The last place I visited in Japan was the Osamu Tezuka Manga Museum in Takarazuka. The museum featured works by Tezuka, which diplayed a timeline of his works, bunch of original comic cells, and a short film. I thought the museum was pretty good, but not nearly as cool as the Ghibli Museum... but then again, I don’t think any museum will ever top the Ghibli Museum!!!
So here’s my crazy tale from Shirahama. On Saturday, Jesse and I planned a day trip to Shirahama mainly for the beach there – apparently, according to Jesse, the white sand on Shirahama beach was imported from Australia, crazy eh! Anyways, the beach was extremely beautiful, and I loved the feeling of the sand. Oh, and there were soooooooooo many people there, but I didn’t mind it. So we swam and laid under the sun for a while, sat on some men-made rocks/cliffs to watch the sunset; and as we were walking through the beach to the bus stop, we saw hundreds of candles lit all throughout the entire beach, it was no doubt a spectacular sight!
Alright, this is where all the craziness starts: so we took the bus back to the train station, expecting to get on a train back to Osaka. However, we have missed the last train, which was at 7:30 pm... like WTF, why so early!?!?!?! The guy who worked at the station gave us a schedule, which was all in Japanese except for one part that said something like "to Osaka... impossible". We had absolutely no idea what to do; we didn’t know where to sleep as we figured that all the hotels were probably beyond expensive since it was a resort town. We started walking back towards the beach (at that point, we were thinking of sleeping on the beach), we passed by a police station and I told Jesse that we should go in and see if the cops knew any cheap places (ie, youth hostels) where we could stay for the night. So we went in, found one cop that spoke some English, explain our situation to him... and to make this long story short, one of the cops called this place up, got us a room and the cop who spoke English drove us to the hotel. Seriously, the polices in Japan are sooooo nice and helpful... there’s no division between cops and ordinary folks like there is in North America... people in Japan respect them and vice-versa. So we got to the hotel, which ended being more like a youth hostel then anything... originally, they were going to charge us around $60 Canadian for a shared room with four beds in it. Of course, we thought that was expensive, so we told the cop that we didn’t really have enough money as we still needed to pay for the train ride back to Osaka the next day. (that was totally a lie... we had more than enough since I didn’t need to buy any train ticket because I had a JR pass) So, the cop bargained with the owner and we each ended up paying five bucks less. The room actually turned out to be pretty great, there were no other people sleeping there, it was big, we got our own bathroom, and we also got a TV. We checked out the next day at around 9:15 am and went to the beach again. It was extremely sunny that day and I got major sunburn. Jesse said that I look like Zoidberg from Futurama. We left the beach at around one and finally took the train back to Osaka. That was my unforgettable adventure at Shirahama, I hoped you enjoy this overly long post. On another note, I have been crazy sick these past few days... I still feel really sick... I am so not looking forward to the long-ass plane ride, but I will be home very soon, so I’ll see you all soon!!!Warning!!!
Dancing in a club after 11pm is technically an illegal act in Japan, and while there are any number of places where you can dance till dawn local police have been enforcing this archaic law. In a recent raid, involving over 50 police officers, Japanese and non-Japanese were separated and all foreigners’ IDs were checked. While such raids are rare, we advise visitors to carry their passports, or risk being escorted back to their hotels to have their belongings searched.
I toured around the city during my second day in Hiroshima. I checked out of the hotel at around 9:45 a.m. and started walking towards the Hiroshima Museum of Art. The museum featured art works by European artists as well as modern Japanese artists. I think I was one of the first visitors that morning... no security guards were on duty yet, so I was able to take a few pictures inside, including a few by Picasso! I hit up Hiroshima Castle after, the place was alright... not as impressive as the castle in Osaka though. 
I walked through Hon dori, which is another huge shopping arcade... I think there are like a thousand shopping arcades in Japan! My last stop in Hiroshima was the Prefectural Art Museum. The museum was full of paintings and crafts by Japanese and Asian, I particularly liked a piece called Holocaust In Hiroshima. The highlight of the Prefectural Art Museum had to be Persistence of Memory by Salvador Dali. Seeing that painting in real life was amazing! So that was my second day in Hiroshima… stay tuned for my post about my crazy adventures in Shirahama that involved a beach, being stranded, and the police.
The first place I visited in Hiroshima was the A-Bomb Dome. As soon as I came close to the structure, tears covered my eyes. I walked around the dome a couple of times, and then proceeded toward the Peace Park. Throughout the park, there were numerous memorials dedicated to those who died during nuclear devastations. At the end of my walk was the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. For the longest time, I did not want to visit this place due to the fact that it is way too saddening. However, a number of people that I spoke to told me that the Peace Museum is the one museum that I have to visit during my stay in Japan. As I expected, the Peace Museum made me extremely sad... and very angry towards Americas. Well, by that, I mean angry towards actions taken by Americas during WWII. I don’t really want to describe what I saw and read at the museum, so I’ll just move on to my next destination.
I checked in to my hotel, emptied out my backpack, and headed toward Miyajima. Miyajima is this beautiful town near the city of Hiroshima... you have to take a ferry to get there. Of course, as soon as I arrived at Miyajima, I went straight to the famous O-Torii, the grand gate to the Itsukushima Shrine, the symbol of Miyajima. The tide was lo, so I could walk through and around the O-Torii. Afterward, I strolled through the Itsukushima Shrine. The passages throughout the shrine were so beautiful… I realized that by the end that I was supposed to pay a fee to enter the Shrine, but I entered it through the exit and I guessed that people working there thought I have already paid. Haha, I can’t believed I rip-off a shrine!! Anyways, I wandered through the quiet town, visited a couple temples and pagodas and headed back to the O-Torii as the sun was setting. By then, the tide was beginning to come in and you no longer can get out near the gate without getting yourself wet. I sat on the rocks for an hour or two, just watching the O-Torii from a distance, seeing the sunset, and hearing the water coming closer and closer to the shore... it was such a peaceful experience, a definite contrast from the horrifying images I saw at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum earlier that day.
