Today was packed with goodness like Japanese supermarkets are with inedible sealife. First I went to the Hiroshima Art Museum to check out an exhibit on railways in art that closes tomorrow. I was blown away - the museum is pretty small and architecturally nothing special, but it is just stuffed full of incredible art. The traveling exhibit had about three Monets, a couple of Degas, a Manet or two, and countless other extremely good pieces by artists I didn't recognize. Beyond that, the part of the permament collection that I saw, which is only about a fifth of the total, had three or four Monets, a Manet, four Renoirs, two Degas pieces and tons of other great stuff. I couldn't believe it - this place is just a tiny little museum in the middle of downtown Hiroshima, and yet it's a treasure trove of priceless and beautiful art. Entrance to all cultural things like this is free for exchange students, so I'm bally well going to tromp down there every weekend I can and get an eyeful. There's another museum about half a mile away that I haven't checked out yet, but I hope that it holds the same kind of surprises.
Next I went off to the Hiroshima Castle, which was a fun little adventure into Touristy Kitschland. The castle is amazing from the outside, but just a mediocre Hiroshima history museum on the inside. Obviously the castle was rebuilt after 1945, and they really only cared to faithfully restore the outside, making the inside a flavorless Let's Learn History piece. Nonetheless, a fun adventure.
Then came conveyor belt sushi again, which just gets better and better every time you go. I went with two of my friends named Machiko and they taught me more of the Hiroshima dialect. It's apparently all harsh and sounds like yakuza talk - I love it.
Afterwards one of the Machikos and I went to Kill Bill, which was the first movie I've seen in a theater since getting here. It was tons of fun, but just ridiculously bloody; even my previous experience with Tarantino's films didn't prepare me for the non-stop bloodfest that is this movie. I felt a little badly for bringing a chick to it, and I spent a fair amount of the movie trying to figure out if the whimpering coming from the left of me was her chuckling softly or gasping in horror. I think it tended towards the latter, but that's okay; a little blood-soaked adventure is good for girls. In America, are the Japanese conversations subtitled? Here the English bits were subtitled in Japanese (obviously), but the Japanese bits were raw. I got most of it, as the language is pretty simple, but there were some parts that gave me some guff. Listening to Uma and Lucy Liu butcher their way through the Japanese language is hilarious. They try their best and probably speak with better accents than I do, but it's still pretty rough.
The arm you see in the mechanical rabbit photo belongs to the Machiko I went to the movie with. She didn't blink an eye when I insisted on taking a picture of this random toy, clearly just assuming that this is the sort of craziness Americans get up to in their spare time. And, of course, she's right.
We have a five-day weekend next week, made into a six-day one by the fact that I have no class on Thursday. I love how Japanese colleges don't even pretend to make students work, or even come to school. Anyway, I decided today that I'm going to make the most of that break by leaving on the night bus for Kyoto on Wednesday, then meeting up with my friend Andrew who lives in Himeji on Sunday or Monday, finally returning to Hiroshima on Monday night/Tuesday morning. I am thrilled to spend three or four days in Kyoto all by my lonesome - Kyoto is just filled with incredible cultural spots and classical art and architecture, so I'm sure I won't even begin to see all there is to see.
- Gyaa! I'm give up
