Day 3 - Miyajima

Day 3 - Monday 30th September 2919

Up and out early today, before 7.30. We got an 8am train using our rail passes and had a 30 minute journey to Miyajima station. Then it was a 10 minute ferry to Miyajima island, passing lots of planks of wood floating in the ocean. We later found out that they were for growing oysters on the underside. Hiroshima and the surrounding area are famous for their oysters.

We had arrived early so that the Ohtorii gate (a red gateway) would appear to be floating at high tide. It lives on a bed of mud and you can walk up to it at lowtide, but at high tide it 'floats'. Only, today it was a huge pile of scaffolding 'floating' on the water. Renovations. Oh well.

The rest of Miyajima is fabulous. Its like a seaside town with lots of shops and temples. We went into the Itsukushimajinja shrine, which also 'floats'. Its a huge wooden platform with covered walkways and statues of lions everywhere. There is also the 5 story Hokoku pagoda, which is bright red, but you can't go up it. We did look in the treasure room, which had samurai swords and samurai clothing. There was even a model of the Ohtorii gate being constructed and therefore covered in very old-fashioned scaffolding!

Lots of wild deer roam around the town and mountains and are very bold about making friends with tourists or wandering into shops.

It was still early, and getting very humid, so we decided to get the cable car up to mount Misen. It is supposedly a miracle site, and has a flame that had been burning for 1200 years. The flame lit the one now standing outside the peace museum in Hiroshima.

The cable car was great and the views were spectacular over the other islands and the sea of maple trees below us. A couple of leaves had turned bright red, but we are a few months to early for the autumn leaf show. You could see tiny beaches in amongst the greenery. Very beautiful.

After the cable car was a funicular cable car that took you the last stretch to the viewing platform. We weren't at the top though, so decided to do the 1km hike to the top. You trek downhill for a third of it and then up, very steeply. It was very hard work in the humid air. Dotted along the lush green hiking paths were temples and shrines full of little stone human shaped statues, all wearing an assortment of hats and sunglasses. I'm not sure if this was significant or if they were just abandoned or forgotten hats. One statue holding a book had reading glasses on! Very cute.

We made it to the top of the mountain drenched in sweat, but feeling accomplished. The views were incredible, if a bit hazy. The trek back was much easier. There were so many people heading up the mountain as we came down at noon. I'm so glad we got up early and had the place pretty much to ourselves.

At the bottom we headed for lunch and ended up having lots of small snacks. We had deep fried fish and potato cakes, with cold tea that had an aftertaste of coffee, fried spiralled potato's, fried asparagus fish cakes wrapped in bacon, katsu curry oyster filled bread, fried maple shaped chocolate filled pastries and custard filled maple shaped sponge cakes. All washed down with Hiroshima grown lemon soda for me and lemon beer for Matt. The food street was great. Filled with domany interesting food stalls and touristy shops, and deer of course! What a great morning.

When we arrived back in Hiroshima we headed straight for the Peace Museum, something we felt we had to do when visiting this area. It was just as awful as we had imagined it would be. I learnt a lot and the information was presented in quite a matter-of-fact, almost emotionless way. It only took an hour to get around it, so I felt it wasn't overdone to the point where you couldn't take any more. It had one section where individual, named children's stories were told, next to an actual item of clothing or possession they had on them that fateful day. That bit was particularly difficult to see. But it was all done very tastefully.

Still, we needed a huge ice cream afterwards to cheer us up, as we looked at the tree that had flowered the following year after the bomb, a fitting metaphor for how life goes on no matter what.

We were pretty knackared by this point and my foot was causing some trouble, after a mistep trekking the mountain earlier. We headed back to the hotel to freshen up, then went in search of a bar to watch the rugby and eat. We found 'Jennys', a bit of a dive, but with surprisingly good pizzas and burgers. Samoa vs Scotland was on the big screen. We were the first people in there, but it soon filled up with rugby fans.

