Day 9 & 10 – Universal Hiroshima
So, evidently, no entry yesterday. We practically haven’t had any down time since we’ve been here and it has finally caught up with me. I was gone the second my head hit the pillow last night… and honestly I’m fighting to sit here and write this tonight!
So yesterday we had our big Universal Studios day! I was so pumped for this day and Harry Potter world, you have no idea. And when I woke up feeling like absolute butt hole, I was shattered! But I grabbed something to eat and felt better so thought, yeah, there’s no way I’m missing Harry Potter world! So a train and a bus ride later, we were at the gates of Universal Studios. No wait, we got distracted by food first.. Before even getting to the gates I spotted steamed buns (I’ve wanted them since we got to Japan… so yeah, I was getting me one of those)!
So after quick detour we were lined up to get our tickets. By this time it was about 11.30 (much much later than we had hoped), so all the express passes were sold out. The result of this was that we went on none of the rides. Not a single one. Not that I’m heartbroken by that, I’m very much inexperienced when it comes to rides – unless it’s basically a scenic tour, it’s too much for me. Walking through the streets of the Studios was absolutely amazing though. How they’ve done the theming for everything is great!
We headed to the timed ticket area for Harry Potter world, but to get to that you had to walk through Amity (the little fishing town in Jaws), and it was so perfectly themed! You had the bait shop, and the shark hanging on the pier, even down to the small fishing boat that the crew took out looking for the famous Jaws in the movie, floating in the river next to the area. After we had booked the Harry Potter tickets (we had about an hour and a half to kill before we were allowed in), we had a look at the ride in the Jaws area, but the line for that was 90 minutes long. We soon discovered that without the express pass, 90 minutes was about the average wait… Hence why we didn’t get on any rides! But believe me, it was still a great day.
We wasted a bit of time just exploring the park a bit, walking through the different open areas to have a look, just until we were allowed into Harry Potter. We killed a bit of that time by going through the Backdraft show. Basically, it was just to show us how they created scenes in the movie with the fires. The first two stages of this show were pretty boring to be honest. We stood in a dark room watching a Japanese dubbed doco on how the effects were done. Moved onto the next stage, same deal, but this time with a small demonstration. Final stage was a little different though, and not speaking Japanese, I can’t say any of us expected it. They basically created an entire scene with special effects right there with us in the room. Real fire. Real explosions. Real (but fake) danger. They showed how a fire could spread through an old factory (in the movies anyway, probably not too accurate). Seriously left with the heart thumping by the end of it! I wish I had known what was coming, I would have filmed it! But for now, Harry Potter time!
Now there was no playing it cool for Drew and I. We were like kids in a candy store! And we decided to go to Ollivanders Wand shop first! When we reached the archway into Hogsmeade, after a brief moment of “oh my god this is amazing” and staring at the amazing buildings and sets in front of us, we made a B line for the shop door. We were greeted by a lovely Japanese lady dressed in witches robes, who directed us to follow the queue around the back. We thought this was just to enter the shop, but after the 50 minute wait we thought something might have been a bit wrong with that. We did a bit of Googling and discovered that you could just walk into the shop, and that we were lined up for the Ollivanders experience. I am so glad we made that mistake though! When it was our turn to enter, the lady that directed us to the queue, took us into a small room filled to the roof with boxes of wands, quite a small room, but then opened up a secret doorway to lead us in to meet ‘Ollivander’. We all piled in and a small white man started his talk in Japanese, scanned the room, saw that there were a couple of us white folk in the audience, and very easily slipped into speaking both Japanese and English. He chose a small child from the audience (secretly but not so secretly shattered he didn’t pick me) to play Harry’s part basically. He goes through the ritual of the wand choosing its wizard – with a few small mishaps along the way; some shelves collapsing, a small thunderstorm, and finally the right wand was chosen. The small child was amazingly happy and walked out with his own wand! It was a wonderful experience.
From the Ollivanders experience, we were lead directly into Ollivanders shop itself, were there were wand boxes everywhere. Every shelf you looked at was full, each with their own character and a small replica of what each characters wand looked like. It was hard to choose a character, but Drew got Dumbledore’s wand (you can’t leave Hogsmeade without the Elder wand), we also picked up another elder wood wand that had a cool skull design as the handle, and I got Fleur Delacour’s wand. All very beautiful and well made replicas, fairly expensive as well – with 3 wands in hand, it was a good indication of how the rest of the day was going to go – sorry bank account.
We then moved out into the street and properly looked at all the buildings and shops and little features in the alleyway itself. Down to little moving figurines, and book covers with the moving fronts, props in the windows of the shops, the attention to detail was impeccable. It actually took our second look around to really take in that there was a massive full sized Hogwarts Express train poking in from the side, with steam from the engine and luggage on the station and everything. Very impressive. Continued looking through shops, magically loosing money everywhere we went (see what I did there?).
