I met Erez at my station and we quickly stored the giant hockey bag I was going to take home for him, having replaced it with a sleek proper travelling backpack. After taking care of this, we got on the train from Kurashiki to Onomichi in the Hiroshima prefecture. We accidentally got on the wrong train ( it came three minutes before ours and we got on it, assuming it was the one we were waiting for). While consulting the map in the train car, a fellow passenger offered his help and confirmed my plan B of taking the train to the end of the line and then switching. He was an American teaching English at a high school in Fukuyama, and was on the train with a classmate of his from university who was visiting from the States. It was interesting chatting with him and his friend about their experiences studying abroad in Japan a couple of years before, as well as his experience of now working in a high school. At the end of the journey we exchanged names, and when asking what kind of name Erez was, we established that we are both from the same tribe 🙂 He says that he doesn’t really practice, but as it was Friday night he wished us a good Shabbos as we were heading our separate ways. Another wandering Jew…
We arrived in Onomichi late, but even in the dark, the views looked pretty spectacular, I couldn’t wait to see what they would be like in the light of day.
Erez had heard from some coworkers that this area had a bit of a pirate history, and we started to see some pirate motifs right away, although we are not sure what this was about.
We settled into our hotel and tried to get a good night’s sleep – we needed our strength as I had lots planned for the weekend, and it had been a long week already for both of us.