Since Hiroshima is only an hour and a half by Shinkansen from Osaka, we decided to make a day trip out of it! And boy are there a lot of mountains between Osaka and Hiroshima and we spent the vast majority of our time going through tunnels where I had to pop my ears almost every three seconds.
Once we arrived in Hiroshima we took a street car to the A-Bomb dome and Peace Memorial Park. The A-Bomb dome is a former promotional/commerce building that the A-Bomb was almost directly dropped over, yet still had its still and stone walls standing. Since then its been reinforced many times as part of reconstruction projects. It was really earie to look at with all of its crumbled walls, and really hard to believe that something so close to the bomb could actually survive that. 
We then crossed the bridge to the peace memorial park, which had been the target of the bomb because of its military base located there.
We then crossed the bridge to the peace memorial park, which had been the target of the bomb because of its military base located there.On the island there were all kinds of statues and memorials, including an urn filled with all the 77,000+ unidentified victims, the peace bell and a children's memorial with a sculpture of Sadako from the story Sadako and the 1,000 paper cranes, and thousands upon thousands of cranes folded by school children. There is also a memorial in front of the peace museum that bears the words "Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat this evil" engraved in it. Every year there is a peace ceremony held on the morning of August 6th, and every year they add a list of the victims who have been identified in the last year to the the memorial.
The museum is under 100 yen admission for anyone, and 300 yen
for an audio guide which I highly recommend. The information lady at the Hiroshima station told us we needed an hour for the museum, but we ended up being there for almost 3 hours. Generally speaking, I do not like to talk about these sorts of things when I go visit them. So I'm not going to get to indepth with what I saw or felt, though I would like to share two things quickly. I feel that while Japan was not nearly as blameless in the war as the museum placards sometimes made them sound, there is no denying that what happened there was horrible. I could be wrong, but I feel as though most Americans either see it as needing to end the war or tit-for-tat for Pearl Harbor. I don't know what I believe for the first half of that statement, but I do know I disagree with the 2nd statement.I don't think that what they realized is that within the blink of an eye, with just 1 kilogram of nuclear matter, we anihalted an entire city, not just a military base, killing anywhere between 140,000-300,000 people either instantly or over time from radiation poisioning, serious burns and 
injuries and cancer, most of which were civilians. There were also a great deal of children within the direct vaccinity of the blast that never came home, as that day, some 8,000 had been conscripted to do work to make firelanes around the base.
One thing that really did shake me though, was when I was looking at some of the items from the rubble and from victims, I had been looking at a pocket watch that was kind off to the side. A volunteer at the museum walked up to me holding a tape recorder head set and said "English? You speak English?" I nodded yes, somewhat confused, and he pushed a tape into the recorder and before holding out an ear bud to me, he said "That my fathers" I kind of just looked at him dumbfounded for a minute, before I looked at the listing of the watch's donor. I pointed at and said. "This. This....this is you?" He showed me the ID badge for the museum and sure enough, the name on the badge and the name of the donor matched up. I listed to the English audio recording then and apparently, he is an in-utero A-Bomb survivor. His father, Jiro, worked at the Hiroshima train station, and was killed during the blast. His mother who was pregnant with him at the time, went into the main part of the city (with all the radiation and heat, extremely dangerous while pregnant I would like to point out) to try and find him at the station. By chance, someone toppeled a safe, and his mother found his watch and belt buckle. And that was all she ever found. He then gave me a postcard tha thad a picture of the watch and belt buckle and his story and contact information on one side and a picture of the destroyed station on the other.
After the peace museum, we hopped on another street car, local train and then a ferry to get to Miyajima, a little island off the coast of Hiroshima, with a very famous red tori that looks like i
t floats on water. It is one of the top three most photographed sites in Japan, and is really really beautiful. Unfortunately, I think we were there during the wrong time of year or something, because the water was so far out, it didn't even come close to the torii, but it was still pretty. The weather was also perfect for this venture and was the first down on our trip that we did not need our warm coats, gloves, umbrellas or some variant of the three!
Once we got onto the island there were all these signs saying "DO NOT FEED, TOUCH OR TEASE THE DEER."...so of course I was all confused thinking deer? what
deer? I read the sign further and apparently if you let them, they will eat your paper, clothing, souveniers, heck they may even eat you for all I know. We were walking down the street and there was this little stone area with trees and plants and suddenly I realized Okay... there's the deer...There were like...7 of them, just chilling out, watching people, one lady was petting one. It was a very surreal experience because the deer in Pennsylvania usually just jump in front of cars or run away like their butt is on fire...maybe because there is no Bambi season in Japan? There were some walking down the streets with people, some checking out babies in strollers...very weird. I eventually did see a deer eating someone's map.
We bypassed the temple that the Tori stands in front of mostly because it was getting to be 4 o'clock and we wanted to go up Mt. Misen to see the views and the cable cars only ran until 5:30. The temple looked pretty, and I'm sure it would have been nice to see it, but the experience on Mt. Misen was worth it! It was pricey, and my mom and I wished we had a whole day on the island to do it justice, but we were glad we got to see it all the same. The cable car was interesting because you actually had to switch stations half way up the Moutain to take another cable car up. Once we got to the top of the mountain, there was essentially the same warning about the deer...except with monkeys....
Unfortunately we didn't see any monkeys, but we did see some spectacular views from the first
observatory. there were some more higher up, but we didn't really have much time before they started calling for the last cable car of the night...and I did not want to hike down that mountain in the dark (there actually is a trail). Mom and I wished we had come there a little bit earlier, just so we could see more views and see the "7 wonders" on top of the Mountain that pertained to Kobo Daishi, the founder of Sengon Buddhism (once again, yay HIST 172)...it actually would have been cool to hike down the mountain, but the sun sets fast around here, so we decided the cable car was our best best.