I left Miyajima at around eight and headed back to Hiroshima. I don’t know why, but I decided to see the A-Bomb Dome again. The thing was even more haunting at night! I crossed the bridge to the other side of the Peace Park and saw a gathering of mostly young hippies, I mean people, playing music and chanting while candles were lit to form a peace sign. I stayed and watched the hippieness for while, got hungry and left.
The day I came back from Tokyo, there was this huge fireworks festival thing at the river right near Jesse’s place. The train was freaking crazy... it usually takes about 10, 15 minutes at the most to get to Jesse’s place from Umeda station; but that day, it took me about 40 minutes, I was so irritated and sick of Japanese people by the end of my ride. Jesse’s friend Berry right near the river, so we went to watch festivities at his rooftop… the view was amazing! ...check the pictures out and see for yourself.
Yesterday, I went to the Osaka Aquarium Kaiyukan. I actually walked around the place twice because I finished it so fast the first time that I thought I better walk around again so I could get my money’s worth. The place was pretty neat... the penguins were sooooo cute and the jellyfish were stunning!
I walked around the bay area, and then decided to check out the Suntory Museum, which was right next to the aquarium. There was this art exhibition there called Snoopy Life Design. 
I was hesitant to go at first as I am neither a fan of Snoopy nor the Peanuts comic/cartoon. But I am so glad that I went... the exhibit was really cool. A bunch of different artists took the Snoopy character and re-designed and interpreted it into their own visions. There were huge Snoopy statues painted and decorated in very weird and creative styles. Also, there was this space where you get to draw on a computer and your drawings are then projected onto a Snoopy stature... that was sooooooo cool!!!!!! In case you are wondering why I only took like four photos, it was because I wasn’t allowed to take any picture at all, but I managed to snap those ones.
By the time I was finished with the Snoopy Life Design exhibit, the sun was setting and I had a gorgeous view at the bay area. Again, check the pictures out and see for yourself. That is all for now, I am going to Hiroshima for a couple of days, so I’ll update this blog when I get back.
On my last day, I went to see the Metropolitan Government Offices in Shinjuku, which is where my hotel was. Oh, I forgot to mention, the station at Shinjuku is HUGE!!!! There are like five subway/train lines at Shinjuku, as a result, the combination of them make an enormous underground passage. Seriously, the station extends to over a hundred blocks! That was awesome because I could walk through the nice air-condition underground instead of the boiling heat outside. Anyways, I did not get a chance to go in the Metropolitan Government Offices because it was close... I was kind of disappointed about that.
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Before heading back to Osaka, I went to check out the Takashimaya Times Square, this gigantic shopping mall. I spent a very short time there because it really sucked. There you go, that was the end of my Tokyo trip… I am actually thinking of doing a day-trip back as I missed two things I really wanted to see: the National Museum of Modern Art and the John Lennon Museum.
Here’s the craziness that went on while I was in Tokyo: I stayed at a hotel called Sunlite Shinjuku, my room was sooooo tiny, but I didn’t care because the location was amazing! The first night, I went to this festival thing near my hotel. There were a bunch of food stands and people dressed in traditional Japanese attires drumming and dancing around. That was probably the most Japanese thing I witnessed so far.
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The next day, I went to the best museum ever! It was the Ghibli Museum in Mitaka. It was a Hayao Miyazaki museum... the place was set up like a studio: showcasing sketches, paintings, photographs, and different stages and processes in making Miyazaki films... oh, including the actual full storyboard to Grave of Fireflies!!!! The museum was absolutely amazing... actually, I cannot describe how much I enjoyed that place; it is definitely my favorite thing in Japan so far!!!!!!! Sadly, I was not allowed to take pictures inside the museum (even though I tried to take a few, but they were all blurry)... nonetheless, I was able to take pictures outside and I took a bunch of the flying robot from from Castle in the Sky... that thing was huge... it was soooooo cool! Ok, you are probably tired of hearing about how much I loved the Ghibli Museum, so I’ll move on to my next destination in Tokyo.
I traveled to Ebisu to check out the Yebisu Garden Place. I walked around there for a while, went to the Sapporo Brewery Beer Museum and got some free beer... it was sweet! I was planning to go into the Museum of Photography, but it was a little expensive; they were charging like 7 bucks for each floor… I thought it was a rip-off!
I did more traveling, this time to Hamamatsucho for the Zojyoji Temple, Tokyo Tower, and the bay area. The Zojyoji Temple was kind of sad: it had "rows of little statures of Jizobosatsu, the protector of the souls of stillborn children. Mothers who have experienced stillbirth or who have had an abortion may dedicate an image of the deity and decorate it with baby clothes, toys, and little windmills." Haha, that was take right from this Tokyo pocket guide book... btw Liam, that book is awesome!... I totally planned my trip mostly according to it, thanks!!
I thought the funniest thing was how there was this large picture of the tower in front of the entrance and people were getting their pictures taken with it. I mean, WTF?!?!?! The real thing is right there and people were taking pictures with a photograph of it, how strange!
The last thing I did in Hamamatsucho was just walked around the bay area, or the harbor front. I had a beautiful view of the city and the water and wind was a nice and refreshing contrast from the extreme heat I felt for the entire day. I hung around there for like an hour or so, bought some dinner and went back to my hotel. This post has been extremely long, so I will leave out my last day in Tokyo in another post. Peace-out kids!
