Germany in Japan

As I was looking over some of our photos from the year so far, I realized that there were a few little trips we made that I neglected to blog about.

In the end of April, we went with some friends of ours to a  German village themed park in Okayama Prefecture. It is called Doitsu no Mori, or the German Forest. It was a beautifully warm  spring day and the little "village" was so picturesque. It is in a very rural part of the prefecture surrounded on all sides by rolling green mountains. It took us about an hour and a half to drive there from Fukuyama. When approaching the front gate, you already feel like you have stepped into another country. Except for the katakana on all the signs, that is.

One thing I love about Japan is that I very often find plaques on trees and other plants indicating what species they are. Since I am always trying to learn what species grow commonly in our area, it is nice to see these signs. Have I ever mentioned how much joy I get from binomial nomenclature?

The village square, surrounded by restaurants, bakeries, and shops.

There was a lot of open space for the children to run around and burn off some energy.

There was also an astroturf toboggan hill that was fun for both the kids and us.

Next we headed over to the petting zoo where there were goats, sheep, rabbits, pot bellied pigs and miniature horses. William was not too sure about the goats and spent the first five minutes watching them from a safe distance, tense and silently terrified. 

He kept this guarded expression throughout almost our whole visit to the petting zoo area.

Meanwhile, Theo could have spent all day there taking care of "his" bunnies.

We found a field of blooming canola which was a very familiar sight to us Manitobans. It turns out that they think of canola as a quintessential spring flower. I have never seen it blooming in Manitoba before July!

There were a few restaurant options for lunch, but since the German and European style restaurants were packed full of people, we decided to have Japanese style barbecue instead.

Yum!

Then off to let the kids enjoy a few more things, like bumper cars,

driving a bus,

taking a ride around the park on a little train,

and jumping around in a bouncy castle.

Finally, after the children were good and tired, we were able to enjoy some more adult sights. There were dozens of beautiful flower beds fully blooming with spring flowers.

A fun day was had by all. I would really recommend this park to anyone with children, but I might have found it very dull if I had gone only with adults. There is a bit of shopping and the flowers are pretty, but most of the attractions are for the 12 and under crowd. 

A View from the Station

Theo absolutely adores babies. When he is not playing with William, whom he refers to lovingly as "Chubby Bubby", he is pretending that his teddy bear is a baby. Lately when we go out, he asks if he can carry his "baby" around in a carrier like William. So, I fashion him one out of a shawl. He has certainly gotten some interesting looks from people when he has it on!

Theo, helpin' a brother out.

Dustin and Theo waiting for the train with their babies.

On a train related note, did you know that Fukuyama is the only city in Japan where you can see the castle directly from the train platform? The shinkansen platform is one level up from the regular train platform, so I am sure the view of the castle is a bit better, but seeing as we're too cheap to ride the shinkansen, this better view will have to wait.  

Here are the castle walls and smaller out buildings of the castle as seen from the train platform. It does make a nice view while waiting for your train to arrive. 

Also, a few days ago Theo and I stepped off the train on our way to an appointment with his doctor and saw an Anpanman themed train waiting on another track. Cute!

Hiroshima City

The day before Karlee left, we all headed out to Hiroshima City for the day. We thought it might be a bit strange if she returned to Canada never actually having gone to the capital city. We didn't have any particular plan of what we were going to do for the day, but mostly just wanted to stroll around, shop, and see a few monuments.

The A-Bomb Dome

We took the train from Fukuyama west into Hiroshima City which took about 2 hours. About a 40 minute walk from the train station there is a whole area with parks, museums, and monuments. We let Theo run around and terrorize pigeons, or chibbins as he has taken to calling them, while we looked at the atomic bomb dome. This is a building that was destroyed when the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6th, 1945 and left standing as a memorial to all of the people killed by the bomb. It was originally a government building for the promotion of industry and the bomb was detonated almost directly above this building.

Nearby was the Hiroshima Peace Museum which we wanted to peruse, but realized that the kids would never be patient or quiet enough for us to enjoy it. I am not sure if "enjoy" is the correct word here, since I would most likely emerge from this museum pretty depressed and/or crying, but even so, I can't wait for the day when the kids are older and not every thing we do on a trip centers around them. Instead we let Theo give the peace bell a ring and headed over to the Children's Museum.

