I love coffee, back in my Past Life I used to go really often
to coffee shops specially Starbucks, sometimes before work I just
grabbed a coffee and breakfast there and was the only place open
before 6 am or after hours, the prices in Mexico are way cheaper that
here and besides that I was getting an income so spending some pesos
in a coffee wasn’t big deal.
Now I’m traveling in a really tight budget so I cannot afford to
buy many stuff or going out for dinner or drinks only maybe once
every week or every two weeks to a restaurant so Starbucks is out of
question, why would I spend 400-700 yen in a coffee when I can have
free coffee in the hostel, yea! Instant coffee is far from a real
coffee but the savings are real.
So buying a coffee in Starbucks will not be an option here in Japan
at least they had a wonderfully/tasty/weird/special seasonal flavor
like last month they have Banana and this month Sakura flavor latte
or frappuccino, one day walking by Hondori street I saw a poster
about a new flavor banana! Never tough that coffee and banana would
be a good combination, as a fruit is great coffee companion but IN
the coffee didn’t seems right, but well, if pumpkin and coconut ar
an option, why banana not? Or maybe apple? No, I don’t think so.
Few days after I went to Don Quixote to get some milk as part of a
nutritious diet in Japan that almost nothing has calcium and saw the
Banana Soy Milk for only 170 yen with taxes, after thinking for a
while if it was something I really need or want I decide to
buy it, is ok, I’m not spending much in alcohol either so my
expenses are almost null here so I took it home and after heating
water I made the coffee with banana flavor.
Incredibly it tastes really good!
Now that I remember I used to do banana smoothie back home with
coffee on it so it wasn’t such a new thing at eh end.
You know Miyajima
island, I’m sure you have at least see a picture of it somewhere or
hear/read something about it, is a small (not so small when you are
hiking to the top) island near Hiroshima.
Is one of the 3
views of Japan with Matsushima and Amanohashidate and is the only
one that I have visited so far.
The magical place
Miyajima was a
volcano long time ago and not so long time ago (maybe a twelve
hundred years) a monk named Kōbō Daishi founder
of the Shingon sect of Buddhism visit the place and felt the holiness
and aesthetic of
the place so he decided to make it a place
to stay and practice Shingon there.
People
believe that the whole island is God’s
body so they build a Shine also another belief is that the
Gods dwell in Miyajima island.
The Shrine was made
on the sea and not on land because it was considered profane to build
something on God’s land. And you can actually feel this feeling you are in a really old place, specially at night when almost no one is there.
Before going
there:
-Check the
weather, for us in the morning was sunny but when hiking to the
top of the Mt. Misen the weather got really cold.
-Drinks: Take
a bottle of water, tea or energy drinks with you, I don’t get why
to spend money on drinks when you can have them for free.
-Events:
there are a lot of events during the year, it would be bad to go
there the same day and missing it, look for them before leaving the
internet.
How to get there:
I’m currently in
Hiroshima so the easiest and cheapest way to buy one day ticket and
take the street bus south west to Miyajimaguchi Station and then take
the ferry to Miyajima port, and from there, the island is yours!
What to do there
is not a list of “the 10 things you have to do in Miyajima Island”
or “Top 10 things to do in Miyajima Island” but instead my
recommendations and a couple of places I would like to go next time I
visit the Island.
Deers!!
The moment you go out of the port building you will notice a deer, a
wild deer trying to eat peoples stuff, specially paper, they are
friendly but also can get angry at you if you bother them so much.
We waited for a friend some minutes outside the building and saw a
lot of reactions of the people, the distracted boy that saw the deer
just after it hit the boy forehead and he was scared as hell, the
foreign guy yelling to his mom about the deer but the mom was to
distracted that she didn’t even notice, the Instagram girl that
acted like a food and give the deer a lot of paper just to take a
good picture, we just looked at them with disapproval because too
much paper for the poor animal.
