Yesterday I mysteriously found myself with no immediate plans on the horizon. Considering my busy party/outing schedule recently, this came as something of a shock; but it also made me realize that I haven’t done a great deal of traveling or exploring during this vacation, which I fully intended to work on at first. It’s nice to be wanted, and hanging out with all my friends this holiday season has been great, but I get these urges to go adventuring alone sometimes. If I go places by myself, I don’t have to worry about scheduling conflicts, being boring, tiring someone else out, or getting lost by deviating from the map: in Japan, I can meander in aimless circles for hours and enjoy just looking around, without a major goal in mind. Particularly with Hiroshima as a small-sized city, I’ve noticed that the best way to get to know the place is to simply wander as whims dictate – it seems like when I take the time to walk freely, I always discover interesting things. And if I come across something really good, then I can share it with people later, and not have to worry if it’s worth the effort to get there sight unseen.
With this mindset, at about one o’clock I set out with the hazy intention of going to Aki no Kofuji, on Ninoshima Island. This is a hike from GetHiroshima.com that I’ve been dying to do, and the sun came out at noon, so I figured the views would be pretty good if I could motivate out there. But even as I hopped a bus into town, I was already thinking that I might be cutting the timing a little close: where I live, Ushita-Higashi, is about as far away from Ninoshima as you can get while still being inside Hiroshima proper. Plus, even though it was 1:00 I hadn’t eaten all day, so I knew I was going to have to fuel up before even considering the rest of the journey south. I got off at downtown Hacchobori/Tatemachi and lunched at Seattle’s Best Coffee for old time’s sake (they had one on campus at my old Osaka study-abroad university,) sipping a cup of their excellent hot chocolate while I mused over what to do. Eventually I came to the conclusion it couldn’t hurt to get on the streetcar and just see what time I arrived at the ferryport – if it was too late when the train pulled in, I didn’t have to get on the boat, after all.
As luck would have it, the tram that came while I was waiting on the platform happened to be one of the latest light-rail models in the system: a 5100-series Green Mover (<< click if you want to see an extensive site full of great photos.) I forget if I've mentioned before that I love trains, and I love Hiroshima’s “Hiroden” streetcars – I think the old antique ones are the coolest, but the Green Movers have a special appeal too, because they have a particular single seat that I adore occupying whenever I get the chance. It has a great view through the Green Mover’s huge windows, and no one will bother you (or stare, if you take pictures) since there’s not even a driver at the very very back of the train. If you need to charge your PASPY smartcard, the machine is right next to you, and there’s usually a route map at eye level for station reference too.
Actually, I was looking at just such a route map when I saw that “The Hiroshima Museum of History and Traditional Crafts” was right on the way to the port, accessible from the #1 line train I was riding. Given that it was about 2:30 PM at this point, I thought a revision of plans might be in order: Ninoshima appears to be the kind of place you need to devote a whole day to, at least, and anyway I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed with a history museum. Checking the map again (which is a bit unspecific as you can see below) I figured I could get off at any of the Ujina stops – Ujina san-cho-me through Ujina go-cho-me – and start looking for it, since Hiroden stops are all very close together for the most part.
Click here to go to a more easily readable version if you want – left click on the graphic in the middle of the page and choose “zoom in” to navigate.
I decided to aim for Ujina-san-chome (宇品三丁目) but missed it due to a moment of fiddling with my iPod. So instead, I got out at Yon-chome (宇品四丁目), which is across the street from a sweet little playground/park and the area’s 公民館, Community Center.
