Seeing as it is the Year of the Monkey, I thought a good way to celebrate it would be to do an 8-part Year of the Monkey series based on my experiences with actual monkeys. The first time I encountered monkeys was during my first three months in Japan when I was studying at Senshu University. I had procured a JR Rail Pass for my fall break prior to arriving in Japan and for a few days I traveled around on Japan’s shinkansen (新幹線/bullet train) to visit the cities of Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto, and Nara for the first time.
I originally intended to go on my trip alone, but two people joined me. One person joined because the first day matched their itinerary and the second person joined for the whole trip because they didn’t do any research and they pretty much copied everything I did. So we took the Shinkansen and made an impromptu stop at Shin-Fuji station for 30 minutes just to… look at Fuji. Which was nice, but it wasn’t very close, nor was it very special looking without its picturesque snow. We were bored pretty fast and hopped on the next train to Osaka.
The three of us went to Osaka to see Osaka Castle, which was my second Japanese castle (after Odawara Castle), but neither of which were original castles, both castles were rebuilt. It was interesting enough, we went to the top of the castle, took some pictures in the cut-outs, and then one of my friends split off from us and then it was just me and the copycat. During these trips, we pretty much just stuck to convenience store food, which was unfortunate retrospectively as I didn’t really get to experience Osaka as much as I thought I had.
After the castle, the two of us went to the Kaiyukan (海遊館/literally: ocean amusement building), Osaka’s aquarium, one of the biggest in the world. There I got to see huge manta rays and whale sharks for the first time and it was a fun experience, but a little fun than it could have been because it was at night so the sunlight was dimmed and we were rushing through because we wanted to see everything before closing (at least the price was discounted). In the gift shop I purchased an octopus plush that I named Hatchan (はっちゃん), which is a pun based on ‘hat’, ‘eight’, and -ちゃん (the Japanese suffix denoting cuteness), I thought I was being clever thinking of this name on my own, however a few years later I discovered there are takoyaki (タコ焼き/fried octopus balls) restaurants called Hatchan as well as a One Piece octopus character named Hatchan (oh, well!). My friend proceeded to buy the same octopus doll, so somewhere in the world, Hatchan has a creepy twin brother. That night, we both stayed in a capsule hotel in Osaka, which was a horrible experience. Capsule hotels are basically hotels where you sleep in a coffin sized room next to hundreds of other people in similarly sized rooms. It was so noisy and I didn’t get any sleep, but I was glad that I tried it at least.
The next morning we woke up really early so that we could get a train out to Hiroshima to see Miyajima. Miyajima was such a fun experience, I was surrounded by deer that wanted to play with me as well as a beautiful island full of culture and nature. We took the ropeway to the top station and walked up to the top of the island and the view was so beautiful. There were also a few deer up there as well and one kept trying to eat my ramen (I gave it my shrimp, since I don’t like seafood). I really enjoyed the view and there was almost no one up there. Just before taking the ropeway back down, I saw my first wild monkey and I saw it attack a deer and then swing on a flagpole back and forth to scare it away. We took the ferry off of the island soon and headed to our next destination: Hiroshima Peace Park.
The Hiroshima Peace Park is the location where the first of two atomic bombs hit during World War II. I wasn’t sure what to expect when I visited the peace park, I guess if anything I thought it would be sad and I would feel guilty for being an American, but that wasn’t the case at all. I felt peace and love by visiting the peace park. We were interviewed by some school children there and we even a got a photo with them, this was a fun experience. It was a lot of mixed emotions, happiness, sadness, guilt, hope, hard to explain. I saw some of the paper cranes that Sadako made (the story that made 1000 paper cranes famous), I saw a lot of sad things in the atomic bomb museum, I got to see the famous building that is called Genbaku Dome. Soon we took the electric car back to Hiroshima station, where we caught a shinkansen back home in time for Halloween the next day.
Length of trip: 2 days (Wed, Oct. 29— Thu, Oct. 30, 2008), 1 night.
New cities visited: Fuji, Osaka, Hiroshima.
New prefectures visited: Shizuoka, Osaka, Hiroshima.
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