Weekend Escape

I took advantage of the long weekend to meet up with a friend in Hiroshima. It was nice to get off my island. Nice to see someplace new. Nice to be someplace urban. Nice to visit with my friend.

We went to Miya Jima for the day. The deer on the island apparently eat paper. These are fighting over a piece of paper someone gave them. Yum!

Of course we visited the famous shrine.

Then we took a cable car up to the top of the mountain for the supposedly scenic view. But it was raining reasonably hard, and we could only see mist. There were some really cute monkeys at the top of the mountain. It seems that monkeys don't like rain, because these guys were all huddled together with unhappy looks on their faces. The hike down the mountain was quite wet and rainy.

The next day, we learned all about the atomic bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima. And while we were taking a break on a bench, some random guy came over to talk to us. And a minute later, this other random guy came over, asking for help with his English homework. I was actually quite relieved when the second guy came over because the first one was a little bit creepy. While I was distracted with helping guy #2 with his English homework, creepy guy #1 started trying to take a picture of me with the camera on his cell phone.

Eventually we managed to get rid of both guys. And then I said to my friend, "See?? I told you random people try to take pictures of me!" Because the day before, I got the feeling that 2 ladies on the street car were trying to take a picture of me. This actually happens to me quite a lot. And whenever I tell people, they always think that I'm paranoid. But yes, people do take pictures of me. And yes, people do stare at me, ignoring other foreigners who might be around. This has happened to me in just about every Asian country I've visited. So while I was weirded out that a strange guy was taking a picture of me, I was also happy that I had a witness. I'm not paranoid! People really do watch me!