Since from this point onward I actually zigzagged around quite a bit at random, I’m going to present the points of interest I found in a logical and progressive manner, instead of in the order I discovered them in. If anyone is interested in following the route of this urban trek, it should be fairly easy, since I more or less looped around the side-streets edging the streetcar tracks. It’s worth it, in my opinion, to see some of the regular everyday Japan atmosphere that Hiroshima harbors a lot of. Ujina is one of those areas I’ve started to mentally refer to as “the Japan between”: the neighborhoods and streets and shops where people actually live in this country, all of which exist in vast stretches inbetween the castles and temples and other big, impressive sights that usually get all the attention from travelers. Not that there’s a thing wrong with any of those sights either, of course, since obviously I love those too… but it’s nice to view and acknowledge the everyday, sometimes. Most Americans I’ve spoken to – if they have considered Japan at all, to start with – have this mental image that all of Japan is Tokyo: crowded and bustling and neon and business-suited (or goth-Lolita-anime-ized) twenty-four hours a day. News, folks. Japan is not Tokyo, any more than America is New York City. In fact, I think Japan intentionally uses Tokyo as its “face” to the Western world sometimes, with all the good and bad implications that entails. Much more of Japan is like Ujina, at least from what I’ve found on my trips. It’s not “weird” and “exotic” and “oh, those crazy Japanese” – it’s just people, who happen to live a little differently than elsewhere in the world, and who have their own perspectives on what’s normal. Obviously that statement could go for anywhere you land around the globe, but it’s true.
Kanda Shrine
Enough proselytizing, back to the walk. Looking across the playground, which was occupied by a tribe of local kids, I saw a big roof sticking up which could easily have been either a shrine or a temple – turns out it was a small Shinto 神社, Kanda Jinja. You can cut straight across the tiny park to get onto the shrine grounds, but heading left from the Community Center and then turning right at the first small paved intersection will bring you to the main gate. There’s not a ton to see here, but at this time of year there are impressively large kadomatsu placed in front of the torii entrance; they are traditional New Years’ decorations, which vary subtly from region to region. From what I’ve come across, Hiroshima’s style of kadomatsu tend to be quite beautiful, with many different types of plants and flowers incorporated into them.
Ujina Miyuki Building
Once finished with the shrine, return to the Community Center in front of tram stop Ujina-yon-chome 宇品四丁目 once more. Start heading back north, up the road the way the train came down. Not more than a block or two from the Community Center, on the left, is the Ujina Miyuki Building, which is an A-bombed structure now housing a restaurant and a hair salon.
It actually used to be a power substation, as detailed in the plaque mounted near the front door – it was still working up until it was replaced in 1994(!?) You can kind of tell the building’s former function from the way the architecture appears, but examining the ultra-heavy-duty, almost steampunk electrical pylons in front really cinches it. These things are awesome, in both senses of the word.
At this well-designed NHK website, “A People’s Map of Areas Affected By The Atomic Bomb,” you can look up and explore many other obscure A-bombed buildings like the Miyuki. It also shows the locations and tells the stories of those A-bombed trees you can find randomly throughout the city, and explains the meanings of the monuments in the Peace Park.
Rankuru Used Book Store
Continuing to stroll toward the Ujina-san-chome 宇品三丁目 streetcar station, you’ll see a big yellow awning sticking out over the sidewalk with the words “used book store” in English near the top. This is Rankuru (“Lancru”? Putting the katakana ランクル into Google results in a ton of pages about Toyota Landcruisers, abbreviated as Lancrus… hmm.)
The front windows of this fantastic secondhand manga store are painted with classic characters like GeGeGe no Kitaro and Tetsuwan Atomu (that’s “Astro Boy” for English speakers.) Yes, it’s primarily a used manga store rather than a used book store per se; there is one wall of actual prose and some light novels scattered about, but in a store this densely packed, one wall doesn’t amount to much. All the rest of the cave-like space is devoted to Japanese comics of various genres!
When you enter this store, you feel like you’re literally swimming in manga, or maybe tunneling into a graphic novel mine: the dimly lit crammed shelves are extremely close together, with more volumes piled on the floor, covering the walls, and hanging from the ceiling. The organizational system is loosely based around publisher (all the Jump series are in roughly the same area, all the Asuka stuff and so on are together… for the most part) but other than that, it’s a trackless wilderness from what I could gather. The nice middle-aged lady proprietor might be able to locate specifics if you ask, but I was too busy joyously rummaging to think about checking with her. A majority of the shelves are double-, even triple-deep in books, so it really is like digging out gems from the rock. You feel like you’ve genuinely earned everything you walk off with, too.
I should note that for lovers of pretty boys like myself, the BL section is huge – picture directly below is the first section of it, it goes on for another three shelves to the right.
