Wednesday (3/12)

Today I caught a fairly early start, and rode a couple of bullet trains to Hiroshima. I had to change trains at Okayama, which was a little frantic. I had 5 minutes to change, and I couldn't see the postings for which platform I needed, but fortunately it was the other side of the same platform.

Then I got to the hotel, and checked in. This was the hotel I kinda splurged on (since I'm only staying for one night). It was kinda weird, they grabbed my bags on the way in, they were overly polite (even for Japanese customer service), and the room is pretty decent (not much bigger than the Palace Side Hotel in Kyoto, but I've got a blazingly fast internet connection here).

Here's a quick video walkthrough of the hotel room



Then I went out to see the Peace Memorial Park just down the street from the hotel, built just next to the center of the bomb's explosion. First I went to the Peace Memorial Museum. Sorry, I didn't really feel like taking pictures .. it was pretty somber and often disturbing. I did get a couple of pictures of scale models of the city before and after.





And here's an even smaller scale model showing you where the bomb exploded mid-air. The card on the left marks the domed building that has been left just as it was. The card on the right marks where the museums current location is.



From one of the windows in the museum, you can see the Memorial Cenotaph, and the A-Bomb Dome in the background, just across the river







The eternal flame : Flame of Peace (can't see the flame too well in the picture)



And here's the Children's Peace Monument, which had it's beginnings in the story of a little girl born just before the bombing, who developed lukemia, and thought that, according to tradition, if she folded 1000 paper cranes then her wish to get better would come true. She died before she finished all 1000 cranes, but it sparked a worldwide movement of children folding paper cranes and sending them to the memorial. And it's made the paper crane a symbol for peace.







There was a bell dedicated with an inscription encouraging people to ring the bell for peace. I gave it a ring, and I could hear it being rung over and over as I walked around the memorial park.



This is the Aioi bridge, which was the T-shaped bridge that was the target of the bombing.



And the view of the A-Bomb Dome from the Aioi bridge



Some more pictures of the dome





Then, I was starting to get hungry (and depressed), so I figured I'd cheer myself up with some Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. I'd heard of a place called okonomimura (okonomiyaki village), and I was finally able to find it.



The second floor is where all the okonomiyaki places are, and each place is just a single 3-sided counter with a bunch of seats. So I walked all the way to the back where an old couple had a place called 新ちゃん (Shinchan), and the old guy waved me over, so I couldn't resist.



As I was getting close to finishing, I kinda felt like people were looking at me (a bit more than usual .. it's weird being the foreigner). The old lady refilled my water, and complimented me on how well I use chopsticks, to which one of the three guys sitting a few seats from me said, "yeah". So now I've been complimented on my Japanese twice, and my chopstick usage twice. The first time was in Tsukiji, when I had the only sushi I've had in my entire trip to Japan (weird, huh).

I ended up going back to the same area for dinner, and ate at ちいちゃん(Chiichan), and had their special. It was pretty good, but the Shinchan special I had for lunch was better =)