Hiromshima, actually quite surprising to us, is an amazing city, and if
you didn't know its history and stayed away from the Peace Park you'd
probably never know what happend here 61 years ago! The city is clean,
modern and spacious, better than most of the cities we've been to, good
shopping too (the Havaiana search is finally over, thanks to Danielle!)
We went out on our first night into the main shopping area (Hondori
St.), and had a local meal where the whole place went silent as we
entered!! Some Japanese guy befriended us and took us all onto a karaoke bar, had a few drinks (he tried to make us pay £60 for one round, but Dad soon argued us out of that one! We only had beer!!).
The Atomic Bomb Dome, the only building still standing from when the
bomb hit, was amazing, in a really eerie kind of way. The whole
atmosphere of the park wasn't any different to a normal park, which surprised us (we expected the locals to feel bitter about everything), but it seems 'Forgive and Move On' is definitely the Hiroshima motto!
After spending quite a few contemplative minutes at the A Bomb Dome
(well Mr M and James did, Danielle just took a million and one
photographs!), we walked across the new bridge (the old 'T Bridge' was the bomb target and is no longer there, funnily enough) and through the Peace Park. There are origami cranes, in loads of different colours, EVERYWHERE!! A young girl called Sadako started making them when she found out she had Leukaemia, making a paper crane is supposed to bring you luck, she made over 1000 but still died from the disease (A Bomb effects). There's also an Eternal Light, which they say will not be put out until all the countries in the world disarm their nuclear weapons (something I don't ever see happening...).
The Peace Memorial Museum was great, one of the most interesting and
shocking museums we've ever been to, but for all the wrong reasons
unfortunately. Some of the images made my stummy go I can tell you!
After a quick Japanese curry (!) we headed to Miyajima on the
looooooong tram ride and ferry to The Itsukushima-Jinja shrine, one of the three most photographed things in Japan (and they take A LOT of
photos!!)....Danielle added about 50 more photos to that number!! Very pretty, and we even got to see it surrounded by water and at sunset, which is rare apparently.
And that's about all for Hiroshima, Mr Malcolm has gone on to Thailand
and we are heading down south to Kyushu!!
