Friday
We all met up in building 11 at 5PM and headed out together to Tokyo station. Surprisingly enough, we all made it there without losing anyone. We were given seat tickets, though when they handed them out, they asked I wanted a 2-seat area or 3-seat, and since I had no particular arrangements, I just chose the 2-seat since it would be easier to get out for bathroom breaks and what not. They gave the tickets in pairs and 3's though, so I had to find someone to give it to. D: Since this isn't my group, I'm friends with like...no one. So that was awkward (and depressing). I finally asked a girl who was rather indifferent if she'd take my other ticket, and she did, and the one kid I did know, Will, traded tickets with someone else so that he and his friend would be in the row in front of me, so that was cool. We boarded the 6:30 train bound for Hiroshima.
View behind my seat.
There was a pretty sunset. Well, at least it's the prettiest I've seen so far in this muggy city.
This was our dinner. Too bad I can't eat nori and had to give my onigiri away, so I was hungry. D: I bought some stuff from a conbini beforehand though, knowing this would happen, so I didn't completely starve.
The ride to Hiroshima was long, but fun. I brought my DS along, as did a ton of other students. At one point, one kid (Aaahh I don't know his name!) was walking through the aisle and saw all the DSs and decided that we should all play Mario Kart together. So Julia, who had Mario Kart with her, started up a game and 7 others (myself included) joined in. This was so fun, and hilarious. xDDD It would be so quiet, but when a race ended, people would stand up and point fingers and threaten to take people down, etc. I actually won a round too! I was super surprised, because I usually suck. XD So that was awesome. My DS lost connection though, but by then I was tired of playing, so it was cool. Everyone else I think played one more round after that before calling it quits, so I didn't miss out on much anyway. I spent the rest of the time listening to music and trying to catch some z's, but as usual, I failed horribly with the sleeping part. D:
At last, around 11PM or so, we arrived in Hiroshima.
What better way to be greeted than by amusing Engrish?
We headed out of the station and to our hotel. Sorry for the dark pictures, but lightening them in photoshop hardly did much to help.
Our hotel was the "Intelligent Hotel" lol.
It was kind of pretty inside. Harsh florescent lighting though, ick.
We got our keys upstairs and basically called it a night then, not to anyone's complaints. People could wander around outside a bit if they wanted to, but I don't think anyone did. I went straight to my room.
Praise the lawd the gave us all singles, so no obnoxious roommates! The single was small, but comfy. It was really all that was needed. Really though, I like the closeness of the walls. It's comforting in an odd way.
Funny story time. So I was checking out the room, seeing what all there was, and decided to see what the view from my window was like. The windows are frosted, so you had to open them to see outside. Well when I opened my window, all I could see was the wall of the building next door, lol, so I stuck my head out to look to the sides and see if I could see anything there. I look to my right and can't really see anything, but then I look to my left and see THIS
SCARED THE CRAP OUT OF ME HOLY MOTHER OF PEARL. I did NOT expect to see any living thing sitting on my window, mere inches away from my face, let alone one with a bright orange eye. At first I thought it was dead, because surely even a pigeon would have flown away when I opened my window, so that freaked me out even more. I slammed my window shut and hyperventilated for a bit before laughing. When my heart stopped flipping out, I poked my head out again to see if the bird was alive, and once I saw it was, I snapped the above picture, and again, the bird stayed still, just blinking at me. I was then all "awwww" about it because I do love pigeons, and decided to see just how chill the bird was. I closed the right side and went to open the left where the bird was, and the bird didn't fly off as I was opening it until I think the window slid his tail to the side to the point where he lost balance and had to fly off. :( So close. But that certainly made for an interesting start to my night.
I took a shower and then went to bed. That was pretty much that, lol.
Saturday: Atomic Bomb site + Peace Park
Saturday morning, we had breakfast at the hotel from 6:30-8AM, which was the typical hotel breakfast. I had just restarted my pills the day before though, and I had that morning nausea thing to go through again, ugh, so I had a hard time eating anything. Thankfully it was just Saturday that I had to deal with that. I eventually gave up on eating and brought my stuff down from my room to checkout. I was a dip and forgot to pack my little purse, so I had to carry my big heavy backpack for the entire day instead of throwing it in a hauling truck, uggggh that sucked. We first headed out to a trolly tram whatever thing.