Day 2 - Hiroshima

Day 2 - Sunday 29th September 2019

Today we were up and out by 9.30, having a pastry for breakfast in a cafe. We tried to go up the TV towers viewing platform, but it was closed for renovation, so just headed to the main station for our train to Hiroshima.

We exchanged our print outs for our Japan rail passes which last all week. We paid extra for first class to be 'guaranteed' a seat. We got seated tickets for the first leg of the journey, but couldn't reserve for the second. Luckily we managed to find seats anyway, but this was a lesson to book our seats for each train earlier than the day we're travelling!

We got to Hiroshima without a hitch and met Luke at the station for lunch. Hiroshima is known for its okonomiyaki, which is a layer of savory pancake, cabbage, bean sprouts, pork, noodles, egg and delicious okonomiyaki sauce all cooked on an enormous hot plate in front of you. It was seriously tasty! The noodles go all crispy at the edges. Yum!

We then went and queued up to book our seats for all of our other trains. Our train to Kyoto will be at 6am in order for us to get a guaranteed seat for the 3 hour journey! I'd rather get up early than stand for 3 hours at a 'reasonable' time!

Luke went to get his train to Osaka to meet Tony and Margaret, who arrive today, and we went to check into the Candeo hotel, which is a bit bigger than our last room, yay. We can actually open our suitcase on the floor space.

We went for a wander into the centre of town to see the A-Dome, or the atomic dome, which is the remains of a domed hall for merchants to promote goods. The bomb hit almost directly over the building, so it avoided part of the blast. Everyone inside was killed, but the shell of the structure survived. It is now a UNESCO site and is a very powerful monument, in the middle of a park full of monuments to various groups of people who died in or in the after effects of the bombing. Its all very tasteful, and we will visit the museum tomorrow. I did get annoyed by the Chinese tourists smiling and posing for selfies in front of the building. A guard even told them off for standing on the monument. So disrespectful.

We headed to the bar district to find somewhere to watch the Wales vs Australia rugby match. We ended up in Bar G.O.D where there was a big screen and lots of westerners paying crazy prices for beer. Beer is very expensive in Japan! As is food in general. Wales just about won the match. It was very entertaining.

We ended up in a tiny local restaurant where a very friendly man cooked our food on a grill in front of us. We had bacon wrapped asparagus, chicken skin skewers ( not a fan ), pork skewers, aubergine in miso sause (yum!), grilled potato, sushimi tuna, and sausages. Delicious.

An early night tonight as we're getting up early for a day trip tomorrow.

Day 1 Japan - Nagoya

Day 1 - 28th September 2019

It was quite a nice week at school really. Everyone was in a good mood because half term was coming. We had Hutchy and Sian back for Tuesday and wednesday evening before they left early on Thursday. On Tuesday night we went for Yang's dumplings, and on Wednesday, they had a day at Disney, so we met them at the Cheesecake Factory for nachos, mini burgers and fudge and cheesecake layered cake. Yum.

The rest of the week was fairly quiet and then before we knew it we were up on Saturday morning, heading for the airport and for Japan.

We flew air China, which was actually really nice. We were given a sandwich and drink and extra legroom seats. We landed in Nagoya at around 1.30pm and managed to work out the train system quite easily. The trains are very expensive compared to China.

The Japanese are known for being polite and they certainly are! Everything is very clean and it feels like people make time for you. There is no pishing and shoving anywhere. People queue up nicely for trains. No sharpening of elbows needed like in shanghai! Loving Japan so far!

Our hotel room was tiny, just the size of the bed really and with the smallest bath I've ever seen! We didn't see any of the city, but we were only there for the rugby really. We headed out for some traditional katsu curry, which is like chip shop curry sauce, served with breaded pork and rice. It's delicious!

The rugby was actually in the neighboring city of Toyota at their stadium. It was about an hour on the train and there were lots of fans headed that way. As we were walking to the stadium, Japan beat Ireland in their group match, so the Japanese fans were going crazy!

