It was October, 2005. I was in Hiroshima, in the restaurant on the top floor of a highrise hotel, having dinner. They sat me at a corner table, with a corner window that faced the night-lit city. Being that the hotel is on the water, the road stretched out, away from the hotel – I could see for miles.
My dinner companions, as they had been throughout my trip, were my pad and pen. I no longer have the pad, but I remember writing how I felt – the awe-inspiring enormity of being completely alone, thousands of miles away from everyone and everything I knew. Not a soul in the world who could recognize me and know my name knew where I was at that moment. When the waitress approached my table she bowed, placed a cushion on the floor and knelt to take my order. It was the same when she brought the food and cleared the table – bowing deeply before she knelt and when she stood. So so foreign.
Being completely alone, I discovered, is a surreal experience. With no responsibility to anyone but myself and the world – what felt like the entire world – stretched out before me, I was simultaneously a speck on the face of the earth and an entire universe in and of myself. I don’t remember if the fact that I looked out over a city that was once wiped out, turned to rubble, its innocent population murdered in a single explosion of proportions larger than any of us alive can imagine had anything to do with my perception of surreality that night, but I suspect it did.
But I was there. The place I’ve read of in the history books. Hiroshima, Japan. Anything could have happened there.
Anything.
From the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima
From the restaurant, Grand Prince Hotel, Hiroshima
Remember waaay back in December when I went to Japan? Yeah, I’m finally almost finished writing about it and sharing my pictures. Queen of Procrastination… it’s me.
On my last full day in Tokyo I had plans to meet a friend for dinner. They’d been forecasting rain–100-120mm of it–and that scared me a little. That’s more than we get in an average month here in Ontario. In fact if they forecast more than 30mm in a day we start filling up sand bags and check our canoes for leaks. So it was, on the 16th of December, that I headed out with my umbrella, silently bemoaning the fact that I hadn’t brought water wings or a pool noodle to Japan with me.
I stopped first at a Doutor coffee shop in my local train station for some breakfast. Here’s what I wrote in my notebook:
Kokusaitenjijo Station, ODaiba
Tuna sandwich for breakfast… but the coffee’s good! Actually, so’s the sandwich.
I went everywhere yesterday. First to Shibuya, then Akihabara, then to Shinjuku to meet Kellie. Today I’ve decided to go to Asakusa. It’s raining a little – more to come. I hope, regardless, to go shopping a bit more.
Noted: the trains don’t have whistles. Everyone just obeys the signs.
And.. I’m listening to the theme from Sesame Street on the overhead radio. No shit. It’s hard not to laugh out loud.
Oh thank God that’s over.
“We’ve Only Just Begun…” not the Carpenters.
At least it’s not Earth Wind and Fire belting out Christmas carols.
Coffee’s finished. Time to go.
So with that I boarded a train and went back to Shibuya to meet with Susie, who I missed, then on to Asakusa.
It’s a quaint little district of Tokyo most famous for its Sensou-ji Temple. I walked around for a while in the pouring rain and took some pictures.
From there I went shopping. In Asakusa there are narrow streets, some covered, some not, with vendors down both sides. I wish I’d taken pictures. I managed to finish my Christmas shopping there but I still had some time left before I had to meet my friend, so I went into a Starbucks for a coffee and a drip-dry.
4:50pm – finally made it to Starbucks – looking out the window at the rain coming down. It’s very close to freezing out there – probably about 4 or 5 degrees. I’m in Asakusa waiting to go to Ueno Station to meet Shigeyoshi at 6. I can’t believe this is my last evening here. Did I get what I came for? The 5:36 certainly. The experience – the knowledge that I can still travel alone and be happy and content to do so is invaluable.
Do I want to come back? Definitely. This is such a fascinating country. Yes. But next time I’ll be more prepared. I’ll come back with a plan when I’m rich from the sale of my novel…
Off to meet Shigeyoshi.
…with whom I had a wonderful dinner. We ate in a Japanese restaurant right in the Station and he was kind enough to be patient with me as he watched me struggle with my chopsticks. I ordered a plate with shrimp and something else… when I asked him what the something else was he looked up the translation on his phone – which meant nothing to me. So he went looking for a picture – and showed me one of a sea urchin. I must say it was delicious!
I regret not taking any pictures at our dinner, but you can get to know him yourself by visiting his blog here: https://sotacf.wordpress.com/ which is where I first got to know him myself. His interest is in cars, but he also has some gorgeous pictures of his travels around Japan on his blog. Please do go and say hi – I owe him for waiting so patiently for me to get to this post!
