The Hendersons in Himeji: Hiroshima and Miyajima Island

So this weekend we decided to take a day trip to Hiroshima. For those of you who are not familiar with travel in Japan I will give you a little tutorial. The best way to get around in Japan is by train. There are thousands of trains going thousands of different places all over Japan. Now each train is also different. You have the Shinkansen which is the bullet train and easily the fastest way to travel Japan, especially long distances, but it is also the most expensive. Then you have the Special Rapid. This train is not super fast or anything, it just skips smaller stations and only stops at the major ones. Then there is the local train. This is the exact same train as the Special Rapid but it stops at every station along the way. During breaks from school the JR line has a special pass called the Juhachi-kippu. When you go to the station with this pass, you get a stamp for the day and then jump on whatever train you want to take. Once you have your stamp for the day you can go anywhere you want and get on and off the train as much as you want for that day. So I, being the "frugal" person that I am, decided that we should try using this ticket to go to Hiroshima. Unfortunately, you cant use this ticket on the Shinkansen so we would have to rely upon the local trains. After doing some research and charting out our trip I found that if we used this pass and left at 5:28 am we would make it Hiroshima by 9:48 am OR we could take the Shinkansen and leave at the same time and arrive in Hiroshima at 7:30. So now we had a decision to make. Using the Juhachi-kippu would take about 9 hours round trip where the Shinkansen would take 4. But the Shinkansen would cost $320 round trip for the two of us where the Juhachi would cost $46. Hmmmm... So at 4:45 on Saturday morning with a couple snacks, a few books, our I-pods fully equipped with 5 movies a piece and our Juhachi-kippu ticket burning a hole in our pocket, we headed for the station. We were excited for our adventure and looked forward to seeing the sights in Hiroshima. 4 hours and 20 minutes and 51 stops on the local train later we were in Hiroshimam, bright eyed and bushy tailed, ready to go. Unfortunately, the weather was not so good in Hiroshima... and by not so good I mean it was pouring rain! By now we had come too far to let this deter us, so we set off to the A bomb dome. One of the good things about our 4 hour train ride was that we had plenty of time to read our Fromers guide to Japan. We were able to map out each and every spot we wanted to see in Hiroshima so we were ready to roll. After a short street car ride we arrived at the dome. I was a very somber feeling as we got closer and where able to soak up what happened here so many years ago. The A Bomb Dome is the remains of the former Industrial Promotion Hall. This building was closest to the hypo center of the nuclear bomb and still remains at least partially standing. It was left in its current condition after the bombing in memory of the casualties. A little past the dome we came to the Children's Peace Monument. Here we saw a statue dedicated to all of the children who died in the bombing. The top of the statue is a girl with her arms stretched out holding a paper crane above her head. The statue is in remembrance of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who died from radiation from the bomb. She believed that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes she would be cured. Even today, children from around the world send folded paper cranes to be placed at this monument. We then moved on to the memorial cenotaph. This cenotaph holds all of the names of the people that were killed in the bombing. If you look through the monument you can see the peace flame and the A Bomb Dome. After seeing all of these memorials, the weight of what happened almost 64 years ago really started to hit home. With heavy hearts we headed to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. In this museum there were stories of some of the people who lost their lives, pieces of buildings that were destroyed, clothes that were tattered, pictures of victims suffering from burns all over their bodies, testimonies from people who survived the bombing and information on nuclear weapons in our world today. Many times we found ourselves just standing and staring as there are no words to begin to explain the mass destruction and lingering effects of this bomb. Some of the statistics are more than my finite mind can truly grasp. 70,000- 80,000 people killed instantly, 90,000-140,000 were dead by the end of 1945 due to burns, radiation and other related diseases and up to 200,000 had died by the end of 1950 from cancer and other long-term effects. There are sights and sounds in my head now that can never be erased. Even after going through so much, its amazing how far Hiroshima and Japan as a whole has come since then. After leaving the memorial park we hopped back on the street car and headed to a small down town district that is known for its Hiroshima-yaki. In past blogs we have talked about how much we love Japanese food, especially Okonomiyaki. Well Hiroshima does Okonomiyaki their own way and we had to get in on that action. Our Fromers guide led us to a little hole in the wall place that made some of the best Hiroshimayaki around. We left very happy and stuffed! We decided we would walk around a little bit and then we came across a sight that we never thought we would see in Japan. It was called "Happy Marvelous Creations," and yes, the name says it all! While they may call it exactly what it is, us Arizona folk call it, Cold Stone Creamery! For those of you who do not know my wife very well, there are not many things in life that she loves more than ice cream, especially Cold Stone. So it didn't matter how full we were, there is always room for "Happy Marvelous Creations"! So by now we are in a food coma, but pushing on because we wanted to make it to Miyajima before it started getting to late. We headed back to the station, flashed our Juhachi-kippu and hoped on a 20 minute train ride to catch a ferry out to Miyajima Island. The island was so beautiful as we were surrounded by nature. After walking for a couple of minutes we were greeted by wild dear that roam the island in search of a treat from the tourists. There is also a beautiful shrine that has an Ottori that can only be reached during low tide because when the tide comes in it is becomes partially engulfed by the ocean. Audrey and I were there at high tide, but it was really cool to see the Ottori out in the middle of the water. There was a lot of great hiking to do on the island, but due to the rain we just hiked through many of the omiage (souvenir) shops. After a couple of hours on Miyajima we decided to call it a day. We took the ferry back to the train station, then a train back to Hiroshima. We gathered our belongings and jumped back on the 7:15 train headed to Himeji. It had been a long day and we were beat, but it was well worth it. We had a wonderful day in Hiroshima!