We woke up at our hotel in Hiroshima at 8:30 am after a peaceful night's sleep. Considering that we had been sleeping 6 hours for the past few days, it was a refreshing change and probably has something to do with the North American comfort of the Sheraton. Since we had to check out of the hotel today, we took our time getting ready after having in-room coffee made using an ingenious drip coffee sachet. We checked out around 10:40 am and stored our bag with the hotel luggage storage.
We walked to the adjacent train station (Hiroshima station) and tried omelette with rice at a restaurant. It had a base of tomato fried rice covered by a plain omelette drizzled lightly with ketchup. We were a little wary in giving it a try but it actually tasted quite amazing. The serving size wasn't enormous and we knew that because of a packed day we won't have time for lunch so we decided to supplement our breakfast with some comfort food. We had McDonald's chicken burger and as always, it didn't disappoint.
We boarded the Hiroshima tourist bus outside the train station at 12 noon and were dropped off at our first stop of the day, the Atomic Bomb Dome or the A-Bomb Dome. It is the ruins of a building that is still in the same shape as it was after the atomic bomb explosion in this city. It is the only building that retains its post-atomic-bomb state since the rest of the entire city that was also destroyed has been rebuilt and were it not for the A-Bomb Dome, you wouldn't be able to tell that this city was once destroyed in an instant.
As you must already know, Hiroshima has the unfortunate distinction of being the first city ever to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. The bomb was dropped by an American B-29 bomber plane (called Enola Gay) at 8:15 am on August 6, 1945. Next year will be the 70th anniversary of this horrendous incident. The actual target was the bridge that is a few meters away from the A-Bomb Dome but it missed its target and instead detonated about 160 meters away from its intended target. The bomb detonated in the air 600 meters above the Shima Hospital building and in less than a second, most buildings within a 2 kilometer radius were turned into rubble and ashes and within that instant, over 80,000 people were killed. About 6500 of them were children, most of whom were working in the area around the A-Bomb Dome to make fire lanes in case aerial bombardment hit the city. About a dozen buildings had their structures remain intact because of the use of concrete in their construction. This isn't to say that anyone inside the buildings survived. The smoke and ash from the explosion went into the atmosphere and within 15-20 minutes of the blast, the so-called black rain started coming down that affected the remaining survivors of the initial blast by drenching them in this radiation poisoned rain. The effects of the radiation from the initial blast and the following rain were so strong that by the end of 1945, a mere 5 months after the bomb explosion, the total death toll in Hiroshima had reached 140,000. It is estimated that about 350,000 people lost their lives because of that one instant that should rank as the worst moment of human history. The horrific thing is that it wasn't a spur of the moment attack but a lot of planning went into it. There were six cities on the short list and along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki (that became the second city to have been destroyed by an Atomic Bomb a mere 3 days after the destruction of Hiroshima), Kyoto was also on the list. In a chilling display of cold-hearted murderous intentions, all six cities that were on the short list for "receiving" the atomic bomb had not been raided in the war till then so that the Americans could accurately measure the destruction caused by the Atomic Bomb - unbelievable! Tokyo and Osaka had been regularly bombed in aerial raids but these unfortunate 6 remain untouched.
The area around the A-Bomb Dome has been converted into the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and while the A-Bomb Dome is a hair raising reminder of the cruelty that the human species is capable of, the park and the memorials in the park extend an optimistic message of peace rather than dwelling on assigning blame. Walking through the park and stopping at different memorials - one for the 6500 children, one for the 20,000 Korean nationals living in Hiroshima at that time who died in this incident and a mound that has the cremated ashes of 70,000 people - was a very moving experience. We sat at a bench in the park and talked about how it would've had been a day very similar to this one and that none of those hundreds of thousands of people must've had any idea of what was about to strike them. Just goes to show the ephemeral nature of life and even more than that, it shows us the capability of the human species to self-destruct.
We then passed by a flame that the people of Hiroshima plan to extinguish the day the world gets rid of all nuclear arms. Then we went to a memorial hall within the park that hits home the scale of destruction. The hall is circular and on its walls is a 360 degrees view of what you could see if you stood at the location of Shima Hospital after the bomb had been dropped. The view is constructed using tiles and 140,000 of them, in remembrance of the 140,000 who died in the immediate aftermath of the Atomic Bomb explosion. Just before exiting the hall building, we decided to sit through a movie that presents some excerpts of the book "Children of Hiroshima". We had already been extremely moved but listening to the version of events that 4 children experienced first hand completely rendered us speechless, with dry throats and teary eyed. Witnessing the painful reminders of this massive scale ethical crime is too much to take in a few hours.
