Atomic Bombs and Floating Toriis

Torii at night
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My parents and I left my house at 5:30 am Saturday morning loaded with our backpacks and bound for the train station.  Halfway to the station we realized that my parents had forgotten their camera!  With no time to go back, we had to make do with mine, which only works about half the time.

We took 4 trains (including 3 Shinkansens, or bullet trains) to get to Hiroshima and it took us around 7 hours.  When we arrived in Hiroshima it was raining as forecasted.  We checked into the hostel and got settled before heading to Maison de Croissant, a vegan restaurant a 10 minute rainy walk away from the hostel.  It was a really nice place (with table clothes and everything) and the food was really good!

Before the bomb
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It had been a long day with not much sleep the night before so we just headed back to the hostel and relaxed for a while before heading to bed.

The next morning we were up early and headed to the Peace Memorial Park for an intense day learning all about the Atomic Bomb.  We went through the museum but I wasn't very impressed with it.  It was really poorly laid out and wasn't really that informative.  Despite the rainy forecast for Sunday, it was a beautiful day and we got to explore the park and A-Bomb Dome.  The park has so many monuments to peace all over the place.

After
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After the Peace Park we went back to the hostel and got some lunch before heading out to Miyajima.  Miyajima is an island not far from Hiroshima which has many temples and shrines all over it.  It also has tons of tame deer and a giant, orange, floating torii (gateway to a shinto shrine).  This is apparently one of the most photographed spots in Japan.  It was beautiful.  We stayed for a few hours just wandering around and walking through the hills until well after dark.  We found a little restaurant at the top of a hill that was just closing up but invited us to have a few drinks.  From that spot we could see the orange torii far below light up brightly and the view over the water to Hiroshima.  We then went and walked around the torii on the mud flats left by the low tide.  We met some other visitors who were wandering around--tanuki.  These are called "racoon dogs" in English and look like small, brown racoons with no stripes.

A-Bomb Dome
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Once we were finished looking around on the island, we headed back to the hostel where I made dinner and we called it a night.  We had been planning to wander back past the A-Bomb Dome on our way home that night to see it lit up.  We forgot all about it until we were ready for bed and about to jump under the covers.  It was around 1am but I decided that it might be amazing and, since it would be my only chance, I better go.  I wandered through the deserted streets by myself and suddenly had an eerie feeling.  I kept imagining people running into the river with skin and clothing hanging from them bloody and burnt.  When walking across the bride I could imagine them below climbing up the supports and asking for water.  While walking I happened upon the burial mound where the remains and ashes of the unidentified dead were buried.  It was really creepy.  The A-Bomb Dome at night was nothing spectacular.  Only part of it was lit up and there were so many street lights all around it you could hardly see it against the sky.  But the walk was well worth the trip.

The next day we got up and decided to look around a bit more at the park before heading out to Shikoku.  We visited the Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall for the Atomic Bomb Victims.  This building had a huge memorial in the middle of it that showed the the neighbourhoods that were destroyed radiating out from the hypocenter.  The next room had a huge screen where the names and faces of people killed by the atomic bomb were displayed, constantly changing.  You could also look up specific individuals to find out more about them, etc.

They then had an area where you can read the stories of survivors and get an idea what it was like to witness the events of the day.  Many people lost their entire families and had to search through piles of burned up corpses before stumbling upon the carbonized remains of their own mother, etc.  It was very moving and really showed the horror of the bombing.  I would say that if you only had time to see either this or the museum, you should see this.

After visiting a few more monuments we headed back to the hostel to pick up our bags and start another train journey to the Iya Valley of Shikoku, a place the Lonely Planet calls "the Tibet of Japan."