広島 - Hiroshima

I arrived at Hiroshima station at around 1:30pm on Tuesday 12th February. With a hotel already in mind after some internet research prior to travelling, I set out on foot down Ekimae-dōri (which translates as 'the street in front of the station'). Immediately, I was taken by how beautiful a city Hiroshima was. Spacious, tree-lined streets... gorgeous river... it reminded me, interestingly, of Nagasaki. Kyoto was lovely, of course, but enormously different from my home city in Kyushu.

A ten minute walk saw Ekimae-dōri become Heiwa-Odōri, or Peace Boulevard, the main street in Hiroshima. The hotel I was looking for was just a couple more minutes walk from there. It is called the Toyoko Inn and is one of a chain of business hotels found in all the major cities of Japan. I stayed in the Toyoko Inn in Kumamoto with the rest of the team who went on the Red Cross sports trip back in November. It was from this experience that I knew I would like the hotel in Hiroshima and since it was in the perfect location for my purposes, I decided to go for it. It was almost exactly the same price as the ryokan in Kyoto incidentally.
Check-in wasn't until four pm so I left my rucksack behind the reception desk and went exploring. I came across this:
Now, is it me or does it appear that this duck is reading a newspaper whilst sitting on an invisible toilet?

After about an hour of wandering around I got a sudden craving for some curry, so I changed my objective to seeking out a curry house. Today really was my lucky day, as I stumbled upon this restaurant after only a few minutes of looking:
“Good Smell. Good curry”. Sounds good enough for me, I thought.

After settling in at the hotel for a while, I went out again and made the ten minute walk to Heiwa Kōen (Peace Park). I particularly wanted to see the Genbaku Dōmu (A-Bomb Dome). I had first seen pictures of it many years before during history lessons at school and was struck then by its desperate appearance. Being only a matter of metres from the hypocentre, it managed to stay standing because it was subjected to primarily downward rather than horizontal forces. It is now a Unesco World Heritage site.


The cenotaph, containing the names of all the known victims of the bomb. Each year at the memorial service the names of all the hibakusha (atomic-bomb survivors) who have died in the past year are added to it. Last year over 5000 more names were added.

The Children's Peace Memorial, inspired by the leukaemia victim Sadako, who believed if she folded a thousand paper cranes, her wish to be cured would come true. She died before she reached 1000, but her efforts inspired children across the world to fold cranes in the hope of one day achieving peace.
The monument for the Korean victims of the bomb. One in ten of the victims of the bomb were Korean, largely due to the fact thousands were forced into coming to Japan for slave labour by the Japanese during the war.
I had been warned that Kyoto was extremely cold at the moment but compared to Hiroshima, ha! I woke up on Wednesday morning to this image from my hotel window:
A blizzard, by English standards! And a little later, after breakfast:
Wednesday was the day I had planned to go to the island of Miyjima as a day trip and I wasn't going to let a little snow stop me. I left the hotel wearing all the clean clothes I had left in my bag, ready to spend most of the day outside. I'll talk about Miyajima in a separate post because there's quite a lot to say.

I got back from Miyajima in the late afternoon, with just enough time to see the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. This museum is only given one line in my Lonely Planet guide book, but that was enough to convince me to see it. “... Featuring Salvador Dali's Dream of Venus...” The Salvador Dali?! The Dream of Venus?! The painting lived up to its expectations without a doubt. It was truly amazing. There were some other wonderful paintings there too, many by Japanese artists. I enjoy admiring artwork, but sometimes there is just too much to look at for me, too much to try and appreciate. This was quite a small museum however, so that suited me very well.

I woke up bright and early again the following day, Thursday. No snow this time though. After breakfast in the hotel lobby and after checking out I went back to Heiwa Kōen to see the Atomic Bomb Museum. Needless to say, it was very moving. It was also very informative. I learned that, unlike Nagasaki which aimed to simply rebuild after the destruction of the bomb, Hiroshima was given a make-over too. The streets were widened, trees were planted (many of which were donated from various places from across the globe). They wanted Hiroshima to become The City of Peace and so it had to look like it. From spending three days there, I think they did a very good job. It is a really beautiful city and a lovely place to explore on foot.
To get home to Nagasaki I had to first travel to Fukuoka/Hakata. I worked out that if I went by Shinkansen to Fukuoka and then by train to Nagasaki, it would cost me well over ¥12,000, but it would only take me four hours (excluding the time it would take to change trains). I then worked out that taking a bus all the way back, changing at Fukuoka, would take me seven hours but would only cost ¥6500. I decided to go for the latter. I had already finished everything I wanted to do in Hiroshima and sitting on a long-distance bus for the afternoon, listening to my ipod and enjoying the scenery didn't sound that bad to me. And if I would be saving ¥6000 too, then all the better. After a small glitch early on, involving me getting on the wrong bus, I had a very easy journey home. It was wonderful seeing my apartment again, lying on my bed, playing on my laptop. After five days and 1700km of travelling Japan, I was absolutely exhausted. I ate some dinner, put my camera on to charge and fell asleep.

