Thursday, March 24th: Snow in Hiroshima!
Erci got me up early to visit the Hakata Machiya Folk Museum before we checked out of our hotel, and though it rained, and was bitter cold, the experience was wonderful. We took several pictures of Kushida Shinto shrine before the museum opened, then enjoyed the museum for an hour. The silk weaving portion is free, and in a very beautiful example of early Showa architecture. Amazing place, and well worth the walk from Gion subway station in Fukuoka.
We gathered out bags and checked out of Miyako Hotel and managed to buy Nozomi tickets for the train to Hiroshima with only 2 minutes to spare! This time we lucked into a 500 series train, and the LED display in the front of the car announced that we passed 300kph several times (mostly in tunnels) on the trip through beautiful country side. Steep mountain slopes bottoming out on rice fields and small towns with traditional Japanese styled homes built with modern materials. Beautiful.
Hotel Granvia is attached directly to the Hiroshima station, which turned out to be a good thing as it was pouring when our train pulled into the station. Granvia is even more posh than Miyako, and it also has broadband. We consulted the tourist information center in the station and discovered that the afternoons were low tide here, so we skipped the trip to Miyajima for now and simply went into the city for the Peace Park and the dome that survived the atomic bomb blast. This was a sobering visit and that was accented by the weather (cold, and more rain; good thing we did not try Miyajima). The Hiroshima trams are a lot like the ones in Prague. We closed the evening with a very expensive teppenyaki style steak dinner on the 21st floor of the Granvia Hotel while looking past our chef at the night sky filled with snow!
Snow!? This late in March this far South and West in Japan!? Unheard of... but that is our luck... sigh. The stores and stations are all decorated with cherry blossoms because that season is upon us, and we are seeing snow. At least it is beautiful, so incredibly beautiful.
We gathered out bags and checked out of Miyako Hotel and managed to buy Nozomi tickets for the train to Hiroshima with only 2 minutes to spare! This time we lucked into a 500 series train, and the LED display in the front of the car announced that we passed 300kph several times (mostly in tunnels) on the trip through beautiful country side. Steep mountain slopes bottoming out on rice fields and small towns with traditional Japanese styled homes built with modern materials. Beautiful.
Hotel Granvia is attached directly to the Hiroshima station, which turned out to be a good thing as it was pouring when our train pulled into the station. Granvia is even more posh than Miyako, and it also has broadband. We consulted the tourist information center in the station and discovered that the afternoons were low tide here, so we skipped the trip to Miyajima for now and simply went into the city for the Peace Park and the dome that survived the atomic bomb blast. This was a sobering visit and that was accented by the weather (cold, and more rain; good thing we did not try Miyajima). The Hiroshima trams are a lot like the ones in Prague. We closed the evening with a very expensive teppenyaki style steak dinner on the 21st floor of the Granvia Hotel while looking past our chef at the night sky filled with snow!
Snow!? This late in March this far South and West in Japan!? Unheard of... but that is our luck... sigh. The stores and stations are all decorated with cherry blossoms because that season is upon us, and we are seeing snow. At least it is beautiful, so incredibly beautiful.