In addition to the neck-deep drifts of modern manga, there are genuine antique tomes, like first editions of Tezuka’s Pheonix, original Gundam media, and a lot of very old postwar comics I don’t have enough background to recognize immediately. The big paper model of Devilman keeps watch over a corner’s worth of these rarities, but there are others strewn throughout the store, mostly in plastic bags carefully mounted on the walls. Behind the counter, you can see the owner’s huge collection of anime/manga/etc. figurines, but I’m pretty sure these guys aren’t for sale – sorry!
The prices on everything I noticed were comparable to Book-Off; lots of 100 yen to 250 yen bargains. Some of the newer titles were upward of 300/400 yen, but they had rarer things I haven’t been able to find elsewhere, like a Japanese copy of Uki Ogasawara’s Black Sun for 395 yen. Plus, this store has a hell of a lot more character than your typical Book-Off, haha. I enjoyed just digging around and trying not to knock anything over when I moved.
The Hiroshima Museum of History and Traditional Crafts
Leaving behind Rankuru and continuing north, you’ll shortly come to the Ujina San-chome 宇品三丁目 streetcar stop. If you only want to go to the museum, you can just get off the train here (cross the street, if you came from downtown.) The short jaunt from the streetcar to the museum isn’t that well marked, so I’ve taken pictures that will hopefully show where to turn if you want to walk there. (Note: the Ujina Ni-chome 宇品二丁目 stop looks like it might be closer according to the map, but I don’t know if the route is any better highlighted if you try from that station.)
Go up to the first intersection nearest the tram stop, and turn left at the cleaning store with the white cat in the window and bright yellow banner up top.
Keep walking straight, a short four blocks, until you run into a small T-intersection with a tiny alley continuing ahead of you. If you look at the electrical pole to the right of the modern-styled house, you’ll see a sign for the museum in English and Japanese, with an arrow pointing right.
After turning right, go straight for another three or four blocks, until you come to another medium-sized T-shaped intersection. This one has a traffic light. Looking up at one of the poles on your left, you should see another sign pointing the way to the museum. Go left.
Not long after you make the turn, you should be able to see this bright red brick facade. The museum itself is actually another A-bombed structure – it used to be an Army cannery. Click here for the detailed history of the building. Unfortunately, I can’t actually say anything about the exhibits yet though… the place was closed! Guess I should have considered that possibility, since I’m on winter vacation myself, haha. It will be shut until the 5th of January, for New Years’ break. There was a big sign out front saying that they have a special exhibit about Gongitsune, the story of Gon the Little Fox, going on until February 7th 2010 – so I will definitely come back to see it (even though Gongitsune is such a sad fairytale…)
Ujina Ferry Port
When I found out the museum was closed, I wasn’t sure what to do next – until I looked up at the sky.
Ujina is on the south tip of one of Hiroshima City’s four prominent peninsulas, extending out into the bay beyond. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a sunset over the ocean in a long while, and it wouldn’t be at all hard to get down to the shore now: the Ujina Streetcar Line (Hiroden Line Numbers 1, 3, and 5) actually finishes under the awning of the ferry port, and I was only a handful of stations away from the end of that track. I decided I was enjoying walking so much I would just follow the trains down to the sea, and find out what the view was like from the harbor.
The station/ferry port itself sits alone at the end of the land. It somehow seems lonely, even though there are passengers trickling in and out of it all day long – maybe that’s just the effect of winter? But there’s an extensive park just up the hill, where people apparently come to exercise and play with their dogs no matter how cold it is, so I’m not sure.
Actually, I did pass a number of people jogging up and down this long “boardwalk” (so named by the port maps) which curves around the far end of the terminal. And a pair of enormous black and white water birds, which I almost want to say were cranes, soared over the shallow water just beyond the railing for a while. So perhaps it was just the sky that made everything seem so small and so quiet… even the ferry boats themselves, which pulled in and out the entire time I stood there.
Even without a ticket, you can get down onto the docking jetty, right where the boats pull up to load passengers. That’s where the view of the water is the clearest, too. I’m fairly sure that perfect hill-shaped island directly ahead might be Ninoshima – I can’t wait to find out next time. Looks like even the ferry crossing should be beautiful, if I can hit nice weather again.
I wasn’t the only one staring up at the expansive wings of cloud folding over the evening; I saw several couples, and a few older people, sitting on the benches or standing quietly to watch the sun depart. I wonder what everyone else was thinking about…?