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Next, Lily Goes To Miyajima.

京都 - Kyoto

Wow. Where do I begin? Since I last posted, my Mum has come and gone, I have ridden the Shinkansen ('Bullet Train') across Japan and I have seen Kyoto, Hiroshima and Miyajima. Well, let's do things in chronological order, shall we?

So, my Mum came to visit me in Nagasaki. I went to meet her at Nagasaki airport (the runway of which stretches out into Ōmura Bay) on Sunday 3rd February. We then spent the next six days in Nagasaki shopping, eating, sightseeing and socialising with some of my friends here. Her and May got on really well and everyone I introduced her to loved her. I took her to the hospital to meet some of the people I work with and about 75% tried to speak in English for her sake, even though only about 25% actually speak in English. There was a bit of laughing about the lack of a common language but that made everyone smile that little bit more to compensate.

It was nice showing my Mother my home turf here in Japan, but we had previously decided that we would travel a bit together too. On Sunday 10th February we woke up bright and early, said sayonara ('goodbye') to May and headed for Nagasaki Station. We got on a train to Fukuoka/Hakata (which took 2 hours) and there hopped onto an Hikari Shinkansen bound for Tokyo. We got off at Shin-Ōsaka Station and changed for a Shinkansen going through Kyoto. In a total of five hours travelling time we had travelled 854km, and the first 174 took two hours on the regular train. It was very impressive but a little weird travelling on the Shinkansen. If you imagine a film clip taken from a moving train and then imagine speeding it up and watching it in fast-forward, that was what it was like. Anyway, here's the Shinkansen we caught Hakata to Ōsaka:
After navigating Kyoto Station (which is the train station equivalent of a mystical labyrinth by the way) I managed to book us two nights in a traditional Japanese Ryokan (Inn).

It was a lovely little hotel. It was quite expensive but there was no arguing that we were travelling the Japanese way now. Plus, a large and delicious breakfast was thrown in. Can't argue with that. Aaaand do you see that table in the second photo... well, it has a heater built into it. You slide your legs under and it keeps your feet toasty while you enjoy a cup of ocha (tea) and an okashi (cake). Bliss.

The following day I headed out to Fushimi-Inari Taisha, a Shinto shrine in the South-east outskirts of Kyoto. Although many of you might not recognise the name, some of you might recognise the place:


The shrine is dedicated to the Gods of rice and sake (Japanese rice wine) and is the main Inari shrine out of the 30,000 dotted across Japan. Needless to say, it is very popular with tourists and when I arrived there at around 10:30am it was packed. Even so, the beauty of this famous shrine was undeniable. The torii-lined pathway extends 4km up the mountain, Inari-yama. I didn't walk the entire 4km. As much as I was enjoying the stroll under the torii, the prospect of an 8km trek in the middle of February didn't appeal. Besides, I would be leaving Kyoto the next day and I still had some more sightseeing to do.

Next I went to Gion, the traditional entertainment district of Kyoto. It was here that I stood my best chance of seeing a real-life Geisha, as they still wander the streets here on their way to and from appointments. In a stroke of pure luck, I stumbled upon a Geisha posing for some photographers after being in Gion for only five minutes. Jackpot:
I stopped on the walk back to the Ryokan at the Kamo river. It was turning into a beautiful evening and what with the distant mountains and the river birds and the buildings of Kyoto on all sides of me, I decided to sit on the bank for a while and read some of my book.

After another night in the Ryokan, Mum and I went back to Kyoto Station. There we said goodbye. She got on a Shinkansen for Tokyo and I got on a local train to Shin-Ōsaka, and from there took a Shinkansen to Hiroshima. Mum is flying back to England from Tokyo Narita Airport today. I have been in Hiroshima for the past three days so I don't know what she got up to in Tokyo, but if her time in Nagasaki is anything to go by, it probably involved a lot of shopping :-)

Stay tuned for the next instalment, where Lily Goes To Hiroshima.

