Pictures (part six): Miyajima and Hiroshima

Well, this is going to be a shorter post today. Relatively shorter, anyway.

This post corresponds to this post for Miyajima, this post for Hiroshima, and this post for pictures.

If you don't know what this is by now, I haven't been fangirling enough.

Even the deer wanted to eat momiji manjuu.

You have no idea how much I wish I could be on that boat. Because SERIOUSLY. SO COOL.

This was right by the shrine which the huge sea torii belonged to. I have no idea what it was, except that it was sacred for some reason.

It's kind of creepy, in my opinion.

This's the back of the shrine. Notice that the water's already receded.

Also, there were tiny crabs all over the place.

Aaaaand that's all the pictures you get of awesome views, 'cause my camera is pretty terrible.

That enshrined piece of driftwood. SO COOL. (I actually took a bunch of pictures of this, but I figured that most people wouldn't want to look at more than one.)

Because I cannot post enough pictures of this torii.

Here's a pagoda that was on top of a hill that I climbed and nearly fell down. (The nearly falling down was my fault, for the record. Mostly.)

That tanuki is smoking.

Also, robots.

I don't think this needs any further explanation.

So as we were walking around as the sun was setting, we came across these deer, who apparently thought that the sign at this shop was tasty.

Then a little foreigner kid showed up to scold them loudly in English.

Kid: No! Bad deer! Don't eat paper!

Deer: [IGNORE]

Then they started fighting over who got to eat the paper.

This is a guardian lion wearing someone's glasses. No further explanation necessary.

Tiny shrine! (You can't see particularly well from this picture, but it was in a little pond, so you had to cross over a stone bridge to get to it.)

And here are some close-ups.

And here's the back of it. (You can see a little bit of the pond in this picture.)

Futons! We slept on futons. I really like futons. So much easier to make than normal beds. Also, they're pretty ridiculously comfortable.

Yes, that is a jellyfish. At my feet. Because the tide went out which allowed me to...

...walk down to the giant torii. Have I mentioned how much I love this torii? I love this torii so much. I would undoubtedly marry this torii, if I didn't think that Itsukushima Shrine would probably object.

As I mentioned before, people stuck coins in between the barnacles for luck.

When they couldn't find spots in the barnacles, they just stuck the coins in breaks in the wood of the torii.

A stepping stone path which you can only use when the tide's out.

Itsukushima Shrine, when the tide's out.

And here's the Atomic Dome again, 'cause that's the only picture I have from Hiroshima.

Today's the 65th anniversary of the atom bomb being dropped on Hiroshima, if you weren't aware. This was the first year that the U.S. sent a representative to the annual memorial ceremony in Hiroshima. Small steps, I suppose.

In any case, I don't have many photos left, so my guess is that I'll only have one post left, maybe two. They'll go up...at some point. Yeah. See how good I am with schedules when I don't have to keep notifying my parents that I haven't died in a ditch somewhere?

Hello, I am an otaku, in case you hadn't noticed

So today I was awoken at about 6:10 a.m. by an earthquake. AGAIN. This one was a 5.3 on the Richter scale, apparently.

Anyway, after that I got up, ate some breakfast, and then went to Akihabara for a day of ADVENTURE (and making other otaku supremely uncomfortable).

This is pretty much how it went all day:

Me: [walks into store]

Random otaku man: [glances over, realizes that I am a gaijin, gets nervous]

Me: [starts looking at something incredibly geeky]

Random otaku man: [does a double take, realizes that I am female, gets even more nervous]

Me: [puts incredibly geeky thing in my shopping basket]

Random otaku man: [realizes that not only am I a gaijin female, I actually know what I'm doing, and starts edging away]

Anyway, uh, I don't have a whole lot of cash left. WHOOPS. (Actually, I think I have more than 5000 yen left. And $900. So actually I have a lot of cash. I totally lied there.)

Long story short, I went to a million incredibly geeky places and bought lots of geeky things (which I'm not going to list what they are, 'cause some people reading this are getting some things as presents). Including a shirt. Yes, I broke the Cardinal Rule of Cal. I never buy clothing. Ever. But, really, this was too good to pass up. I mean, not only is it possibly the greatest Durarara!! shirt in existence (so much better than all the other ones I saw, which just said デュララララララララララララララララ！！and were $45), it was also really cheap for an anime shirt (they're usually somewhere in the $35-$50 range), AND it has Engrish! I mean, how can you get better?

Me: [puts shirt on the counter to buy it]

Cashier: Do you really want an M?

Me: Well...um...I'm a foreigner and I heard that sizes run small in Japan, but do you think this is the right size for me? Do I need a bigger one?