Another Whirlwind Adventure
“The Japan Between”: walking in Ujina
Yesterday I mysteriously found myself with no immediate plans on the horizon. Considering my busy party/outing schedule recently, this came as something of a shock; but it also made me realize that I haven’t done a great deal of traveling or exploring during this vacation, which I fully intended to work on at first. It’s nice to be wanted, and hanging out with all my friends this holiday season has been great, but I get these urges to go adventuring alone sometimes. If I go places by myself, I don’t have to worry about scheduling conflicts, being boring, tiring someone else out, or getting lost by deviating from the map: in Japan, I can meander in aimless circles for hours and enjoy just looking around, without a major goal in mind. Particularly with Hiroshima as a small-sized city, I’ve noticed that the best way to get to know the place is to simply wander as whims dictate – it seems like when I take the time to walk freely, I always discover interesting things. And if I come across something really good, then I can share it with people later, and not have to worry if it’s worth the effort to get there sight unseen.
With this mindset, at about one o’clock I set out with the hazy intention of going to Aki no Kofuji, on Ninoshima Island. This is a hike from GetHiroshima.com that I’ve been dying to do, and the sun came out at noon, so I figured the views would be pretty good if I could motivate out there. But even as I hopped a bus into town, I was already thinking that I might be cutting the timing a little close: where I live, Ushita-Higashi, is about as far away from Ninoshima as you can get while still being inside Hiroshima proper. Plus, even though it was 1:00 I hadn’t eaten all day, so I knew I was going to have to fuel up before even considering the rest of the journey south. I got off at downtown Hacchobori/Tatemachi and lunched at Seattle’s Best Coffee for old time’s sake (they had one on campus at my old Osaka study-abroad university,) sipping a cup of their excellent hot chocolate while I mused over what to do. Eventually I came to the conclusion it couldn’t hurt to get on the streetcar and just see what time I arrived at the ferryport – if it was too late when the train pulled in, I didn’t have to get on the boat, after all.
As luck would have it, the tram that came while I was waiting on the platform happened to be one of the latest light-rail models in the system: a 5100-series Green Mover (<< click if you want to see an extensive site full of great photos.) I forget if I've mentioned before that I love trains, and I love Hiroshima’s “Hiroden” streetcars – I think the old antique ones are the coolest, but the Green Movers have a special appeal too, because they have a particular single seat that I adore occupying whenever I get the chance. It has a great view through the Green Mover’s huge windows, and no one will bother you (or stare, if you take pictures) since there’s not even a driver at the very very back of the train. If you need to charge your PASPY smartcard, the machine is right next to you, and there’s usually a route map at eye level for station reference too.
Actually, I was looking at just such a route map when I saw that “The Hiroshima Museum of History and Traditional Crafts” was right on the way to the port, accessible from the #1 line train I was riding. Given that it was about 2:30 PM at this point, I thought a revision of plans might be in order: Ninoshima appears to be the kind of place you need to devote a whole day to, at least, and anyway I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed with a history museum. Checking the map again (which is a bit unspecific as you can see below) I figured I could get off at any of the Ujina stops – Ujina san-cho-me through Ujina go-cho-me – and start looking for it, since Hiroden stops are all very close together for the most part.
Click here to go to a more easily readable version if you want – left click on the graphic in the middle of the page and choose “zoom in” to navigate.
I decided to aim for Ujina-san-chome (宇品三丁目) but missed it due to a moment of fiddling with my iPod. So instead, I got out at Yon-chome (宇品四丁目), which is across the street from a sweet little playground/park and the area’s 公民館, Community Center.
