Hiroshima Okonomiyaki

Since I’ve been in Japan, I find that the more I learn about the country in terms of its language, traditions, and histories, the richer my experience becomes (A good place to start for anybody already in Japan is A Traveller’s History of Japan). Japan’s history is quite impressive if not solely for the fact that ever since people came to these islands, they’ve pretty much always been Japanese. What’s more interesting is when this history reveals itself embedded with the lifestyles and the people that I see everyday. Of importance to many Japanese in Japan is Hiroshima and its regional cuisine, okonomiyaki.

A student was in my office the other day for help in preparation for an interview to get into university – many good schools have interviews in both English and Japanese as part of their acceptance requirements. She also asked me if I learned much about Japan in Canadian schools. I told her that in the basic social studies courses that we take up to grade 11, all of our history focuses mostly on Canada. In Grade 12, we have the option of taking a world history class, but this focuses mostly on the west, and the only real mention of Japan is that the Americans dropped two atomic bombs on the country. It wouldn’t be until university where I learned more about Imperial Japan before the war, and a bit more about the country’s broader history.

Anyway, the student I was speaking to was very glad to hear that we learn anything about Japan at all – especially about the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. She said that she has heard that there are many young people of this generation, many of whom live in these two cities, who are not aware of these significant events in their country’s history.

It’s been almost 65 years since the war, but I find it hard to believe this part of the country's history could be lost in the memories of the population – especially when there are people still alive who actually have first hand memories of the bombings.

It was last night at an overnight teacher party where I spoke with a teacher who is from Hiroshima. He is a proud Hiroshimite, or Hiroshimian -- or maybe these types of terms don’t apply to Japanese names, and he is often very privy to the differences between the cultures in Northern and Southern Japan. I told him that I went to Hiroshima over the winter vacation and that I had gone to Miya Jima and the Peace Memorial Museum. He sort of brushed these off as being obvious and was more interested in whether we tried any of Hiroshima’s okonomiyaki restaurants, which is a cuisine that Hiroshima is known for.

Okonomiyaki is a Japanese style pancake that usually is made with some combination of yakitori noodles, cabbage, fried egg, seafood, sliced meat, tuna flakes and okonomiyaki sauce – I’m sure I’m forgetting something.

I told him with brimming confidence that in fact, we had gone to the famous Okonomimura, which is a building in downtown Hiroshima that houses about 20 or so restaurants – all of them specializing in okonomiyaki. The building itself is an experience. After getting off the elevator at each floor, there are several small shops that all look the same – they have a large stainless steel grill down the middle of the restaurant where on one side, the chefs prepare the food and on the other, customers are served and eat strait off of the grill. Each place also has its owners all competing for customers and aggressively trying to seat people in their restaurant. Janice, her dad, and I had a great time.

My teacher however, was not so enthusiastic. He was a bit upset that I had not told him I was going to Hiroshima because he would have recommended that we not go to okonomimura, which is fairly well known among people who live in Hiroshima as a place for low quality, and inauthentic okonomiyaki. The way to tell okonomiyaki that is prepared well from the stuff that is prepared not so well is that you do not need to use chopsticks to eat it. When it is prepared well, you are provided with a metal spatula-type instrument; if the chef has prepared the dish properly, one should be able to cut the pancake and eat it with the spatula without it falling apart. I had to admit that after cutting my pancake in Hiroshima, I had to use chopsticks to pick at the sloppy mess in front of me.

He also went on to tell me that okonomiyaki is an important food in Hiroshima because during the war, and especially after the bombing of Hiroshima, staple foods such as rice, were very scarce. Instead, people had to find other ways to sustain themselves and okonomiyaki ended up being a nutritious alternative to more traditional Japanese foods. It was his grandfather who was around to actually see one of the B-29 bombers fly overhead of the city and the subsequent mushroom cloud of August 6, 1945. The man lived for several years – until his grandson was about 18 or 19, but he also carried around a medical card that granted him free access to medical treatment anywhere in Japan due to the radiation he was exposed to in Hiroshima. Although many thousands of people died instantly in the blast of the atomic bomb, just as many people died in the weeks after from radiation exposure. I find it a bit eerie that on August 7th, the day after the bomb, many people mourn the deaths of people suffering from this radiation, while I simultaneously celebrate the day of my birth.

