There's your bombshell...
Trip Start
Apr 25, 2006
1
19
76
Trip End
Apr 25, 2007
Hiroshima,
Japan
Monday, May 15, 2006
My favourite foible is the insistence for standing on the right-hand side of escalators. In Japan, escalators always have one side for people to stand on, and the other side is the express lane where you must keep walking up the stairs (hence defeating the purpose of the escalator). But seriously, those 2 seconds you save could be really vital. Anyway, in my experience Osaka is the only city where people stand on the right and walk on the left - everywhere else is the other way around.
I just remembered another amusing anecdote. On the train the other day with Keiko and we found seats opposite each other when we hopped on. There was a businessman sitting next to me, so when he jumped off at his stop I suggested Keiko sit next to me to chat. (Side note: no-one will sit next to me on the public trains anyway so it would be a wasted seat). She sat down for a millisecond, but then jumped up as if stung and returned to her other seat! I was perplexed - the businessman didn't seem to have a problem?! I then learned that in fact the businessman WAS the problem, and that unsurprisingly he had left the seat warm and therefore completely unusable. I have it on good authority that 'most' women would react the same way here... I would be thanking the bloke for warming it up for me!
The local train to Shin-Osaka (where the bullet trains are) took about 1.5hrs, which hilariously is roughly the same time it took the Shinkansen to boot me from Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima! My lunch on the train consisted of a 500mL can of Asahi Extra Dry, and a packet of Twisty-like snacks that had a faint, somewhat disgusting taste of fish to them. It was also my first trip on a Railstar Shinkansen, and the big difference is that the seating is 4 across rather than 5 across - luxury.
Hiroshima Station was easy going and obviously geared towards foreign tourists. I didn't appreciate the standard "Are you American?" query (seeing as you could spot them from about 8km away) - I found myself beating them to the punchline and just opening with "Hello I'm Australian" a lot of the time. The info centre was pretty helpful (they are damn good all over Japan really), and so it wasn't long before I was equipped with map, guide, and directions for getting to the youth hostel.
I managed to get on the right bus, but soon realised there was no english info about the stops. All I knew was that the ride should cost me 210 yen and that there was a tiny sign on the opposite side of the road that I could look out for. There was then an 8 minute walk to look forward to. I should probably mention here that the buses work a little differently to what I'm used to. When you get on a bus you pick up a little ticket with a number on it, which corresponds to the bus stop number for that route. You get on via the back door, and pay/leave through the front door. At the front of the bus there is a grid of numbers which tell you how much you owe at the end of your journey - you just check the yen value shown next to the same number as your ticket. This meant that when my value finally hit the magic 210 yen mark, I was frantically looking out the windows for some sign of the youth hostel. Not long after that, I was more than pleased to hear the voiceover say "blah blah youth hostel blah" so once again these clever Japanese saved my bacon. I then realised how difficult it must be for visitors to Perth trying to make sense out of our bus system. Firstly, there are no automated announcements telling you which stop you are at - I remember even I had troubles when visiting a place for the first time. Secondly, we have a 'zone' system where you have to magically know how many zones you will travel through to get to your destination (I'm pretty sure everyone gets the Zone 1 ticket and pleads ignorance). It's actually quite cute here because most of the drivers have little microphones on them - they announce the stops (even with the automated messages), they chat to passengers, and they also thank every single passenger as they leave.
I digress... I found the YH signpost, and as per their instructions I followed a whole bunch of signs with arrows until I found the place perched up on a hill. Great view, but a real prick to hike up there each time. It was only about 3pm, so rather than die of boredom (there was absolutely no-one there!) I decided to head into the city for a look around. The funniest thing I saw was a wedding shop with a video display in the front window - showing happy couples, dresses, champagne etc - BUT it had some very inappropriate backing music: "Torn", by Natalie Imbruglia. There are plenty of terrible translations/interpretations to be seen here... and people look at me a little strangely when I burst into spontaneously laughter. I also took the opportunity to test out KFC in Japan for the first time. May I just say it was quite average, which is probably a good thing because I won't be bothering with them again.
