Nagasaki Three-Day Trip

Day 1:  Nagasaki Peace Park, Atomic Bomb Museum.  Not much to say.  Very sad.  There were two peace parks; very important to visit both.

Delicious eki-ben

Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum

Day 2:  Nagasaki City Science Museum.  It's very small and catered to children.  We enjoyed a half-hour show about Mosasaurus.  It was dramatic, full of emotions.  One thing I need to complain, though. Nagasaki boasted itself as the only window to the outside world when Japan was an isolated country.  So it had lots of interaction with foreigners for hundreds of years.  Before entering the museum, it has pictures of European scientists that were connected to Nagasaki.  Upon entering the museum, there was not one word of English, or Dutch, or Portuguese, or Chinese in this science museum.  Its website does not have a foreign language page, either.  What happened to Nagasaki's connection to the rest of the world?  Shouldn't it pride itself as an international city?

長崎市科学館

Day 3:  shopping malls.  Too hot.  We visited Nagasaki during the rainy season; everyone pre-warned us that we would get rained on.  We only got rained on in the peace park for about five minutes.  After that, the sun came out and actively burned the humidity in the air.  It was so hot.  I got heat stroke and couldn't breathe.  So we stayed indoors.  There were more things to see in Nagasaki, but they were outdoors.  We just couldn't bring ourselves into the sun.

On our way back, here was our flight number.  What an ominous sign.  Something bad will happen.

Flight No. 666

Hiroshima Three-Day Trip

Day 1:  shopping!  ROF inside the Shareo underground shopping is my favorite t-shirt shop in all of Japan!  Cutest print design that tells a story on every shirt.  I've spent hundreds of dollars in this shop in the last 10+ years.  My worry is that as I get older and fatter, I wouldn't be able to fit into its shirts anymore!

However, Shareo seems to be going downhills.  A lot of stores were closed, for pandemic or some other reasons.  We went to the above-ground shopping Hondori Street, and Math Teacher was impressed with the number of cafes.

Okayama to Hiroshima bullet train

Day 2:  A-Bomb dome, Peace Park, Memorial Museum.  Somber learning experience.  Not much to say here.  Very sad.

Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

Prefectural Art Museum:  beautiful.  They had an exhibit to showcase Hiroshima prefecture artists and asked people to vote on it.  Both Math Teacher and I couldn't vote because they were simply too wonderful.  We couldn't pick one, and we felt bad for even trying to pick one out of so many talents.

Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum

Day 3:  Miyajima and Iwakuni.  The torii gate at Miyajima is still under construction.  I felt bad that Math Teacher was missing out on one of the most beautiful scenery in Japan, but we had to visit it now because we didn't know when the renovation would be finished.  So I told Math Teacher to imagine a beautiful red gate in the middle of the sea.

Itsukushima Jinja

Iwakuni is a dying city, but somehow they put in a new train station with escalator.  Five years ago they had nothing; we had to drag our own luggages up and down the stairs!  Kintaikyo is still standing, thank goodness.  Still as serene as ever.  However, the souvenir shop stopped selling my favorite spicy pickled lotus roots and four-season sake set 😢

Kintaikyo Bridge

Kurashiki One-Day Trip

Kurashiki as a city needs to do a better job of tourism advertising.  It is not a half-day trip; it is not a one-day trip.

The city has got museums, shrine, park, old-timey houses, river walk, shops along river walk, gondola down the river, swans in the river.  Museums along include art museum, natural history museum, folklore museum, etc.

At least for me, I needed three days in this city.  However, I was lied to by the advertising, thinking it was a halfway stopping point between Osaka and Hiroshima.  So I planned one-night stay there.  It was not enough!

The willow trees along the river were swaying poetically.  We were rained on for a little while, but the rain simply added to the romance.  The swans were so cute!  I did not have enough time for shopping.  Apparently jeans and/or denims were very popular in the city.  They even had blue color ice cream!  Restaurants were all delicious!

Sigh, if I had time, I'd go back and stayed longer.

Delicious eki-ben

Beer for a hot day

つばめ喫茶室:  It is inside a courtyard that seems to be a museum.  OMG, the best chai that I've had in Japan.  Chai in Japan tends to be more milky than spice-y, but not here.  I could taste the spices and the milk.  It was wonderful!

Delicious vegan restaurant

Ohara Museum of Art

Japanese Apple Pie

This type of apple pie was quite famous.  It was a whole apple baked in a piecrust.  Since it was famous, I had been buying it as gifts for other people, but never tried it myself.  This time, finally, I bought one to try.

Box

Apple Pie

Cross Section

I was not sure if there were many brands.  For this one, the apple was delicious, but the piecrust was thin and stale.  I even heated it up in the toaster oven, as suggested by other people.  Still not my type of pie.  Maybe I should stop buying this as gifts.  Maybe it wasn't that good to start with; it was just the Japanese technology to bake a whole apple inside piecrust that intrigued people.

American apple pies were better.

停止中.....KEEP DISTANCE

Saw this in the women's bathroom in the grocery store.  I'm confused.  No more social distancing?

是我文法不好？還是英文不好？還是中文不好？

Matsumoto Castle & Tateyama Kurobe Alpine Route

Matsumoto Castle was so pretty from outside, but inside was empty.  All the weapon displays were guns.  What happened to samurais with swords?  Too bad people were not allowed to walk on the red bridge.

