Tokyo, Japan 16-17 September 2008

We knew that the two week National Sumo Tournament was on while we were in town and the only day we had left was the day we flew out. We hiked it across town to the Sumo Stadium and bought the cheapest tickets possible (they’re really expensive!) as we would only be there for a few hours at most (the super stars came on at 1600 each day). The competition had been going for a few hours already when we arrived but as it was the lower ranked wrestlers turn to compete, the stadium was pretty quiet and virtually empty. This suited us and we happily made ourselves comfy in the ringside seats that weren’t yet occupied and no one seemed to notice. I’ve only ever glanced at Sumo on TV before and found watching it live very bizarre and strangely entertaining, more so than I thought it would be.

This is the inside of the stadium. The ring is only small (4.55m in diameter) and once outside the ring, there is very little room to move!



Some of the guys were quite small, more muscle than fat but were often pitched against wrestlers much larger than themselves. Many times, the smaller guy won on sheer agility and speed and some of the moves were brilliant. Before they start, they squat before one another



then start a whole ritual of stamping and slapping (some of the guys could barely lift their legs and I got the giggles)



but one chap was really really flexible!



and this can go on and on as they try to psyche each other out



Once ready, they always started facing one another, fists down



before the ref gives the nod and they lunge at each other. Most of the time they locked, sometimes they’d slap each other about the head or even bang heads – the noise made us cringe.





It’s a lot more physical than I thought it would be, I always thought it was about pushing and shoving but it seems that basically anything goes! The best move was when they both lunged at each other but one guy stepped out of the way at the last moment and the other went flying on by out of the ring. Brilliant!

Its all very ceremonious, no matter what rank the wrestler is and once the match is over, this guy wanders round singing some song



Some of the wrestlers looked in pretty good nick but others just looked fat and unfit. This guy was really puffing just walking out to the stage.



There are an official list of 82 winning techniques and some were pretty nifty. It was very funny to see the guys sitting waiting on the side get landed on. I don’t know how they didn’t get injured. The refs, one on each side, copped it too and we saw more than a few wrestlers go flying off the platform and land on someone. Hugely entertaining.

As we left the stadium, we came across a wrestler who’d been for some lunch and I asked for a photo (but had to promise Euan that I wouldn’t try any stupid poses with this chap – I was all up for getting him to faux wrestle with me but Euan wasn’t having any of it)

Then the real heavyweights started to arrive – in taxis! This guy was massive.



It was a bit of a shame that we had to head for the airport as it would have been good to see the really good guys but as it turned out, there were TVs showing it at the airport so we caught a bit of the action there while waiting.

A bit random but I couldn’t help but take a photo of this girl who was sitting next to Euan on the train to the airport. Everything was pink and white; even the phone matched.



I meant to catch more of the kooky fashion, the immaculate dressers and the perfectly accessorised garments that passed us in the street on camera but we would have had to be stationed in one place for a long time. I’ve never seen anything like it and anything goes but it always seems to be pulled off with absolute style and perfection. I have to say that I warmed to Japan and loved the people but we were left a bit disappointed by the lack of historical character in the places we visited.

It was with some reluctance that we left the efficiency, neatness and flawless service of Japan that night and flew to Beijing.

Nikko, Japan 16 September 2008

We’d spent enough time in big cities so decided to head out to Nikko from Tokyo. Our Chinese visas were issued and once these were picked up (a bit of a mission in itself), we were free to go!! Back on the Shinkansen and off to Nikko for the afternoon. Nikko is a beautiful spot about 130km from Toyko and there we found what we thought Japan would be like. We’ve been a bit guilty of skipping meals in Japan and it takes its toll (we both get grumpy) so we made a point of eating something – even if it was pot noodles in the car park of a supermarket.



On the way up the road to the temples, we got side-tracked by this lady who painted dragons. They might be dime-a-dozen for all we know but they looked pretty cool.

