Hiroshima preview

After Kyoto we went down to Hiroshima. Today Hiroshima is a bustling city of over 1 million people. It was hard to believe the city was completely destroyed on August 6, 1945. The A bomb memorial park was quite somber. I'll write more about that when I can upload photos....

Accommodations in Hiroshima were a hostel but it was a chain and not nearly as homey as Pan and Circus. It was also far more aimed at international travellers.

Dinner in Hiroshima was, as all dinners in Japan are, an adventure. We started by walking randomly in the general direction of the memorial. Not sure where to look for food, we were like a moth to a flame as we followed the bright lights. Eventually we tried two Japanese restaurants but couldn't communicate at all with then in order for me to safely eat. On a whim Brendan decided to try a French one. Communication was much improved but regrettably the prices were too high. We were about to leave when we were stopped, and one of the patrons then led us out and a few blocks over to a different French restaurant and was greet enthusiastically by the patrons and staff there. Clearly our guide was well known. He then left and we ordered our food in French while the chef prepared custom meals in front of us!

Kyoto

June is rainy season in most of Japan. To beat it we used our Japan Rail Pass to head down for a whirlwind 4 day tour of Kyoto and Hiroshima.

Kyoto

Kyoto is a lovely city that until the 1860s was the capital of Japan. There are countless temples and shrines throughout the city and the city is nestled in a valley. The shrines get increasingly gorgeous the higher up the hills you go. Unfortunately there isn't a hop on hop off tour bus for the highlights - it would be an ideal city for it as the top sites are kilometres apart. We walked the first day and negotiated the public transit the second.

Kyoto is also a very touristy place and we found more English there than in Tokyo. Most restaurants and shops had at least some English. The local specialty is a Japanese beef (wagyu). Kobe beef is actually the most famous type of this, but we weren't in Kobe so we had the Tokyo variety instead!

Finding a restaurant was difficult due to the paradox of choice. there was a lovely narrow street that ran beside the river and had countless restaurants and shops. They were also super high end with entrees in excess of $100 a plate common. Fortunately there was cheaper fare to be had and we found a restaurant offering different parts of beef a la carte, which you cooked at your table. We tried Kyoto prime rib (tatekanoko), then added salted beef tongue (tantsura), beef heart (hatsu), artery (korikori), and trachea (urute). Tatekanoko and tantsura were fantastic, hatsu was quite good, korikori is an acquired taste and urute.... Well, it's crunchy and was not finished, we'll leave it at that.

Our accommodation in Kyoto deserves special mention. I've been booking on the fly, often the day before, utilizing expedia, hostel world, airbnb, etc. The only affordable option I could find for Kyoto last minute was a hostel called Pan and Circus. Believe it or not, I've never done the dorm style hostel before, having usually camped or stayed at B&Bs in Europe. I had some trepidation about what the experience would be like. I needn't have worried though as Pan and Circus was super friendly and some fantastic memories were formed made.

Our first night we met an Israeli illustrated who in his off season was travelling and was now on his 7th month, having previously been in India and Sri Lanka surfing. We joined up the next day for the Philosopher's Walk past the temples / shrines.

After an exhausting day after which we headed back to the hostel ~5pm to rejuvenate before finding a restaurant for dinner.  We were sitting in the common area resting while others arrived. Our hostess Marian (sp?) made a special effort to introduce everyone as new people arrived. Soon Japanese ladies with minimal English tried to engage us in conversation. So began a delightful evening of conversation with the help of phrase books and apps. Talking of going for dinner together arose and I showed my handy allergy card to alert them to the challenges. At this two of the women offered to make food for us! We had a fantastic dinner of Japanese curry, and continued talking in the Pan and Circus bar until midnight.

The following day was a whirlwind tour through a bamboo grove and the Golden Pavilion before heading to Hiroshima late that afternoon.

Street of expensive restaurants

Our raw food

Our grill

A wonderful temple complex. We watched a ceremony from the deck in the main building seen above.

Temple, I think this one was of the dead... There wasn't a lot of information available on them.