Matsumoto Castle entry ¥700/person

Apparently Matsumoto people eat horses.  I've tried horse sashimi once.  It was not as good as fish sashimi.

Horse Meat Cuisine

From Matsumoto to Tateyama Kurobe Alpine route was easy and not easy.  First, it was one-hour train ride from Matsumoto to Shinano Omachi, ¥680/person one way.  Even though the train was Japan Rail, it did not accept Suica.  We had to buy paper tickets.  Then it was 40-minute bus from Shinano Omachi to Ogizawa, ¥2,500/person round trip.

Shinano Omachi Eki

Shinano Omachi to Ogizawa

From Ogizawa, the Alpine route started.  Ogizawa to Murodo (or as Math Teacher called it, Mordor), it was ¥9,470/person round trip.  It was a lot of transportation.  It looked so confusing when I was researching online.  However, it was well-organized.  We didn't get lost. Followed the tourist crowd, and everything was all right.  Every stop took about 15-minute for transportation and half an hour for sightseeing.  I would highly recommend pack own picnic, as the food up in the mountains were very basic to none.  Besides, there was nothing better than to have a picnic surrounded by beautiful white snow under the bright blue sky.

Ogizawa to Murodo, ¥9,470/person round trip

Murodo was the top of the mountain with the snow wall.  It was only half way through the Alpine route, but it was enough.  Even though it was at the end of May, the snow wall was 14 meters high, and it didn't feel cold at all.

Of course I had to buy local beer as souvenir.  The red and gold tasted sweet and great; the black one tasted funny.

Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

I wasn't going to see this movie because I felt it was a two-hour advertisement for US military.  I also worried that, after 30 years, they wouldn't come up with original plot, just like Star Wars.

Math Teacher really wanted to see it, exactly because it was a two-hour advertisement for US military.  Then I got new contact lenses.  What better way to try out new lenses in a dark theater?

I was right.  The whole movie was an advertisement for US military.  The plot didn't change at all.  Tom Cruise was still the baddest ass pilot ever.  Same competition amongst pilots storyline, only with young generations.

They tried to be diverse with the young generation by throwing in an Asian man, with a codename "Yale". Heh, how original.  I don't believe he uttered a word in the entire movie.

This time they flew into enemy's country to destroy their infrastructure.  Nobody had a problem with US flying into a sovereign nation and stole the enemy's fighter jet?  Nobody had a problem that those enemy pilots were only defending their own sovereignty?  Because they threw in "Geneva Convention", that made everything ok?  What happened to diplomacy and talk?  This movie was saying because US didn't like something, US had every right to destroy it.  And it was sold as heroism.  What bullshit.

Go back to watch the original Top Gun.  It was better in every way.

Book PROMOTIONS!!! Memorial Day Sale!

I TAKE THEE will be free on Amazon 5/28 ~ 6/1!!!

I TAKE THEE

Book 2 FROM THIS DAY FORWARD and book 3 TO HOLD & TO CHERISH will be discounted at $0.99!!!  Boost my sales and leave good reviews!!!

Thanks a million to everyone!

goodreads

I am not familiar with this website:  goodreads.  Apparently it's imdb.com for books.

A reader rated five-star for I TAKE THEE and FROM THIS DAY FORWARD.

I TAKE THEE

FROM THIS DAY FORWARD

The author names were different on goodreads.com.  I was being a dumbass in the beginning of my "writing career" that I didn't know how to choose a pen name.  So I switched names after book 1 was published.

Apparently this reader has figured out that both author names were me, and enjoyed both books.  I'm so touched!

It's a great feeling to have such a dedicated reader.  However, I'm not tech-savvy enough to get in contact with the reader.  The internet's advice is to set up a mailing list so I could collect email addresses.  Then I could send out news, promotions, etc.  Unfortunately, I didn't even know how to set up a mailing list.

I'm sorry, my precious reader.  Please keep reading my books.  I'll do my best to write awesome stories that you'd like to read.

Shibazakura Festival

Shibazakura Festival was beautiful!

We got lucky.  It was raining in the morning so not a lot of people went to the festival.  By the time we got to the festival, however, the rain stopped.  Even though it was cloudy, Mt. Fuji was out and about!  It was a great day to walk in the garden and under the shade of Mt. Fuji.

The shibazakura were tiny flowers on the ground.  So they actually looked better from far away than close up.

The festival also featured Peter Rabbit theme.  I didn't quite understand, but perhaps Peter Rabbit was famous in Japan?  However, they did an half-assed job about the English theme.  The sandwich shop didn't sell cucumber finger sandwich.  Math Teacher tried the strawberry sandwich.  It was one dry hotdog bun with strawberry cream and chocolate cream.  He was disappointed.  He thought it would be a peanut-butter and jelly sandwich.  I laughed at him, saying peanut-butter and jelly sandwich was an American thing.  We were at the festival around lunch time; the restaurant wouldn't sell us take-out beverages because it wasn't tea time yet (we both didn't understand the logic).  So I had no idea how "English" the tea was.

Overall, it was a great place to walk around for an hour.  Pack own picnic.  Don't buy any food and drinks there.