Day 27 – Hiroshima / Shimonoseki

Day 27 – Hiroshima / Shimonoseki

Hiroshima is known for being the site where America dropped an Atomic Bomb, and as a result is rich with recent history.
We woke up early because we knew we had a big schedual, and headed to the Peace memorial park, where the famous museum is for the incident.
I would like to write a massive amount about the experience and also post photos, but I will try condense it to a small amount, and we were too absorbed to think about taking photos anywhere.

On the way to the Museum, I saw snow floating down for the first time I can rememmber in my Life. There was a bit of sun streaking through casting a nice hard warm light which contrasted with the cool beautiful snow and the world became a different place.
When walking through the museums pre made route, the start explains background about Hiroshima and what type of town it was. Then they `drop the bomb on you` and its pretty hard to keep the eyes from going a tad red.

The meaningless slaughter of so many people, and the official real documents with things written on it similar too “We want to see what the effects of the bomb would do to a city so lets try it on Japan and not give them warning” don`t help to give enough reason for any of it.
I`m not going to take any sides because I can empathize with both sides and the happenings of war seem stupid to me from any side and angle. The museum didnt try to make America or the rest of the world look bad, but even so I would be on the Japanese side more.

They had a section where they showed photos of the people with melted and burnt skin, and the effect of the blast and radiation on people and a wide range of objects from all different ranges from the hypercentre of the bomb. I heard this museum was life changing and I definately do understand why, I dont think anyone could go in there and not be changed in some way. There was also alot of information about how the bomb works and why they are so dangerous, also why all nuclear weapons should be destroyed because of the entire worlds destruction.

For me, besides the large room showing the effects on the people, I was moved close to breaking on a few certain things.
The stories of the little children forced to help the war effort by destroying buildings as fire breaks.
Reading their last oblivious journal entries and also what happened to them, and of how they managed to make it back to see there parents before dying. They had to move such a long way with such burnt and melted skin, enduring radiation, and the Black rain (It rained black from 5 mins after the bomb), just to die in their parent arms if their parents were ok. And then the pain and emotion from the parents was told.
This together with how Hiroshima has send a special Peace Document to every country and every insident of nuclear weapons testing since then (there are hundreds on the walls).

Overall we were rushed so I could only read about half of everything and not absorb myself enough so I wouldn`t mind going back one day.
The reason we were rushed was because we were also going to Miyajima Island the second half of the day.
We had to take a Ferry accross the water to get there, and in the middle of the channel between the island and the main land I was lovin the view. Ive always liked the feel of being sandwiched between 2 big masses when on the sea, and the god rays of light pouring from one side only helped to make standing on the top deck a very good feeling.
When we got closer to the island I could see a cable car system going up the mountain, a bird of prey circling the docks, and a bunch of cool temples and monuments.
We got off the ferry and checked out a famous one first which is a Torii Gate in the water! Its about 50m out from the island, and is quite large. We also saw alot of wild deer hanging around which was very surprising, and the first ones we saw were 2 large females with a baby and they came out of no where to try raid our pockets for food. You could pat them and it was weird because our western brain sees them as too wild for that.

We then went up the cable car and the views were astonishing, the cable car moved around very erratically so didnt feel safe but it was fun, and we were pretty high up. After along while we reached near the top around 450m above sea level. We had 40 mins before the last rail car back down, so we ran 20 mins straight up slopes and stairs to reach the lookout at the top at around 550m above sea lvl.
We barely made it there and within 2 mins checked the AMAZING view out with the sun setting and took some photos, then ran the rest of the way back and just made the cable car.
Apparently there are cheeky monkeys around the place up there but we didn`t see any because we were so rushed. We also missed out on heaps of cool temples and even a world herritage site near the shore because we were so rushed and didnt have time.
Missing out on things just makes you feel disappointed and not appreciate what you have seen, so I will keep this in mind to make sure enough time to fully appreciate things is allocated next time.

We then went to Shimonoseki and a train was late for the first time in Japan so far (Its not a big city).

World Peace!
– D

~ by dylanrayner on December 17, 2010.