{"id":57204,"date":"2020-01-14T20:00:00","date_gmt":"2020-01-14T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/voyapon.com\/?p=57204"},"modified":"2020-05-13T22:39:45","modified_gmt":"2020-05-13T13:39:45","slug":"miyoshi-day-trip-hiroshima","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/voyapon.com\/miyoshi-day-trip-hiroshima\/","title":{"rendered":"Miyoshi City – A Day Trip from Hiroshima by Bus"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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A 90 minute morning bus ride, as it turns out, is a great time to think about monsters. Well, not monsters, exactly. The Japanese call them yokai<\/strong><\/em>, but when you try to translate it to English, it becomes a bit messy, as Japanese-to-English translations sometimes are. For example, when someone calls out “Otsukare sama deshita<\/em>!<\/a>” as you leave work and you ask them what that means in English, the answer might simply be a very long silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My traveling companions and I met at the Hiroshima Bus Terminal<\/strong> at 7:30 am sharp. We were headed for Miyoshi city<\/strong><\/a> in the mountains north of Hiroshima, to visit their newest attraction, Japan’s first and only museum dedicated to yokai<\/em><\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Miyoshi Mononoke Museum – Japan’s First Yokai Museum<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

We’ve already established that yokai<\/em> are like monsters, but that definition is too narrow. Yokai <\/em>can be spirits, physical beasts, demons or gods, or even supernatural phenomena. Some yokai <\/em>are widely regarded as real, while others as just folklore. The popularity of yokai<\/em> exploded during the Edo Period, when illustrated stories, such as the famous “The Night Parade of 100 Demons<\/strong>” could be reproduced using woodblock printing in mass quantities. Interest in yokai faded during the Meiji Era, but was revived again in the 1960s by Mizuki Shigeru<\/strong>, a manga artist who drew on yokai <\/em>tales he learned as a child to create the popular manga series, “Gegege no Kitaro<\/strong>.” As recently as 2013, yokai <\/em>have continued to be popular among children in “Yokai Watch<\/strong>” video games and anime.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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