One more post to go before the reports of my adventures come to a close…
I used to go there as a kid. My friends and I spent hours there, or sometimes I’d just go alone and sit. The locks were unused even back then – the place was run down and at the end of a dusty old road that went no where, it was rare to see people there. That was my experience of Newmarket, Ontario, Canada in the seventies. It was where I spent most of my time.
The picture was taken two and a half years ago. I went back, on my own just to see how much had changed.
They’ve turned it into a public trail now. “Beautified” it–in my estimation it was beautiful when it was solitary. There were so many people walking across the bridge on the day I was there, but few came down to my spot under the tree where I would sit and contemplate life and make up stories as a kid.
I could barely hear them over the sound of the rushing water, so I felt at peace still. I remember sitting on the big final step with my legs dangling over, wondering how cold the water was. There were rumours that people had drowned in the current – I doubt it’s very deep, but you never know. In years gone by there was water running down the other side too… the level was much higher back then.
Now the fence prevents anyone from exploring like I used to. There was no fence back then. Just the drop.
That day two years ago I remember not wanting to leave. I must have sat on that concrete slab for two hours or more. I kept saying to myself, “I don’t want to go.”
It’s a bitter-sweet feeling, revisiting a place that means so much – that so much of the past can be remembered by. The sharp scent of iron in the water, the constant, unending shush of the waterfall, the birds chirping in the trees, the heat of the summer rising humidly from the ground.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t want to leave that spot; I knew I had to get up and go eventually.
Being Christmas time, and still having to do a fair bit of shopping, I decided to make my final two full days in Tokyo shopping days. I started out going to Shibuya – an absolutely fantastic place to go if you like crowds of people. I can’t stress enough how overwhelming it is just to cross the street there. I found this:
It’s a live camera at Shibuya crossing. (I swear I could watch this video for hours, especially when it’s crowded at lunch time. Is it just me?) On the far left side, outside the shot, is the train station. It is from that side of the street that I took this picture:
and here are two photos I took
facing the train station
at the end of the crosswalk on the far right of the youtube video screen
I went from there just a short way up the block to Tower Records
and bought a CD by, you guessed it, Buck-Tick, as well as a Christmas present for my best friend John – the new AC/DC CD with a bonus poster. He’s now likely the only person in this little town of ours to be in possession of an official AC/DC poster in Japanese.
Its funny, here in North America McDonald’s seems to me to be generally the most garish thing in any cityscape. In a place like Tokyo, the golden arches get all but lost.
Can you spy the McDonald’s?
amongst the karaoke bars and cartoon characters. But there it doesn’t seem garish. It just all awesome scenery.
From there I went to Akihabara, the area of Tokyo which is famous for anything gadget-like or to have anything to do with anime, to shop for my kids. As always, the store lights are stunning.
With so little space, a tiny shop is expanded by going up – some of the stores have seven floors of retail area. I would have liked to have gone back to Shibuya to see it all lit up, but by the time I finished having dinner with my friend Kellie (who I’ve known for about seven years through LiveJournal but never met in person before) in Shinjuku, I was too tired to make the extra stop before going back to the hotel. It had been yet another nine hour day of walking around.
First up, it’s time for a happy dance! My Facebook author page hit 100 followers today! If you’re not already following me, I’d appreciate it if you’d contribute to my new goal of 200? 😀 Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/lindaghill.fiction?ref=hl
In other news, I decided to go ahead and make another WordPress site. I took the advice of several of my commenters on the previous post and downloaded Chrome so I can keep the two identities open at once. Finding followers is going slow, but it’s infinitely better than at Blogger, where I’ve started writing a parody of sorts. It’s enjoyable for the moment, but with no one reading it, it’s going to get boring. I’m sure I’ll eventually post it here at WP – where it won’t be boring, natch.
So, my new persona. The name came to me as sometimes names do and you just know they’re right; no rhyme nor reason for it. My profile picture is a selfie I took of the back of my neck… which was fun with my sore shoulder. Why a picture of the back of my neck? You’ll see when you get there. I’ve created a twitter account to go along with the blog, just for the hell of it. As it says on the little twitter description of me, “Beware: utters expletives without warning” – there will be more swearing over on my new blog than there is here. To give an example, I’m thinking about doing A-Z April over there with the theme, “A-Z imaginative cusses.” Because I can.
