen, ramen with a white broth. It tasted very good.

We debated whether to do some karaoke or not, but decided to go directly to a nearby bar. Unfortunately, we got totally lost by the directions in her book, and the map in my book. I misread the map and we went to the wrong building first. Then her book said the bar was west of a particular street, when it was one block east of the street. So we spent nearly an hour before finding it. It was fine, though, since it only started to pick up once we got there. At first we were in the bar near some Japanese "rap-style" guys. They basically were wearing lots of clothes they had observed in rap videos, from what we could tell. Anyway, the D.J. that night decided to blast the music to try to deafen us. After shouting for awhile, we moved to a quieter corner of the bar. One of the owners of the bar was there, and engaged us in conversation. He was from New York, and had been running the place for 10 years. He was a nice guy, but his boasts about having a great hamburger were a little misplaced. It came out very well done: too much so for my liking.

After a little bit, three Japanese guys came and wanted to practice their English with us. They were really nice, and we talked with them until we wanted to go home. We were probably just going to walk home, but they said they lived nearby (a blatent lie, we think) and two of them took us back to our hotel in a taxi. So four of us crammed into the taxi and they dropped us off at our hotel. Victoria offered to pay for the taxi, but they wouldn't have any of it. So we got out, said goodbye and went in the hotel. Shortly thereafter, Victoria realized that the pants she had toted around all day from GAP were still in the taxi. I tried calling our new friends to see if they knew which company the taxi was, but they didn't. I couldn't remember the taxi's color, so the hotel receptionist (an exceptionally nice woman) called a bunch of the taxi companies to try to find out. We had no luck, and the taxi lost and found was closed the next day because of a public holiday. Victoria was quite disappointed.

The next morning we took the subway to Ohori-koen, a lake-park in the middle of the city. We wented a row boat for 30 minutes, and I took Victoria around the lake. It was very pretty and fun. We walked to the art museum (a different one), but there was a line of 100 people trying to get in. I think there was a special exhibition or it was free or something. Regardless, we didn't have enough time to wait in line and then see the museum. So we went to a nearby Japanese garden (built 10 years ago) which was nice.

We headed back to the train station and had a nice lunch at a Korean restaurant. Then we went back to the hotel and got our stuff. The rest of Tuesday was spent on trains going home (6 hours). Overall, it was an awesome trip, and lots of fun. The only bad thing was losing the pants. I've been to Shikoku, Hokkaido, and Kyushu in the last two months. Not bad, considering a lot of Japanese people haven't been to all four main islands (Honshu being the other one).