Splendors of Japan
Day Eleven – 21 May 2014
Osaka – Hiroshima
Weather: drizzle to sun, 15-23
Speaking of light. The rain poured all night and about 1:30, the thunder shook the building. I reached out for my camera and hit the video button hoping to catch the thunder but didn’t. I did catch the sound of the rain.
And all I can think is that all that rain could wash out the only road into Mt. Koya.
I was up at 6:30 (yes, the monastery doesn’t have showers in the rooms but you can get an automatic wake up call, wifi and cable…we love the irony).
Breakfast was the most interesting Be My Guess meal yet. Tofu is recognizable but the rest isn’t, including the white slim. Some of us couldn’t even watch people eating it (even though it was fairly tasteless, the slimy texture was not my cup of tea. Last night was a green slim soup made from seaweed that some people just loved.) The green tea this morning was the best I’d had in Japan and when the female monk came around serving rice, I asked if I could have two and she said yes.
I’m set until lunch!
Cause if there was no rice, we would have been looking for a comfort stop five minutes after we pulled out of the monastery.
We were done by 7:30 and out to the bus for 8. The monks didn’t wave but one stood in the street and bowed as though praying.
And all I can think of is the steep switchbacks and the heavy rain last night.
The road was weavy all the way down and this time the steep slopes were on my side. It was drizzly and foggy but the drizzle cleared as we hit the valley and by the time we got to Osaka, the sun was out.
On the way, we pass buildings advertising slots and Kimiko said they are actually a type of game with balls but that it’s against the law to win the money so they give out prizes instead. But then you go out the back way and exchange the prize for money.
Kimiko said Osaka is the third largest city after Tokyo and Yokahama by population with 2.7 million people. Nagoya if fourth. Osaka had become an important distribution centre for the rice that the lords used to collect as tax. It would be stored here and then shipped to Tokyo.
The itinerary changed a bit from last year’s when they had lunch in Osaka and got into Hiroshima later in the afternoon. We went straight to the Hiroshima station, grabbed a bit to eat there and took the 11:45 train to Hiroshima.
The bullet train can travel up to 270 kph (too fast for decent photo ops but I did take some video that really gives a good indication of the speed). The train was built for the Olympics so this is its 50th year. It is very punctual, never being out more than 30 seconds (and even that only happens in case of earthquake). There are 3000 workers who inspect the tracks every single night to make sure nothing can impede the train which simply would not be able to stop for anything.
Kimiko had assigned seats so that we would have no one get a window seat twice. It wasn’t difficult getting on and there was plenty of room on the overhead shelf for our bags. I had a window seat and had plenty of room to get out without the others having to move. We counted up the seats and number of cars and estimated that a full train could carry 1600 people.
It takes until 1:11 pm to reach Hiroshima. Three hundred kilometres in under two hours.
Try that on a bus!
Hiroshima is known as the City of Peace for obvious reasons and they take it very seriously. The city sits on a delta and is a series of islands split by six rivers. Our first stop is at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.
The park includes more than the A-Bomb Dome, which where we start. The original target of the bomb was the Aioi Bridge right next to it but the wind blew the bomb 160 m to the east so that it exploded 580 feet directly above the former Industrial Promotion Hall. The building’s location and design contributed to it surviving the blast somewhat intact though the people inside died. The original Aioi bridge survived the blast and remained in use until it was replaced 35 years later.
We walked around the Dome to take pictures and read the information boards. No one is allowed on the grounds of the building itself and an alarm is in place. Contrary to what some thought, we didn’t get strange looks from the Japanese. Quite the opposite. One teacher asked me where I was from and bowed and told his class and they all waved and said hello. Later on, I watched a concert and some of the kids gave me an enthusiastic wave. No one glared at us. No one said anything to us. We were met at every turn by smiles and bows. There were no recriminations or blame. Just understanding, forgiveness and a deep-seated wish for peace.
This is why I think Americans should not skip the extension to Hiroshima.
We walked across a bridge to the Children’s Memorial Park. It’s hard not to get emotional here. There is a memorial to Sadako Sasaki, the 10 year old girl who got leukemia and made the cranes hoping it would bring a cure. She died at 12. There are thousands of cranes in a display around the memorial. She is the inspiration for the book “One Thousand Paper Cranes.”
The next stop in the park is to the Eternal Flame which is going to be left lit until the world dismantles all of its nuclear weapons.
Which won’t be tomorrow.
The next stop is to the Memorial Cenotaph which has a book with the names of all those who died. About 4000 names a year are being added as the survivors pass away. The inscription reads: Let all the souls here rest in peace for we shall not repeat the evil. The Japanese translation was carefully constructed so that the word “we” would not be misinterpreted as “they.”
The Cenotaph arch forms a direct line of sight from the A-bomb Dome to the Children’s Memorial, Eternal Flame on one side and the museum, which is our next stop.
We are given more than an hour to walk through the museum which of course isn’t enough, but was enough to spend time at some of the exhibits. The one thing everyone commented on afterwards is that the museum does not change history or ignore the more embarrassing or disturbing parts. In the pre-bomb exhibit, they follow the Japanese expansionism and even mention Nanking. There is no blame, no accusations. Just the facts as we all know them.
One display has a watch that stopped at the moment of the bomb. Several models show Hiroshima before and after the blast. Another shows it in relation to where the bomb exploded above it (which mercifully is why the city is livable today. There was no irradiated soil to fall back and the radiation dissipated in the air.)
One display shows the bomb as photographed from the ground. As I passed from one building to the next, I came across the one thing I never expected to find in Hiroshima or the museum. A shop selling t-shirts and souvenirs.
Granted, they all point to peace. I got my first “normal” t-shirt here saying Hiroshima Loves Peace.
Don’t we all.
From here we made a 30 minutes stop at the Shukkien Gardens which like in Kanazawa, were built to give the locals an idea of what it looked like in other parts of Japan. This one had several bridges which are replicas of other bridges throughout the country. And for 100 Yen ($1), we can feed the koi and turtles…but we ended up feeding the pigeons instead. Very nice on a comfortably warm sunny day.
By 4:30, we were at the hotel and checked in. My first thought is to return to the A-Bomb Dome and take my time walking around. It’s only a 5 minute walk (I can see it from my window). I cross the Aioi bridge and get a great view of the building from across the river.
On the bank, there is a group of children lining up and there is a piano. I go over and see a sign that it’s a Peace concert with an atom-bombed piano. The children sing three songs but I’m almost out of memory on my card and get only the first one.
If you watch no other video on my site, watch this one. It was everything I could do not to cry in public.
Kimiko would later listen to the video and told me they were singing about the dream for peace.
I took my time wandering the site, again to no glares but many bows and greetings.
One thing I notice in Hiroshima is more kids have coloured hair and there were even some down to earth punk kids.
Granted, they stood out like sore thumbs compared to all the other Japanese children we saw.
I went looking for McDonald’s but had left my map behind and was one block too far over when I ran into two tourmates. They were slightly confused too, so I knew where they wanted to go (you have to go underground to cross the street at the intersection by the hotel and there’s a mall down there). When he knew where to go, he gave me his map and I found McDonalds and the shopping street, but by then, my foot was saying ‘turn around.’ I had a Big Mac and it was getting dark by the time I got back to the hotel. Not that there’s any worry. You can very safely walk the streets after dark here.
If my foot wasn’t such a problem, I could have walked so much more on this tour.
Can’t wait to see my massage therapist.
Go to Day Twelve
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