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March 18, 2005
Hiroshima for the first time
A quick 2 days at the end of February with Edo and Patricia, the two craziest people I know.
We met up with a few other people, got some Mexican food, went out and ended up seeing a hip hop dance competition. We also got a glimpse of “reggae dancing” which is a weird (read: slutty bastardazation of whatever reggae dancing is supposed to be) but very athletic tabletop-style dancing. I’ve made a habit of not bringing my camera along when I go out at night, but as it warms up I’ll change that habit, somethings you just have to see to believe.
Edo close up, abunai! Edo is pretty crazy, and that’s saying a lot seeing as most of the gaijin I know around here are pretty wild. (side note: word spell check knows the word gaijin (foreigner)! Weird!) But he lives out on a tiny island and I figure you have to be a little bit crazy to keep having a good time out there.
We took a bus over to Hiroshima. It’s only about 3 hours away, but the bus costs approximately 30 bucks one way. We tried to study Japanese on the way there, probably scared the be-jesus out of the other passengers while we repeated words like “weird” and Edo impersonated old islander men.
Japanese work eithic is strange to me. Teachers at my school stay well past dark almost every day. I stayed late once to finish a lesson and left at 7pm while teachers were making themselves hot instant ramen. My guess is that this guy is a victim of a late night, but that’s still not a good reason to be falling asleep out on the road!! Every time traffic came to a stop he dozed off and then woke back up when things started to move again.
The Hiroshima skyline.
The Ganbaku Dome (Hiroshima Peace Memorial above which the first atomic bomb was centered on August 6th, 1945) is visible on the left but it’s dwarfed by the growing city. I didn’t go to the museum this trip because I’m still debating about going through that experience, but I have a feeling I will.
Posed. Taking in the city as we first start to walk around.
Patricia and I did way too much window-shopping for our own good; she showed me some uber-cool shoes that I later bought in Osaka. This store was a little too stylish and they had to label the door (“DO-A”) so that people could get in. On the inside they had a mix of gothic chain and death garb mixed with trendy pastel pop wear and a splash of stylish retro-inspired (as in 19th century) duds all watched over by store clerks that started at age 40 something. Wha?
Dozing on the way back to Ehime.
The inland sea is so beautiful. We passed over a series of bridges to get from mainland Japan (Honshu) to our island (Shikoku).
Posted by theinfonaut at March 18, 2005 04:53 PM