She started with the head

Then painted the body in one stroke, stopping the brush every few millimetres to create a scaled look



sprinkled some gold dust over it and voila, a dragon!



Shin-kyō, a red lacquered bridge was at the end of the road and the river gushing under it was incredibly clear. Very picturesque and the photo doesn't do it justice.



The Nikko National Park has temples spread through it and we managed to visit about three of them. The five-story pagoda was pretty cool



and some of the roof decorations were also pretty cool



but the real highlight were the huge trees. They were similar to redwoods in size and absolutely towered, dead straight, above the temples





The approaches to some of the temples were tree-lined paths and this one had a huge gate at the end, very grand and made us feel very small!





We hung out in Nikko until dusk and the temples had closed then made our way back to Tokyo. We’re staying in a hotel (rather than hostel) this time, in a different part of Tokyo to where we were when we arrived and it’s at the opposite end of the scale. Its all bright (red) lights, traffic, noise, bustle and restaurants at all hours of the day and night. Nice to experience something different but the hostels in the quieter areas are a bit of a haven for us and more like being at home, with kitchens, laundry facilities and lounge areas where you can sit and chat to others.


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Hiroshima, Japan 13-14 September 2008

We had a flying stop in Hiroshima and, as we arrived late, started with dinner at a local teppanyaki restaurant/bar. Nothing much fazes us but we stood outside the curtain covering the doorway for a good 5mins debating whether to go in or not and disturb the locals.



The menu was only in Japanese, no one spoke English, we speak no Japanese and, from peeking through the hanging curtains covering the street-facing kitchen doorway, we could see that there was huge potential for some dodgy choices of meal! We ventured in and it was as we suspected. Everyone stared, laughed and continued to do so quite openly and with good humour throughout our entire meal. There were bar-type seats right at the gril and we waited for those to come free so we could watch and see what was cooking then point helpfully. We saw the below and thought, yes!



Tepanyaki is quick and these guys were firing out the dishes every few minutes so for us to take at least 5 minutes to explain what we wanted using a combination of broken, badly pronounced Japanese and sign language was just holding up the show! To say it was a bit stressful doesn’t begin describe it. We started by gesturing, using Japanese from our book and got a hands up, eyes rolling, “ohh, iie, iie, iie” (Ohhh, no, no, no) indicating that our menu choice did not come with bacon (as it turned out, it was pork that looked very much like bacon but we only found that out when we saw the chefs cook it for someone else!).

We eventually got into the swing of things and some of the things we ordered were winners – like the pork pancake: a crepe made on the griddle, topped with a small mountain of sprouts, onions, seasonings, then layers of pork on top, cooked for a while, flipped over then placed on a broken egg that had been cooked on the griddle. That was really good and the lady in the below looked after us really well.



Because we were sitting close to the griddle, we ate directly off it but the lady in the above photo took one look at us trying to cut this pancake thing up using the utentil they gave us, shook her head, dragged our whole meal back towards her on the griddle, cut it up into small pieces for us then pushed it back at us. It was very clear that we were providing entertainment to all those sitting around the grill. Some had finished their meals ages before we started but clearly were hanging round just to watch and once we got used to being a spectacle it was OK but slightly mortifying nonetheless.

One of the poorer choices of dish was something that looked so good at the start (see the first photo) but it turned out oh so awful. It started with four rashers of bacon bring placed on the griddle, then an egg broken on top.



Then came the bit that made it awful and as soon as I saw them my stomach turned. A handful of these brown (nattō) beans were placed on the egg and believe me, these are not just any old beans. They have the consistency and stickiness of something the cat brought up and hang together a bit like the drool that comes out of the aliens mouth in the movie ‘Alien’ - a sticky stringy goo that has the consistency of mozzarella but much thinner and glutinous. YUK. . They are truly vile and I’d tasted them in a sushi roll the other night and immediately spat them out. Those of you who know me will know it takes a lot for me to do that with any food.