My teacher has yet to find any good okonomiyaki in Iwaki, but he said that a childhood friend of his has a restaurant in Fukushima city. Whenever he craves okonomiyaki, this is where he goes to have it served properly. Someday he will return to Hiroshima because as he said, he is the first son in his family and it will be his responsibility to care for his parents when they grow old and to take care of the family estate.

Hiroshima

I started writing this blog today, but at some point I realized that I was writing two different stories. As such, I’ve split them into two different posts. This one is on our travels to Hiroshima and the next will appear tomorrow.

It’s been a while since Janice and her Dad were here in Japan, but I wanted to write a bit more about our travels down to Hiroshima. I posted a few photos from Miya Jima, but haven’t mentioned much about the trip at all on this blog.

I’ve already mentioned a bit about Miya Jima in previous posts, and you can see some of the photos here and here. It is listed as one of the 3 big sites to see in Japan and so far, has been one of my favourite places to go in Japan. Miya Jima itself is an Island that you must take a ferry to. I think that throughout the region’s history, the island is considered to be a very holy, or spiritual place because of its beauty. The ferry drops you off about a 10 minute walk away from the massive tori gate that the island is famous for. The gate itself sits in the water on the shore of the island and when the tide is out you can walk right up to it. We had arrived early and not only was the tide out, but there were very few people there as well. Janice’s dad walked up to the gate, put his hand on it, and by the time he walked back, the tide had started to come in, submerging the base of the gate.

The gate is built right in front of a shrine, which many tourists walk through because it is built above where the tide comes in. It is called “the floating shrine” because it looks like it is sitting right on the water.

Like Nara, there are also lots of deer walking around the island, and you can buy food to feed them.

Some of the shops are also interesting; we found one store that was full of wooden sculptures. I don’t think I took any pictures, and hence cannot share the intricacy of these figures – of which, many stood over my head, but I will say that several of them had price tags that showed them to be worth tens of thousands of dollars. What was even more odd, was that for so much exquisite work, there was nobody attending the shop as we walked through!

On the island, we also took a cable car to the top of Mt. Misen, where the eternal flame still burns (see a photo here). You’re also supposed to be able to see lots of monkeys on the mountain, but when we were there, a sign said that they were all out feeding. The best part of the mountain though is the view at its peak which is about 40 minutes away from where the cable car takes you. On they way, there are several shrines and temples to visit as well. At the summit, there is a great view of Hiroshima, the island itself, and the tori gate at the bottom near the ferry.

Miya Jima is one reason many tourists go to Hiroshima; the Peace Memorial Park is the other. Within the park, there are several memorials to see and visit, but the most symbolic/memorable for me were the A-bomb dome, the Peace Flame, and the Peace Memorial musem.

The A-bomb dome is a structure that survived the bombing of Hiroshima and is now being preserved as a memorial to the event. The building itself was pretty much the only building left standing after the attack, which they say is partly due to the fact that the bomb was dropped and detonated almost directly above it. Because the force of the bomb was directed strait down on the building, its vertical walls were in the best position to withstand the initial blast – although I’m sure this wasn’t the only reason it is still standing.

The Peace Flame is a monument that was lit in 1964 and has burned continuously ever since. The flame will only be extinguished if all nuclear weapons in the world are abolished. I have also read that the flame was lit from the eternal flame that burns on top of Mt Misen.

Finally, there is the Peace Memorial Museum, which serves to document the tragedy of the bombing in Hiroshima. Inside, you can see the history behind the bomb as well as several official documents discussing the legitimacy of using it. There are also replicas of the city before the bomb was dropped and afterward. The most haunting portion of the museum contains actual artifacts from the area within the blast – and even from the people who were affected by it. Among the various items that somewhat survived the blast, there were collections of hair, fingernails, and even a tongue that has been preserved from among the thousands of people who suffered seriously from radiation exposure and died in the days after the initial blast.

I think we were only in Hiroshima for a day and a half. It was a very brief visit, but I feel like we saw a lot, and Hiroshima was probably one of the more memorable places I’ve been in Japan. We also saw a castle in the city, but to be honest, I don’t remember much about it. The only other thing we had time for was to go to Okonomimura for some okonomiyaki. More on that tomorrow…

Lazy as per usual

Just a quick one today. I get home a bit late on Thursdays, so we're just going to stay in and watch a movie i think tonight. We've got a nice bottle of wine here that cost us all of 400 yen. We were going to head out to an Iwakians social gathering, but the strong winds kind of scared us inside.