Since from this point onward I actually zigzagged around quite a bit at random, I’m going to present the points of interest I found in a logical and progressive manner, instead of in the order I discovered them in. If anyone is interested in following the route of this urban trek, it should be fairly easy, since I more or less looped around the side-streets edging the streetcar tracks. It’s worth it, in my opinion, to see some of the regular everyday Japan atmosphere that Hiroshima harbors a lot of. Ujina is one of those areas I’ve started to mentally refer to as “the Japan between”: the neighborhoods and streets and shops where people actually live in this country, all of which exist in vast stretches inbetween the castles and temples and other big, impressive sights that usually get all the attention from travelers. Not that there’s a thing wrong with any of those sights either, of course, since obviously I love those too… but it’s nice to view and acknowledge the everyday, sometimes. Most Americans I’ve spoken to – if they have considered Japan at all, to start with – have this mental image that all of Japan is Tokyo: crowded and bustling and neon and business-suited (or goth-Lolita-anime-ized) twenty-four hours a day. News, folks. Japan is not Tokyo, any more than America is New York City. In fact, I think Japan intentionally uses Tokyo as its “face” to the Western world sometimes, with all the good and bad implications that entails. Much more of Japan is like Ujina, at least from what I’ve found on my trips. It’s not “weird” and “exotic” and “oh, those crazy Japanese” – it’s just people, who happen to live a little differently than elsewhere in the world, and who have their own perspectives on what’s normal. Obviously that statement could go for anywhere you land around the globe, but it’s true.
Kanda Shrine
Enough proselytizing, back to the walk. Looking across the playground, which was occupied by a tribe of local kids, I saw a big roof sticking up which could easily have been either a shrine or a temple – turns out it was a small Shinto 神社, Kanda Jinja. You can cut straight across the tiny park to get onto the shrine grounds, but heading left from the Community Center and then turning right at the first small paved intersection will bring you to the main gate. There’s not a ton to see here, but at this time of year there are impressively large kadomatsu placed in front of the torii entrance; they are traditional New Years’ decorations, which vary subtly from region to region. From what I’ve come across, Hiroshima’s style of kadomatsu tend to be quite beautiful, with many different types of plants and flowers incorporated into them.
Ujina Miyuki Building
Once finished with the shrine, return to the Community Center in front of tram stop Ujina-yon-chome 宇品四丁目 once more. Start heading back north, up the road the way the train came down. Not more than a block or two from the Community Center, on the left, is the Ujina Miyuki Building, which is an A-bombed structure now housing a restaurant and a hair salon.
It actually used to be a power substation, as detailed in the plaque mounted near the front door – it was still working up until it was replaced in 1994(!?) You can kind of tell the building’s former function from the way the architecture appears, but examining the ultra-heavy-duty, almost steampunk electrical pylons in front really cinches it. These things are awesome, in both senses of the word.
At this well-designed NHK website, “A People’s Map of Areas Affected By The Atomic Bomb,” you can look up and explore many other obscure A-bombed buildings like the Miyuki. It also shows the locations and tells the stories of those A-bombed trees you can find randomly throughout the city, and explains the meanings of the monuments in the Peace Park.
Rankuru Used Book Store
Continuing to stroll toward the Ujina-san-chome 宇品三丁目 streetcar station, you’ll see a big yellow awning sticking out over the sidewalk with the words “used book store” in English near the top. This is Rankuru (“Lancru”? Putting the katakana ランクル into Google results in a ton of pages about Toyota Landcruisers, abbreviated as Lancrus… hmm.)
The front windows of this fantastic secondhand manga store are painted with classic characters like GeGeGe no Kitaro and Tetsuwan Atomu (that’s “Astro Boy” for English speakers.) Yes, it’s primarily a used manga store rather than a used book store per se; there is one wall of actual prose and some light novels scattered about, but in a store this densely packed, one wall doesn’t amount to much. All the rest of the cave-like space is devoted to Japanese comics of various genres!
When you enter this store, you feel like you’re literally swimming in manga, or maybe tunneling into a graphic novel mine: the dimly lit crammed shelves are extremely close together, with more volumes piled on the floor, covering the walls, and hanging from the ceiling. The organizational system is loosely based around publisher (all the Jump series are in roughly the same area, all the Asuka stuff and so on are together… for the most part) but other than that, it’s a trackless wilderness from what I could gather. The nice middle-aged lady proprietor might be able to locate specifics if you ask, but I was too busy joyously rummaging to think about checking with her. A majority of the shelves are double-, even triple-deep in books, so it really is like digging out gems from the rock. You feel like you’ve genuinely earned everything you walk off with, too.
I should note that for lovers of pretty boys like myself, the BL section is huge – picture directly below is the first section of it, it goes on for another three shelves to the right.