30 ⽇ - 30 Days

This is really it. I only have 30 more days here in Nagasaki, and 34 more days in Japan. How did I get here? How did I make it this far?
My Mum is coming to visit me on Sunday and will stay in Japan for two weeks. As great a blessing as this is, with it comes the need for a lot of preparation, planning ans socializing on my part. My social life has never been as active as it is now, I don't think. All of my friends at the hospital are really excited about her visit so I've been getting a lot of invitations for us both for dinner and stuff. I haven't had to turn anybody down yet but our schedule is getting so full that I might have to soon. I should stop complaining. It is reminding me how much a part of the hospital I feel now.

Speaking of socializing, May and I have been invited to Sinenkai this Thursday. Remember Bonenkai, the end of year party that was held in the middle of December? Well, Shinenkai is the start of year party. It will be a night full of food, alcohol and semi-naked dancing no doubt, at least it will if Bonenkai is anything to go by. Is it wrong that I am looking forward to it even though I know this? When I asked a few of the nurses on 6E if they were planning on going, they all raised their hands in unison and yelled, “Iku! Iku!” (“I'm going, I'm going!”). Looks like I'm not the only one who is looking forward to it.

せいじんしき - Seijinshiki Festival

The second Monday in January marks the Seijin No Hi, or coming of age day. Men and women who have reached the age of 20 (hatachi) celebrate on this day the start of their adulthood. It seems to be acceptable to celebrate Seijinshiki not just on this day though, at least things certainly look that way as May and I celebrated it this Saturday just gone. She is 20 years old according to the western counting system and I am 20 according the Japanese counting system (where you are 1 on the day you are born). So either way you look at it, one of us was supposed to be celebrating our coming of age.

Kumiko-san and Oka-san kindly arranged for us to be dressed in their kimono for the day. We had tried on yukata (summer kimono) at the International Festival that took place in October but these... these were bone fide, the-whole-nine-yards kimono. It took two people two and a half hours to dress both May and me. There were so many layers, bits of string, back-boards, padding, towels... ugh, it was all very exciting and interesting and something I will remember for the rest of my life, but boy, was it tiring. It was very similar to how I imagine being dressed in a corset would be like - lots of pulling, tugging, bracing yourself - as was the end result: very pretty, but difficult to walk and breathe in.


Once fully kimono-clad, we took a walk around the hospital (where we got dressed) and showed a few of our friends on the staff. There were many “Kawai ne!” (“Cute!”), “Sugoi ne!” (“Amazing!”) and “Kirei!” (“Pretty!”), which was all very nice. After some photo-taking we then got in to Oka-san's car and drove to Suwa-jinja (the main Shinto shrine in Nagasaki). Something to note: riding in a car with a huge obi shaped into a flower on your back is tiring work!


After only a few hours of wearing the kimono, we were glad to get them off and back into our jeans. I have a new-found respect for women who wear kimono regularly, particularly geisha, who's kimono are notoriously heavy. Really, it was hard work just standing in them. Doing anything else required additional effort too. Still, kire katta desu, ne! (they were pretty, weren't they).

クリスマス と おしょうがつ - Christmas and New Year

It seems like an age since I last posted anything here. A lot has happened. I have spent my second Christmas abroad and 2007 has come to an end. Being as we are now in January, I have the delight of being able to say that next month I am going home. There are what feels like a million crucial and complicated things that I need to do before then, but no matter how stressed I get with all of that I just have to remember that in a little over two months none of this will be important.

So, Japanese Christmas. May summed it up perfectly in one sentence: they don't celebrate it religiously or culturally, they just think it looks pretty. It is very true that Christmas can transform even the drabbest train station or department store into a fantasy land of lights and decorations, but this rather superficial celebration of Christmas is rather lacking in the spirit of the season that we love in the West. With no family or close friends here in Nagasaki, Christmas passed May and I by without really changing our moods much. We did have a very pleasant time, it was just missing that something special that makes Christmas Christmas.