When we got back down the mountain....the place was almost like a ghost town. The temple and cable car were closed, so there were really only the people who came down with us, a few lone s
tragglers in the streets and some people on the beach. It was so serene and quite and reinforced our theory that at least on the western half of the country, everthing shuts down at 5/5:30. After that we We captured a few more shots of the Tori during the sun set and lit up at night and Mom and I both agreed that this was the perfect end to our 11/12 straight days of traveling....
Well that's all for now folks! Next time I'll hopefully be in my dorm and will have found some form of internet! Here I come Mito!
The museum is under 100 yen admission for anyone, and 300 yen
for an audio guide which I highly recommend. The information lady at the Hiroshima station told us we needed an hour for the museum, but we ended up being there for almost 3 hours. Generally speaking, I do not like to talk about these sorts of things when I go visit them. So I'm not going to get to indepth with what I saw or felt, though I would like to share two things quickly. I feel that while Japan was not nearly as blameless in the war as the museum placards sometimes made them sound, there is no denying that what happened there was horrible. I could be wrong, but I feel as though most Americans either see it as needing to end the war or tit-for-tat for Pearl Harbor. I don't know what I believe for the first half of that statement, but I do know I disagree with the 2nd statement.I don't think that what they realized is that within the blink of an eye, with just 1 kilogram of nuclear matter, we anihalted an entire city, not just a military base, killing anywhere between 140,000-300,000 people either instantly or over time from radiation poisioning, serious burns and 
injuries and cancer, most of which were civilians. There were also a great deal of children within the direct vaccinity of the blast that never came home, as that day, some 8,000 had been conscripted to do work to make firelanes around the base.One thing that really did shake me though, was when I was looking at some of the items from the rubble and from victims, I had been looking at a pocket watch that was kind off to the side. A volunteer at the museum walked up to me holding a tape recorder head set and said "English? You speak English?" I nodded yes, somewhat confused, and he pushed a tape into the recorder and before holding out an ear bud to me, he said "That my fathers" I kind of just looked at him dumbfounded for a minute, before I looked at the listing of the watch's donor. I pointed at and said. "This. This....this is you?" He showed me the ID badge for the museum and sure enough, the name on the badge and the name of the donor matched up. I listed to the English audio recording then and apparently, he is an in-utero A-Bomb survivor. His father, Jiro, worked at the Hiroshima train station, and was killed during the blast. His mother who was pregnant with him at the time, went into the main part of the city (with all the radiation and heat, extremely dangerous while pregnant I would like to point out) to try and find him at the station. By chance, someone toppeled a safe, and his mother found his watch and belt buckle. And that was all she ever found. He then gave me a postcard tha thad a picture of the watch and belt buckle and his story and contact information on one side and a picture of the destroyed station on the other.
After the peace museum, we hopped on another street car, local train and then a ferry to get to Miyajima, a little island off the coast of Hiroshima, with a very famous red tori that looks like i
t floats on water. It is one of the top three most photographed sites in Japan, and is really really beautiful. Unfortunately, I think we were there during the wrong time of year or something, because the water was so far out, it didn't even come close to the torii, but it was still pretty. The weather was also perfect for this venture and was the first down on our trip that we did not need our warm coats, gloves, umbrellas or some variant of the three!Once we got onto the island there were all these signs saying "DO NOT FEED, TOUCH OR TEASE THE DEER."...so of course I was all confused thinking deer? what
deer? I read the sign further and apparently if you let them, they will eat your paper, clothing, souveniers, heck they may even eat you for all I know. We were walking down the street and there was this little stone area with trees and plants and suddenly I realized Okay... there's the deer...There were like...7 of them, just chilling out, watching people, one lady was petting one. It was a very surreal experience because the deer in Pennsylvania usually just jump in front of cars or run away like their butt is on fire...maybe because there is no Bambi season in Japan? There were some walking down the streets with people, some checking out babies in strollers...very weird. I eventually did see a deer eating someone's map.We bypassed the temple that the Tori stands in front of mostly because it was getting to be 4 o'clock and we wanted to go up Mt. Misen to see the views and the cable cars only ran until 5:30. The temple looked pretty, and I'm sure it would have been nice to see it, but the experience on Mt. Misen was worth it! It was pricey, and my mom and I wished we had a whole day on the island to do it justice, but we were glad we got to see it all the same. The cable car was interesting because you actually had to switch stations half way up the Moutain to take another cable car up. Once we got to the top of the mountain, there was essentially the same warning about the deer...except with monkeys....
Unfortunately we didn't see any monkeys, but we did see some spectacular views from the first
observatory. there were some more higher up, but we didn't really have much time before they started calling for the last cable car of the night...and I did not want to hike down that mountain in the dark (there actually is a trail). Mom and I wished we had come there a little bit earlier, just so we could see more views and see the "7 wonders" on top of the Mountain that pertained to Kobo Daishi, the founder of Sengon Buddhism (once again, yay HIST 172)...it actually would have been cool to hike down the mountain, but the sun sets fast around here, so we decided the cable car was our best best.When we got back down the mountain....the place was almost like a ghost town. The temple and cable car were closed, so there were really only the people who came down with us, a few lone s
tragglers in the streets and some people on the beach. It was so serene and quite and reinforced our theory that at least on the western half of the country, everthing shuts down at 5/5:30. After that we We captured a few more shots of the Tori during the sun set and lit up at night and Mom and I both agreed that this was the perfect end to our 11/12 straight days of traveling....Well that's all for now folks! Next time I'll hopefully be in my dorm and will have found some form of internet! Here I come Mito!
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