Our last stop of the Peace Memorial Park was the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It further humanized the experience by highlighting the trauma and the horrors of the unforgivable incident.
After exiting the park, we took a cab back to our hotel/train station and then took the train to Miyajima station which was a 25 minutes ride. After getting off the train, we walked for 5 minutes to the ferry station and took the next ferry to the Miyajima island. This island is famous for two things - the Itsukushima Shrine and it's "floating" torii gate. We could see the gate from our ferry and like gates of all Shinto shrines, this one is also shaped like the symbol for the mathematical constant π.
After getting off on the island, we walked through the souvenir market towards the shrine. Another interesting thing about the island is that deer roam the island freely and not just one or two but a whole bunch of them!
The Itsukushima Shrine is breathtakingly beautiful. When the tide is high, the whole shrine that's made of wood and supported by wooden underwater pillars, seems to be floating on water. Painted bright orange on the inside with a red pagoda style single roof, the shrine is picture perfect. The shrine was rebuilt several times since it's original construction in the 6th century. The current structure dates back to the 16th century and follows models from the 12th century.
We took quite a few pictures of the shrine and the floating gate that's visible from the main dock of the shrine. The gate is made of decay-resistant camphor wood and is 16 meters high. Similar to the shrine, the gate seems to be floating on water in high tide but when the tide is low, worshippers can walk around its base. We were relatively fortunate to encounter a fairly high tide for the gate to appear majestically standing in the sea. In terms of evoking ancient Japan, this shrine and its gate have so far definitely done the job most convincingly. Although that might change after we visit Kyoto, let's see.
Then we took the ferry back to the mainland and from there we took the train to Hiroshima station. We got our bag from our hotel, got a McDonald's dinner packed and boarded the Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka. The ride took 1.5 hours during which we had dinner and I started writing this update. After reaching Shin-Osaka, we had to wait about 20 minutes for our next train to Kyoto station. We got a cab from the Kyoto station to our hotel Hyatt that was a short 10 minute ride. We were in our room by 10 pm and now about to go to bed. We are in Kyoto for the next two days after which we will go back to Tokyo.
We'll be back tomorrow when we have some tales of Kyoto - Japan's ancient capital - to share with you. Till then, take care and good night!
We walked to the adjacent train station (Hiroshima station) and tried omelette with rice at a restaurant. It had a base of tomato fried rice covered by a plain omelette drizzled lightly with ketchup. We were a little wary in giving it a try but it actually tasted quite amazing. The serving size wasn't enormous and we knew that because of a packed day we won't have time for lunch so we decided to supplement our breakfast with some comfort food. We had McDonald's chicken burger and as always, it didn't disappoint.
We boarded the Hiroshima tourist bus outside the train station at 12 noon and were dropped off at our first stop of the day, the Atomic Bomb Dome or the A-Bomb Dome. It is the ruins of a building that is still in the same shape as it was after the atomic bomb explosion in this city. It is the only building that retains its post-atomic-bomb state since the rest of the entire city that was also destroyed has been rebuilt and were it not for the A-Bomb Dome, you wouldn't be able to tell that this city was once destroyed in an instant.
As you must already know, Hiroshima has the unfortunate distinction of being the first city ever to have an atomic bomb dropped on it. The bomb was dropped by an American B-29 bomber plane (called Enola Gay) at 8:15 am on August 6, 1945. Next year will be the 70th anniversary of this horrendous incident. The actual target was the bridge that is a few meters away from the A-Bomb Dome but it missed its target and instead detonated about 160 meters away from its intended target. The bomb detonated in the air 600 meters above the Shima Hospital building and in less than a second, most buildings within a 2 kilometer radius were turned into rubble and ashes and within that instant, over 80,000 people were killed. About 6500 of them were children, most of whom were working in the area around the A-Bomb Dome to make fire lanes in case aerial bombardment hit the city. About a dozen buildings had their structures remain intact because of the use of concrete in their construction. This isn't to say that anyone inside the buildings survived. The smoke and ash from the explosion went into the atmosphere and within 15-20 minutes of the blast, the so-called black rain started coming down that affected the remaining survivors of the initial blast by drenching them in this radiation poisoned rain. The effects of the radiation from the initial blast and the following rain were so strong that by the end of 1945, a mere 5 months after the bomb explosion, the total death toll in Hiroshima had reached 140,000. It is estimated that about 350,000 people lost their lives because of that one instant that should rank as the worst moment of human history. The horrific thing is that it wasn't a spur of the moment attack but a lot of planning went into it. There were six cities on the short list and along with Hiroshima and Nagasaki (that became the second city to have been destroyed by an Atomic Bomb a mere 3 days after the destruction of Hiroshima), Kyoto was also on the list. In a chilling display of cold-hearted murderous intentions, all six cities that were on the short list for "receiving" the atomic bomb had not been raided in the war till then so that the Americans could accurately measure the destruction caused by the Atomic Bomb - unbelievable! Tokyo and Osaka had been regularly bombed in aerial raids but these unfortunate 6 remain untouched.
