I guess it has been a problem to load my blog for some of you ...and for me as well.

Cal has decided that I should get myself a better site, and helped me do it.

The blog has moved here....

Enjoy... and sorry to those who have to go through the trouble to change the link....again

 

 

We went for a trek at Sandankyo, a gorge located away from the city.

 

There won't be much to talk about this trek.

Halway the 11km trek up the hill, we were blocked by strings and a sign which told us not to continue due to possible rockfall....

And so we returned, after just 5km. We were supposed to see giant waterfalls and a dam on top of the hill.

Well anyway, just enjoy the photos I've taken during the trek...

 

 

 

That was just a random statement...

 

These are my favourite 3...

 

AND...

How could we leave just like that.... 

without some.....

that hand was another random thingy...

 

Well,....... seriously, and to be honest....

 

(credits to Khai Xiang for constructing a better sentence)

(credits to Cal for taking those photos for me :p)

The end... Thanks for dropping by again....

 

Food ..... in Hiroshima means Okonomiyaki... its like saying Penang Laksa or Ipoh Hor Fun...

And so, I dedicate this entry to Zhiyi, who had been trying to make the best homemade okonomiyaki... all on her own...

Sorry Zhiyi, gotta steal that from your blog...

Well anyway, in Hiroshima we ate Okonomiyaki... first stop was a restaurant by the name of Mitchan. After eating at Mitchan, we went around town and we found Ah Chan or something like that... (copycats)

We had to queue up just to enter the restaurant ... but it didn't take long....

We sat down and watched as our stomach rumbled and saliva glands lost control...

 

*kiap kiap kiap*

(a bit like tortilla rolls, ... or roti canai on top of mi goreng)
 

we waited... and we started 'camwhoring' in the restaurant... (that hand on my right is trying to touch me)

 

There are quite little choices in the menu. The basic things in it are, squid, meat, bean sprouts, spring onions, cabbage, prawn, etc etc....

 

and you can choose your base, you can have your base either....

note the difference in that 2 pictures.... you can also choose to eat it from a plate, or eat it from the teppan (hot steel plate) where the chefs use to cook... ( i recommend eating from a plate)

 

Price of one okonomiyaki range from 600 to 1100yen (rm18 to rm33) ...(at this point you'll go...wahh so expensive).....  yeah.... it's Japan....

 

We waited....

Its ready...!!!!

we could tell cos the Okonomiyaki were like....

Okonomiyaki ,... simple said is Japanese pizza. If translated it means, grill as you like.... (I think)....

ok... first time's over. Wonderful taste.... 

But when in Hiroshima, how can we miss out this .....

 

(Zhiyi, don't faint...) .... It's Okonomi mura..... Okonomiyaki restaurants in Hiroshima are like mamaks in KL.... but this is too much... a 4-storey building.... more than 20 restaurants, all selling the same thing.....okonomiyaki....

But I assume there must be some differences between those restaurants....

 

the both of us literally went up and down looking for the right place to eat... some were packed, some were empty.... (so there ARE SOME differences among them)

Instead of choosing, I ended up saying, ....

" this one has a lot of guai lous... I think this one is popular..."

 

Okonomiyaki story The End ~~

oh by the way, I thought,

"How often do I get to go to a city bigger than Miyazaki, why not get a haircut too...."

we strolled round the city center... looking for a place to cut my hair.
Average pricing for a university student .... 3800 to 4500 yen (RM 112 ~ 135) ...

cheeeeee~~~ sin.....

But by luck, we came across a small shop, a young lady running it... with 3 customers waiting.....

1000yen - RM30 (i'm sure you can't get any lower unless you cut your own hair)

She is good.... very good....

 

To round off the entry.... here are some shots of Hiroshima ....

 

Did I mention that i Looooooove the tram system in Hiro?

 

Everyone was rushing home I guess.. you can tell from the cars...

... didn't turn out that good... if only they worked over-time... the buildings would be bright and nice...

 

the end...

"Welcome to Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. I heard that Kenny wants to know more bout the atomic bomb and here I am, a doll once owned by an atomic bomb victim, to tell you all about it!" ....

nahh... Kok Hong will tell you.... so here's the museum...

A museum in Hiroshima dedicated to the history of the first atomic bomb used against humankind.

I guess all of you here know that Hiroshima was devestated by the dropping of the atomic bomb... here's the picture...

That's a model inside the museum. This is what one part of the museum looks like...

The museum is seperated to 2 sections... the introduction and the after-effect...

Hiroshima was one of the few targets for the bomb. Then Kokura (remember the entry on my 20 hr journey? I mentioned Kokura... and there will be an entry about Kokura soon) .... anyway... the 2nd target was Kokura. But due to cloudy conditions, the plane diverted to Nagasaki... (both Kyushu).