The animals are everywhere in the bottom of the island, chilling,
chasing some people, posing for pictures or just walking around, when
you get closer to them is easy to notice that the horns has been
removed, I guess is for safety reasons.
Shops, foods and
souvenirs:
Walking to the Shrine you will find Omotesando Street, the main place
in the town with a lot of stores full of souvenirs, restaurants,
street food and candy shops, In January is the oyster festival so is
a must to do, they are really good. (about 400 yen for a couple of
oysters)
The floating
Shrine!
If you walk from the coastline instead of the stores you will quickly
notice the Red Torii Gate floating in the sea, an amazing view and
the contrast within red, blue sky, dark green sea and the forest
behind it is amazing. After taking as many pictures as you want to in
any position you like, look for a place to sit for a while and take a
time to appreciate the beauty of it.
We went wen the tide was not so high neither low so we couldn’t
walk to the gate neither see the Shrine with water under it, but I
bet it will be great to go on a day with low and high tide. You have
to pay to get into the Shrine and see all the treasures that are
inside
Maybe my favorite place on the Island, Daisho temple is that kind of
places that when you arrive you feel good, peace, light, like if
gravity were less on it or your thoughts got dissipated, it was our
next stop and on our way to it we could see the Five-Story Pagoda and
more deers.
Daisho-in Temple is one of the most important temples of Shingon
Buddhism and it has a lof of things to see, after the Niomon Gate and
the kings that guard the temple you will see a long stair up with 600
vulumes of Dai-hannyakyo Scripture (Buddhist scriptures) that its
believed if you read them, or touch them in their spinning metal
wheels they will bring you “Enourmus fortune”, I did touch them
because I cannot read Japanese.
At one side of the door there are 500 Rakan Statues of the disciples
and all of them have different facial expressions, I went on winter
and they had beanies in their heads and scarfs, some people leave
money on them.
After the Rakan Statues you can see the Bell that it was used to tell
the time in the morning, afternoon and evening, but not you can hit
it with a huge piece of wood and they ring it to start the time for
worship.
Then is the information office, toilets, the Kannon-do Hall with the
imagine of the Deity of Mercy with eleven heads that will look for
all the creatures in Earth and save them, a gigantic Sand Mandala
that is made with colored sand made by Buddhist monks from the Tibet.
Walking upwards will see the Cosmic Buddha, the 1,000 Fudo images or
Inmovable King.
Now there are two paths, right will take you to Maniden Hall and lft
to Daishi-do Hall, both of them worth of your time and energy, yes,
even if you already saw 1000 temples in Japan.
In the temple you will notice a lot of statues called Jizo Bosatsu
with red bibs, this is because parents who have lost their childrend
think they are their lost children so they take care of the Jizo. I
found one with a child shirt and some others with baby toys, hard to
imagine the feeling they have.
Red ribs for the lost child
Hiking to the Mt.
Misen:
Before Hiking they recommend you to not doing it sleepy or after a
night without good sleep because is about 90 minute hiking and over
500 meters above the sea. Some people find it hard, the track was
nice, some stairs, some pathways, after few minutes we encounter snow
and it was frozen, later we had some refreshing hail just after we
got in the part of the trail with snow and we could feel the huge
pieces of snow hitting our heads every time they fell from a tree.
A non-Hobbit house
We tough we had reached the peak so we stop to appreciate the view
and take some pictures but we were a little bit far from it, we meet
some Mexican guys from Guanajuato and we all went together to the
peak. From there you can see a lot of islands nearby, Hiroshima,
This is me looking at the distance
We walked down to the eternal flame, a friend of mine was in a hurry
so we took him to the gondola and we walked down.
It was good that we finish the hike before it was all dark because
they have no lights on the path so it becomes a little bit dangerous,
still I had a flash light that I got in Korea and the phones now are
always a good tool for that.
In the island you can find an aquarium and a history museum that I
didn’t visited but they seem like a good option if you don’t feel
like doing the hiking.