When we arrived at the Peace Dome station, we hopped off, and I snapped a random picture of the area.
Yeah I don't know. I take dumb photos sometimes.
Pretty much immediately, we arrived at the Peace Dome, which is one of the very few things still standing from the atomic bomb drop. It was super eerie. I'm amazed that that much is still standing though, especially considering how close to the hypocenter it is. Apparently the hypocenter's pressure went down vertically and further out it was horizontal, so because of that it wasn't flattened like everything else, or something like that. Not my area of expertise.
Don't ask me what that says, I don't know.
Another shot. And definitely not the last. It's hard not to snap a photo everytime you see it though.
We made our way across the canal, heading toward the museum.
Not sure of the significant of these, but they were along the way.
Another memorial. This roofed statue(?) is covering a box that contains all the names of the A-bomb victims, which includes anyone that was alive during that time living in the area, even if they lived and died of natural causes. They're still considered victims, and so each year, they add more names as the people of that generation pass away.
This is a statue dedicated to Sadako (yes, the Sadako of Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes).
There's a bell inside, and this crane is hanging from it.
As you can see, 1000 crane chains are donated all the time. They get really creative with them too.
Anyway, we arrive at the museum, and we're basically given until a certain time to wander around and look at stuff as we like. Thankfully, they had lockers that give your money back when you return the key, so I was able to store my backpack while we were there.
The museum. As one would expect, it was quite depressing, and gives you the shudders, but amazingly enough, I didn't cry. I guess I'm just kind of numbed to it by now since I've studied WWII a lot and have already seen some pretty gruesome stuff. Nonetheless, it really makes sure you never forget what happened.
I tried to take pictures, but my batteries were starting to die, so I only got a few in before I was able to buy more at lunch.
Taken pretty much as I walked in. Nothing of significance; just a shot of the place itself.
One of the first cases featuring some clothing and ration books.
There was a huge mural of this black and white photo of the bomb site. Completely flattened. You can see the dome in there.
They had two models sitting in the middle of the room - before and afters.
Yeeeaaaah. The red line you see on the left is the hypocenter.
Another case upstairs featured a couple more articles. The first of this school boy. They had his barely legible nametag and wallet in there, which I tried to get a picture of, but my batteries were not cooperating. Sad though.
In the same case was this guy's glasses. I couldn't get a picture of his story because of my batteries, but holy crap, those two pieces of rock used to be glass. I can't even imagine what that man must have felt.
This was probably one of the most heart-wrenching items. If it wasn't placed in the museum, I'd believe it was a small statue before I'd believe that it was a real rike that some kid once rode.
This is a paper panel that has runs of the black radioactive rain that showered down after the bomb fell.
A pair of shoes Sadako was given while she was in the hospital. The tag said that after they learned she was terminally ill, her parents gave her a red kimono and these shoes to go with it, because they thought she should be able to own a kimono. It also said that she used to like to wear the shoes around the hospital all the time.
That was the last picture I was able to get before my batteries went kaput. It's probably a good thing, because this made me spare you guys photos of actual skin and nail samples of bombed victims (yes, they actually had that stuff there). And also the wax mannequins of what people looked like after the bomb was dropped, walking around with tattered and bloody clothes with their skin literally hanging off their bones. Yeah I ran through that part pretty quickly, lol.
When it was time to meet up again, we met up in a large room where we were given a lecture on A-bombs and H-bombs, and how much damage they do. It was sort of terrifying. Knowing that an H-bomb can completely obliterate an island and create a creater in the ocean floor while leveling the surrounding land and raining radiation in a huge radius...just one H-bomb y'all. Use of H-bombs could easily destroy an entire continent, and possibly basically make the world freeze over. And he had all these graphs showing approximately how many nukes different nations were holding, and yeah. No nuclear wars please. D:
After that was lunch time, which was another bentou that really had nothing I wanted to eat. :| I went outside to eat and eventually found a bench that wasn't in the sun and sat there. Unfortunately I ended up being in the bench next to some other CIEE students that were talking about all this stupid drama crap. It was some of the most asinine stuff ever, but since I couldn't find anywhere else to sit, I just stayed. I guess the good thing about not having anything good in my bentou meant for a short meal, and I went back to the museum early. Finally bought more batteries.
