Sightseeing in Hiroshima

Yesterday after breakfast we walked over to view the various A-bomb memorials in the pouring rain. Sadly, we did not do Vancouver proud as we came armed with a total of one umbrella and one raincoat between the four of us. Somehow we muddled through anyway. It almost seemed fitting to be viewing such a sombre thing in cloudy, rainy conditions.

I can't yet upload my photos but if you would like to see images of the memorials we saw, you can click on the map here: http://www.pcf.city.hiroshima.jp/frame/Virtual_e/tour_e/guide1.html

The first memorial we came across was a sculpture of a woman carrying a limp child. The base of the statue was buried in thousands of paper cranes, in every colour of the rainbow. Megan pulled out a hotel business card and quickly folded a crane to add to the collection in honour of the many mothers and children who were killed in the bombing.

Next we walked over to the children's peace memorial - a beautiful statue arcing toward the sky with a girl at the top representing Sadako, the girl who tried to fold a thousand paper cranes before dying of leukemia ten years after the atomic bomb. The base of the statue featured some glass display cases filled with colourful paper cranes.

Nearby we found the eternal flame and the memorial cenotaph for the bombing victims. From the south when you look at the memorial you see the flame and, in the distance, the a-bomb dome framed by a curved concrete sculpture. It is very pretty indeed, and as we were looking at it some Japanese ladies were busy cleaning the memorial and placing fresh flowers on it.

By this point we were all feeling rather soggy so we decided to explore the museum. For a mere hundred yen (around a dollar) you can view all the galleries, with signs and some subtitled video in English. Pictures, scale models and artifacts tell the story of the atomic bomb in a remarkably objective way; with typical Japanese humility, the display points out several times that Japan also inflicted a great deal of pain on citizens of other countries during the war, and doesn't point fingers at the allied forces whose decision it was to use the first atomic bomb on their city. The museum was moving but never maudlin, and there was something interesting for all of us to see. I think it was especially thought-provoking to Calum, who was fascinated by the life-size replica of the "little boy" bomb, wanted to know how it worked, and then had lots of good questions about why someone would want to use such a thing and why we would want to go to the United States after they had dropped such a horrible bomb. Talking with him about this, I felt lucky that my children can grow up in a peaceful country where bombs are something so remote from their experience.

Anyway, it was all great and well worth visiting.

I should mention here that Hiroshima itself is a beautiful city. Full of trees, very clean, with an extensive public transit system and a gazillion taxis. We met some wonderfully friendly taxi drivers who practiced their English on us and were very patient as we tried out our Japanese.
You would never know, except for the presence of the a-bomb dome, that such a short time ago this city was the scene of terrible devastation.

After our aforementioned Italian lunch (laugh all you like, Laura, but it was really GOOD Italian food -- so there! LOL) we visited Sogo, one of the largest department stores in Hiroshima. My original plan had been for us to take a ferry from the dock at Peace Memorial Park to Miyajima, site of the famous floating Torii. Given the weather, though, we decided that a ferry ride followed by outdoor sightseeing would be a rather unpleasant experience so we opted for shopping. I already described the basement levels of this store in my last post; the ten floors above it were equally amazing. One floor had a Kinokuniya bookstore and lots of toys and cute, overpriced children's wear (way outside our usual price range -- they had sections featuring Burberry and Ralph Lauren, along with the highpriced Japanese designers). We enjoyed shopping for books and stationery, and took some time to visit the pet department and marvel at the dog kimonos for sale. I kid you not -- dog kimonos.

Well - it is nearly breakfast time and I am sitting in the common room in my pajamas. Time to go figure out how to work the shower in our room.