Dr. and Mrs. Hofeditz in Japan, Part 3

And finally, the conclusion.

This is a big one, folks and folkettes.  On March 31, my parents and I toured a bit more of Kyoto before getting on the train to Hiroshima.

Everyone looks good in a yukata.

If you see something called "Potatornado", you have to buy it.  Ironclad law of the ironic universe.

Vortex of potato!

The sand gardens of Ginkakuji.  The large mound is reshaped every day and represents Mt. Fuji.

This is green tea ice cream in between biscuit things with custard.  Yep.

The sakura weren't quite at full bloom, but the sun came out and made for a wonderful ride along the Philosopher's Path, one of the big springtime Kyoto attractions.

Heianji temple.

My parents' body language says they disapprove of cheesy pictures in Japanese gardens, but they just can't see how nice it looks from my perspective.

I wandered above Chion-in temple to find a huge graveyard.  There's at least that much again behind me in this picture.

After a bit of a Creighton-sponsored scramble to get to the station on time, we boarded the Shinkansen for Hiroshima, a 90 minute trip.  The plan for Hiroshima was to spend two nights there, then head for the famous island of Miyajima.

Train beer.  Clutch.

Hiroshima is famous for its oysters and its okonomiyaki.  Okonomiyaki means, ambiguously, "cooked how you want it".  It's wrongly referred to as both the Japanese pancake and the Japanese pizza, when really it's more like an omelet.  Egg and cabbage are the only base ingredients, then supplemented with anything you'd like, from other vegetables to meat and seafood.

There are two styles of okonomiyaki, the Kansai/Osaka style and the Hiroshima style.  As I live on the Kansai side, I can only really get Kansai style in Kanazawa, so I was eager to try the other style.  I knew it involved noodles in some way, but I was pretty uncertain about it otherwise.  On a recommendation, we went to "Okonomiyaki Village", three floors of a building with tons of small okonomiyaki shops competing for customers.  We picked one more or less at random, and then we had one of the best dinners I've had in Japan.

It's safe to say I prefer Hiroshima okonomiyaki.  First, batter is spread on the grill while noodles are cooked on the side.  The batter becomes a thin crepe-like pancake, and cabbage, spices, and other add-ins come in.  Oysters were still barely in season, so my dad and I got oyster okonomiyaki.  Eventually the noodles are mixed in, and then comes the egg.  They crack an egg on the grill and then spread it into a circular shape.  The whole other mess is flipped onto the egg, creating one big delicious package.  I'm having trouble writing this because of the huge puddles of saliva pooling around my computer.

Difficult to describe why this is amazing and terrifying, but outside most Japanese businesses are statues of tanuki.  I don't remember if I've talked about them before, but tanuki are an indigenous raccoon-dog animal.  There are a lot of old legends about an anthropomorphized tanuki who gets into all sorts of hijinks and they're associated with prosperity.  They're also often peeing and have enormous testicles.  This was the most insane tanuki statue I've ever seen, and it stopped me dead in my tracks.

The main "sightseeing" attraction in Hiroshima, and the reason for our stop there overall, is of course the Atomic Museum and the memorial to the Hiroshima bombing.  It was an incredibly affecting experience, and if you are ever in Japan I highly recommend considering a trip there.  I have a LOT of problems with the way the Japanese typically treat history at this point, and I know that some people have problems with the Atomic Museum, but I found it to be generally a non-political expression of grief and remembrance.  The most difficult part for me was seeing some preserved junior high school uniforms--they are charred and torn and are accompanied by stories of the children that died in them.  School uniforms haven't changed much in the last 60 years, and it was all too easy for me to picture my own students in those uniforms.  War may be necessary in some rare cases in this often broken world, but that doesn't mean it isn't evil.

Paper cranes folded by kids around Japan, inspired by the story of Sadako Sasaki

The memorial with the eternal flame with the Atomic Dome in the background.  The Peace Park that contains all of this is about a quarter mile from the hypocenter.

After the Peace Park, we walked around the city a bit, including a visit to the rebuilt Hiroshima Castle.

Find the parentals!

Somewhere in the course of the day the idea of seeing Hiroshima's pro baseball team, the Carp, play was brought up and luckily enough they were playing that night.  Formed just five years after the bombing, the Carp have a brand new stadium and a history of losing.  Think the Cubs with less money.