Next, we were to go back to the same room to hear the account of an A-bomb survivor.
Her name is...Matsubara...I'll just call her Matsubara-san, since I can't remember what her first name was. Starts with an M. But anyway, she seemed like a really sweet lady, and looks really young for her age (she's supposed to be in her 70s). But she had a stroke two years ago, which screwed up her muscle control, mostly in her throat, so she couldn't talk very well. On top of that, she decided to do her entire speech in broken English, so I only understood like 10% of it. D: During the Q&A afterward though, she answered in Japanese, which was like, 30 times easier to understand, seriously. I wish she had done her speech in Japanese with people translating.
Of her story, I don't know the details since it was nearly impossible to understand, but what I got was that she was with 2 other friends of hers, and they were outside when the bomb fell, and she said she saw it falling from the sky from the plane. When the bomb fell, everyone went flying and got separated. She got burned, and was too disoriented to move, but gradually she came more to her senses and forced herself to try to get home. She tried to find her friends, but couldn't, so she kept heading home. When crossing one of the canals (there are like 6-7 rivers/canals in Hiroshima), she saw lots of bodies floating and people in terrible conditions begging for water and trying to drink water from the river and dying and whatnot. She went down to get water too, but when she was down there...I kind of forget, but someone that knew her found her and that person's face was completely unrecognizable, and she couldn't tell who it was until they said their name. But yeah, she ended up not drinking the water and started going back home again. I think she found her best friend Takiko along the way, but she wasn't doing well. Something about her wanting to go back to her school but probably wouldn't make it there because she was too injured. Basically that was the last time she go to see her friend, because Takiko died I think the next day or something close to that, and Matsubara-san had always regretted not having been able to do more for her. She eventually made it back to her house, which was still sort of standing I think? But a bunch of people were in there taking shelter, so I think she went to an acquaintance's house after that. That's all I can remember of her account though, unfortunately. She also mentioned that she had been wearing white clothing, which probably saved her from worse burns. Had she worm black, she probably would have died. Kind of a crazy thought, but it makes sense.
After her speech, we had to do small group discussion. Michelene went around to listen in and such, and when she got to us, I admitted that I hadn't been able to understand her English, and wished that she had done more in Japanese since it was much clearer, and she said "Yeah, we didn't expect her to do all of it in English, but she said that she wanted to because she feels more accomplished doing it all in English and she thinks it might be the last time that she can give her speech, so she wanted to do it that way. But in the future we might have to do it in Japanese," which was really depressing to hear, lol. I hope it's not her last time. She loves being able to spread her message and feels like that's her role in life, to prevent something like that from happening again.
After her speech, we took a tour of the area.
This is a mound where a good number of the victims' ashes were collected. It's actually a thing that you can go inside. On the other side is a door that goes in, and they have shelves of jars with victims' ashes. They said that as they do construction, they still uncover more bodies, but even when they can't identify them, they put the ashes in the mound.
I kind of forget what exactly this was, but the point of showing us this was because of the ground. The lowered ground is actually the level the area used to be back when the bomb fell. I'm not entirely sure why just this spot remained this way, but that's the story.
Memorial for the Korean victims.
Another dome shot from across the canal with a photo of how it used to look.
A peace bell.
The remaining dome shots. We passed it on our way to the hypocenter.
Ahhh I didn't catch was this was either, sorry. This was also on the way, and it's just another memorial piece.
Nothing of significance that I know of, but that's an awesome clock.
We went to the area where the bomb landed, but I was at the back of the group and didn't actually hear that we were at the hypocenter, so I didn't get a picture, which makes me sad. DDD: I really wanted that. Oh well. There isn't any landmark, surprisingly. There's just buildings there. :|
We then headed to our next hotel.
Just shots of the city.
These rooms were super cozy. I don't know, I really liked these. I didn't want to leave, lol. Nice beds for just singles. Apparently I lucked out on the size though, as some other people had smaller beds.
