「Nagoya」タグアーカイブ

Okunoshima 1

After our crazy rainy day, we were more than ready to leave Nagoya and head to Okunoshima, the highlight of the trip.  Many people, including Japanese people, don’t know about Okunoshima, a small island located in the Seto Inland Sea, the sea surrounded by Shikoku, Honshu and Kyushu.  Actually, when I told people where I was going many people thought I made a mistake and meant to say another, more popular island.  However, I did not.  There is a reason many people don’t know about the island, besides its relatively small size and inconspicuous location, but perhaps the government didn’t want you to know but I’m going to tell you!  Although the island origins lie in farming around the end of the 19th century the Japanese government built 10 forts on it to help fight the First Sino-Japanese war.  However, those forts were unneeded and soon after the Japanese government started produced poison gas on the island.  From 1929 to 1945, the Japanese government produced five different kinds of poison gas mainly used for the chemical warfare in China.  The Japanese government kept the island secret (even removing it from certain maps!) because Japan had signed a treaty saying that they would not be use chemical weapons so this isolated island was a perfect place for the government to carry out their secretive mission. Ruins of the factory and different storage units still remain on the island and are hauntingly fascinating.

Although still not highlighted as a top tourist attraction, such that Hiroshima is, the government has opened a small poison gas museum on the island to show the truth of the damage of poison gas. The curator of the museum, Murakami Hatsuichi said in a New York Times article, “My hope is that people will see the museum in Hiroshima City and also this one, so they will learn that we [Japanese] were both victims and aggressors in the war.  I hope people will realize both facets and recognize the importance of peace.”

And with the 10th anniversary of September 11 just behind us, I couldn’t agree more.

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Japan’s Tropical Storms

The next morning, once again, we woke up to pouring rain but we didn’t think much of it as we were on our way to Nagoya so it wasn’t going to spoil any sightseeing or us…. or so we thought!  Once we arrived at the station we realized that the trains weren’t running due to the heavy rain and we realized the severity of it once we realized the train sitting at the platform was the 6:20am train and we had come to catch the 9:37am train!  So basically no trains had left that morning and wouldn’t be leaving for a long time….

Japan is an island so naturally it is pone to tropical storms and typhoons, especially the southern islands (Okinawa, Kyushu and Shikoku).  As I type this now, Shikoku has recently been hit by typhoon 12 (meaning 12th of the year – they are given numbers not names) and typhoon 13 is out brewing in the Pacific. With improvements in safety and building, causalities are fewer than in the past but due to flooding and landslides, typhoons are still very dangerous.  Japan is very good at predicting and warning everyone about the typhoons but this doesn’t stop the cancellations of flights, trains and any other transportation possible. It’s something you have to take with a grain of salt which is what we did…

So in Takayama we sat at the train station for 6 hours (on the 6:20am train), others bailed and were going to try other modes of transportation but we thought it best (and safest) to just try and wait it out.  Once we finally started moving, although it was still raining, we ended up getting to Nagoya 4 hours later.  So a trip that should take a little over 2 hours took us 10 hours.  Needless to say, it was a long day. Riding on the train over the swollen river (repeatedly) was super scary and you really can see the power of water.  So while we didn’t get to see anything in Nagoya, we were safe.  Moral of the story: During a typhoon or tropical storm, stay safe!

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Takayama 1

We woke up to pouring rain in Hakone.  We got fairly wet walking to the bus stop but after that it was an easy commute to Odawara and time for the Shinkansen (bullet train)! We hopped on the bullet train bound for Nagoya and switched trains to make our way to Takayama. It was a very beautiful train ride but next to impossible to capture on camera.  We arrived in Takayama around mid-afternoon.  I was surprised at how big the city was but now I can see hot it got the nickname, “Little Kyoto”.  It doesn’t look like anything too special from first glance but with some exploration, charming streets and shops and areas emerge.  We ate Hida ramen at a tiny little shop close to the station.  Nothing to write home about but loved that we had to walk through the kitchen to get to the toilets.  After lunch we called our ryokan (a traditional Japanese inn), Hagi Takayama.  We had full intention to make our way back to walk around after settling into our room but realized that wouldn’t be happening once we got picked up in the van and made our way up into the hills.  It was a walkable distance but it would have been a risk with the threatening clouds in the distance.  So we settled into the ryokan.  It had an amazing view of Takayama city and a number of different onsens (hot springs) at the hotel to choose from, including one that was outside.  After we settled for a bit someone from the hotel did come and let us know that there was a night tour of the town after dinner we were so inclined to join in, which we did.  I’m so glad we did!  It was really nice to see the town with no people and the shops all closed up.  It gave it a much more old town Japan feel.  The streets were lined with cute little street lanterns and the streams running on the side of the streets provided a pleasant nature soundtrack.  Just beware, there are no covers to these streams… we found that out the hard way.  I highly recommend the night walk though, Takayama wouldn’t have been the same without that little excursion.

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