Cashier: Hold on just a moment. [comes back with a size M and holds it up] No, this is far too big for you.

Me: [DESPAIR]

I got an S, although I could have probably gotten an XS, but, really, my ego did not need that blow to it.

So then I had to go back to the hotel to meet up with everyone else so we could go back to Kyoto.

Classmate: What did you buy?

Me: ....things...

Classmate: What things?

Me: ....anime things...

Classmate: LEMME SEE. [rifles through bag] What? Seriously? You bought a [incredibly geeky object that usually only men buy]?

Me: .....yes....

So then we rode the Shinkansen back to Kyoto, which, by the way, I like better than Tokyo, for the record. SORRY, TOKYOITES.

We got to have dinner with our teachers, which was really nice.

Awesome male sensei: So where did you go in Tokyo?

Me: ...Akihabara...

AMS: Oh, what did you buy? Electronics?

Me: .....anime things....

AMS: Like what?

Me: Like [incredibly geeky object that only men buy]...?

AMS: SERIOUSLY? I LOVE THOSE! [soliloquy about the awesomeness of aforementioned object]

And then at the end of dinner, my host mom and host brother showed up, and gave me a really nice card (although card might not be the right word, because it's HUGE). And then we had to say our final goodbyes, which was SO SAD.

Everyone: YOU HAVE THE BEST HOST FAMILY EVER. JEALOUS.

Me: I know, right?

I'm going to write them a thank you letter, and probably fail at grammar forms, BUT IT'S THE THOUGHT THAT COUNTS.

And now some pictures from the Miyajima/Hiroshima trip.

Whoo, we're on the Shinkansen (bullet train)!

Oh my goodness, a lunch cart! I wonder if they have chocolate frogs...

So then we took another train to the pier, and then hopped on a ferry to Miyajima.

Lunch time!

This is probably what Miyajima is most famous for: the torii (shrine gate) in the middle of the ocean.

And here's the accompanying shrine (which I didn't get to go into, 'cause I didn't have time).

So then we got on the sky cars to go to the top of the mountain.

No need for explanation here. Just look at the view.

Two loverrrrrrs. Forbidden from one another~~~ A warrrr divides their peopllllllllllllle and a mountain divides them aparrrrrrrrrrrrt.

(Seriously, I'm not the only one thinking this, right?)

Watch out for monkeys, you guys. (We didn't actually see any monkeys, which was kind of disappointing.)

And then we saw this really cool piece of wood which was randomly enshrined.

So then we went and chilled in our room, because it was too hot for doing anything else.

So then we went down to the torii again, but the sun was setting this time, so it was GORGEOUS.

My classmate cracking up over some face I was making and subsequently making me crack up.

Dinner!

Classmate: Can we eat the yellow flower thing?

Waitress: Well, yes, but it tastes nasty, so please don't eat it.

Me: ....I already ate it...

Classmate: ...

Me: It was good!

Classmate: You are so weird.

So then we went to sleep. (Well, actually we took a bath before that, but whatever. I'm skipping over that.)

Next morning!

Breakfast! It was yummy. (Especially the white stuff with the yellow sauce. I'm not entirely sure what it was, but it was really good.)

So then we walked down to the torii, which we could actually walk down to, because the tide was out.

This guy is sticking a coin (for luck) in between the barnacles that are coating the legs of the torii.

Some of us wanted to marry the torii, that's how awesome it was.

So then we hopped on a train to Hiroshima.

And then we went to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, and it was depressing and everyone wandered outside looking shell-shocked.

So then we wandered around some of the memorials outside (in a rather dazed manner, partially because we were in humanity-hating mode, and partially because it was approximately EXTREMELY HOT).

And then we went to the Atomic Dome. (This is one of the few structures that was left intact after the bomb was dropped. It was kept preserved in its original condition.

So we went to this little hole-in-the-wall okonomiyaki shop. (Note the morose expressions. We still hadn't really gotten over the hating-humanity thing yet.)

And we ate this. It was delicious.

In any case, I have tomorrow morning free, and then I have to hop on a plane to come back to the States, so obviously there won't be a new post tomorrow. My next post will be from back home! It's been fun, guys. I'm going to miss Japan. Won't miss the heat (or the cicadas, which came out this week), but I will miss a lot of other things. Like the food. And the people. And the language. (Speaking of which, I feel very sorry for Opal and Esuka and anyone else who talks to me in Japanese on a fairly regular basis, because I'm going to be speaking super slangy Kansai dialect. Sorry, dudes and dudettes.) But in any case, I'm sure that I shall have plenty of very exciting adventures at home.

In any case, it's time for me to sleep! G'night!