At this point we had a couple of hours of free time. They had an optional trip to Hiroshima Castle, and the only reason I wouldn't have gone was because I wanted to go to a beach if we were close to one, but we weren't so I went. The castle was actually destroyed by the bomb, but they replicated it (sorta) and turned it into a small museum. It was a bit silly, but it was something to do.
Stupid, but we passed this shopping area along the way, and I thought it looked...cute? xD Yeah I know I'm weird, shut up. I wanted to go in.
Anyway, yeah, the castle.
Outside of the outer area.
Just inside the first gate.
Same area. And puppies.
The "A-Bomb Tree". I guess that means it's a tree that survived the bomb.
Still a ways to go...
Remnants of the foundation of a building. No idea what kind it was though.
Almost there!
And we're there.
Photos weren't allowed inside (except for taking photos after dressing up in silly SAMURAI outfits, lolz), but the 5th floor was basically an observation deck, so photos were okay there. Certainly gave a nice view of the city.
The hypocenter is somewhere between that red tower thing and the wide-ish building that's juuuust left of the center of the photo. Oh, and I think my guide said that taller building was the most expensive building in Hiroshima, lol.
We headed back to the hotel and met up with everyone before heading out for dinner. We were going to be having us some delicious Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki, and omfg delicious it was.
This place was kind of weird. You go up to the 2nd floor and there are all these individual shops that all look the same, and they all cook the same food, but they have different owners and the recipes differ slightly. We were assigned to "Shin-chan", which was way cooler than all the others, like "Momo-taro" and I forget what else. xD The empty seat was mine.
OM NOM NOM NOM NOM NOM. That was so hard to finish though. I was so stuffed. SO GOOD THOUGH.
After dinner, we were free to do whatever we wanted, so one girl in my group, Melissa, and I had chatted on and off and decided we wanted to explore, so we set out to find somewhere to go. But first, a picture of a bike we saw just outside the restaurant, lol:
Reminded me of Batman's, except not as awesome of course.
Okay, so since she had no particular places in mind, I was like, "Well there was this one shopping area I saw that looked really fun" and she was like "Okay, let's go there then, why not" so we headed out to that Pacela places I snapped before. xDD Amazingly enough, despite not knowing where we were and having not been to Hiroshima before, we actually managed to find our way there with little problem.
It looked pretty lit up at night.
It had a very interesting layout.
By the time we got there though, the place was closing, so we didn't really get to do anything. D:;; But that's okay. It was a pretty average place, if not a little lacking, but I felt content for being able to visit the place afterall. xD We decided to try and find a place that made smoothies or something, because that sounded really nice, but when we couldn't find anything, we just settled on visiting a 7/11 and got drinks. I got the passion fruit tea I'd been meaning to try, and it was really good.
From here we just went back to the hotel. It was a bit early, but good timing, really. It was around 8 and I wanted to check out the public bath. I wanted to have time to go there and relax in my room, and stay up long enough to let my hair air-dry, so it was really perfect. The public bath was on the 2nd floor, and I went down there in my pjs, which turned out to be perfect. The bath area was much like the one I used when I first arrived in Yoyogi back in 2004. In fact it was exactly like it, lol, except all the showers were Japanese style (which I prefer for public settings). I bathed, then hopped in the hot bath. I wasn't actually in there long though, since it had been a hot day, but just wanted to be in long enough to get that relaxing feeling. I hopped out and headed back upstairs. I passed a couple of people that were on their way down, so I was glad to see I wasn't the only one wanting to use it afterall, lol. I spent the rest of the night watching TV and drinking my tea. It was sooo relaxing. I went to bed around...midnight-ish? I forget. When I turned the TV off, it first had this screen:
lol xD ♥
I quickly conked out and had some of the best sleep ever. My god that sleep was amazing. Too good, really. I had a really hard time getting up the next morning, ugh.
That's it for the first two days. I was going to include Miyajima into this post, but it's 3 AM and I have to wake up at a decent hour tomorrow to meet up with Tomoko (the girl I met from the tea ceremony visit - we're actually doing something!). Miyajima will take too long, plus it'll be big enough for its own post, so I'll write about it later. Until then, g'night.
