the final installment of the winter break saga!

greetings, chaps! shall i finally finish the grand fizznale of kibbeh's and my homeric journey through the underbelly of japan? (and by underbelly, i mean gorgeous and fun cities)

the previous cliffhanger (and remember, in the last post, i told you to take note of my diction and word choice of "cliffhanger," due to its very clunky and obvious literary foreshadowing) left us brimming over with okonomiyaki in the heart of hiroshima, shopping mecca. well, the next day, kibs and i awoke to beautiful blue skies. we hopped, skipped, and jumped our way over to hiroshima's peace park, which had less numerous monuments but was of course still powerful.

a tomb that holds the names of all the victims. when you look through the piece, the a-bomb dome is directly in line

we meandered in the cold, stopping to ring a huge gong-like bell for peace, and then coming across this memorial for the children killed by the bomb. one of the victims, who died later due to radiation-induced leukemia, thought that if she could make 1,000 origami cranes, she'd live--but she died before she finished. now, at this memorial, there are thousands of origami crane designs surrounding the statue, sent from all over the world.

i thought this one was particularly pretty!sorry for the flash reflection...

after meandering through the park, we crossed a bridge over the crystalline river to see the a-bomb dome. it basically is one of the few (only?) buildings that survived the bomb. parts of it have been fortified in order to prevent collapse, but as you can see, it is very much how it was after the bomb dropped in august 1945.

on the left.

we spotted a kitteh friend living in the ruins. matt said he'd seen the cat the year before, which made me happy. i like that something cute and joyful found a home there.

after seeing the park, we were in need of some retail therapy. i was, anyways! once again, i must thank my lucky stars that matt likes to shop and can keep up with my breakneck speed. that is, until we hit the final store, and i kept him waiting for 30 minutes while i wavered between sweaters. i picked the right one, though, and after dropping off our loot at the hotel, we hopped on the tram to get to miyajima, the famed island off of hiroshima.

we took a ferry, and arrived just before sunset. i was shocked and elated to find the island rampant with deer, and snapped a few photos before it got too dark.

the island's claim to fame: a humongous shrine in the ocean. during low tide you can walk up to it, but as you can see, it was high tide for the new year!

abominable purple snowwoman.

as the sky darkened, we saw men in white robes and sashes carrying huge logs around. we knew something was going to happen, given it was new year's eve, and new year's is like japan's christmas.

we stood around in the cold, a bit impatiently, as we slowly but surely began to get jostled by kids and adults alike. everyone kept pressing in in in, and i'm not one for crowds. turns out, SURPRISE, matt's not one for cold (belfastian, my bum!). we got grumpy, but soon were abated by the japanese doing what they do best--setting everything on fire.

logs were lighted, sparks flew, people grabbed bundles of sticks and turned them into torches, fire was on the ground--literally, the island went up in flames. plumes of smoke began choking the happy crowd, which carried on with its pyromania.



delighted, but also concerned with getting ready for our new year's eve pa-ti (party, duh), matt and i hustled back to the ferry to hiroshima. we dozed on the train ride back to the city, washed the smell of celebratory smoke and fuel out of ourselves, and met up with the ever-splendid limey sam and his visiting girlfriend cecily. the gruesome foursome managed to find the seemingly only open restaurant in the city--a coco's curry house--ate some curry, and hit the streets to find "stevie's wonder bar," a place that sounded promising and hilarious.

sure enough, as soon as we entered the small establishment and heard the funkadelic 70s tunes, we knew we were in the right spot. the DJ/bar owner, a heavyset japanese man with an afro (God only knows how he managed to coax his japanese locks into an afro, it defies nature), was very genki and danced along with the jams. his son, a 10 year old, showed up everyone in the bar with his sweet dance moves. the vibe was amazing. everyone was dancing, bopping, and having a blast. everyone had a party popper for midnight, when we all shouted "HAPPY NEW YEAR," hugged and kissed. such a magical evening!

the next day, tuckered out but really satisfied with our travels thus far, matt and i embarked on what we little could have expected would be the adventure of a lifetime. i took this picture of the view from our hotel room, ignorant that such luxury (visibility beyond 2 feet, a bed, contact with the outside world, warmth, etc) would shortly be snatched from us by mother nature.

what with all the adventures we'd had that week, mashuu and i were running low on cash. and for those of you who don't know, "JAPAN IS A CASH-BASED SOCIETY," something that the JET program is constantly reminding newbies. however, we could not obtain more cash. ATMs are not 24/7 in japan. please don't ask me why, because it seriously is the stupidest thing ever and infuriates me. furthermore, during the new year holidays (a period of perhaps 4-5 days?), all of the ATMs are closed. CLOSED. we're talkin' nuffin. squat. diddly. bupkis.

with only about 6,000 yen between us (~$70), we knew that we had to save what money we had for gas. luckily, matt said that the surprise he had in store for me was credit-card friendly (a freaking novelty in japan). he said all would be revealed when we got to fukuoka. i couldn't wait!

