Hiroshima to Tokyo

Neither of us slept very well while in Hiroshima, or really felt comfortable in the city itself.  We are wondering whether we are getting superstitious in our old age.

 

We had some pickles from Takayama so bought just one bento box,

some fruit and some cake for our very long trip back to Tokyo, via 2 bullet trains, with only a few short stops.  What a waste of good walking time.  Still we covered   677 kilometres in four hours, so I suppose we shouldn't complain.  The bullet trains are very impressively futuristic to look at , and very comfortable inside

Pity planes aren't like them.  You have lots of leg room and the seats tilt.  You have a hook for hanging your jacket and, if travelling with luggage, you lift them onto the overhead racks.  In between each carriage  are toilets, bins for rubbish, a wash room.  No-one leaves litter in the cabin.  There is a special smoking carriage.  The conductor and the lady who sells snacks bow when entering and leaving the carriage.  All terribly civilised.

We were lucky (?) enough to share the first carriage with a class of high school students, who, from inside the train, had waved gaily at us as we walked down the platform.  They were rather abashed when we entered the same carriage, but a few braver souls continued greeting us and responding to our grins, even tried out their English on us.  They were however, amazingly well behaved on the trip.

As usual, travelling by train in Japan gives you a cross section of life in Japan from the window

canals and rivers

townships

urban industrial

tea fields

rice fields. 

The farms sit amongst the towns, and seem more like gardens to us, used the huge sprawling acres of Australian farms.  The towns are often so ugly and stark and utilitarian that they are startling to the visitor, given the apparent talent for creating beauty in architecture, landscape  and gardens of the Japanese.  I have been marvelling at the way the Japanese can create beauty with , for me, startling combinations of colours and patterns, yet their modern houses, apartment blocks, factories and shops can be so awfully dreary.  This morning, for instance, I was admiring a girl waiting for a cup of coffee wearing a sort of beige cloche hat, with her long hair out, a fur collar, a long, loose  jacket and a fitted  mini skirt and high heeled boots.  She looked like an inspired mixture of 1920s flapper and 2012 modern girl.  In the station, there were 2 middle-aged ladies wearing olive kimonos with pink obis, and each layer was a different pattern, but it worked.  The young girls wear loose tops and very short skirts, and there is not a cleavage or overt sexual innuendo through figure hugging clothes, but they look sexy.  In contrast, some of the photos of girls at the races in today's Melbourne Age newspaper just look trashy.  As an older woman, with a very different shape and taste, I couldn't pull it off, but so many women look elegant and sexy here.

The trip was a time for lots of thinking.  For instance, one of the reasons I like Japan is that it is so resolutely Japanese.  Even I am bowing constantly and saying "Hai" every second.  They are very good at taking what they want from other countries and adapting it to fit them.  So, they have mobiles, but don't use them on trains or in the street where they can disturb others.  They use plastic, paper, packaging, but sort rubbish carefully and no-one dumps things in the street.  People smoke - but never while walking and only in designated areas ( unfortunately, these include restaurants, even if there are smoking and non-smoking areas).  They use credit cards but most shops only accept cash.  Very few people speak English, and those that do, tend not to speak it fluently.  Shops frequently have English, French or English names (often misspelt or oddly connected to the products being sold), but they are very Japanese in their contents.  Foreign food is Japanese in flavour and presentation.  Tv is uniquely Japanese.  When the news is on, you get a small image of the presenters faces reacting seriously to what is said.  They use flash cards and cartoons and writing on whiteboards a lot rather than using photos, film or live crosses.  The cameramen wear suits.

On the other hand, Japan still seems very insular, which may not be good for it in the global context.  This is the only country I have visited which has no foreign TV channel on free-to -air tv.  No equivalent to SBS in Australia, no CNN, very few language programs.   Even the BBC is in Japanese. This means that, unlike Sweden for instance, where nearly everyone speaks English well, there is very little opportunity to learn or hear another language or culture.  Furthermore, the tv programs generally seem to be pretty mindless to an outsider.  Lots of variety shows, cooking shows, soaps, games shows and shows about Japan.  very little seems to be educational.  Never anything foreign and very little, except the news, about foreign countries.  And they have an extremely tough attitude towards migration, so the population is pretty much nearly all Japanese.  I wonder whether that may be a disadvantage to the country in the long run.

We finalyy arrived at Tokyo station, which is much less foreigner friendly than Kyoto or Hiroshima, we now can see.  It so makes me feel as if I am in a science fiction movie.  Streams of people hurrying somewhere.  People in uniforms depicting their occupations - the pink clad cleaners, the conductors in blue uniforms and white gloves, the workers in grey boiler suits, the Information ladies in blue suits and boaters.

We miraculously found our way out of the right side of station and hunted for our hotel.  Naturally, the hotel wasn't where Apple said it was , but we found it by chance a few blocks away without having to seek help.  The hotel Sotetsu Fresa is as small as our first hotel

But has everything we really need.  God knows where we will put our suitcases when they turn up though!

We went back to the first hotel to retrieve the dark glasses I had left there and then wandered round the shops looking at clothing and shoes.  I was very amused in the department store "Printemps" that the casual wear for young women floor had no jeans, shorts, or what Aussies call casual wear in sight.  Instead, fur collars, cardigans, bows, ruffles and pleats are all the go.  But I love the socks and stockings they sell.  Bob was just amazed at how many shops there are, how many people are out shopping and how late they open on a week night.

We had dinner in a restaurant which claimed to have Singaporean food and where this very pretty lobster was awaiting his fate with a friend in a tank

We ordered gado gado which was very bland and very un- Indonesian or Singaporean

 

Beautifull crispy and tasty garlic prawns

 

 

Very, very bland crab dumplings

And very nice oyster noodles with a chilli paste.

Then, exhausted, it was off to bed in our new nightgear - much nicer than the sack in Hiroshima, but not as nice as the kimonos.