last days in Japan

This was sent by AVI from China. Since he cannot post to blogs or Facebook..I am sending for him. Excuse all the typos..I am sure the keyboard must have been bad. I am supposed to edit/spellcheck. However I do not have time for this right now.
HIS MOM

Final Days in Japan

It's a bit hard to write about my finals days in Japan seeing how I just arrived in China and I'm being assaulted with differences. As a matter of note, I can't actually get into my blog (or facebook), which is a pain!

After Kyoto, I left for Okayama, I thought it would provide me with a more relaxed pace than Kyoto and it was halfway to Hiroshima (my next destination) and provided close access to Himeji-jo. Himeji is the oldest, best preserved castle in Japan. That's probably not accurate, let's call it the most impressive, old castle. Unfortunately, I was visiting in the middle of a nice day holiday. It seeme d lik e much o fJapan was traveling durin g this time, an d many of them chose the castle on this day. After an hour cure (I showed up fairly early too), I found a complimentary english guide. Joinin g me on the tour were three travelers from Hong Kong (obviously I pumped them for info re China). The cast is a great site, but the numbe r of people was a bi toverwhelming. What was supposed to take two hours was stretched into five. At one point, I was just waiting in a cue that would be more appropriate at Space mountain. I figure a day like that needed to be followed up with a couple drinks, which I found at a local Aussie bar. We watched Bruno, it's still funny the second time.

The short trip to Hiroshim ahad me arriving in the midst of a storm. Half an hour later (and with my pants fully soaked) I was in my hostel and off to start the day. Hiroshima is of course the site of the a bomb drop. I think it give the city a kin dof spooky feel. I should talk about the museum and the memorial, but I won't, save for two points. (1) The downstairs had what I thougth was the most interesting and touching exhibits-drawings and painting of survivors. For some reason, the mass of travelers left these rooms vacant, which made appreciating the exhibit possible. (2) What I also thought was interest was the Japanese explanation on why the bomb was dropped- to justify the US military expenditure on the research and production of the bomb.

For it's sad history, I felt Hiroshima was like the other Japanese cities i had visited, hoards of shops (I never knew the Japanese were such consumers) arcades, offic e buildings, fashionable people, etc. So I took this time to enjoy some o f my favorite things in Japan. I grabbed some people form the hoste ate great sushi and follwed this up with puti-cura (sp?) those little pictures taht only school kids are supposed to do. The next days was sadly my last sight-seeing day in Japan, which I chose to spend on the island of Miyajima. This is a perfect day trip from Hiroshima. You can see shrines in the morning, follow that up with a hot, sticky ascent to the top of teh island, enjoy the view and some monkeys. Cool off for a bit and catch a cable car down in time to see the sunset. I have some nice pictures and once I figure out how to upload again, I hope to share them with you. I should mention that I also walked through the shrine which means I will be granted enlightenment (as if there was any doubt!).

Better than the sceary are the pics from later that night. I met an Irish traveler named Warren a couple days earlier in Kyoto. We discussed meeting in Hiroshima to go out to Kareoke with a french girl that happend to be living there (we also met her in Kyoto). The french girl ditched us (no suprise) but in her place we were joined by an english gal named Kirsty (she was much cooler than the disaffected Frenchie) whom I spend teh day with at Miyajima. After showing up and polishing off 2 liters of sake we were good to go. I would say that the three of us were pretty god rock starts that night. We sang, danced on tables, spilled our beers, I even have a war wound (somehoe I cut my finger while playing the tamboreen). Too much fun. We rolled in around 5, and I'm happy to say that I remember teh whole night and without a hangover.