This was a fantastic (and free) museum that had three floors of hands on exhibits to explore and a planetarium. After a morning of sightseeing, Theo was freakishly happy to be able to run around, touch, and climb everything in sight. 

Ummm, I'm not so sure about this one....

Our last tour for the day was at the Hiroshima Castle. Outside, the boys and I checked out a few very neat old trees that survived the atomic bomb and some cute turtles in the moat around the castle.

The castle was originally built in 1590 but was destroyed by the bomb. It was reconstructed in 1958.

There were a hand full of exhibits inside and a chance to dress up in costume. Theo was pumped that he got to dress up as a samurai. The helmet itself weighed about 15 lbs. so I am surprised he kept it on as long as he did.

Before we turned back to the station, we had a supper of okonomiyaki. These are savory pancakes made from flour, cabbage, noodles, and your choice of meats and other vegetables fried on a large griddle. Okonomiyaki is made all over Japan, but Hiroshima prides itself as the only place that makes them the right way. This was my first time to have them Hiroshima-style and they were fantastic. Pictured here is the "deluxe okonomiyaki" with soba noodles, cabbage, pork, cheese, and mochi, topped with okonomiyaki sauce, shiso flakes, and sesame seeds. Yum!

I wouldn't say that Hiroshima was the most interesting city that I have spent the day wandering in, but none the less, we had a great time strolling around. 

Miyajima

Hiroshima Prefecture: Fukuyama City is the small box on
the right and Miyajima is the larger box on the left

In the end of September we all decided to visit Miyajima. This island is on the opposite side of Hiroshima Prefecture and a really popular tourist attraction. All of the of the hotels and ryokan were fairly expensive, but luckily there is a campground on the island that charges 300 yen (about 4$ Canadian) a night. I had shipped all of our camping gear about a week before I left, but by the middle of September when it still hadn't arrived, we started to wonder if we would have to cancel our trip to Miyajima after all. Lucky for us, only a few days before the trip all of our gear arrived.

Karlee and Dustin wait for the train all
loaded up with camping gear

We took the train from Fukuyama to Miyajimaguchi, which took about 2 1/2 hours, and then a quick ferry ride from the mainland to the island. One of the first things we noticed when arriving was that there were deer everywhere. The species on the island is the Sika deer, which is a bit smaller than the deer we are used to and never lose their white fawn spots.  The deer were completely accustomed to humans and were milling about, sleeping, eating people's food and even letting children pet them. They were charming for about the first 30 minutes and then became super annoying, especially after one tried to chomp at William's foot and head butted me when I tried to shoo it away. Luckily, it was one of the deer who had its antlers cut off. By the end of our weekend, even an animal lover like me wanted to kick one. It is very sad actually, since humans are completely to blame for the aggressive, begging, scavenger monsters that these little deer have become.

Theo and a deer inspecting each other

Theo on the ferry

William and I on the ferry

Karlee walking from the ferry to the Campground

A morning clash right next to our tent

The campground was fairly nice during the day, but once it got dark everything changed. Firstly, all the male deer around decided to retest who was in charge of the tents. There was pawing, grunting, and clashing of antlers. At one point during the wee hours of the morning, a deer must have knocked over someone's cooler, since there was a mad herd gallop of at least 10 deer from all points of the campground right past our tent. Once again, all of the males felt the need to fight over who had the rights to the spilled food.

View of the sunset from the campground beach

Laughing at one of Theo's ridiculous jokes

There were a number of people who decided to shoot fire crackers for a few hours. One group of campers only arrived near midnight and sounded like they were building a cabin with all of their tent peg hammering. There was absolutely no wind, so I am not really sure what they were so concerned about. I was almost looking forward to when Theo would wake up at 7:30 a.m. running, shouting, and wreaking vengeance on all of these noisy people. Unfortunately, these same people decided to loudly take down their tents and leave at 4:45 a.m., while Theo somehow slept through it all. To top it all off, a loudspeaker played a long and loud wake up call at 7 a.m. I might have been annoyed if it woke up the kids, but miraculously they both managed to sleep in a little.

Dustin and Theo heading for the toilet

After our crappy night, Karlee, Dustin, and I realized that there was no way we could possibly manage another night at the campground. We decided to explore the town and island until late in the evening, and take the last train back to Fukuyama that night.

To be continued...