Thursday, July 5, 2007

Hiroshima - Day Tripper (Almost)

Things didn't quite go as planned today. I woke up, ready to take a day trip to Miyajima, which is home to the second most photographed attraction in Japan (after Mount Fuji, of course). But, to make a long story short, the train I was told to get on went in completely the opposite direction, and it was almost two hours before I was able to get off and on a train back to Hiroshima.

So, with four hours of my day suddenly vanished, I decided to put off the trip until tomorrow, since today would no longer be my last day in Hiroshima. Instead I just kind of wandered around the city with no real plan. I kind of treated today as my day off from doing much of anything - now that I have two days more in this city, I don't have to pack everything into one day.

My biggest decision of the day was when I came upon a sign that said "Comic Book Museum" with an arrow pointing up a steep hill. Ultimately, my dislike of exercise triumphed over my love of comic books, so the museum will have to wait for a less hot day. I wonder how many visitors they get a year - clearly no fat comic book nerd is going to climb a mountain to look at a bunch of comic books they probably already have at home.

For dinner I had pizza. Yes, pizza. And it was good, damnit!

I have to say, if I were to live in Japan, so far I would choose Hiroshima as my home. The people are great, the city is beautiful, the food is outstanding, yadda yadda yadda. So I'm really glad to be staying here two more nights. Another reason is that I have yet to see any of Hiroshima's famously tame deer (in fact, in a recent poll, when asked what they thought of when they heard the word "Hiroshima", 58% of Americans said, "Deer," and 37% said, "Didn't some buildings fall over or something?") But I have yet to see a single deer, let alone pet one like that stupid little girl in that statue I'm always seeing.

I don't know what's been going on at the department store next to the hostel, but for the past two nights, there have been huge crowds behind police barricades, obviously waiting for someone to pull in. A lot of them have hand made signs to hold up with hearts drawn on them and some stuff written in Japanese - I assume the usual stuff like, "I love you Brad!" and "Take me with you, Ashley Angel from O-Town!" Whoever this dude is, I don't know why he's coming to the same store twice in a row, but I figure if it was anyone I cared about they would have written his name in English. If these people are here tomorrow night, I suppose I'll have no choice but to stand with them and find out what all the fuss is about.

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