It was a given that I would have to take advantage of this summer vacation somehow. A total of 9 days free, 4 days left on my Seishun 18 ticket, and an entire country to carve my way through. It was a priority to carve a gash as far down the island as I could. In order to take advantage of the Seishun 18 ticket, which allows you to travel as much as you want in not-necessarily-consecutive days, you need to have designated travel days where you can really get your money’s worth. Ideally, the final destination would be about as far away from Tokyo as possible, while still being close enough to return in one day on the trains.

One thing about the Seishun 18 ticket: yes, you can use as many trains as you want in a day, but only the local trains that stop at every station and the next faster one that maybe shaves 5 minutes off an hour trip. So, while you could travel from Tokyo to the furthest tip in four hours by using Shinkansen or faster trains, it takes a lot longer to get anywhere the local train way…as you will see.

I found out that Trisna wanted to go on a similar trip, so we just decided to go over together and then separate on the trip back. The plan was this: leave really early on Sunday, head over to Nara. We would stay overnight at Nara and then leave in the early afternoon and head over to Hiroshima on Monday. We would stop off at Himeji castle on the way. We’d spend one full day in Hiroshima, and visit Miyajima island. I would head all the way back on Wednesday while Trisna stopped over in Kyoto. I made the hostel reservations and meticulously planned out the stations and transfers we would have to take, with a general estimation of how long it would take.

On the day of, I got up at 4:45 in order to catch the first subway train to hit Nishi-Waseda and aimed to arrive at Tokyo station around 5:30. I had to run to reach the closing doors at the subway station, but I made it. Things went smoothly all the way to Tokyo until I realized that I had remembered to bring socks, but forgotten to bring my Seishun 18 ticket. Doh. I reached Tokyo station anyway to consult with Trisna about the options, determined there really was only one, and I was on the next train back to my dorm. Train rides take longer when you’re hating yourself.

We finally left at 8:00. Tokyo station to Atami (1:40), Atami to Shizuoka (1:15). We ate lunch at Shizuoka. Shizuoka to Hamamatsu (1:15), Hamamatsu to Ogaki (1:50), Ogaki to Maibara (:35), Maibara to Kyoto (:55), and then Kyoto to Nara (:50).

We arrived at Nara around 6:00 and quickly found the hostel. It was called Nara Ugaya Guesthouse, and had a pretty nice atmosphere. The guy working there was pretty nice to us, was patient with the less-than-stealler language skills and recommended us to a good Ramen restaurant. There was a map on the wall with the hometowns of everyone who had stayed at that hostel. I put one very lonely pin in the area of Nampa, Idaho. After dropping off the bags we had been lugging around since the morning, we headed to the aforementioned Ramen restaurant.

We followed the instructions exactly, and it led us to a place like this. Some may look at this and think “dodgy,” but in my experience the best food to be found are in these creepily out-of-the-way places. A lot of bad food, too, but you can’t throw the baby out with the bathwater.

The restaurant looked like a place that probably wouldn’t have passed health inspections in America, but there was a healthy crowd there despite the late time we arrived. I asked what the spiciest thing they had on the menu was, and they named two options, one of which was Kim Chi Ramen. I ordered the other one. While waiting for our food, we talked a bit to the waitress, who seemed surprised that I could speak and seemed to think that Trisna was Japanese. It was an ongoing theme through the trip. People would always address Trisna first and then be surprised when she responded with less than fluent Japanese. I personally like my own situation where if I can formulate a “sumimasen” they seem impressed.

When the food was delivered to us, I was a little unsettled that she gave me the Kim Chi Ramen. I didn’t care enough to have them change it because it took like 10 minutes to make and it looked good regardless. I guess all the talk about Kim Chi tasting like feet is just bad press, because it was really good. Of all the Ramen places I’ve been to here, it was the best I’d had so far.

A couple sitting next to us eventually started talking as well. They asked where we came from, where we were going. They recommended that if we went to Hiroshima, we should order the okonomiyaki. Oh great, just what I wanted to hear. But wait! Hiroshima okonomiyaki is different from normal okonomiyaki, and generally regarded as the best in Japan. So, okay, we would have to go at least once.

After dinner, we attempted to get as much sightseeing as we could during the night. We wanted to go to Miyajima island, which is about 40 minutes from Hiroshima, before dark the next day, so the less time we had to spend in Nara in the morning, the better.

We started going from place to place, based on a map that Trisna received from a travel information booth. It was very nice weather — none of the humidity of Tokyo and a very light breeze. There weren’t many tourists out, so it was nice. By the end of the night, we had actually seen about 70% of what we wanted to see total. I did some more long exposure photography with varying degrees of success. My favorite shot was this one of a gazebo on a pond that I didn’t digitally retouch at all.

We headed back at about 10:30, because we wanted to leave the hostel at 5:30 am the next morning. In our 5-bed shared room, there was only one guy asleep at the time. When I woke up at 5:10 the next morning, all the beds were filled. Trisna wanted to take a shower, so we didn’t end up leaving until closer to 6, but it gave me a chance to use the free computer in the lobby. It’s amazing how quick you start to miss that thing.

