Hiroshima and Miyajima - Hiroshima, Japan
Hiroshima, Japan
A bus, cable car and 5 trains from Koyosan we were in Hiroshima dropped our bags off at the hostel and headed out. We jumped on a street car and headed towards Hiroshima peace park. The street cars in Hiroshima are awesome.....someone from San Francisco should come here to see the system at work. In Hiroshima the street cars come often, go to more than 2 places, are cheap and have more than 4 seats.... Excellent. *****Attention!.....buzz kill alert....many depressing things and no jokes to follow.****** The Hiroshima peace park is a pretty somber place for obvious reasons. It starts at what is called the A-Bomb dome (Genbaku domu). It is one of the few buildings left in about a 2km radius of where the bomb was dropped. The bomb was detonated in the air about 600m almost directly above this building which used to be called the Industrial Promotion Hall. Many people wanted to tear the building down in the years following the war but it was decided to leave it up in the 60's and it has since been reinforced so it will never fall....pretty amazing place. The peace park is a massive park in central Hiroshima between 2 rivers. It was densely populated with homes and shops before the bomb but is now just a beautiful park with museums and monuments. After the bomb was dropped scientist figured that it would be 75 years before anything would grow in this area but within a few months plants started to sprout up....this was a great sign of hope for the people of Hiroshima and the beginning of the park. In the center of the park is the Memorial Cenotaph, a beautiful monument where each year on the anniversary of the bomb (Aug 6th) they open it up and add names of the people who have past away in the last year that had been effected by the bomb, obviously less and less names every year, It's up to 287,000+ a-bomb victim names this year. Next the the Memorial Cenotaph is the Hiroshima Peace Museum, a massive and amazing museum with a great audio tour that starts by describing life in Japan and its military focus leading up to Aug 6, 1945. It goes through the development of the bombs through to the decision to drop them on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. A great part of the museum was a wall with hundreds of letters posted on the wall. Since that day, every time a country with nuclear weapons performs a test the mayor of Hiroshima writes a letter to the leader of the country to plead with them to stop nuclear weapons research and testing and remind them of the destruction and loss of lives that occurred here. The next section of the museum was all stories of people who experienced that day. There was a lot of graphic pictures and depressing stories of parents who lost their children. Any child who was above 12 was taken out of school to work during the war, mostly on building fire breaks to help lessen the damage of tradition air raids or carpet bombing....many of these children were in the area that was most devastated by the bomb. It took us a few hours to go through the museum and left at about 6:00 to clean up and go for dinner. ******Attention!....buzz kill over....I apologize for any inconvenience or feelings that may have caused****** For dinner we went to a Japanese BBQ place....totally my idea :) . They chuck a ceramic pit of fire on a tiny table, give you a couple set of tongs and a plate with a bunch of raw meat.....I guess they don't worry about cross-contamination here....and I guess neither should I! I'll let you know in a few days how this went. I love countries where if you burn yourself on a pit of fire on your table, or eat raw chicken it's your own damn fault. They would never have a restaurant like this in North America....unfortunately some one...probably from 'Murica, would sue. It was delicious. Time to go to sleep on the floor for one last night...beds from this point on! Woo hoo. In the morning we headed to Miyajima, a small island a short train and ferry ride from Hiroshima. It was roughly 65 degrees out side, sweatiness commenced. We checked in to our Ryokan (like a B&B) and headed out. We took a cable car up a mountain, and then Jackie made me walk up a different mountain to look around and then walk back down.....on a side note, it was beautiful. It took all afternoon for this epic journey through mountains, forests and temples all the while dodging insane mutated giant bees.....seriously, huge effing bees over here. I'm guessing some leftover radiation from the bomb has affected these things...they sound like helicopters. Did some research...Apparently these things kill like 40 people a year...makes them the most deadly animal in Japan...and I was telling Jackie to chill out and stop panicking when they buzzed her face...oops. Oh well, we survived the killer mutant bees...off to the hotel to shower and then we went to watch the sunset over the Ohtorii Gate with some Sake....good idea? No. The sunset was beautiful....sake is nasty. Wine from grapes.....delicious. Wine from rice.....torturous. Why does a country with such good food drink something so awful? We went to a sushi restaurant for dinner and told the incredibly friendly chef we trusted him to just feed us....we ate some weird stuff....but it was all delicious. The people in Miyajima, if possible, are even nicer than the rest of Japan. Bed time. In the morning we had our breakfast and headed for the train station, long journey back to Tokyo this morning. We have to leave Miyajima earlier than anticipated because there is a typhoon headed for Tokyo causing train delays. As awesome as the Shinkasen trains are....apparently going 300+kph in the rain is too much for them :( . In the 2.5 weeks we've been here there has been an earthquake and now a typhoon in Tokyo.....why do people live there? Cause its awesome! Hopefully our plane can still take off in a typhoon...if not, I can't think of anywhere I'd rather be stuck, except Kyoto-Yodobashi.