The stadium is very cool and seats about 45,000 people. The match was sold out. Beer was very expensive!!! The seating in the stadium is very steep, so it means that everyone has a really good view of the pitch, even if you are really high up. South Africa played their reserve team and beat Namibia 57 to 3. Namibia put up a good fight though, but you could see how tired they were at the end.

Leaving the stadium was very civilised. No pushing. Everyone just walking calmly along to the station. Amazing really. We decided to have a beer while we waited for the crowds to go. I had a 'fresh mint mojito' which seemed to have no mint or alcohol in it. It was basically lime juice!  The match was really good fun and I'm glad we got tickets. I'm really looking forward to seeing England though next week.

Becky's Birthday and Cat Trouble

It's Becky's birthday today, but since she was covering in the office this week, we got some cake and Starbucks coffees to celebrate on Wednesday.  She was very surprised!  It's been a bit of an odd week in the office because out of the 9 of us 3 were out all week on the year 6 residential, and another 4 were out all day on Thursday for the year 4 trip.  With Becky and Sylvia covering for 2 days each, it felt like a very disjointed week.  But it was wonderful having both Becky and Sylvia in the office again. We do miss them!

I, myself, got to cover Joanna's year 5 classes this week, which I actually loved because they are my class from last year.  I grew very attached to them by the end of last year, and so it was wonderful to see them again.

The year 4 day trip on Thursday was really fun, but really hard work!  I had a group of 8 (mostly) lovely students, and we went around Century Park (which is enormous by the way) to 17 out of 20 parent volunteer run stations, where there was a different activity at each.  It was called 'The Great Race' and activities included puzzles, ball games, skipping rope challenges, a parachute activity - all sorts of things!  It was roasting hot and we barely sat down all day except for 30 minutes at lunch.  One friend did 15,000 steps - I don't have a counter, but i'm going with that too!  The aim was to absolutely knacker-out the students, since Thursday was also their residential, where they slept in tents on the school field.  Thank goodness I didn't have to do that!  I had to go home and nap after school because being tired is such a bad thing for me now - it seems to be the trigger of my epilepsy, but a good sleep always sorts me out.  Anyway, the day was really fun, and the students all enjoyed themselves very much!

On Tuesday, the fluffies took their first step to becoming British Citizens, which was to go to the official vets on the other side of the city and have their rabies jabs and their microchips implanted.  They also received their official travel crates.  They were not happy about the situation at all, espcially Snowball, who hid behind the curtain in our bedroom for the next 24 hours, refusing to eat.  Sooty actually recovered fairly quickly and was purring at me by the time I got home from school.  Sooty is naturally suspicious, so maybe it wasn't quite such a shock.  Snowball is very trusting,so probably felt the betrayal more.  I feel like a very bad cat mummy.

They seem to be fine now, and are getting used to the crates.  They were even playing in one yesterday, so hopefully they will be OK.  They will have to go on another day trip to have their blood work done in January, and then soon after it will be time for 'The Big Move'!

This weekend has been quite a chilled one for me.  We popped into a friend from work's baby's first birthday party on Saturday, but otherwise I've not done much other than watch the rugby.

Matt has had a very busy week at school and out.  He has had a million meetings during all his breaks, and then was out on Tuesday evening for hotpot with the senior school management team, out on Wednesday night for Adam's birthday curry, and out on Friday for his football social.  Today he is playing/watching his team play football.  He hurt his toe on Friday, and has possibly broken one, so he was going to see how he felt.  On Thursday, we also met out new cat sitter for when we go to Japan, so it's been very busy!

This afternoon will be a bagel at Lean for lunch and then a whole evening of sporting TV!

The Peace Hotel and Shanghai Tower

These photos have all come out in a backwards order, so you'll just have to take my word for it what order we did things in.