Only a couple cups of Butterbeer later, we decided that we would really like to look through the castle. How they did this was actually pretty clever. You had the line for the ride, as well as the people only wanting the scenic tour of the castle all winding together, basically walking the same path, only the walk through obviously headed away from the ride at the end. But I have to say the walk through was amazing! You started out in the Herbology lab, where you walk through the glasshouses where you can imagine the Mandrake being re-potted. Then we went past statues of the houses, the lion for Gryffindor, the raven for Ravenclaw, the Honey badger for Hufflepuff and the snake for Slytherin. Then past the house totals – four tall tubes filled with different coloured pebbles to signify the point totals, and also past Dumbledore’s office stairs, with the big golden phoenix guarding the entrance. Following the path next took you to a small hallway covered in talking and moving portraits, all telling you something a little different about themselves along the way. This was a purely delightful sight for my inner child. Following along the path you were lead into the Defence against the Dark Arts classroom, where you received a small talk from Harry, Hermione and Ron (of course it was in Japanese, so I have no idea what it was about), but the room itself was amazing; You got to see a skeleton of something (I think a small dragon maybe?) hanging from the roof, little displays around the room with skulls and bones, desks with books on them and numerous little gadgets. Next you came across the portrait of the fat lady. And after a small talk with her (again, in Japanese) you were lead to the Gryffindor common room. This was the final themed room of the Castle tour, and I cannot say enough how absolutely impressive the entire experience was. Although you could probably guess how much I enjoyed it from the length of this blog already…
When we finally dragged ourselves out of the Hogwarts Castle, we decided to grab some lunch at the restaurant The Three Broomsticks. Amazing to look at, but I won’t go into details. Food was great too! But by this time I started to feel like what I felt like in the morning. So the rest of the day was, to be frank, kind of shit for me. We finally left Harry Potter world and tried to find some rides where the lines weren’t too big. None. We walked around and searched and searched. Explored the different areas – Jurassic Park, New York and Spiderman, Hollywood Blvd. But nothing without a waiting time of 90 minutes or more. So we decided that we were probably done for the day, and went and got some dinner at Bubba Gumps. The food was pretty good! We made what felt like a long journey home, and I crashed as soon as I was home!
Today was a very different pace. I still feeling crook as all hell, but we were up and at it by 5.45. We met the group downstairs at 6.45 and were off towards Hiroshima. This involved a train to Shin Osaka station, and then the Bullet train to Hiroshima. I can’t remember much of the Bullet train ride, I’m pretty sure I was asleep 10 minutes in. But a good bit of perspective for you. We travelled so fast, that what we did in 1.5 hours, would take 7 hours taking a normal speed train! When we got there we jumped on a sight seeing bus and got off at the A-bomb dome. This is the only building still standing from the time the bomb dropped. Which is amazing in itself, because the point of detonation was only about 600m above this very building. They have left it standing not as a symbol of war, but more a symbol of peace – it is now listed as a heritage site. From here we headed over to the Peace memorial.
From certain angles it is a strange and for me an unsettling sight, but you can see both the Peace memorial and the skeleton of the burnt out dome. But when you look at the Peace memorial, you can’t help but feel a little better about the world. From the bell with the crane shaped ringer and the young girl on top, to the boxes and boxes and boxes of coloured folded cranes sent to this site from around the world, with nothing but messages of peace, you can’t help but feel uplifted.
From there we headed to the museum, which proved to be a little more confronting than I was prepared for. Not many photos were taken, as there was a lot of burnt personal effects of people who were either killed in the initial blast, or died a few days later. There was even a section where they had a part of a stairway, with a permanent shadow burnt into it from where a human was sitting at time of detonation. Walking through the displays was absolutely heart breaking.
With the group feeling the heaviness of what we just saw, we headed to a ferry that would take us to Itsukushima – known for its shrine in the sea – for sunset. The ferry ride was 55 minutes long, and I don’t think there was a single one of us who saw the entire trip. I woke about half way there looking around and saw every single party member asleep around me. We’ve been very busy! But taking this opportunity to look outside, I got to see coastal islands and beaches! Which is something I did not expect to see on my trip to Japan! When we got there, we headed into the shop stalls. So many cute little shop fronts inviting us in! Even a little Ghibli shop I had to remove myself from – so many cute Totoro’s and forest spirits! Aaaah! Have to wait until we go to the Studio Ghibli! But this strip of shops leads us to what we travelled to this island to see. The beautiful Temple and shrine in the sea. So many beautiful photos were taken. And I even had another catch up with some deer! These ones were much nicer than the ones at Nara. Exploring this little island took the rest of the night. The photos will be able to say more than I can right now. It’s 1.05am and I’ve been up since 5.45… I’ll be surprised if this is still making sense!
We made our way back home, and I am struggling to stay awake. So I’m going to call it here. Photos will explain everything I have failed to!
We’re off to Hakone tomorrow for our traditional Japanese experience and our hot spas on the decks. Should be a magical day full of plenty of down time to try and rest these weary bodies!