Then the thing was rolled, sliced and slid over to us to eat off the hot grill.



So, once the nattō were in there, the dish was pretty much ruined for me but Euan bravely battled through most of them and very nearly made it to the end.

A clear winner was fried eggplant, fresh ginger, pork, onions and green pepper with tamarind or hoisin sauce. All dishes were served in a square of tinfoil and all tables in the restaurant had a huge heated plate inset into the middle of the table that the food was placed on. We’d eaten Teppanyaki before but London-style which is very authentic. We got a bit more clued up as the night went on and as the chefs were cooking, asked them to point out on the menu which dish they were preparing. Then we just kept count of where the choice was on the page (the eggplant was three from the top). I’m sure they breathed a sigh of relief when we left but the lovely lady who’d looked after us had obviously found out how to say good by in English and came round from behind the grill to see us off – hanging out the door, waving madly saying “bye bye, bye bye”. Very humorous and a great experience but not exactly the most relaxing meal we’ve had!

As we only had a day in Hiroshima, we’d decided to get up early and head out to Miyajima Island, about an hour out of Hiroshima by train and ferry. All was going well until it started tipping it down with rain ½ way there on the train and by the time we got to the ferry, you nearly couldn’t see the island for the rain. We’ve been very lucky thus far as it is the rainy season but we’ve not copped it until now. The island was very pretty and the famous Ō-torii gate standing alone in the water just off shore was still a lovely sight even in the rain. This is the 17th incarnation of the original gate and stands unaided, its own weight providing an anchor, in the water.

Everyone else sensibly had umbrellas but we made do with jacket and poncho..

Tame deer wander around freely and those that weren't sheltering were hassling a few people who had to run to get away. It was quite funny to watch and the deer were well up for standing on their hind legs to try and get closer



A bit random but I thought this was really cool. Like an alien made out of bolts, screws etc. Someone had a great imagination and a welding torch!



There are a few temples on Miyajima and the below is known as the floating temple



very aptly named as it was bucketing down and the view was restricted by the rain



The rain didn’t stop that day so it was lucky that we hadn’t planned to trapse around Hiroshima. Euan had this poncho that he’d kept from the Vietnam trip last year. It wasn't really raining, he just likes wearing it (just joking!).



The afternoon was spent in the Hiroshima Peace Museum and the surrounding park which was actually very pleasant and had some very moving monuments to the bomb victims.



There was a pretty cool peace bell that you could ring so we spent a bit of time testing that out



and seeing what it was like to put your head inside it immediately after ringing it



The A-Bomb dome is adjacent to the park and is the only building remaining from the bombing in 1945. This is what it looked like a few days after the bombing



The Dome is in surprisingly good repair given that the bomb exploded 500m above and 160m to its west. Even the bridge next to it, which was the actual target, survived but had to be replaced some years ago as the damage had finally taken its toll.



The museum at Hiroshima is larger than that in Nagasaki and two bomb-focused museums in two days is definitely one too many. Its pretty heavy stuff and the Hiroshima museum had more focus on the bombs effects on Hiroshima and its people than the Nagasaki Museum, which offered more history on the weapons themselves and what we were doing to the planet by developing and testing them. We’ve learnt more about keloid scars and how radiation affects the body than we ever thought we would.

We had a six-hour trek back to Tokyo on the Shinkansen that evening and while it was made very pleasant by being in first class we didn’t think the difference between the seats in the Green Car and those Normal Car was worth the money (we travelled in both). Something worth bearing in mind perhaps if you’re ever looking at buying a Japan Rail Pass and are tempted by the ‘Green Car’ option. If it were British Rail then yes, it probably is worth the difference but not here. We looked at the costs of travel without the Rail Pass and a standard one way from Tokyo to Hiroshima is around 18,000 yen or about £100 so it doesn’t take too many trips before the costs mounts up.

