Golden Week

On Tuesday, I shinkansenned down to Nagoya to meet up with Kaiah. Nagoya is not a city to add to your itinerary unless you have a reason to go there. It`s Japan`s fourth largest city and as they`re all much of a muchness, you can skip it. It has no outstanding features of natural beauty (aside from Kaiah, perhaps) and the shrines are pretty run-of-the-mill. We had brilliant fun though. Kaiah still doesn`t know the city too well, so we navigated by stalking handsome boys - into coffee shops, through department stores and around the red light district. We went to Nagoya-jo and rebelliously went down the `up` stairs and stopped off for some famous miso nikomi ramen (ramen soup with udon-like noodles).

After grading the kakkoiiness of every customer in a trendy coffee shop and trying on some tardis-like hats, we went to an izakaya for tea. Kaiah has a degree in Japanese and lived in Hokkaido for a year, so was able to handle the picture-free menu with ease. As I am a huge fan of squid, he ordered some squid sashimi, which is not how I generally like it to be served, but squid is squid. A few of the kanji were indecipherable, so we were presented with inedible purple slop and an amused expression from the waiter. We`d ordered squids innards. We both had a go each, and as we couldn`t chew it was tasteless, but vile. It looked like something a Jewish doctor would throw in the bin.

We tried to find some more entertainment later, but every izakaya was full and the Hub was the only option. Kaiah was tempted to try it, but being greeted by Australian and American accents is not a good welcome, so I suggested we try Wara Wara, a cheap and reliable chain izakaya whose menu I am pretty much bored of and know off-by-heart. It was full, but we did meet a drunk girl in the lift who was going to the same place and so I asked her to join us. Sadly, Wara Wara had a waiting list, so we headed back to the Hub with our new friend. She turned out to be only 20 and slaughtered, but not ready to take herself home. She loved us, even though her English wasn`t great. She sat and occasionally squealed, while showing me her new shopping. She had bought every possibly hair ornament and accessory going, including two hairpieces, so we came to the conclusion she was a hostess - one that would be far more successful if she could handle her drink. She eventually went home and we tried stalking boys for new places to go, but every time we spotted any that looked like they`d know cool places, they veered off into blow job bars (`Snack Bars`) and we were left at a dead end.

We eventually headed back to the smallest town in Japan and picked up Kaiah`s gaijin friend and a physics teacher he works with before hitting karaoke. The physics teacher thought I was `sugoi` and I thought the same of him as he is the only person in Japan who thinks I look young and can sing. He was clearly lying to be smooth, which works as well on a Japanese physics teacher as it does on an English one, but bless him for trying.

The next day I took my hangover to meet Rachel in Hiroshima, a relatively painless exercise for me, but not her as her phone had run out and she`d been hanging around the shinkansen platform for an hour. We dropped off our bags at the station and walked around the dead ends of Hiroshima. A wonky-toothed weirdo tried to invite himself to dinner with us, but we managed to shake him off and head to a Chinese restaurant for a huge lunch. Rachel had travelled by boat and thought she was suffering seasickness in the restaurant, but it was actually a small earthquake - possibly her first.

After dinner, we got the tram to our hostel. It was far from the centre of Hiroshima, near Miyajima, an island famous for its torii (the gate to the shrine is in the sea). We were led to our hostel by seeing blind man with a white stick under his arm whose perfectly good english disintegrated into mumbled Japononsense. Worryingly, he was very surprised when Rachel spotted the hostel - hopefully because she could read Japanese and not because he was leading us somewhere unpleasant. The owner resembled Fu Man Chu and hugged us because we were so late, but we were more distracted by the OCD sufferer licking cream off a celophane cake wrapper who had stubbed out 20 cigarettes after taking one drag. Not somewhere we wanted to spend too much time alone. We quickly headed out to an izakaya where we had to eat squid and octopus tempura as it was the only thing we could order from the all-kanji menu. The chef loved having some foreigners in and gave us some chips for free. The waiter, however, took to calling me `kiwi sour` as I ludicrously asked if they served them.

We were forced to share a room with two boring (one down-right unpleasant, actually) JETs who were friends of friends and a mosquito who ate us alive. I have a line of bites across the sole of my foot. We barely slept so got up early to explore Miyajima - we did some shrines, bought masses of tat from the sovenier shops, and then got a cable car up the mountain. I was not as scared as I expected, although did have a hissy fit while waiting on some stone steps for the second leg of the journey. Climbing down the mountain was more of a challenge. We apparently picked the toughest route, though some fools were going up the same way and gasped `konnichiwa` with strained red faces as we passed.

On Friday we did Hiroshima proper - the museum and A bomb dome and moved into a new hostel. Everywhere was booked for Golden Week, so we were lucky to have the upgrade to a real YHA bed. We also got an 11 o`clock curfew which ruled out any fun, but we were too tired and skint by this time to worry.

The museum was amazing and presented a devastating piece of history in a very dignified manner. Emotional blackmail would have been entirely justified, but rather than tugging on heart-strings with depictions of vicious and prolonged deaths, it wielded this only against the destruction of buildings. It was moving, but nowhere near as traumatic as I had expected. Weirdly, the 30th Anniversary flower festival was taking place, so we heard lots of commotion from outside and wanted to get out into the sun. We found a spot and watched masses of groups perform roughly the same traditional dance over and over again.

One thing I did notice about Hiroshima is that, although an obvious tourist mecca (Rachel seemed much troubled by the gaijin count, though it didn`t compare to Nowhereville Omiya), the locals seemed enthralled by our presence. Perhaps because we were two loud, busty girls, or perhaps it was straightforward racism, we couldn`t quite tell. Generally it was very sweet and whenever we stood still for more than two minutes, we were forced to entertain yet more curious natives. However, in the izakaya near our first hostel, some of the waitresses ignored our `sumimasens`, even though between us we could order a meal without falling back to English. We also had a bizarre experience in a cafe. Two young boys were sat opposite showing no interest in us whatsoever (we both knew this as they were fairly kakkoii, so we had shown interest in them) when suddenly the braver of the two gestured to a camera and asked if we`d mind. Rachel got ready to take a shot, just as the young man lowered himself on the sofa to pose next to us. We laughed, but got on with it and the second one took his turn. Fine in itself (ish), but when we tried to chat with them and asked them to join us, they went back to their seats and acted like nothing had happened.

On our last night, we had to race into town from the hostel to find somewhere to eat. This time, we managed to get into Wara Wara and got laughed at by the waitress for trying every cocktail on the menu. Do not order anything with Calpis in it. I got home yesterday, but as I had swapped dates for my return, my ticket was not reserved and there was standing room only on the shinkansen. A stop or two into the journey and I managed to elbow an old lady out of the way and get a seat. Whatever she had been through, I had descended a mountain and my legs ached. I wasn`t going to stand for four hours.

Last night I took my holiday snaps to the George and befriended a hairdresser called Shin who perhaps sees himself as a future Mr MacGechan. I am less sure. This morning I went to Cafe Lamp and showed off the photos again - my god, they love it. Afterwards, we went for lunch and I ended up chatting to a young guy called Abe who wants a girlfriend who can cook - more precisely, who will boil the vegetables he chops. He has no other criteria. He initially said a Japanese girl would be best, but he only insists she can boil. Looks and personality are not important. Kaori suggested he date me, but I would like to think I had bagged someone who was a little fussier.