It was a pretty amazing time.  Instead of hotdogs and pizza, sushi and yakitori and udon noodles were the food, and the modest crowd threw themselves into cheers and songs the whole game.  It felt like what I imagine American baseball was before all the crazy money showed up.  Perhaps that's an over-romanticizing of the game, but it felt fresher and newer in many ways.  Unfortunately, the Carp lost.

Their mascot is a weird Phillies Phanatic ripoff.

At a prearranged time, everyone blows up long balloons and lets them go at once to cheer the Carp on.  Shades of my sports day, if you can remember that far back....

My dad remarked poignantly how surreal our day had been, visiting and reflecting on images of horrendous devastation and then plopping ourselves in the middle of the vibrant life that continues in Hiroshima.  Hope (and possibly baseball) springs eternal.

No explanation necessary.

The morning after the Carp game, we set off for Miyajima island, home of the famous "floating shrine", which I guarantee all of you have seen before.  It's one of these images that people show when they're trying to show JAPAN; of course it's not floating, it's a giant torii gate in the water that has been there for 700 years.  No big deal.

From the ferry.

The day was foggy and wet, but it ended up creating some really amazing and unique views.  We planned to drop our bags off at the luxury ryokan we decided to splurge on and head up on a hike up the island's main peak, Mt. Misen.  There's a cable car to the top, but we're not lowland wusses.

The big blocky building is our hotel.

By the temples at the trailhead.  The trail was composed mostly of steps all the way up the mountain, and if it isn't obvious in the picture, the streambed in this part is almost entirely manufactured.

At the end of the only hike I've ever done with an umbrella.  We were the only people who braved the whole trail in the weather aside from a very nice Japanese university student from Kobe named Kosuke.  He was only too happy (and insistent) to take our picture.

There is also a temple complex near the peak of Mt. Misen.

This is, very subtly, one of the more incredible things I've ever seen.  This fire has been burning for 1200 years.  I'll wait for that to sink in a little bit....  Through the craziness of life, death, wars, constant regime changes, and a nuclear explosion not far away, someone has always been at the temple to feed the fire and boil water for tea for more than a millennium.  JFK's grave ain't got nothin' on this.  The fire was used to light the eternal flame at the Peace Park memorial in Hiroshima.

We did take the cable car down.

We did not regret that decision.

Possibly the best picture of my parents ever.

After the hike, we checked into the ryokan and cleaned ourselves up.  It was a really wonderful place, I have probably never been so relaxed and comfortable staying somewhere.

When you check in, they bring you tea and snacks to your low table.

Before dinner we set out to walk around town.  The tide was out, and I far prefer the torii gate like that.  The coolest part of coming right up to it was realizing that the main two posts are virtually unchanged enormous tree trunks.

Then it was time for dinner.  It was the best dinner I've had in Japan.  It was a traditional "kaiseki" dinner, with probably twenty small dishes of food served in stages.  Soup, sashimi, oysters, rice, vegetables, fruit, on and on.  I only have pictures of the beginning of the meal when we only had a few of of the dishes in front of us, as eating quickly took precedence over documentation.

My Papa takes the dive and eats a whole shrimp--eyes, guts, and all.  This is more than I'm capable of as of yet....

 This picture does no justice to my memories of the meal.

When we got back to our room, futons had been laid out.  Nothing for it but to get into yukatas and relax until our bones slid out of our bodies.

I decided to head out again at night to get a couple pictures of the shrine lit up.

The next morning we got back onto the ferry and headed east.  The plan for our last stop was to go to Himeji to see Japan's greatest castle before it went into renovation the following weekend.  That way my parents would be closer to Tokyo to make it easier to get back for their return flight.

Everything went without a hitch, despite being weirdly shadowed by the most insufferable, priggish, entitled British kids since Draco Malfoy.  The castle was really crowded, but we got our individual-sized helpings of Japanese culture and went to a relaxed dinner.

It's important to not be self-deceiving about the trip--sometimes it was really frustrating, and nerves were frayed at points.  I realized that it was the most consecutive time the three of us had spent together since maybe ever, and traveling with other people is one of the hardest things to do.  Still, it was truly wonderful, and my parents helped me to see Japan with new eyes.  I also truly think it brought us much closer as a family.

One of my greatest joys here has been to be able to show the things I've seen and learned to the people I care about back home.  Thanks for the opportunity to make my experience all the more real.