but i'd have to. with the gas indicator hovering just above empty, matt and i booked out of hiroshima and headed onto the highway. after about 20 minutes of tense driving involving both of us looking at the gas level, we pulled off into a roadside town. trying to use the handy-dandy iphone, we searched in vain for a gas station that was open. closed. closed. closed. closed. everything was closed. we popped into a konbini to plead for help. some dude pointed us in the right direction, and after some wrong turns, we made it to a viable station and i almost wept with relief. too soon, though.

we spent about half of our money on gas (we'd need to fill up again before making it back home, so we had to be really frugal with food, etc.), then plowed on to fukuoka. it began to snow, and i daydreamed about what the surprise could be. suddenly, in an epiphany, i shrieked, "IS IT COSTCO?!?!" matt laughed. it was!!

a rest stop on the way to costco. please note the blanketing snow.

at about 4pm, we made it to the costco. it was just like in the US! we wandered the aisles for over an hour, filling up our huge cart and marveling at all the products we'd forgotten about or sorely missed. the crowning jewel of my haul: campbell's tomato soup.

finally ready, we ambled up to the cash registers. i went first. i nonchalantly whipped out my visa, the international credit card, and was promptly told it was no good. matt whipped out his mastercard. also no good. it was like the cashier had bitch-slapped us. we literally didn't know what to do. we allowed him to usher us over to a corner with all our (now unattainable) goods, and talked about what to do. we abandoned our cart, and ventured into a nearby family mart to try to get money out of our accounts back home. nope. i almost cried again. matt was seething. however, we managed to cope by returning to costco, avoiding eye contact with the clerk who had shunned us, and spending 800 of our precious yen on costco pizza, fatty meat sandwiches, and drinks. full, but still a little sad, we prepared for the long drive home.

oh yeah, and we had gotten a parking spot right next to the entrance. it was such a good spot that i took a picture. USELESS.

we hit the road, bouncing back from the trauma and getting into good spirits again. we figured we'd be back in nobeoka by 9pm. that is, until the highway closed. due to snow. we, and other hapless drivers, were directed off the highway and onto a one-lane mess of a road, crammed with cars. we decided to try to use the iphone to fenangle a way around it all, and to get back on the freeway further on, but instead ended up going in a gigantic circle that took us an hour. matt drove on, at about 10 km/hour, with the other cars. eventually, though, we decided to take route less traveled, and headed into the nearby mountains.

i wasn't really paying attention to what we were doing until i realized that it was pitch black outside, there were no street lights, the snow was falling thickly, and after a while, there were no other cars. the roads were winding, and we drove slowly. gargantuan branches of trees drooped into the middle of the road. we had to drive through them, knocking snow off as we went along in the stick-shift, decades-old scooby doo mystery machine.

out of nowhere, the car slid. matt kept everything under control, but i felt like my heart had just thrown up in fear. a few minutes later, it slid again. matt drove more slowly, at about 5 km/hour. we reached a hill, and as the car slowly chugged upwards, it began to bottom out, and we began to turn involuntarily. matt put on the emergency brake, and we were stuck, at a tilt, on the hill. we couldn't move. just as i was volunteering to get out and push, another car came up. three japanese men hopped out and approached, jabbering away, and with their help we managed to steer the car into a nearby shoulder. the whole time i was terrified that it would slide off the nearby bank and into the farmland below!

the japanese men, though very well-intentioned, kept talking to us for about 15 minutes, even though we understood nothing. finally we told them we'd sleep in the car, which made them leave. by now it was about 9:30pm. we didn't know what to do, but knew that we could never make it up the hill. so, after peeing in the snow a ways away, i got behind the car and helped matt ease it back onto the road. we went back the way we came (very carefully), and decided to go through a potentially less dangerous mountain pass.

we began on the mountain road, in extremely tense silence. the only noise was the gentle hum of the car plodding along at 5km/hour. we made it through some hairy turns, and were gradually going uphill. the only thing separating us from the valleys below was a thin metal rail.

going up another hill, the car slid. suddenly, the back of the car went left, the front went right, and it was just beginning to spin out of control when matt put on the brake. i think i might have cried out. we stopped. i croaked, "no more!" and we decided to turn around and sleep in the car in someone's driveway.

but first, we had to turn around. matt, the driver of the millenium, managed to back up the van into the safe side of the road, against the mountain and cushioned by a small snowbank. slowly but surely, he wrangled a 10-point turn, getting us out of the snow and turned back around to safety. after twenty more heart-wrenching, stomach-twisting, throat-tightening minutes, we came back towards civilization and saw a school and some houses, dark, silent, and smothered in snow.

i helped direct matt into the large driveway, which happened to have a very conveniently-placed vending machine. only in japan. i bought a water bottle, we set up the futons, and i never felt so grateful to be alive!

we awoke the next morning to melted snow and clear skies. if the snow hadn't stopped, we would've been stranded, but i think we had used up all our bad luck on new year's day. we were elated as we drove with ease through the sunny mountains, which seemed so much prettier and so much less sinister in the light of day!

we made it back to nobeoka just fine that afternoon. and after getting more gas, we even had enough money to buy food. and we lived happily ever after in snow-less miyazaki.

jokes on jokes, we're hitting the snow hard starting this saturday, when we and some other JETs will be in hokkaido, where snow was basically invented. but, this time, no driving! wish us luck and life!

feeling sickened from recounting that brush with death, but otherwise content,
lilly