In the morning it was just about as desolate as it was in the night. We cut through the park that houses most of Nara’s attractions and went to the most remote area first. The shrine at the end was nice, but I liked the path that we had to walk to get there better. It was like what people dream of when they think of the world’s best place to take a morning run. I did not run though, which is why I managed to enjoy myself, but especially in the weather it afforded one of those rare “it’s good to be awake at 6 am” feelings. I did not feel that way even at 7:45 am walking across campus, past the dumpsters behind the dining hall, to my fitness class over at NNU.

At the shrine, we were the only people there except for a guy who had just finished raking the rocks in preparation for tourists. We were able to witness what happens to all the omikuji (pieces of paper with fortunes on them) that people tie up in the shrines. Deer eat them. This is probably just in Nara, which is famous for deer being everywhere. The deer are not afraid of people at all, and will often solicit food from them. I was told that the best time to visit Nara was in the late morning or early afternoon, after the first round of tourists had satisfied the deer’s hunger (take that sentence out of context). I found them to not be annoying at all. Maybe it was too early, but they never approached either of us, but they wouldn’t run away and allowed you to pet them if you felt so inclined.

We hit up Nara’s major tourist attraction, the great buddha before the crowds arrived. Two of my HDRs are from here. The exterior of the building is here, and the interior is here. A fun fact that I just learned while researching this post: this is the largest wooden building in the world. There were probably five people in the entire place when we arrived, so we had it almost to ourselves. No hustle and not even a little bit of bustle. Apparently this great buddha is even bigger than Kamakura’s buddha. (14.98 meters vs Kamakura’s 13.35) The main difference is that it’s indoors, and being much further away from Tokyo, has a much less touristy (though still touristy) vibe.

When we left, the tourists were coming out in droves, including several field trips for junior high students. On our way back to the hostel, things were noticeably busier and we decided it was time to start heading toward our next destination.

The good thing about the schedule was that the first leg was harder than the second. On Sunday we traveled about 10 hours with no interesting stops. Monday we had a 7 hour train ride scheduled with one place we could stop at for lunch that I really wanted to go to. So, it was Nara to Osaka (:55), and Osaka to Himeji (1:00), home to Himeji castle.

I wanted to go to Coco Ichiban, a chain of curry restaurants in Japan that lets you choose the spiciness level from one to ten. We found one and headed to it. Trisna had never been to one before, and I cautioned that three was as much as I could handle while still enjoying the meal, but she jumped to five. They actually won’t allow you to have anything higher than that until you can prove that you can handle level five. I sweated through my level three while she fully enjoyed her five without even touching her drink. I guess it’s par for the course when you grow up in Indonesia.

We had to keep our visit to Himeji castle shorter than I would have hoped, but we still spent a good amount of time there. Himeji castle is mostly famous because it’s the most complete of Japan’s feudal castles. For me, I wanted to see it because it was used as a filming location for my favorite movie of all time, Akira Kurosawa’s Ran.

As a castle in its own right, it looks very majestic. If it were possible, I would have tried to hit this up at either a very early or very late hour in order to avoid the huge crowd, but the weather was perfect so it wasn’t bad.

I don’t know how to make our trip from the entrance gate to the top of the castle and back to the gate sound terribly exciting, because it was mostly very cool visually. I can see why it’s the most visited castle in Japan, and I wish I could have spent some more time there. It deserves to be more than something you just check off a list.

An HDR I took from the top of the castle looking on the grounds and the surrounding town is here.

It was getting to be about 2:00, and we were in danger of not reaching Miyajima by sunset. In retrospect, I should have just decided that we wouldn’t be able to go there that night and stayed in Himeji for a few more hours, but we gave it a shot. Himeji to Okayama (1:30), Okayama to Hozaki (1:30), Hozaki to Hiroshima took about two hours. It was after 7 by the time we arrived, and the sun was long gone. Miyajima would have to wait for the next day.

We found our hostel, that was more like a cross between a hostel and a hotel. It was actually rated as the 8th best hostel in Japan by people who I would imagine are qualified to make that judgment. After dropping off stuff in our rooms, we asked where to get yakisoba (which is what I wanted). The receptionist said that most okonomiyaki restaurants also sell yakisoba, and said there were a ton of said restaurants in the second floor of Hiroshima station.

There were many restaurants in the second floor of the Hiroshima, and most of them specialized in okonomiyaki. We went to one that seemed busy, assuming that all the people there had a better idea of which one to pick than we did. I ordered yakisoba, and Trisna got a squid okonomiyaki. She said it was really good. My past experience with okonomiyaki coupled with the word “squid” made me doubtful. She said she wanted to go there one more time before we left.

I grabbed the top bunk in my hostel room and set my alarm so we could reach the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum as soon as it opened in the morning.