The Purple Penguin

Hello from Hiroshima! We are having a great time, though I’m still having trouble with the keyboard. Joe told me to describe these internet places so here it goes: The machines are in little cubicals, only one person. So in the last place while I frantically typed trying to finish in half an hour, Joe walked around and had a look. The walls were covered in bookshelves full of various books, magazines, newspapers; there was a rack at the front with DVDs; and behind the counter were playstation keypads and games. They are truly media centres rather than internet cafes. They also have various sized cubicals – from open style desks as we have at home in our internet places to small individual cubicals, to larger cubicals with beds! This place is very similar but you have to ‘join’ so poor Joe is downstairs looking at the CD\DVD shop. I shudder to think what we may be bringing home!

The Osaka Aquarium was wonderful – including the baby whale shark in the large tank. It didn’t look cramped at all, though I’m sure given a bit of time it will be way too big for the tank. Unfortunately their environmental message got a bit lost in the gift shop where they were selling sea shells, coral, and turtle shell.

Sorted out the trains fine – actually it was pretty easy. We got to Himeji and spent about two and half hours wandering around the castle and surrounding area. Most of it spent in the castle which was very impressive. We actually got to go inside the West Bailey and through the Long Corrider. You have to take off your shoes when you go into the buildings and they are lovely wooden floors. We also went into the main tower, right to the top – 6 flights of steep slippery wooden stairs – and saw the shrine and got our brochures stamped to show we went to the very top! Beautiful view.

Then on to Hiroshima. We’d done the classical, don’t miss this castle so today we did the classical, don’t miss this shrine – Miyajima, with the ‘floating’ torii. If you’ve seen photos of a Japanese shrine gate, you’ve probably seen this one. We did that perfectly – got to the temple while the tide was still pretty much high and stayed long enough for the tide to go out enough that we could walk out to the torii. There were hoards of tourists and loads of tacky little tourist shops – the main items appeared to be anything carved out of maple (including rice paddles which they claim were invented there); little maple leaf shaped cakes with various fillings (loads of little shops with the cake making machines in the windows – fun to watch); models of the gate; and loads of little deer (stuffed, carved, on jewlery, etc.). There are deer on the island, protected species and boy don’t they know it! My t-shirt got nibbled! They expect to get fed and deer cakes are sold as soon as you get off the ferry – Joe and I passed which was why my shirt got nibbled. The shrine is lovely – tour groups obviously pay to go to worship there so we got to see a Shinto ceremony. We also saw the floating No stage, but it wasn’t floating as the tide had gone out! We did not however attempt to climb this mountain or ride the cable car up – guess we learned a couple of lessons from Purple Mountain!

Last night after we got settled into our hotel – oh yes, Japanese style hotel. So we have to take our shoes off to enter our room, have tamati mats on the floor, and slept on futons last night. We also have a bath downstairs, but it looks more or less like a bath at home only covered and much deeper. I’ll have to try that out tonight. Once we got settled we headed out to see Peace Park. It’s very nice at night and quite sobering. We’ll see the museum tomorrow. And from that we’re heading to the most tacky tourist awful destination in Japan – Beppu! Should be a bit of a contrast.

Yes, we are still having a wonderful time. Only 14 days to try all the new stuff!