Hiroshima

Sean started early this morning getting out for Golden Hour at 5:15am, the first set of photos is his full manual camera settings shots.  He plans on another outing tomorrow morning before we leave.

Today was a mixed bag.  We booked a tour to Miyajima Island and the Atomic Bomb Site.  The tour didn't start till 10.30 and it was a half hour walk to the meeting point so we decided to take in a bit of the neighborhood on the way.  Hiroshima is green and leafy, has wide streets and is very clean. It is a lot quieter than Osaka and very orderly.  We saw parking garages that stack cars and others that pull them sideways, we saw heaps of beautiful flower displays, little buildings crammed beside larger ones, a taxi rank outside one of the big hotels and Japan's version of the lollipop lady stopping traffic to let pedestrians cross.

We finally got to our meeting point in a very swanky hotel.  The tour started off with a long bus ride followed by a short ferry ride to Miyajima Island which is well known for its floating shrine.  You'll know it when you see the photos.  It also has a 12th century Shinto Shrine and a Buddhist Pagoda.  Shinto believes finding happiness in this life whilst Buddhist is finding happiness in the afterlife so they balance each other.  There were two very large foo dogs watching over the entrance, one with its mouth open and one with its mouth closed.  Apparently the dog with it's mouth open is saying the first letter of the Japanese alphabet and the one with its mouth closed is saying the last letter of the alphabet which symbolises start to finish.  The path to the Shrine is lined with 108 lanterns which represents 108 sins (8 is a lucky number in Japan) and these are lit every night.  It was a really beautiful place and even though there were thousands of tourists, it still had a really peaceful vibe. (Note: There are 1700 residents on the island and last year they had 4.3 million visitors)  Also on the island are wild deer but they are so used to visitors you can walk right up and pat them.

After a few hours it was over to the A Bomb Site and Hiroshima Memorial Park.  It was sad, sombre and very confronting.  The Dome is one of a few buildings that survived the blast but it has been preserved in the condition it was left standing in.  It is a very eerie place.  The bomb did not fall on this building, it exploded mid air above the hospital building a few streets away however the effect was catastrophic.  One man survived the blast because he was in the basement of one of the buildings.  It is not known how he miraculously survived but he did live a long and healthy life.

There are numerous statues and symbols devoted to the survivors all over the park as well as number of fountains and ponds.  The water features represent the water that fire victims were crying out for after the blast, and that many "survivors" though alive, perished as they ran or jumped into the water to soothe burns, and subsequently drowned as they could not stay afloat (a fire ball ripped through the surrounding areas).  There is a monument to a 12 year old girl who was diagnosed with leukemia after being in the blast area when he was 2.  The Japanese believe that making paper origami paper cranes brings good luck so she set about making them from medicine wrapping paper when she was in hospital.  It is said she made over 1300 (the true number remains unknown) her parents kept hiding them under her bed so she would continue to make them, and thereby staying hopeful that she would get better.  Unfortunately she never did.  Her classmates as a tribute to her commenced a fund raising campaign resulting in the erection of a memorial.  There are thousands of colorful paper cranes made by visitors that hang around her memorial and other statues within the gardens as a symbol of peace and hope. 

We were then taken to the Museum which was where things got real.  They had an amazing panoramic wall photo of Hiroshima before the blast and as you walk past you eventually pass through a door into a panoramic photo of what it looked like after.  There was also a large round floor video screen that showed you the landscape of Hiroshima before the blast, the bomb dropping, the fire ball and then the devastation.  If you stared into the middle of it you felt like you were falling with the bomb.  It was really confronting when we saw burnt children's clothes and photos of the kids.  There was even a burnt tricycle. As if that was not enough, as we were leaving there was a time clock at the door which showed the date of the Hiroshima bombing, August 1945, days passed since then, and then the days passed since the last time a nuclear test occurred which sickeningly enough was in 2017 North Korea.

It was an incredible day!

Tomorrow we say goodbye to Hiroshima and catch the bullet train to Kyoto.  We feel like we have been in Japan for weeks because we have seen so much but it has only been 4 days.  We are really excited about Kyoto, hopefully old Japan is alive and well and we with a bit of luck we may get to see the Geisha's.



Photos
2018-04-01 - Hiroshima, pre-dawn and early morning
2018-04-01 - Hiroshima and Miyajima