Japanese Whispers - Part 1 - Osaka, Hiroshima, Okunoshima

I have just returned from the land of ramen and polite bowing and I feel like Bill Murray in Lost in Translation without the overwhelming sense of loneliness and pervading sense of ennui. Buckle lived in Japan for two years almost ten years ago, and he's been eager to get back and who am I to stand in his way (provided I get to go along for the ride)? 

The first week of our trip was spent travelling around the south - Osaka, Hiroshima, Kyoto and we even made a stop in the mountains at Koyasan. We had been planning to visit the Ghibli Museum while in Tokyo the following week but as it turned out the museum was closing for maintenance the day after we arrived so we had to make a dash to Tokyo for the day to catch it before it closed for a few months.

The entire building was specially built to house all the whimsy that Ghilbi Studios can churn out - it was filled with spiralling staircases, tiny archways, illustrations and a giant Catbus. You weren't allowed to take photographs anywhere inside the museum so this was all we could manage but Buckle got a great shot of a woman walking her cat in a wheeled bag in the bag surrounding the museum.

Buckle's Japanese skills made it much easier to take photos of people's pets.

We spent a few days in Osaka visiting Osaka Jo (which I imagined to be a loud-smouthed American with connections in the black market but which turned out to be an enormous castle), and the Instant Ramen Museum.

Yes, an INSTANT RAMEN MUSEUM.

Where you got to make your very own Cup Noodles.

By far my highlight of our time in Hiroshima was visiting Okunoshima. The Japanese govern t built a poison gas factory on the island in 1902 and produced gas for wars up until the end of the Second World War. When the factory was abandoned the island was overrun by the rabbits which were kept on the island to test the poison. 

When you step onto the island rabbits coming running from everywhere and climb all over you to get at whatever tasty morsels you have on or about your person. It's adorable in a hope-I-don't-catch-a-disease sort of way. The factory itself is incredibly eery and beautiful, and casts almost sculptural shadows on the landscape.

This post is so laden with photographs that I'm going to split the first week into two posts, but in the meantime enjoy the photographs and some wanderlust while I sit quietly and lament my return to the mundanities of everyday life.