Our weekend plan of doing something new every weekend is still going strong - this weekend we went up the Shanghai Tower (the tallest one. Second tallest building in the world) and we stayed over night at the fabulous Peace Hotel on the Bund.

We have had Matt's University friend Tom, and his girlfriend Sian staying with us from England this week.  They arrived on Tuesday, and while it has been lovely to see them, they came without any sort of plan of what they wanted to do.  So, it's been a little hard work during the week when our schedules were so off - we were going to bed early and getting up early for work and they were getting up at midday and going to bed at midnight.  We'd worked out our schedules by the weekend though, which was good because it was the mid-autumn festival on Friday, so everyone in China had an extra day off.

We spent ours going up the Shanghai Tower, which was surprisingly empty considering the fact that it was a bank holiday.  Very strange.  The view from the top is incredible.  You can see so far!  And Jinmao Tower and the Bottle Opener look tiny compared.  You are looking down on their rooftops, and it all feels very strange and distorted.

The entrance to the tower is very cool - there are pictures of all the highest buildings in the world at various points throughout the last 100 years - most were in New York City up until fairly recently.  There was also an olympic torch from the Chinese Olympics.

After the tower, and a quick bite to eat in Starbucks, we caught the ferry over the river to Puxi.  This was the first time the ferry has gone in the wrong direction!  You always take a bit of a gamble getting on the ferry, since everything is written in Chinese, but this time we went upstream instead of downstream towards the Bund.  We ended up catching a taxi to get to the Peace Hotel for check in time.

Check in was a bit of a nightmare. At first they told us that we had booked just standard rooms, so none of the food was included (this was the whole point of our stay at this very expensive hotel), but that got sorted, and we ended up with an upgrade to a Bund view because of it.  Then we were told that because I didn't have my passport (it's at the VISA office getting my new work VISA), that I wouldn't be able to stay!!!  We ended up being allowed to check in, then Matt and I had to go to the police station with our floor's butler (in full on tail coat uniform) a 10 minute walk from the hotel, so that they could confirm that my photocopy of my passport was really me.  Absolutely ridiculous!  Oh well, we managed to get into the hotel anyway.  

The hotel is beautiful, and very art deco. It is very famous in Shanghai and has had lots of famous people stay there over the years.    Our room was lovely, and you could just about see the skyscrapers from our window.  The corridor was very Disney's Tower of Terror looking, which was fitting since we were there on Friday 13th, on the day of the full moon festival!  We tried to go out to the bund in the evening, and discovered where all the people in China had been hiding - on the Bund! I've never seen it so busy. We couldn't even walk out onto the street there were so many people there!  We did manage to sneak onto the terrace bar for a look at the full moon and the skyline though.

We also had an hour in the famous jazz bar at the Peace Hotel, which has had the same 6 jazz musicians playing there for over 50 years.  They were great, and the atmosphere was very cool.

On Saturday, Matt and I checked out after a nice breakfast and went home for some time with the kitties.  Sian and Tom went to do some sightseeing.  We all went to the fake market in the evening, and then to the LCM Mall a few stops away from us for dinner in Pizza Express.  We had been to Sichuan Citizen earlier on in the week with Andy and Becky, but met them again for brunch, along with Vicky and Adam at Tacolicious, my new favourite place in the French Concession in Puxi.  A few of us went to a crepe place for dessert after our delicous tacos.  They do such good ginger beer at Tacolicous.  It happened to be one of the members of staff's birthday, so there was a quiz about rap happening.  Every correct question got a shot of tequila, so Matt and Adam had a few!  It was fun!  Sian and Tom went out to a museum after brunch and then we all had an evening in watching a movie.

So, a busy, but nice weekend.  Sian and Tom are off to Cambodia for a week today, and then we will have them back for 2 days (1 of which they will be at Disney and we will meet them at the Cheesecake Factory - yum!)

The bottom photo is of how Snowball now sleeps.  On my head, or on my pillow.  He is like my Snowball hat!