On August 6, 1945... at 8.15am... the bomb was released from a plane by the name of Enola Gay...

Here's the model of how the bomb looked like...
 

Here's a scale model that shows where exactly the bomb exploded...
I was surprised that it blew up mid air...
 

By the way, there were a lot of people in the museum, so much so I got scolded by a man (in canto, we would call him 'dai lam yan') for spending too much time on one exhibit... Japanese people rush so much, even in a museum... and this shows that it is not good to look like a Japanese kid. If i were a guai lou... he would've just ignored me and complained in mind.

Back to the story...

Well there were a lot of people in the museum... Americans, to see what their armies did to Hiroshima... Chinese and Koreans to see how the Japanese received their revenge... Japanese people to see how the past Japan had gone through after the war...

(the above statement has no intention to insult or offend anyone, therefore I apologize in advance if you feel that I did)

Europeans, africans, indonesians, thai...just here for a visit...
* Ever since I arrived in Japan, I have never been to a place where the density of foreigners is so high... not even in the airport...haha

Well of course there were Malaysians... ah beng and ah pek came just to kecoh (2 ding dongs came to play a fool) ...

At one point of the exhibition... Calvin uttered...

Nah... we were serious visitors... (I'm serious)... I mean, it would be so unseemly to laugh and crack jokes inside a Memorial Museum for the victims...

By the way.... this is Calvin... I went to Hiroshima with him...

I was holding a remote control trying to zap him ... *click**click* .... haha

okok...back to the story...

So the tour in the museum continues... there were lots of exhibits... all retrieved , or found after the blast...

The exhibits...

wasuremono means left-item (like my train ticket inside the taxi back in Shimonoseki which i found back later). That paper crane wasnt found after the blast... it was folded by a girl called Sadako, who died of leukemia. She believed that folding 1000 paper cranes would keep her spirits alive and battle with her illness, but she died in the end. There's a statue dedicated to her at the Peace Park outside...

Some exhibits are sooo rusty, the explanation stated that it would crumble at any moment...

There was the 'uneaten' lunch in a box, all rusty, bent and contain carbonized rice.

There was half a pair of spectacles, which the other half had melted into the victim's eyes and flesh.

There were skin and fingernails... the story goes... a boy burnt so severely, his skin hung loose from his whole body, who was rescued and taken home by his friend. Unable to bear his thirst, he reportedly sucked his pus (the same yellow stuff from your pimple) from the ends of his fingers, from which the nails had peeled off. He died in agony the next day. His mother kept his nails and skin for memory.

Well, thirst was one of the reasons why the victims fled to the river... They all cried for water... desperately...

The fire swept across the city like a living hell (as described by a survivor) .. The victims took refuge in the river... They were in the end swept away and drowned by the current... Here's a description of the exhibit ''Victims fleeing in search of water"

The Spirit Of Hiroshima , one of the 2 books i bought from the museum.

Then the tour of the museum continues....

What drew my attention the most was this...

The title of this exhibit is "Human shadow etched in stone (260m from hypocenter)"

The story behind goes... A person sitting on the steps to the Hiroshima branch of the Sumitomo Bank waiting for it to open was exposed to the flash from the atomic explosion. Receiving the rays directly, the victim must have died on the spot from massive burns. The surface of the surrounding stone steps was turned whitish by the intense heat rays. The place where the person was sitting became dark like a shadow.

Simple said, he was combusted alive, leaving a mark where he died.

The shadow now looks blur.
The original photo taken after the blast was very clear...
Due to constant rain, it washed off a bit. Sumitomo Bank then decided to donate this steps to the museum.

I took a photo of this photo from the museum.

At one part of the museum, they exhibit textbooks from around the world, which mentioned about this bombing thing.... and so I went....

how's that...?

Well, the tour of the museum has come to an end...

Meanwhile, outside...

 

Soooo hot... I practically got dried up due to over-sweating... (believe me, the heat here is definately different from KL)

 

Then we made a tour around the city, checking out buildings and bridges which remained ever since the blast...

trust me, its seriously freaky to even pass by that building...
we had to because we were staying in a hostel near this building.

imagine this....
at 8am, the staff came to work ... getting ready for the day, sorting out paper work for the upcoming meeting, getting calls from customers as usual and .....

suddenly.... a blinding white light came and big boom.... the glass shattered into smithereens and everyone got swept away by the force, being pushed to the wall so hard that they were flatten and their intestines and other internal organs blew out....
juuuust like what happens when you throw an egg towards the wall...

