The morning that we were leaving, Megan and Abigail dropped us off at the JR train station in Fussa, as this was going to be a time for Father and Son to hang out and have quality time, which we hadn't been able to do for many years, as Adam was thirty one years old, and he has been in the Airforce for eleven years. Adam was extremely helpful the entire trip, handling the luggage when he thought that I might have a tough time with it, as I was bringing my cane with me to decrease the chance of my falling over (which obviously wasn't very effective in Tokyo the other evening). We caught the train to Tokyo and settled in for the moderately long trip.
Upon arriving in Tokyo, we started searching for the correct area at the train station to catch the Shinkansen Bullet Train to Hiroshima. After we wandered around a little bit, Adam asked a few JR workers where we should go, and if we were in the correct area to catch the Shinkansen, and discovered that we were. Once we were allowed to enter the loading area we discovered an air conditioned structure where passengers could wait, and gladly took advantage of it.
The Shinkansen pulled in a while later, ever looking appropriately like an elongated bullet. It had clean attractive lines. We watched as the passengers disembarked, and then the doors closed. We stood for a while looking at the immobile train. It finally occurred to us that they were busy cleaning the interior of the train. We followed a small crowd of middle-eastern men to a different door of the train and waited there. Information about the train would flash on a small lighted display on the outside of the train written in Japanese, so I have no idea what it said. Finally the doors opened and we were permitted to enter the train. We had reserved seats, so we made our way down the aisle, and into the next car before finding our assigned seats. What struck me was how airplane-like the train was. Similar seats to a jumbo jet, and aircraft windows. When the train left the station I was impressed at the quiet smoothness of the ride. the "Bullet Train" didn't seem very fast...but then you could hear a slight whine as the engine gradually picked up speed. As I continued to look out the window at the sights, fence posts and the like gradually became a blur, even though scenery in the distance didn't seem to go that fast. I attempted to take a picture through the window of the blur that was going by as we sat there, but later when I was able to view the pictures I had taken, they were totally focused and still. The automatic setting on the camera made it appear that we had been sitting still. After we had been on the rail for a bit, a flight attendant...okay...not a flight attendant, but if we had been on a plane she would have been the flight attendant came by with a cart of packaged dinners and drinks, just like you would be served on a plane. Every time the attendants would enter or leave the car, they would smile and bow to everyone. I kind of liked that. It was very pleasant and polite. The train made a few stops before Hiroshima, finally arriving four hours after we had left. Keep in mind that this train goes nearly two hundred miles per hour. Before arriving in Japan, I would look at a map of the world andf figure that I could probably visit all of Japan in a weekend. Boy was I wrong! Japan is huge, and very diverse!
We arrived in Hiroshima in the late afternoon. We had been on trains approximately five and a half hours, so it was nice to finally be at Hiroshima Station. We walked around and found the exit, and emerged into the bright sunlight. Tall, modern buildings and a facinating reflective dual domed fountain were before us. We knew that our Hotel was supposed to be nearby, but we weren't quite sure as to where. Looking skyward, we finally saw it as we strolled around the city. The Hotel New Hiroden. It was a tall building fortunately with the name written on the outside. We went to check in, and Adam gave them our paperwork displaying our reservation. Apparently the man at the counter had a different type of reservation about the whole thing, as he stared at it. It seemed as if he was denying us our room, so Adam kept trying to explain to the man, that we indeed had reservations and the room paid for. The man didn't speak english. It didn't appear that anyone in Hiroshima spoke english. Even the European looking folks that we would see later didn't speak english. The man finally got the attention of a woman desk clerk that apparently could read the english well enough to give us a key to the room.
The room was the tiniest hotel room I believe that I have ever been in. Two single beds about two feet apart, a small TV on the counter as you come in, and a tiny bathroom with only half of a shower curtain. Fortunately it did have a toilet rather that the hole in the floor that is fairly typical for the country, it even was fitted with a bidet. They also had slippers for us to wear, as the japanese don't wear their shoes in their living spaces. All TV programming was in japanese, and the Hiroshima Carps were their baseball team. The Carps wore the uniforms and hats of the Cincinnati Reds, which is convenient since it has a large "C" on the front, which could be interpreted to be for their name. The television picture was extremely sharp, as Japan has had high definition television for many years. Watching the sports, weather and news, I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about, but was mildly tickled at the fact that the news personalities would bow to the camera before and after their newscasts.
Adam and I decided that we should stroll around town and try to find somewhere to eat as it had been many hours since we had been able to do so. We wandered aound never exactly finding whatever it was that we thought that we were looking for, when I followed Adam into a tall building that had a poster of some food inside the foyer. We got into the elevator and guessed at a floor to go to. After it travelled up inside the builing for a short while it stopped and the doors popped open. Hey! Looks like we might have guessed right! It appeared to be a decent restaurant. We entered, and the man at the front counter obviously questioned how many people we had. Adam communicated that there were two of us, and we were led to a booth with an obvious burner in the center if the table. The man went away and after a short while an attractive young server approached our booth. We were handed two text menus, which we stared at blankly, as we couldn't read the japanese writing. Adam requested any menus with perhaps english writing as some restaurants in Japan do. She realized that we were having some difficulties, so she went and got us menus with pictures. Adam asked me what I wanted, and I just shrugged as I didn't really know what we were looking at. He identified what appeared to be beef, pork, etc, so I said "how about the beef?" as I wasn't sure what we were actually going to get. We pointed out to the server what we thought we wanted, and she nodded and disappeared to give our request to the chef. The server returned with a divided metal bowl full of two different broths and placed it on the burner in the center of the table. Next she returned with a tray of vegetables and sprouts. We just stared at it. I was thinking "this doesn't look like beef...what did we order"? The server returned, this time with a large tray of thinly sliced raw meat. We stared some more. We looked at the server and tried to get her to understand that we had no idea what we were supposed to do. She just stared back, Finally she got it. She motioned that we were supposed to put everything into the broths and then when we felt that they were boiled to our liking to remove them and dip them into several small bowls of dressing that she had left. Okay. Got it. The server went away, and we snapped the wooden chopstick apart and fed the raw food into the broth with the metal tongs that were left at the table by our server. The meat cooked rapidly in the boiling broth, and we would remove each slice as it was done and dip it into the dressings. It was fabulous. I must say that this was one of my favorite meals the entire time I was in Japan. I discovered later that what we were eating was Sukiyaki.
There was an awful lot of meat on that tray. Finally we got near the end, which, as we were getting full was a good thing. We placed the last several slices into the broth, and the server took away the tray. We were finishing up, and she brought another full tray! Oh my goodness! "Perhaps we have to finish it in five minutes and it will be free" I said jokingly to Adam. After a couple of minutes of smelling something burning we realized that the wicker plate that our server had brought the vegetables out on was touching the edge of the burner and the edge was burned black. Oops! I quickly moved it away, hoping that noone would notice. We slowly made our way through the dinner and mercifully the only thing the server brought us was the bill. We thanked her, paid the man at the front counter and hit the street. Interesting factoid: you don't leave a tip for your servers in Japan.
We passed several coffee shops, so we decided to stop for a cup. Actually, I had a Kola which is Coke and Adam ordered a Kohi, which is Coffee...it seems that the coffee shops in Japan could never understand that he wanted hot coffee, because anytime he would order it, they would think that he wanted iced coffee...granted it was about a hundred degrees fahrenheight outside, but still...
We made it back to the hotel and turned in for the night...tomorrow probably a visit to the Industrial Promotion Hall which is now known as the Atom Bomb Dome and the Peace Memorial Museum.
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