Nagasaki, Japan 13-14 September 2008

Parts of the train journey to Nagasaki took us along the coast and was very scenic in places but as Japan is very mountainous we were zooming though a lot of tunnels at alarming speed so good views didn't last long. Nagasaki is the city that was flattened by an A-bomb in 1945, three days after Hiroshima was destroyed and its difficult to tell that, 68 years earlier, the place was totalled.

We didn’t think Nagasaki was a particularly pretty place and, almost thankfully, there wasn’t a lot to see there otherwise we’d have had to really belt it around in one day! We made use of the tram system (which is remarkably cheap – about 50p per journey) and headed to the A-bomb Museum which was sobering and also alarming. I say alarming because a large section of the museum focused on the development, testing and use of weapons of mass destruction and called out the countries that developed and tested them. We watched a video that showed the testing carried out by the US, France, UK, Russia and China and also the effects of the testing on the surrounding areas. It chronicled the history of the bomb development and the actions taken by the relevant countries. A single entry on the huge wall of the bomb history stood out for me as I remembered it: “1985: New Zealand refuses entry to UK and American nuclear warships.” All in all, the museum was very interesting but also very grim with loads of photos of the suffering, both at the time and years later, of those who live in the city and surrounding area.

On a brighter note, the Nagasaki central area was really pleasant and the China Town area was very pretty but we’ve no idea how authentic it is. If our visas come through we’ll be able to say for sure!



On our wanderings to find some dinner we came across what looked like, at a distance, a fish shop



but we were a bit shocked when we saw they were not aquariums but glass boxes with live puppies inside



Some seemed a bit depressed



but others were nuts. This little thing was going ballistic inside its glass house and this was about the only time it sat still while we were watching it. It was an expensive wee puppy, roughly £720.



We didn’t hang around as, while they were all clean and watered, it just seemed so wrong.

We made a point of sampling the local specialities, not a tough decision but it does seem slightly unfair to have all this wonderful food that is specific to the county and know that its costing an awful lot! We’ve estimated that its costing us £120 per day for us both to be here (travel included) but we haven’t been living on pot noodles and fruit which would have brought the cost down a bit. Anyway, I digress. The culinary specialities that Nagasaki is apparently famous for are shipokku (a Chinese-style banquet featuring many small dishes), champon (a dish of seafood, meat and vegetables with noodles in a hot soup) and sara-udon (same as champon but with a thicker sauce). Its kind of like an rich soupy chow mein in many ways and is very very good. Most of the time we don’t really know what we’re ordering but we are helped out by the food displays



some of which look remarkably real but they’re all in fact plastic, and no, we didn’t sample the below



Another thing we tried were griddle-cooked balls of egg mixture with pieces of octopus inside (no idea what they're called). The custard is poured into ½ ball molds, then the octopus is added plus a few other bits and pieces and once they’re brown on the bottom they’re turned very quickly by hand



and you are dished up little golf-sized balls that are then covered in topped with miso or tamarind sauce (we weren't sure which), mayo, see-through flakes of dried squid and dried parsley - yum.



The rest of the time we wandered and just looked around. This is Japans oldest bridge, built in 1629



and this picture gives an indication of how Japan is. There was 1000s of yen just sitting on part of the bridge, easily within reach but no one took it.



The contraptions here have been cause for great amusement, frustration and, in my case, pain. The kettles are very different to what we’re used to and in some hostels are more like a complicated hot water flask with lots of buttons to press. I couldn’t work out how to get the boiled water out of one and, after trying a few different buttons, tipping the thing etc, I managed to give myself a wicked burn from the small steam vent that didn’t have steam coming out of it at the time! At another hostel, Euan had me in stitches after confidently pressing buttons on the hot water boiler thing, completely giving the impression he knew what he was doing (and I think he really did) until one wrong press of a button had hot water shooting out all over the bench top.

The accommodation here is very cramped, walls paper thin and if anyone is heading this way, we can certainly recommend some good (and poor) options. Just let us know!


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