Hiroshima

Tokyo is definitely a train based city. I would not ever want to drive a car here! Before coming to Japan, Brad and I bought JR passes. JR owns the most train lines in Tokyo, and the pass is only available for tourists and lets you go on an unlimited amount of train rides over a certain period of time for one set price. Since we are able to go anywhere in Japan with these passes for a couple weeks Brad and I are trying to go on a couple bigger trips to make the pass worth it as well as to experience the the Shinkansen (bullet train).

The Shinkansen that Brad and I rode on.

And let me tell you...the Shinkansen is the way to travel! The trains always run on time, you never have to be there way before it leaves (we got there less than 10 minutes before it left), and you have more than twice the leg room that an airplane has. Brad and I left last Wednesday and got into the hostel that we stayed at pretty late. We were starving so we pretty much just dropped our bags off and then went to find a place to eat. Never thought we would do this but the Hawaiian place that we tried specialized in Spam (not joking. no we didn't know this when we went in the restaurant). So Brad had his first (and hopefully last) Spam burger. I had some nice noodles with Spam...it was easy to pick out the Spam.  

The Japanese style room we stayed in. The futon can be folded up and stored in the closet to make more space for living in during the day. 

Anyway, the next day we woke up early and planned on spending the day walking around Hiroshima seeing everything we wanted to, but it decided to rain. Hard. We went to the Peace Memorial Museum which was a really good experience. It definitely had an anti-nuclear weapon message, but was very informational and objective. The beginning of the museum talked about events leading up to the bombing, then they showed pictures of before and after, had a couple of exhibits on how nuclear power works, and then had artifacts from victims, and some of the after effects. I thought it was very well done, and very moving.

Diorama of what Hiroshima looked like before the atomic bomb was dropped. 

 

Diorama of what Hiroshima looked like after the bomb was dropped from the same angle. 

This was a pocket watch that a man had with him on August 6th. The watch stopped working at 8:15 which is when the bomb hit. 

A shirt that a student was wearing when the bomb hit.

Me with some artifacts that were collected after the bomb hit. 

The only known picture taken the day of the bombing. "I fought with myself for over 30 minutes before I could take the first picture. After taking the first, I grew strangely calm and wanted to get closer. I took about ten steps forward and tried to snap another, but the scenes I saw were so gruesome my viewfinder clouded with tears." -Yoshito Matsushige

View of part of the museum. It took us 4 hours to walk through the whole thing.

 

Paper crane's folded by Sadako.

Paper crane's folded by children all over the world. They are replaced with new ones every year at the peace festival held on August 6th.

The A-Bomb Dome

The day after we visited the museum we traveled to Miyajima to see the famous floating gate before heading back to Tokyo. The gate or torii is part of the Itsukushima Shrine and is one of the most popular places to visit in Japan. The shrine is located on an island off of Hiroshima so we had to take a ferry to access it. 

View of the torii with the shrine in the background from the ferry. 

There were "semi-tame" deer all over the island. This is me "yelling" at the deer. (not really!)

Brad with the deer.

The deer eating a pamphlet somebody had in their pocket, thinking it was food. I guess people have been known to get mobbed by the deer if they discover you have food. 

A pagoda that was near the shrine. 

Brad and I had a lot of fun on our little excursion and hope to make at least one more bigger trip while we still have our passes. We'll keep you posted! Let us know if you have any more questions about the trip! Its hard to fit it all in one little space...