Speaking of body implosions...
there was a picture painted by a victim which went, ...the pressure around the hypocenter dropped so low in an instant, a soldier's eyeballs popped out and his intestines were revealed...

no comments there...

The Peace Park....

 

(i love my camera)

Here's a mosaic of the shots i took around the city... a wall of a former hospital, former university building (the red one), now abandoned...bridges..., paper cranes....Peace Boulevard at night... power outlet... hypocenter.... the interior of the A-dome... a primary school....

 

geez... you'll never believe how much time i spent typing this... but its okay, I'm on holidays anyway....

Thanks for dropping by to read...

 

 

If you've read the entry on Hiroshima's introduction, you would remember me saying, "overnight under a bridge".

Here's the story....there wont be much pictures... everything happened so quickly i dont even have time to take pictures. But read on if you want to...

First,... you have to study simple Japanese geography... i won't be testing you later so don't worry...

 

 

this is a simple map of Japan, not drawn to scale, locations not exactly where they are but just a rough sketch...

here's a close up of Kyushu island and a portion of southern Honshu.

 

 

 

This is my train ticket. 11500yen (RM360).

 

 

 

I have no idea why is it called 18 cos it has nothing to do with it.
The basic way to use it is... board ANY JR commuters or JR rapid train.
Not valid on bullet trains nor express trains...
Valid throughout the country, as long as it is JR and not other train companies.

This explains why my journey is more than 20hrs, with 6 train transfers whereas it can be done in 7 hrs with 1 bullet train plus 1 express train. Its ok... I'm a budget traveller, that 7 hr journey would cost me rm600+ one way.

And so the story goes...

I boarded the train at Miyazaki at 2.30pm .... reached Shimonoseki at 11pm plus.... and i was supposed to catch the 12.20am train to Shin Yamaguchi and overnight there nicely... but...

 

 

I reached Shimonoseki, got off the train, i ran to the platform where i am supposed to board the train to Shin Yamaguchi. I then saw the train schedule at the platform, and it says that the last train is 11.40pm and no more trains at 12am. ... hmmm??

 

 

the train came in seconds... and i began to panic... the doors opened, everyone went in... I asked the lady who was standing by the door, "Does this train stop at Shin Yamaguchi?" .... she went " uhhh.....''

 

I panicked even more.... and so i said.... "aiya...just board la..''

 

Halfway thru the journey, that woman took a piece of paper out and said... ''hmm.. seems like it doesnt stop at Shin Yamaguchi... this train is only up till Asa''  ... that paper by the way was written... ''Extended trains on 13th August 2007"

 

Kok Hong went "@#$%!!"  .... immediately, i got off the train at Hatabu.

 

At Hatabu, with hopes that there will be another train to Shin Yamaguchi, i went to look for a station staff to enquire............... no station staff.... the train i just alighted from was the last train that stops by at Hatabu.......

no choice, i had to return to Shimonoseki by 12.20am and stick back to original plan.

Hatabu.... no trains, no bicycle, no friend living in Hatabu... and i don't even know where Hatabu is until i saw the map...

 

Heart-broken, i took a taxi....stupid 10min ride costs 1600yen (RM48)... he was speeding and went past a red light... and my heart was broken

I paid the taxi driver, with my heart broken.... and left the taxi with my bags....with my heart broken...

 

I looked for my train ticket, this time with my brain blown up.... NOT HERE??!!!

oh .... the whole file with my train schedules...trip schedules....newly bought rm360 train ticket..... is ...... inside that taxi.... where i left my broken heart as well...

I ran inside the train station, told the station attendant my ticket was left inside the taxi....she asked me if i could remember the taxi company and colour....

i couldnt... i knew it was a white taxi.....

her reply..... Shimonoseki has a lot of taxi companies with their taxis painted white....

i went..... ''@#$%!!" in mind...

she ran outside with me, asking help from all taxis parked outside the station to radio call every taxi in their company if there is a file in the taxi.... there were 3 companies outside....no reply....

and i asked her... when is the train to Shin Yamaguchi? she said 12.20am. today is special cos there was a festival and there are extra trains running tonight....

I went .... "@#$%!!"  in mind.....

She went back inside with me, photocopied the telephone directory with Shimonoseki's taxi companies' numbers.....heck... it was 3 pieces of A4 papers thick!! ... ALL taxi companies' numbers!!!

i called every toll free number.... and 12.20am passed.....

waited for reply......and one called.... telling me the driver is coming to Shimonoseki station to pass me the file now....

I went..... "YAY!!"

i got the file....but i missed the train..... the earliest train to Hiroshima is at 6.30am, this time not via Shin Yamaguchi but elsewhere...

I spent a night at the station....

 

 

 

and my butt hurt so much i went to a bench underneath a bridge nearby and slept there....