The area around the A-Bomb Dome has been converted into the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park and while the A-Bomb Dome is a hair raising reminder of the cruelty that the human species is capable of, the park and the memorials in the park extend an optimistic message of peace rather than dwelling on assigning blame. Walking through the park and stopping at different memorials - one for the 6500 children, one for the 20,000 Korean nationals living in Hiroshima at that time who died in this incident and a mound that has the cremated ashes of 70,000 people - was a very moving experience. We sat at a bench in the park and talked about how it would've had been a day very similar to this one and that none of those hundreds of thousands of people must've had any idea of what was about to strike them. Just goes to show the ephemeral nature of life and even more than that, it shows us the capability of the human species to self-destruct.
We then passed by a flame that the people of Hiroshima plan to extinguish the day the world gets rid of all nuclear arms. Then we went to a memorial hall within the park that hits home the scale of destruction. The hall is circular and on its walls is a 360 degrees view of what you could see if you stood at the location of Shima Hospital after the bomb had been dropped. The view is constructed using tiles and 140,000 of them, in remembrance of the 140,000 who died in the immediate aftermath of the Atomic Bomb explosion. Just before exiting the hall building, we decided to sit through a movie that presents some excerpts of the book "Children of Hiroshima". We had already been extremely moved but listening to the version of events that 4 children experienced first hand completely rendered us speechless, with dry throats and teary eyed. Witnessing the painful reminders of this massive scale ethical crime is too much to take in a few hours.
Our last stop of the Peace Memorial Park was the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It further humanized the experience by highlighting the trauma and the horrors of the unforgivable incident.
After exiting the park, we took a cab back to our hotel/train station and then took the train to Miyajima station which was a 25 minutes ride. After getting off the train, we walked for 5 minutes to the ferry station and took the next ferry to the Miyajima island. This island is famous for two things - the Itsukushima Shrine and it's "floating" torii gate. We could see the gate from our ferry and like gates of all Shinto shrines, this one is also shaped like the symbol for the mathematical constant π.
After getting off on the island, we walked through the souvenir market towards the shrine. Another interesting thing about the island is that deer roam the island freely and not just one or two but a whole bunch of them!
The Itsukushima Shrine is breathtakingly beautiful. When the tide is high, the whole shrine that's made of wood and supported by wooden underwater pillars, seems to be floating on water. Painted bright orange on the inside with a red pagoda style single roof, the shrine is picture perfect. The shrine was rebuilt several times since it's original construction in the 6th century. The current structure dates back to the 16th century and follows models from the 12th century.
We took quite a few pictures of the shrine and the floating gate that's visible from the main dock of the shrine. The gate is made of decay-resistant camphor wood and is 16 meters high. Similar to the shrine, the gate seems to be floating on water in high tide but when the tide is low, worshippers can walk around its base. We were relatively fortunate to encounter a fairly high tide for the gate to appear majestically standing in the sea. In terms of evoking ancient Japan, this shrine and its gate have so far definitely done the job most convincingly. Although that might change after we visit Kyoto, let's see.
Then we took the ferry back to the mainland and from there we took the train to Hiroshima station. We got our bag from our hotel, got a McDonald's dinner packed and boarded the Shinkansen to Shin-Osaka. The ride took 1.5 hours during which we had dinner and I started writing this update. After reaching Shin-Osaka, we had to wait about 20 minutes for our next train to Kyoto station. We got a cab from the Kyoto station to our hotel Hyatt that was a short 10 minute ride. We were in our room by 10 pm and now about to go to bed. We are in Kyoto for the next two days after which we will go back to Tokyo.
We'll be back tomorrow when we have some tales of Kyoto - Japan's ancient capital - to share with you. Till then, take care and good night!
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