A Japanese graveyard. No family tree research to do here, so no need for a grave rubbing.

This entire drink with ice came from a vending machine...

Crane

Our friends at Pan and Circus  :)

Bikes and Shakedown ride

Our host Sam graciously has lent us two bikes for our trip. At his suggestion we took them out for a ride in Tokyo.

Bikes:

Sam's bike is a steel frame, heavy duty bike with a climbing gear, iphone mount and dynamo. Since I'm carrying more weight (trucking freeze dried food / cliff bars to help me eat in the land of seafood!), I'll be on this one. Brendan is on a bike with a carbon fork, handlebars, and seat. Its a nice bike that flies when unloaded. It lacks a climbing gear though and the carbon front end emphasizes the heaving weight from the panniers at the rear.

Ride:

Thanks the the battery pack / dynamo we were able to do turn by turn directions from the iphone. It was nice to not have to constantly stop and check where we were. We rode 15km through city streets until the one river, continued along the river a ways, and then retraced our steps. Approximately 40km total and we did it fully loaded. It was a great chance to test our equipment and figure out what didn't work. We'll definitely had too much and will be leaving the extra in Tokyo.

Me

Brendan's bike. I don't seem to have one of him with it....

Side note speaking of bikes - they are very common here but fall into two classes. mama chari, or mother's chariot, is the common one. They range from the bikes on the left and right of the picture, all the way up to the massive bike in the middle with two child seats and electric assist. We've seen a mother with 3 kids on one of these! The nice part for the users is the simplicity - a simple lock through the rear wheel suffices for locking. the second bicycle type is of course the "real" bicycles like what we're riding, but these are fairly uncommon here. Apparently there's a large cultural difference between the two though!

Tokyo

We've been a week so far in Japan. At first I was anxious, especially with regards to eating. I'm having a great time now though! And eating, though not particularly well.

At arrival in Japan we were approached by a Japanese television crew and did an interview on why we had chosen to come to Japan. Apparently I'm on Japanese TV.... Somewhere. After that errands and the airport (SIM card, yen, rail pass exchange) and into Tokyo. Brendan's father has a friend Sam in the Shinjuku area who is lending us bikes and so we targeted staying in that neighbourhood.

Tokyo is.... Massive. We walked into Shinjuku station our first morning and encountered wave after wave of people heading to work. Seemed far busier than union station.... And it's one of several major stations within the Tokyo area. Shibuya crossing is massive with thousands of people crossing through the scramble crossing every iteration. Shibuya is also filled with amazing stores and neon lights, while Shinjuku is known for its night life. And that's all we've seen so far in Tokyo so far! We also did a "Shake down" ride on the bikes to figure out the kinks.

Tokyo highlights:

- Our restaurant hosts the first night we're three men around my age who were super enthusiastic about trying to feed me within allergy restrictions. We wanted to go back but it never quite fit.

- second dinner was in Shibuya. The staff there did a coordinated shouted greeting and farewell to every patron. They also apparently have a Toronto location called Teppen. Anyone been?

Leaving Tokyo

 We have the 21 day rail pass (the maximum), so are trying to fit our of Tokyo experiences into this time. At the suggestion of Sam we opted to head west to Kyoto early on before the rainy season started. Hokkaido is actually dry during June so we'll be fine biking later.

Enough for now! So much to say it will become far too long for one post... More to come!

 Our interview :)

Shinjuku rush hour

Shibuya crossing. We watched for a while from Starbucks and every crossing was like this

Sake barrels at Meiji Jingu, a garden / temple in Tokyo to commemorate emperor Meiji who oversaw the modernization of Japan.

My meal at Teppen in Shibuya

Grad trip!

Following of hearts continues....

I'm now done medical school. Changing circumstances and interests means I'm starting a rural family medicine residency come July. Which means the play on words in the blog title doesn't make much sense.... but does mean there will be more time for travelling!

I'm on my graduation trip now. I'm presently in Honolulu staying with a friend here for graduate school. Relaxing and trying to live like a local for the week. Then off to Japan for a bike trip. Plan is to update here periodically along the way. Stay tuned!