In addition to the neck-deep drifts of modern manga, there are genuine antique tomes, like first editions of Tezuka’s Pheonix, original Gundam media, and a lot of very old postwar comics I don’t have enough background to recognize immediately. The big paper model of Devilman keeps watch over a corner’s worth of these rarities, but there are others strewn throughout the store, mostly in plastic bags carefully mounted on the walls. Behind the counter, you can see the owner’s huge collection of anime/manga/etc. figurines, but I’m pretty sure these guys aren’t for sale – sorry!
The prices on everything I noticed were comparable to Book-Off; lots of 100 yen to 250 yen bargains. Some of the newer titles were upward of 300/400 yen, but they had rarer things I haven’t been able to find elsewhere, like a Japanese copy of Uki Ogasawara’s Black Sun for 395 yen. Plus, this store has a hell of a lot more character than your typical Book-Off, haha. I enjoyed just digging around and trying not to knock anything over when I moved.
The Hiroshima Museum of History and Traditional Crafts
Leaving behind Rankuru and continuing north, you’ll shortly come to the Ujina San-chome 宇品三丁目 streetcar stop. If you only want to go to the museum, you can just get off the train here (cross the street, if you came from downtown.) The short jaunt from the streetcar to the museum isn’t that well marked, so I’ve taken pictures that will hopefully show where to turn if you want to walk there. (Note: the Ujina Ni-chome 宇品二丁目 stop looks like it might be closer according to the map, but I don’t know if the route is any better highlighted if you try from that station.)
Go up to the first intersection nearest the tram stop, and turn left at the cleaning store with the white cat in the window and bright yellow banner up top.
Keep walking straight, a short four blocks, until you run into a small T-intersection with a tiny alley continuing ahead of you. If you look at the electrical pole to the right of the modern-styled house, you’ll see a sign for the museum in English and Japanese, with an arrow pointing right.
After turning right, go straight for another three or four blocks, until you come to another medium-sized T-shaped intersection. This one has a traffic light. Looking up at one of the poles on your left, you should see another sign pointing the way to the museum. Go left.
Not long after you make the turn, you should be able to see this bright red brick facade. The museum itself is actually another A-bombed structure – it used to be an Army cannery. Click here for the detailed history of the building. Unfortunately, I can’t actually say anything about the exhibits yet though… the place was closed! Guess I should have considered that possibility, since I’m on winter vacation myself, haha. It will be shut until the 5th of January, for New Years’ break. There was a big sign out front saying that they have a special exhibit about Gongitsune, the story of Gon the Little Fox, going on until February 7th 2010 – so I will definitely come back to see it (even though Gongitsune is such a sad fairytale…)
Ujina Ferry Port
When I found out the museum was closed, I wasn’t sure what to do next – until I looked up at the sky.
Ujina is on the south tip of one of Hiroshima City’s four prominent peninsulas, extending out into the bay beyond. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen a sunset over the ocean in a long while, and it wouldn’t be at all hard to get down to the shore now: the Ujina Streetcar Line (Hiroden Line Numbers 1, 3, and 5) actually finishes under the awning of the ferry port, and I was only a handful of stations away from the end of that track. I decided I was enjoying walking so much I would just follow the trains down to the sea, and find out what the view was like from the harbor.
The station/ferry port itself sits alone at the end of the land. It somehow seems lonely, even though there are passengers trickling in and out of it all day long – maybe that’s just the effect of winter? But there’s an extensive park just up the hill, where people apparently come to exercise and play with their dogs no matter how cold it is, so I’m not sure.
Actually, I did pass a number of people jogging up and down this long “boardwalk” (so named by the port maps) which curves around the far end of the terminal. And a pair of enormous black and white water birds, which I almost want to say were cranes, soared over the shallow water just beyond the railing for a while. So perhaps it was just the sky that made everything seem so small and so quiet… even the ferry boats themselves, which pulled in and out the entire time I stood there.
Even without a ticket, you can get down onto the docking jetty, right where the boats pull up to load passengers. That’s where the view of the water is the clearest, too. I’m fairly sure that perfect hill-shaped island directly ahead might be Ninoshima – I can’t wait to find out next time. Looks like even the ferry crossing should be beautiful, if I can hit nice weather again.
I wasn’t the only one staring up at the expansive wings of cloud folding over the evening; I saw several couples, and a few older people, sitting on the benches or standing quietly to watch the sun depart. I wonder what everyone else was thinking about…?
Share this:
Related