 

woke up at 5..... took the train and left....

 

 

 

some of you may find it difficult to understand what i have just written. Frequent train commuters in Japan will probably understand cos.... trains in Japan are quite complicated for first timers...

my advice : dont travel in Japan alone when you don't know how to read in Jap, or even chinese letters.... get someone who knows Japanese to travel with you.

This happened cos I am not a frequent train user in Japan, ... i ride a bike to uni from my apartment everyday.... but seriously, i have understood A LOT bout how the trains go about in Japan.

BUT

dont ask me to bring you to Tokyo... I myself need physical and mental preparation...

The size of Shimonoseki station (8 boarding platforms) is very very small compared to Shinjuku or Shibuya station in Tokyo.... and the crowd is only another fraction of the crowd in Shibuya or Shinjuku...

By the way, Shimonoseki station is the last station you see before you enter Kyushu.... in other words... it is the first station i see after i enter Honshu from Kyushu.

 

 

*some may think... Hatabu is on the same line as Shin Yamaguchi... why not just board from there?....

I wanted to...but there were no station attendants on duty to hear from... i didnt wanna take the risk cos the train might not even stop at Hatabu if it were a rapid train

 

 

 

 

.... Updated till the end (Takaoka Homestay)...

Basically just went there for summer festival....

 

there's another video of these kids parading around with giant anpan-man floats but an error occured when i tried uploading it... maybe cos its too cute...

As night falls, lights were up...







In fact... I was asked to join oshirizumo (butt sumo)... I lost cos my butt was too cute...

I lost at the first round and I got hadiah kesian...



but i traded the 500yen for these...



Well of course when there's a festival, there's camwhoring....

and fireworks...



(i love my camera)

But halfway this family-themed festival... the whole event turned into...... into.... no idea how to say this...just watch ....

I was lucky... my host parents' far relative came all the way from Brazil to find out bout his Japanese roots... handwritten family tree... over 1000years old were brought over, but none of us knew how to read ...





... but the thing which drew my attention was the pachinko parlour in Takaoka...

look properly... and you will go....



how's that...

I was brought to the castle for a simple tour the next day...

random pictures which i took just for the sake of showing off that i know how to hold a camera properly...

I guess this will be the most memorable dessert I, .... i mean WE've ever consumed...
br>





Thanks for dropping by...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

That's not some random abandoned warehouse by the way... Its the atomic dome (A-dome). This is one of the structures that survived the blast. 

In case you've forgotten what you have learnt in form 3 Sejarah, Hiroshima was the first place bombed by an atom bomb.

and

I love this hostel where i'm staying! ... they have internet cable for me!!

after a 20hr train journey from Miyazaki ...changed trains 6 times... i finally left Kyushu and arrived here in Hiroshima. by the way, my train ticket is economical which does not allow me to take bullet trains or express trains....thats why the journey was 20hrs...(express + bullet train would take only 5.5hrs) ..

at one point of the journey.... i even slept under a bridge outside a train station just to wait for the morning train...(kesian me) ...

that sleeping outside the station was supposed to be a long story... i'll tell you in detail.... in canto, we say .... zhong pan dou au huet.... (timpa malang sampai muntah darah)

oh by the way.... a very warm, oh ....not warm at all....  hot welcome to Hiroshima...

 

 

i mean....hot

well their relatives arrived on the same day as I, so I couldnt stay in their house, instead stayed in the guest room of their son's house, just next door. Here's the view from my room...





nice eh... i mean, Japanese graveyards are not scary at all... i pass by one everyday when i go to uni... although the journey is only 700m from bedroom to faculty.... what makes our graveyards scary....
1. tooooo huge... and you always imagine yourself lost inside at night, then, old grandma grandpas at their doors all start to invite you to their 'houses'... "come, didi, ... i have chicken rice with roast duck...'' 2. photos stuck to the stone, and they somehow stare at you wherever you stand 3. the rectangular shape of the soil is clear of where the dead is lying, you always imagine yourself trip over and lie flat on the face on top of that... ok... maybe its me... not you

did i mention i was the only one sleeping on the second floor?

 

to be continued...

 

 

Watch this...

 

Do you see the irony?

Here, Ronald tells us to save energy... then on one particular spot in this world, a new mcdonald's restaurant is opening up.... using up more power...

clowns are scary...not just 'It' the clown
kids who watch It the clown, will be traumatized by clowns.
Just to round up this entry, here's a short clip



see what i mean...?

 

Note: this entry has no intention of advertising for, or critisizing McDonalds cos I'm lovin' it.

 

 

 

Remember this?

 

 

some said cake, some said tart.... cheeseburger with a lot of mayo... my body part...

The truth is...