Anyhow, I plan to have fun over there. My address is https://isabellamorgan.wordpress.com/ and my twitter is @izzymorganblog. This may be the only link to the new blog here at Life in Progress (except for the edit I plan to do on my previous post), though I might advertise it once a year as an anniversary thing. There won’t be any links over there to this one. I just want to keep the two separate, but if you comment over there, don’t be afraid to call me Linda. I’m not going to advertise, but I’m not uptight about keeping the two secret from one another. It’s really just a way to keep this blog more professional while having the freedom to write whatever I want, whenever I want.
So what other news is there? Oh! A cat,
Luka
or two.
Casper
What random post would be complete without cats? These two are boarding with the troll (aka my eldest son) in my basement. They came upstairs for a visit so I thought I’d shoot a few piccies.
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
A few things I learned about traveling in and around the Tokyo area by train: if you go onto google maps before you head out, you can find out how many stops it is between you and your destination, how many minutes it will take, whether or not you’ll have to transfer from one line to another, and best of all, google maps actually tells you how much it will cost, which is essential information for using the ticket machines. Also, inside the trains there are screens to tell you where the next stop will be with numbers beside the names. I assumed they were stop numbers, but I soon figured out (when they kept changing) that it was the time to the next stop. Very handy in a packed train car when one needs to plan an escape route around all the other passengers. If you visit Japan, you’ll thank me for this.
I left Kamakura with a measure of sadness. I’d grown to love the little town and having never been to Tokyo before, I didn’t have much of an idea of what to expect. I have to say, I was pleasantly surprised with the area in which I chose to stay.
Odaiba is a quiet part of Tokyo compared to the other places I eventually visited. It’s off to the east of the city and a great place to stay if you’re planning to go to Disneyland, though I didn’t get close to the place. I stayed at the Sunroute Ariake Hotel.
Under $100Cdn/night, it was very clean and there’s a Lawson (convenience store) right in the hotel, so I didn’t have to go out to get something to eat, nor did I have to eat in the restaurant, which was a little pricey to be dining in at every meal. It was also only a two minute walk from the Kokusai-tenjijou (I always find the longest named-place to have to locate) train station, and it was easy to find! so I didn’t have to lug my cases far. The reason I stayed there was the proximity of the venue in which Buck-Tick was playing – I wanted to be able to walk back to my hotel after the concert. It turned out to be a nice 15 minute stroll.
The morning after I arrived I walked over to Zepp Tokyo to see how best to get there. The one thing google maps is not always good for is guiding one in the right direction for walking. It was hard to tell from the map whether or not they were sending me on a stroll down the train tracks. As it turned out, the fastest way there was a humongous foot bridge.
No cars – bonus
When I arrived there the crews were working on emptying trucks of equipment.
The trucks were at the back, which is where the street is
I was surprised to see dozens of girls wandering around pulling small suitcases. With not a hotel in sight I wondered what they could have been doing. I found out later.
I went for breakfast and decided to head in the direction of Diver City Mall. Then I saw this guy.
Here’s a rare selfie of me beside his foot. He’s pretty tall.
I wasn’t really sad – the sun was in my eyes
I walked around the mall for an hour or two – there was a band appearing live outside for a small concert and meet-and-greet and thousands of rabid fangirls screaming their heads off to wade through when I came out. But I was heading out to meet Susie, the lovely lady whose Etsy shop is NOW OPEN! (click here) and who was kind enough to buy my concert ticket.
While we had a quick chat, I found out what the deal was with all the young ladies and their suitcases. Not a bag was left to be found but instead, hundreds of heavily made up costumed cosplayers, just there to get together and walk around. The area, being Palette Town which is apparently famous, has apart from Zepp Tokyo this,
Giant Wheel
and this,
Mega Web – lotsa cars
as two of its main attractions.
By the time Susie and I said goodbye I was good and tired, so I headed back to the hotel. The next day was dedicated to getting ready for the concert.
I think you have to have spent a lifetime in a climate such as the one we have in Southern Ontario, Canada, in order to be able to say with a straight face,
“It’s snowin’ like a bugger, but at least it’s not cold out!” and mean it.
Anyone who would like to try it out, feel free to use the “One-Liner Wednesday” title in your post, and if you do, you can ping back here to help your blog get more exposure. To execute a ping back, just copy the URL in the address bar on this post and paste it somewhere in the body of your post. Your link will show up in the comments below.
As with Stream of Consciousness Saturday, if you see a ping back from someone else in my comment section, click and have a read. It’s bound to be short and sweet.
The rules that I’ve made for myself (but don’t always follow) for “One-Liner Wednesday” are:
lindaghill.com 