Hitchhiking is cool, I really like it, I have done it in Mexico, Taiwan, Finland, South Korea and now in Japan sometimes I do it without thinking or just with the feeling of “oh I should walk that way and then start walking in the road with my finger in the air till someone picked me up.
It makes me feel alive, makes me feel weak and in the middle of nothing it gives you the sensation that you just big failed, but if things went well, you will enjoy 100x more than taking a train or a bus.
After the Busan mistake I will be more careful, so the night before departing I looked on google maps and looked for the express ways from Fukuoka to Hiroshima.
Walking to the Expressway
Starting the adventure!
Because I was in Kasuga city I decided to go to the expressway in the south thinking that maybe most of the cars that come from the south has to take that route.
Second shock in Japan, Japan is clean!!! when walking in the highway in Korea I could easily find any paper or carton to write my destinations name, but here there was nothing, not a single piece of paper in the first hour walking, just some plastic bags that were perambulating in the air but no cardboard or big pieces of paper. Luckily in a phone booth there was the cover of a disposal ice cooler, so I took it and in the next stop I wrote down in Kanji 広島 “Hiroshima”, and kept waking to the last entrance to the expressway.
Una foto publicada por Gilberto Rivera (@rgilberto11) el
It took me almost an hour walking there and another hour to get somebody to pick me up, many people on my way wished me good luck and “Gambatte”, some girls in a car stop just to cheer me up, that actually helps. I tried to look for the plate of the cars that instead of saying Fukuoka said Hiroshima, but most of the traffic was local one.
The first people that picked me up were a young Japanese couple that offered me to take me to the service station, Keiichi had done hitchhiking before to Osaka and Niina loved to travel so they recommended me to be in the station and things will be easier, the funny stuff is that we went to a station first, Niina got some mochi, Japanese rice cake, and then we went to another station, and another, and another, they had a free day at work so it seems they were enjoying the trip as much as I was,
We crossed the Kanmonkyō bridge, the one that connects Japan two of the four main islands, and they told me that it was a place where a lot of important Samurai fights happened. At the end we drive half way from Fukuoka to Hiroshima, after that Niina we were hungry so we stop and eat some Japanese roof tile noodles, really good ones!!!
Una foto publicada por Gilberto Rivera (@rgilberto11) el
After a long goodbye and a hundred thank you they went back home and I stayed in the station with my sign and looking for people with Hiroshima plates, after maybe 20 min a man try to explain me that we wasn’t going to Hiroshima city but he can drop me in a really close rest station. We tried to communicate with a phone translator, after half an hour I couldn’t stand it anymore and fell sleep until the next stop where they left me, they give me a package of cookies :)
The noodles are over a traditional Japanese roof tile
After the second ride and only about 10km from Hiroshima the Sun was going down
Again in the last station it was only 10km from central Hiroshima and I notice two mistakes I made before leaving the “Wi-Fi safe zone”
1.- Not downloading the maps to where I was going to (Hiroshima)
2.- Not downloading the English-Japanese pack in google translator
*extra mistake: maybe bringing 2 jackets from the beginning of the trip wasn’t the best idea either.
The Sun was almost down and there was some snow in the shadows or the sidewalks, a lady told me that it will be better to write “Hiroshima city” because we were already in Hiroshima prefecture, and then also to put “inside” so people knows that I want to go there, and at the bottom she wrote the district I was going to. I wait for about 20min until Yamamoto told me that he can take me to the city and his house was not far from the central station. Yamamoto is the manager of 17 Yoshinoya stores, he lives far from his family but seems to be happy with his job position, his English wasn’t fluent but enough to have a conversation for the drive.
Arigato Yamamoto
In central station I could either take a bus or walk for another 40-50 min, again, the weather still good so I decided to walk, I could see the Hiroshima castle, and some nice buildings on my way, I arrived at the hostel maybe 6 pm and that day I felt like its going to be a good place to be for the next weeks.