On Friday 21st December we were taken out to Bagdad Café (that's 'Bagdad' as opposed to 'Baghdad', according to their sign) by Kumiko-san, along with Oka-san and Goto-sensei to enjoy their Christmas menu. It wasn't what I would call a traditional Christmas dinner, as it featured spaghetti, pizza and seafood salad, but it was very delicious none the less.
May and I were working on Christmas day so we moved our own Christmas celebration to the day before. We basically spent the whole day baking, eating (the food we'd baked, the cake we bought, anything else we could get our hands on) and watching rented DVD's. So not much change there from a regular Christmas, apart from maybe the baking and you would probably watch all the new DVD's you received as presents rather than rented ones. On the 25th, I was working with the home nurse while May was still working on 4F. This meant that while she was bed-making and sorting through patient files, I was visiting ordinary Japanese people in their homes. It was a wonderful and unique way to spend Christmas day actually, even more so because it seems to be standard for the patient to give cake and tea to their guests. May and I spent our lunchtime handing out sweets and cookies to some of the hospital staff and we received a few presents in return. In the evening, we were invited over to Oka-san's house, where we were surprised with another Christmas meal that her daughter had cooked. All in all, a very nice Christmas but, if I'm honest, not even close to the one I missed over in England.

Custom-made keyrings from Oka-san and her daughter:
New Year is a much bigger occasion in Japan than Christmas. We were given four days off from work (combined with the weekend, six days) which is the longest break we have had since coming here. We could have done loads of amazing things, travelled, made the absolute most of our little holiday, but we instead decided to spend most of it shopping and relaxing at home. Don't judge us, we needed the break. We had been waiting for January before we started seriously shopping (which we succeeded in doing, bar a few minor lapses in concentration) because we had heard that Japan has some major New Year sales. It even has it's own special name, hatsuri, or first sale of the year. AND they have special lucky bags (fukubukuro) just for this occasion. You don't know what is inside when you buy them, but they're only about half the price of the contents' value. You're not completely in the dark though, since there are sample bags that you can open and there are different sizes for the bags containing clothes. As interesting as it would have been to buy one, I decided against it. Besides, I had already seen exactly what I wanted to buy:

A blue skirt (¥9555, normal price ¥13,5000) – This is the perfect skirt for me, so I think it was worth spending the equivalent of 2 weeks food money on it, don't you think?
A new pair of jeans (¥3990) - I needed to replace my old ones which are starting to fall apart a little. This style is called 'Boyfriend Baggy, but I am quietly ignoring the claim that they are baggy. I was lucky to find jeans that fit me at all in a country where most girls have a 21” waist and weigh under 100lbs;
A black top (¥2048, reduced from ¥4096) - It didn't photograph well unfortunately, but you can take my word for it that it is cute and looks great with a red top I bought during one of my “lapses in concentration” last month;
A pair of earrings (¥1260) – These were too unusual and too pretty to miss.
Now, the people who know me will know I am not a big shopping person and that I am normally plagued with guilt for days after buying myself anything. Japan has changed me though. Japan is shopping country and I am in need of retail therapy. I wasn't completely selfish however– I bought some omiyage (souvenirs) for people too, which, for obvious reasons, I can't tell you much more about.

May and I had anticipated a lot of people at the department store for the sale on January 1st, so we decided to get there for 10am when it opened. We were shocked: there were hundreds of people ordering themselves into nice, neat queues outside every door into the store. I had heard that everyone goes to the shrine on New Years' morning but apparently shopping is really the priority here. Then came the second shock of 2008: when the doors were opened, people started running! I mean literally running... all over the shot. And the store clerks were yelling for people please not to run, but it was already too late by then. All sense of propriety had been thrown out of the window. Incredible.

New Year mochi (rice cake):
Throughout this whole holiday period the weather has been going crazy. On December 23rd it was 17ºc and 68% humidity; On January 1st it was 7ºc and snowing and hailing. It seems to be stabilizing again now, but I don't know how long that will last. I'm used to it always being 12ºc and drizzling in England – I just can't take this kind of sudden change.

I have no idea how to finish such a long, rambling post so I will just do it with a random picture. This was taken on January 1st near Hamanomachi:
Owari desu!

メリークリスマス - Merry Christmas

Here are a few photos from around Nagasaki during the Christmas season. I thought I would share them with you. Also, it saves me writing a real post.

Sorry this isn't really a very good photo. This is Hamanomachi anyway – the main shopping district in Nagasaki. There are actually tons of festive decorations all over the place here, but apparently, not visible from this angle.

This one is a bit more obvious, huh. Even if you miss the giant snowflake light display on the wall in the background, you would be hard-pressed to miss the 25 foot tree in the centre. Japan is a Buddhist country.... that fact and what we're looking at here really doesn't seem to add up, does it?

