Notes from Tuesday May 16 2023:
We began the day in the chairless monastery, and we calculated we travelled on nine different public conveyances to reach Hiroshima. They were all pretty fun but there was a bit of stress on one leg of the journey: our train was sold out in the reservation cars, however we got lucky and made it onto one of the open-seating cars instead.
And while the dreary rain worked really well for Koyasan (especially in the ancient cemetery), it was nice to learn that the three solid days of rain were finally over.
“Landing” in Hiroshima, we were a bit surprised to find there was no subway in the city, but they have lots of street-cars everywhere and they seem to work nearly as well.
It’s been a very very long day of travel, and we’re excited about a relaxing dinner somewhere.
We randomly found a great place on the 4th floor (so ya know it’s good) of some downtown building. The guy up front saw us coming and began typing madly on his phone. He held it up for us to see, and we read “staff only speak Japanese!” We nodded no problem, I think he was surprised but seated us anyway.
We got back to the hotel and had a mind to try more Japanese whiskies at the bar. But it turns out our hotel doesn’t have a bar! However, they were happy to recommend one a few blocks away, so off we went into the unknown dark of nighttime Hiroshima. This bar was another hole-in-the-wall place, upstairs somewhere, and full of local Japanese libations!
The bar guy keeps a notebook of slang from different languages, trying to stay current with the different visitors he must get. For English, he already had documented FOMO, OMG, “Netflix & chill” lol makes me wonder how that one came up 😀
Leave a Reply