Dick was a bit nervous when we stepped off the train at the Hiroshima station. Between the possibility of lingering radiation and/or lingering bad blood from WWII, Dick stressed that today was NOT a day you wanted to be caught sleeping.
Not today
We headed for the WWII Peace Musuem and surrounding monuments for a look back to August 6, 1945. Not much to say other than the historic documents and graphic images make a strong case for peace.
The trees in the surrounding park did not ease Dickie's fear of radiation. In addition to growing branches, leaves, and other normal tree things, they were also sprouting grass.
When we had seen all the sights in Hiroshima, we came back to Kyoto to our first Japanese-style hostel. It was a 100 year-old wooden house with small rooms. Guests here are provided with some weird stuff: a tea set, the world's smallest toothpaste, pillows stuffed with beans instead of down/cotton, and a floor pad to sleep on.
The only truly odd part of the hostel was that there were no toilets, only footbaths where one would expect the toilet to be. At first, the footbaths were too cold for us to keep our feet in for more than 3 or 4 minutes. But by the end of our stay Dickie was able to submerge for 15 minutes, easy.
Anyways, after a bit of rest we got into the vodka that Dickie had been hauling around since we picked it up at Duty Free in Canada. We got good and liquored up and headed out for the clubs the hostel recommended.
Kyoto at night looks nearly the same as it does during the day, except the night is lit by flashing neon signs and the streets are absolutely SOAKED in puke.
We arrived downtown to a complete zoo -- kids booting in the middle of sidewalk, rolling their unconscious friends through the streets, and passing out in parking lots. Those who were still conscious passed the time by pulling trig into the river. I checked my watch -- it was 11pm. Needless to say, Japan is home to some of the sweetest bros on earth.
Oddest part of all of this was that, as much of a madhouse the streets were, the bars were super tame. All of the places we went to held about 30 people max, and consisted of small groups sitting around tables with music softly playing in the background. How and why did these kids get so wasted, we wondered.
Eventually we found a bar that was a bit more what we were used to. We spent the night there before going home, taking a nice long footbath, and called it a night.
TIPS AND OBSERVATIONS FROM DAY 5:
- Jaywalking is completely non-existant here. Even on narrow backroads void of any traffic, nobody budges until the light shows the blinking green man. Dick thinks this is how pedestrians display their respect for drivers -- I don't know what to think. It's a huge inconvenience.
- Whenever anybody walks into a store/restaurant, all of the workers scream Japanese greetings at you. It's startling and we have no idea what they're yelling at us. Not wanting to be disrespectful we just shout back.
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