The “Japanese McDonald's” is called Mos Burger. This is an advertisement for their Christmas menu. Let's take a closer look...

Yes, the sign does read “Merry X'mos!”. (Sorry that it's blurry, by the way). At first glance I thought it was a misprint, just some poor English, but the Japanese continue to surprise me with their rather clever advertising. What is a little funny though, is that 'Xmas' is not pronounced here as 'Eks-mas' but 'Ek-ku-su-ma-su'. You try saying that quickly... it's really difficult.

I know this one isn't very festive, but I couldn't not share it with you. That is indeed a 3D illuminated human heart model plastered to the side of that building. The hiragana beneath it reads “Nagasaki haato kurinikku” ('Nagasaki Heart Clinic'). What you can't see in this picture is that the heart is lit up so that it appears to pump blood! How's that for innovative? God Bless the Japanese and their advertising genius! It might have been a little wasted in this case though. I mean, if you need to go to a heart clinic, whether it has a giant illuminated heart model on the front of the building is of little importance to you really, isn't it. Would you choose this one over a clinic that didn't have such a display? Hmm?

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Well, that's all for now, folks. I hope everyone had a smashing Christmas. See you in the new year.

ぼねんかい - Bonenkai

It was Bonenkai (the hospital end of year party) last Friday night. There is no denying that May and I looked great. She wore a green dress that she had bought on Wednesday and I wore a red top that I'd bought the week before; Our hair was pretty; We had make-up on. All of these things were massive improvements on how we normally look at work – tired, uniform-clad and a little sweaty from all the bed-making. I think we surprised people a little actually. "Wow, they scrubbed up well, didn't they?" It turned out to be as formal an occasion as people wanted it to be - some of the staff wore suits, some wore jeans - so May and I felt nice and comfortable somewhere in the middle.

The party was at the hotel that is right next to the hospital. We pass it every day on the walk to work and it turned out to be very nice indeed on the inside. One thing I didn't like about the evening was that you had to pick your seat number out of a box at random, meaning you could wind up sitting next to complete strangers. That was half the reason for doing it, also there was a raffle at the end of the party based on seat numbers. It didn't really matter though because Kumiko-san arranged for May and me to sit with her at table 7 by talking a few members of staff into switching with us.

Once seated, the food promptly started to arrive, all of which was delicious. There were a lot of dishes that I didn't recognize, but that has never stopped me before from digging in and it didn't then. There was quite a lot of debate between a few of the doctors at our table over what the English name was for the meat in the soup. We had everything from 'seagull' to 'whale' put forward as suggestions. I think it might have been goose, but who knows?!


Part way through the meal, the performances started. Half a dozen or so of the departments gave a 5-10 minute performance and the senior members of staff had to judge the best for a prize of ¥50,000 (£214 – the same amount May and I get per month from the hospital). After the Kumamoto trip, I knew what to expect: Semi-nudity, group-participation and on-stage consumption of alcohol. Oh, and also wigs and cross-dressing. Needless to say, it was very entertaining. Mariko-san dressed up as a reindeer and threw a mango at a doctor in drag, with the aim of him catching it on a fork. He managed it two out of four times, in case you were wondering. Oka-san was up there, Nakashima-sensei and Imamura-sensei too. You would never think that such respected doctors are so willing to make complete fools of themselves in front of a room full of their work colleagues and friends, but apparently it is the complete opposite. Anyway, 4F won. I can't even bring myself to tell you what Imamura-sensei had to do to get the victory for his floor. *Shakes head in disbelief*. All I will say is that it involved a dominatrix. Enough said.

A sample of 7W's performance:


Yamaguchi-san (assistant nurse, 6E) came over to our table part way through the proceedings and gave May and me each a present: two pairs of tabi (Japanese split toe sock). I had yelped with delight at the inter-departmental volleyball tournament a few weeks ago when I had seen her wearing the most beautiful tabi I had ever come across. She obviously took note. You gotta love Yamaguchi-san :-)

Kumiko-san was very drunk by the time the party ended at 10:30. It was quite funny to watch her giggling to herself and tripping over her own feet. She asked us to forget this occasion in the future and although we won't be so cruel as to bring up her embarrassment again, there's no way I could forget her singing "All I Want For Christmas Is You" over a sobering cup of coffee in Mos Burger after the party.