Fukuoka is one of fastest growing city in Japan, in 2011 it passed the population of Kyoto, is also a quite new city but full of Shrines, parks, shopping centers, museums and temples. Is the sixth largest city in Japan, with about 1.6M people in the city and 5.6M in the metro area, and the tourism has increase, many many Koreans come here or people that want to renew his Korean visa.
Una foto publicada por Gilberto Rivera (@rgilberto11) el
I arrived to the port in Fukuoka on monday, official name is Hakata Port International Terminal, Fukuoka, and being afraid of not having internet later I used the Wi-Fi there, download the Fukuoka maps on maps.me and make a route for the day, I visit the Sumiyoshi Shrine, Joten-ji, Kushida shrine, Shinto-Shrine, Fukuoka Castle, on Higashi park I play with some kindergarten children, visit some temples, other parks, shrines, markets, stores, etc.
One of the first things I notice here is that people is really nice, everyone in the street says おはよう Ohayō and bow their head as I did the same with them. Maybe is because is not a big city and I was most of the time out of downtown but people make a lot of eye contact in a good way, not like Korea that they seem to be too into their own minds they almost never make eye contact, even children. Maybe just different level of politeness.
Una foto publicada por Gilberto Rivera (@rgilberto11) el
I walked around the city until I arrived to Hakata Station and by that time I was starving, so I looked for a place to eat, walking around the stations I saw hundreds of restaurants and nice places to eat, between 500-1200 yen, at the end I decided to eat some spicy pork stew, that at the end was not pork but tofu and the rice was ordered apart so I ended paying more than 700yen for what was less than a set, I got some free nice green tea and a soup. In Korea I could have a nice and filing lunch with that amount of money but well usually the first meal in a new country is expensive and not the best.
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In the restaurant I met Takafumi a Japanese guy that was in Fukuoka for a business trip, we didn’t talk much before eating just itadakimasu but after finishing the lunch we stay there for maybe half an hour chatting, quite cool guy from Tokyo, we exchange Facebook accounts and each one start walking to different ways, for sure I’ll let him know if I visit Tokyo soon.
Before taking the train I used the Japanese toilets and clean myself with water, I didn't new you have to stop it but.. well i realized it later, not the best experience.
Then I took the train south to the closest station of the house I´ll stay in, the weather was nice, a little bit cloudy but not that cold so I walked about 40 min to the direction they told me in Couchsurfing, I could have taken a bus but that implies a lunch or so so I rater walk.
Yoshiki was on time in his home so we get in and Keiko, his wife, receive us with a big smile, we took sit in the living room floor with a square table and some electric Japanese blanket that covers the legs and let you be more comfortable with the cold weather.
We had some really nice sake and dinner, chat for a couple of hours and drink a little bit more, after that we were suppose to take a rest and keep drinking latter but I was so exhausted that when I arrived to the bed I fell sleep until 10pm, I came downstairs and everything was so quiet I didn’t want to bother them. Next day I stayed at home writing and doing some research about Japan, drinking some coffee and eating some matcha chocolate and chatting with Keiko, after that Yoshiki and myself had some really good noodles and enjoy a long chat. He wasn’t feeling really well so we call off the night and I went to my room to take a rest. As usual I was not able to sleep up to late that night.
The noodles and room I stay in, it has a big map with a lot of photographs of host they have had.
One of the first things I notice here is that people is really nice, everyone in the street says 
We had some really nice sake and dinner, chat for a couple of hours and drink a little bit more, after that we were suppose to take a rest and keep drinking latter but I was so exhausted that when I arrived to the bed I fell sleep until 10pm, I came downstairs and everything was so quiet I didn’t want to bother them. Next day I stayed at home writing and doing some research about Japan, drinking some coffee and eating some matcha chocolate and chatting with Keiko, after that Yoshiki and myself had some really good noodles and enjoy a long chat. He wasn’t feeling really well so we call off the night and I went to my room to take a rest. As usual I was not able to sleep up to late that night.
The noodles and room I stay in, it has a big map with a lot of photographs of host they have had.