Ube Station Hotel

Oh, there are so many benefits to living in Korea (okay, sometimes not the food situation i.e. cheese, but everything else is sweeeeet)... my most recent benefit of Korea is its location near Japan. Why not a holiday in Japan when all Koreans are bonding with their families during Chuseok, or the Korean ...

After getting off the stomach churningly fast shinkansen bullet train, we arrived in the small port town of shimonoseki, on the extreme western tip of Honshu. In the few days that we spent in Tokyo, we managed to spend a small fortune on very little so we were hoping for a more financially sustainable time here, unfortunately, things did not go to plan.....

Shimonoseki is a strange little place, with no foreigners, but ...

Yamaguchi est une courte etape sur la route de Fukuoka, histoire de passer une derniere nuit dans une "riokan" = auberge japonaise avec repas gastronomique...hmmm ! Cette ville n'est pas vraiment visitee par les etranger ducoup il n'y a pas beaucoup d'indication en anglais, qu'importe maintenant Pauline gere le japonais ;-) Il y a une grande eglise catholique moderne ...

... Peace Memorial Park. The Park is dedicated to the first city to suffer a nuclear atomic bomb attack, at 0815 the morning of August 6th, 1945. About 140,000 people died as a result of the bombing. Eve and I noted since the bombing was almost 64 years ago, the survivors are starting to dwindle. The river was running softly and the riverbank was lined with a variety of beautiful flowers and vegetation, a very peaceful setting. Our first stop was the ...

... outgoing young woman with Labo. After all the festivities, we mingled a bit and some of the girls wanted to show us their collection of traditional hair pieces and fans. There we also got a quick lesson on fan twirling and opening. Now it was time to eat. A large pot luck supper was laid out, with everything from traditional dishes to Japanese pizzas and pastas, french fries and even some KFC. Many desserts and cookies were also available. Pictures followed and ...

... We saved a wee bit of space for the sweet cake dessert. I was delighted Mr. Takamura wanted me to try his favourite Japanese beer, Suntory Premium Malt. After lunch we talked for a while more and then jumped into the Takamura van. The Japanese have a very stiff fine for drinking and driving, so people do not drink and drive here. Mrs. Takamura drove all of us to a local renowned pottery artisan's shop. We were greeted by Mr ...

... and I tried it out. The water was very warm and everyone laughed when my feet came out all red when it was time to leave! For supper we decided to stop at Sushi Train - we sat at the Sushi bar counter - different varieties of very delicious Sushi were presented 2 units per plate. The plates were displayed on a moving belt around the sushi bar. Patrons could choose whichever plates they'd like off the line. It was like having a moving buffet in front of you. Eve ...

... We caught the JR train to Shin-Osaka, where we had reserved a seat on the Shinkansen to Yamaguchi upon arrival here on Tuesday. The reserved seat trains do not seem to be as crowded as the unreserved trains - with our JR Rail passes, it does not cost us any extra to reserve a seat, so really, why not? Of course we were over-estimating again, and arrived about 45 minutes early for our train. We found a rare seat, grabbed some sandwiches ...

... in an Ojizu (bracelet). My father made a monetary donation to the church where we prayed once again in front of the alter in which my great grandfather bought the lights of 2 butsudans. After all, my great grandfather did a lot for this town of Tabuse. Life is simple here, it's a farmers town, where everyone has a little garden in front of their house. The weather was perfect, warm, clear, and no rain. Our next stop was lunch at Tabuse's finest restaurants. Fujio had made ...

... massive headache ten minutes in, when my mom leaned over to me and pointed to her ticket and asked, "What does this say? Because it looks like a seat number." And it was. Even though we felt stupid getting up and hauling our luggage down the narrow lanes, it was worth the exasperated "silly foreigners!" looks to get away from the smoke. I still had my headache through the rest of the ride, and it was dark outside by that time, and we ...