Hiroshima

Well, today was an amazingly full day! Early this morning, all of us exchange students and all of the program teachers boarded the bullet train for Hiroshima. One and one half hours later, we arrived at the atomic bomb dome in the centre of the city. This is the first stop in the Hiroshima city Peace Park, and is the government building over which the first atomic bomb detonated. It has been preserved just as it was after the bombing, when it was one of the few structures left standing. From there, it was a beautiful stroll down the river, where we met one of the many groups of Japanese schoolchildren there for class trips. The ones that came up to me asked me (in English, this must have been part of the assignment) who I was and where I had come from, and then asked me to sign their little booklets. After that, we visited the memorial for child victims of war that was built by the friends of Sadako, of 1,000 paper cranes fame. All around the monument where glass boxes filled with sets of 1,000 cranes from all over the world, and in front of it a group of grade schoolers had gathered and sang a song in harmony. It was surprisingly effective. I had brought origami paper with me that I bought at a 100yen store beforehand, so several of us folded cranes and dropped them into the donation box. After that we wandered around downtown Hiroshima before heading to the Peace Museum, which chronicles the invention of the atomic bomb, its effect on Hiroshima, and its possible consequences for the world as a whole. I actually found the whole thing to be very well done, and clearly aimed at promoting peace and disarmament instead of pointing fingers. I have to say though that there were some rather gruesome moments. After that we listened to talk by a bomb victim who had been about 12 years old at the time of the war, and who is one of a group of such people who travel the world to protest nuclear weapons. Again she did not try to place blame and she even said that she at one point realized that if Japan had had the bomb, that they would have used it as well. After this, we boarded a trolley, then a ferry, bound for Miyajima island, site of a shrine that has been dedicated a world heritage site and our hotel. This was a traditional Japanese hotel, with cotton kimono, green tea and sweets waiting for us in our beautiful room. Dinner was a feast of traditional foods, which we followed up by a trip to the hot spring public bath. This was actually surprisingly fun and very relaxing. Afterwards, another girl and I walked around the island, which was incredibly peaceful, and petted the deer that appear to be pretty much tame. So, it was a long but definitely rewarding day.
-The peace park is vast and extremely lovely. It is probably possible to spend an entire day there.
-Hiroshima city is devoted to a message of peace, and as such its main symbol is the dove, while a secondary one is the paper crane.
-They said after the blast that nothing would grow there for 75 years, but that was luckily not the case. In fact, certain trees in the city (called, appropriately, phoenix trees) survived the bombing and bloomed again afterward.
-The bullet train is very smooth, but not really smooth enough to write a letter on.
-There was no hot tea on the snack cart on the bullet train, which seems to go against everything that this country stands for.
-Miyajima is beautiful at night when they light it up, but the lights don’t stay on all night and were off by 10pm.
-The deer here allow themselves to be petted, and are about the height of extremely tall dogs, and quite delicate-looking.
-Public baths are actually really fun after the initial awkwardness, though I wouldn’t want to go alone.