On another note, i owe a lot of people some emails that i'll probably get into writing sometime next week after Janice leaves.

Here are a couple more photos of the tori gate at Miyajima.

Eternal Flame

On the Island of Miyajima, where I previously posted a photo of the torii gate standing in the water, we ventured up Mt. Misen where we had a spectacular view of the city and the islands surrounding us. In the interests of saving time, we opted for the cable car that took us most of the way to the top, where of all places, stood several shrines and temples. Some of these shrines are very old and I can’t imagine how difficult it would have been to get the materials for these structures up the mountain without the assistance of the cable car.

One temple in particular, the Reikado Temple (the Temple which Protects Flame), houses a flame that is supposed to have been burning for over 1200 years. This was the flame that was used to light the Flame of Peace in Hiroshima Peace Park.

When we arrived, the flame was housed in a room that was smoky and filled with old Japanese men who sat on benches that lined the walls surrounding the flame. People would use the flame to light candles, which they placed in front of the fire. There is also a giant black cauldron that sits above the flame filled with water. There are plastic cups on the side where one can get a fill of the murky, lukewarm water from inside the pot.

As we were going to the peak, we sat in the temple and drank some of the water, but the flame was mostly just embers. On the way back down, someone had place two logs in the fire, and I was able to get this photo.

My hair had the comforting aroma of campfire smoke for several days afterwards.

Tori

Yesterday I wrote about drums when I probably should have been sending updates for people at home. Janice’s dad left us yesterday morning to catch a plane from Tokyo where he’ll be heading to Hawaii. It was good to see him and we had a lot of fun throughout our travels. I don’t think we would have made it all the way down to Hiroshima if he hadn’t come to Japan. Janice and I have another week together before I take her to Tokyo next Monday so that she can catch a plane leaving the next day. I’m definitely not looking forward to her leaving, but we’ve got a some stuff planned for this week – so we should be able to enjoy ourselves in the meantime.

The picture here is of Janice’s dad walking up to the massive tori gate that sits in the water at Miya Jima in Hiroshima. We arrived early that morning and there were very few people around. The tide was out when we arrived and so we were able to walk right up to the tori. Within a few minutes of being there, the water had risen up past the tori. After going up the mountain on the island, we came down to see it standing in the water as well.

Where we've been

It’s been so long since I’ve written here that I’m not sure how to go about starting. I guess that’s why I’ve been hesitant to even begin. I’ve seen a lot of Japan since I last wrote – and have taken many pictures. I guess this will be mostly a brief catch-up before I go to bed.

Janice is still in Iwaki with me and her dad is also here visiting. When he first arrived on the third, we came back to Iwaki for a day before leaving on a train for Hiroshima. We spent a couple of days there where we went to Miya Jima, the Peace Memorial park, and ate okonomiyaki at okono-mura (a big building that houses about 20 different restaurants all serving only okonomiyaki).

From Hiroshima, we went to Kyoto, where we saw many shrines and temples – too many for me to even remember the names, or even the faces of. Some of the highlights were the hall of 3000 arms, the Golden Temple – or Kinkokuji, and the gardens of the Silver Temple, or Ginkokuji.

After Kyoto, we went to Nara, which has the largest wooden structure in the world, which also houses a very large – if not the largest, statue of Buddha in the world. Nara was an incredible place with deer that roam the streets freely.

Finally, we ended up in Osaka for our last bit of traveling. Here, we went to Osaka castle and roamed the streets all day. There was also a festival happening, so Janice and her dad got a taste for the Japanese festival experience and the good food that goes along with it.

We arrived back in Iwaki a few days ago and it’s been back to work for me. Janice’s dad has a few more days until he leaves for Hawaii on Sunday.

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I was going to keep the Tokyo photos happening in the order that I took them, but so far I’ve only managed to get through our first evening and the next day. So much for that idea.

Here I’ve included a photo of the Golden Pavilion in Kyoto. I can’t remember when the temple was built, but it was burned down by one of the monks in the 1950’s. It was rebuilt a few years later. I think it’s one of the biggest tourist sites in Kyoto, which is understandable given the immaculate scenery around it. We arrived early enough in the morning so the light was good and there weren’t too many people around.