Diary Entry #5

July 18th

A sleep-in and a scrambled egg breakfast where very much in order after the last few days of travel and we set of just before lunch into the heart of Hiroshima’s shopping district. Miss E would have to go to work in the afternoon so she spent an hour or two orientating me to the local shops. And this, my friends, is where I performed my first ditsy act of the trip (and in doing so created the catch phrase of our journey to Tokyo). Now one may shudder to think that we frequented big name coffee chains whilst in Japan, but believe me when I say that they are the only decent places to get espresso coffee. So there we were, standing in Tully’s ordering coffee and that’s when my rudimentary grasp of the language failed me entirely. I turned to the glass counter and pointing, uttered the words: “pretzel des” (ie; “it’s a pretzel”). Never before have I been so correct in my assumptions, unfortunately I was trying to ask for it, not declare its existence to the world *sigh*.

So Miss E left me and headed of to work. I decided I shall have a little look in the shops and then head off up the road to check out Hiroshima castle. That’s when the time warp hit me and when I next glanced at my watch it was nearly dinner time. There was no time for Castle hijinks now. It was dinner, then back to Miss E’s flat to freshen before meeting her at 9 for a few drinks with her work colleagues. I wandered into a little restaurant that was merely a few chairs pulled up around a giant hotplate, and that is when I discovered my favourite Japanese dish: Okonomiyaki (with soba noodles). This dish is delicious, and consists of cabbage, thin slices of pork and soba noodles between two pancakes and smothered in okonomiyaki sauce (pictured). Miss E swears by this dish as the ultimate hangover cure (and we were to get an ample opportunity to test this theory the next morning). If one happens to be in Japan, do try this dish. It is most delightful.

I met Miss E at the appropriate hour and we retired to a small bar (run by a foreigner no less!) where we had a couple of drinks (I had to teach the bar man how to make a martini, and it was served in a wine glass) before meeting other English teachers at a restaurant for more food and beer. It was an interesting evening, with loud wait staff and the odd costumed fool, and when we left the restaurant it was both raining heavily and 4 am in the morning. This surprised me as it was a Tuesday night, and the restaurant was still crowded and going strong when we left – truly this was a 24 hour city.