20 November 2015
Giant phallus
From Hiroshima to Shimonoseki on the Shinkansen
Now I am in Shimonoseki, home of banished samurai and the deadly puffer fish fugu.
The local spelling of fugu is of course, fuku, so you can laugh at that now. Its one of those Chinese style pronounciations that is halfway between g and k.
This spelling confusion is a litte different from the band Glay I mentioned earlier on this trip, who really wanted to call themselves Gray, but stuffed up due to the way Japanese people say r as l and now have the most un western friendly name ever.
Anyway, its not far to Shimonoseki, but the Shinkansen that stops here, stops at all stations. Some of these made no sense, but google maps tells me the 'shin' stations are a long way from the cities the line is actually servicing, probably due to mountains.
I spent most of the journey in tunnels, coming out just for stations.
Arriving at Shin-Shimonoseki, and its quite a distance from the city, for which I had to transfer to the local line.
They time the arrival of the local line to meet the bullet train, but I was wandering around exploring the station and therefore missed it. As usual. Oh well, 40 minute wait to the next one, time to wander the deserted streets around the station.
Once I arrived at Shimonoseki proper, it is seemingly a bunch of megamalls joined by elevated walkways, which conveniently go between the station and my hotel.
Right now I am doing my washing, which has been an adventure. The machines are inside the change rooms for the hot spring, there are machines in the mens and womens change rooms. I didnt know which was which and they are currently empty as far as I can tell.
So I snuck into one of them, and have put my washing on, but now I have to keep sneaking into there to put my clothes in the dryer and get them out etc. right into the changerooms where nudity is mandatory, and I have no idea if I am in the right one.
Perhaps they will think I am just a big ugly girl. A common mistake that happens to me in Australia.
At the suggestion of my mother and because I had heaps of time before my train, I went up to the roof of Fukuya to enjoy the view.
Would have been better to do at night. I climbed up on things to hold my camera over the dirty glass.
Time to enjoy my sandwich and lemon water. I have developed a real taste for white bread sandwiches with the crusts cut off. Mainly because of how cheap they are.
Todays bullet train was a different kind. Seating is 2 x 2 not 2 x 3, and its also empty apart from me.
It was nearly all tunnels today, apart from the 5 stops we made. I believe this one was at Tokuyama, which out the other window was a huge oil refinery as far as the eye could see.
I am the only person who got off at Shin-Shimonoseki. No one is anywhere on the platform. So I wandered about and missed my connection to the local train.
Which means I had plenty of time to examine in detail the stations tributes to Fuku. I will only use the correct Japanese spelling from now on.
Outside the main station in the city proper was a nice building, obscured by construction of course.
And then the giant phallus monument and observation tower which overlooks everyone in Shimonoseki, and mocks the sister city across the ocean in KitaKyushu.
This photo does not convey its true massiveness.
My hotel is a dormy inn premium again, it is identical to the one in Nagoya.
Bathroom also the same. Now to go back to the washing machine and see whats going on in the ladies locker room.