Cheers to jelag, as we were wide awake at 0400 on our final day in Kyoto. Due to this we opted to leave earlier than planned and caught our train to Hiroshima.
Have I mentioned how much that I absolutely LOVE trains!??! Especially in Japan. Watch this
video.
Our Japan Rail passes gave
us free entry on the Hiroshima tourist loop bus, so we
paid 500yen to store our bags in the train station lockers and headed out into
the city.
Hiroshima is a beautiful and emotion-evoking city. Honestly, there isn’t enough in Hiroshima to warrant
staying more than a day, and with the loop bus, you can see everything fairly
efficiently. We immediately disembarked the train and went to the
Genbaku Atomic Dome, one of the very few buildings still standing after the
US set off the first atomic bomb. I was moved to tears and quietly choked back
sobs.
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| Genbaku Atomic Dome |
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| Genbaku Atomic Dome |
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| Genbaku Atomic Dome |
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| Genbaku Atomic Dome |
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| Genbaku Atomic Dome |
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| Genbaku Atomic Dome |
From
there, walking along the river, it turns into
Hiroshima Peace Park where we watch successive school groups pay their respects
with paper crane chains and beautiful vocal concerts.
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| Paper cranes of peace in Hiroshima Peace Park |
H
iroshima Peace Memorial Museum was almost too
emotional for me. Please, if you visit this incredible city, please take the
time to stop by here. I think that everyone needs to read the personal accounts
of survivors or those who lost loved ones that day. There are displays of the
clothes of people that died in the days after from their burns or radiation
poisoning, objects that “survived” the blast, and just the powerful imagery that was
captured. We truly can NEVER forget. There is a very human consequence to nuclear weapon development.
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| Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum |
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| Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum |
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| Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum |
We explored a little bit of the small city before settling in for lunch at
Bakudan-ya Honten (which roughly translates to "dry ramen").
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| Exploring Hiroshima |
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| Exploring Hiroshima |
After another quick train ride for the day, we landed in Osaka for the evening. We checked into our place for the evening, only venturing out to explore our immediate neighborhood and to grab some dinner.
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| Gorgeous manhole covers |
Of course the meal would be ramen, as Adam's primary objective for Japan was to eat ALL of the ramen, at
Kamukura Dotonbori. What is convenient about some of the restaurants is that you order and pay for your meal at a kiosk before you even enter the restaurant. The machine issues you tickets, which is collected by the restaurant personnel, so they don't have to deal with language barriers or money. It's actually very efficient.
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| Kamukura Dotonbori |
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| Kamukura Dotonbori |
And just some sites around the neighborhood:
