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.
The shops in Shimonoseki close early
Everything in Shimonoseki closed at 7pm, on a Friday. I was shocked.
Maybe not everything, Sake bars, Hostess bars and a cool supermarket were open.
I had a good wander around, and didnt really see much.
Theres an area called the green mall, which is a street with shops selling Korean goods with green awnings. Most of these had closed down. There is a ferry to Busan from here, hence the large amount of Korean stuff.
There were signs pointing to a shopping street, and I think I was on it, but couldnt really tell.
So I retreated to the station area, which wikipedia tells me is where everything happens, and was very confused by the supposedly huge 'Sea Mall'.
The layout of this place was unlike anything I had ever seen, it was like a house with rooms, and hidden doorways to another room. Sometimes you had to walk through one shop to get to the next.
There was no actual mall area, where one would walk along outside the shops, apart from one very small atrium. One end is a Daimaru which was very sparsely stocked. I had no way of telling where it ended and the next store started.
Imagine my surprise when they promptly shut, everything, at 7pm. Including the restaurant floor, and fast food outlets at street level! Its Friday not Monday.
I saw a lot of people running around trying to get to places as they were shutting, in Japan wouldnt most people still be getting home from work at this time?
I was by now starving, so it was time for a supermarket dinner, which was great!
Giant phallus changes colors at night. I couldnt find anything of interest around the bottom of it. By all accounts the restaurant at the top is terrible and expensive.
I marched up 155 steps on what appears to be a man made mini mountain to this temple. It was creepy up there all alone.
There are no people. I might have actually been too early for this area as theres big neon signs for hostess bars that are still turned off at 6:30pm.
There is also no English anywhere, apart from this sign, telling me in English how to speak Japanese.
My only friend was this cat, who is proudly guarding what remains of a once thriving Little Busan area.
This building is a civic centre, I cant tell if its fake or not. I am fairly certain what looks like a grand library on the roof is fake and made out of polystyrene.
I took a seat and waited for the xmas show, but it never started.
The layout of the mall was infuriating enough, before I realised theres no way to go from one half of it to the other, note the gap between buildings here.
Heres how you get to the other half after walking through the multi level car park.
And on the subject of car parks, they are absolutely everywhere. Most of the tall buildings are car parks. Pachinko is one level of machines, 10 levels of car park.
Theres also no real underground, Daimaru has no basement, probably because we are on the ocean.
SHUT! Those people down the bottom are running. Was I about to be locked in? The lights went out.
Mister Donut, shut, Lotteria, shut, KFC, shut. Starbucks stayed open, I almost had a cake dinner.
But instead, I found a fantastic supermarket that stays open until 10pm. Seems to be quite an upmarket supermarket based on their meat, bakery, food and veg sections.
I got some sushi including dessert sushi, pickled cucumber Sichuan style which was awesome, and then a fantastic green tea flavoured dessert. It was all discounted too I think it cost about $5. Maybe I will get food poisoning.