Day 6 Hirsohima city and Miyajima tour

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Today was the day i've been looking forward to the most. I was going to visit the place of one of the greatest tragedies of the modern times.

I don't take pleasure in war, nor do I have strong political views either way regarding the bombing of Hiroshima, but this is an event you learned about in your childhood, through your schooling and also from grandparents who fought the Japanese in the Islands in WW2.

The tour didn't kick off until 10.30 so I allowed myself the luxury of having breakfast in the hotel. The price was pretty reasonable compared to the other hotels. 1500 yen for a buffet breakfast (I could have gotten it for 1350 yen if I'd book the night before, a lesson I have learned for tomorrow).
The breakfast was pretty good with both Japanese and western options on the buffet. I stuck mainly to the Western food. Dried anchovy and other fish products really don't interest me at breakfast time. I got amongst the cereal, breakfast sausage, salami, Scrambled egg and pancakes with blueberry sauce. Yum.
The breakfast was substantial and got me through the day.

I left the hotel around 9:30 and took the short walk over to Hotel Granvia where the tour started. It's about a 5 minute walk on the other side of Hiroshima station.
At 10:30 the tour guide (Amy, real name something like iname. She prefers Amy as Iname sounds too much like enemy to foreigners. Fair enough) collected us from the hotel and we piled into a minibus. There were 17 of us on the tour. The mix was Americans, Germans, Canadians, Brazilians, English (this couple were also on my tour on Kyoto. Small world). Our 1st stop was to the Island of Miyajima (also known as Itsukushima (or more correctly the Island is Itsukushima aka Miyajima)). It took about 30 minutes to reach the ferry terminal.
We jumped on a ferry and took the 10 minute sailing to the island. Ferrys are running non-stop during the day and demand is pretty high. A ferry departs about every 5 mins and there are 2 companies running ferrys.
Miyajima is UNESCO heritage site and designated 1 of the top 3 places to visit in Japan. It is the home of the Itsukushima Jinja (Shinto shrine), is considered one of the holiest places in Japan.
As you draw near the island you see a large Shinto Torii gate about 20 metres offshore (see photo). This large entrance is not embedded into the sea floor. It rests on the floor under it's own weight. A pretty impressive effort considering it was first built in the 1200's (it has been rebuilt 8 times since. The most recent was the mid 1800's).
Miyajima is a really nice island. After you step out of the small terminal you have a really nice park area. Beware of the deer. Miyajima has tame deer that wander throughout the area. They will happily be patted. However they are very hungry animals (I don't think they are fed as such) and will try and eat anything you have. If they smell food expect them to harass you. I watched one deer take a bite out of a woman's map she was holding, then try to eat the paper shopping bag. Apparently plastic and paper will kill them. Seems they don't know that.
Miyajima (and Hiroshima in general) is also famous for it's oysters. There are Oyster beds all along the seafront. Hiroshima produces 60% of all of Japans Oysters.
It's about a 900 metre walk from the Ferry terminal to the Shrine. Before you reach the shrine you pass a shinto Torii gate.
Following is a street of souvenir shops and food shops and stalls. Miyajima is famous for it's rice spoons and most shops have a range of decorative rice spoons for sale at a range of prices. Miyajima also has the worlds largest rice spoon (see photo).
Also you can buy a maple cake. A traditional sweet cake which despite it's name does not contain any maple product, rather it is shaped in a Maple leaf style. The traditional cake has a sweet bean centre, although more western fillings are available for those that get turned off by beans in their cake.
Oysters and other fried fish products (Squid, Cuttlefish, Scallop, Conger eel to name a few) are on sale throughout the street. Also there is a couple of restaurants that sell the famous local delicacy Okonomiyaki, which is a savoury Japanese pancake. The batter is made of flour, grated yam, water or dashi, eggs and shredded cabbage, and usually contains other ingredients such as green onion, meat (generally pork or bacon). It is served on a bed of noodles. You can add Oyster, shrimp, scallop etc for an extra charge. I was hoping to try one of these at lunchtime however the restaurants were packed.
We reached the shrine and spent about an hour looking around. The shrine is built over the water. It was low tide so there were a raft of crabs and seabirds loitering on the mudflats.
A wedding party was congregating at the shrine, apparently shrines are a cheaper option for a wedding venue. Amy believed it to be around 120,000 yen to hold a wedding at the shrine (the reception has to be held elsewhere).
There is a lot of other shrines and points of interest in Miyajima, however we were on a limited timeframe so didn't get to explore the remainder of the island.
We jumped back on the ferry around 2:15. I struck up a conversation with the English couple. They are both well travelled. Ian was telling me about their Christmas / New year trip to South Africa and their African safari. He rated it the best trip of his life. He showed me pictures of the trip. It was amazing to see how close the animals got to their 4wd. They showed me pictures of some monkeys running rampant in their hotel room. They were 9 floors up and had left a door open. Apparently the monkeys drained the mini-bar and knew which foods and drinks they did and didn't like. They highly recommend African safari's.
We then headed out to the Hiroshima Peace memorial and Museum. On the way we passed a woman in traditional wedding garb. She had either just gotten or was just about to get married. The driver stopped the bus and allowed some of the tourists to get off the bus to take photos. The bride was very obliging of getting her photo taken.
Apparently it was our lucky day we had seen 2 wedding parties, luck got even better when the driver noticed a Sumo wrestler walking with his wife (identifiable by his traditional robes and hairstyle). Unfortunately I didn't get a photo as we had passed him before I had a chance to grab the camera.
Our tour wasn't supposed to take in "ground zero" as it is located on a narrow, busy street where the bus can't stop. However one of the tour party twisted the guides arm and the bus dropped us off just beside the monument (with quite a bit of disruption to traffic). The Atom bomb was supposed to hit one of the main bridges in Hiroshima and landed just below a hospital about 100 metres from the bridge.
It's hard to fathom the devastation, as the city is now a modern, vibrant, flourishing city with the scars well hidden.
There is a building (known as the A-Bomb dome) that stands in the Peace Memorial park. It gives some insight into the strength and power of the bomb that hit the city. The building is maintained as a lasting memory.
There is a monument in the park known as the childrens monument. It is a monument remembering the suffering of the children from the bombing. The loss of life, severe injury, Loss of parents and family, and the lingering killer.... Leukemia.
There is a famous true story about a girl in Hiroshima who survived the bombings. She was 2 at the time. When she went to school she was a great athlete. She fell sick with Leukemia. She made 1000 paper cranes from medicine labels, believing that this would cure her. She died at age 12. Her schoolmates were so shocked they fund-raised with other schools to develop the monument. The monument is a request for lasting peace and an end to nuclear weapons. The cranes were officially recognised as symbols of peace.
There are thousands and thousands of paper cranes at the monument, made by children all over the world. This is quite a moving monument.
We also passed the peace monument which the city donated as an ongoing request to end nuclear weapon development.
We then entered the museum. We watched a 30 minute film on the Hiroshima bombing. This is a graphic and horrifying watch. The film is no-holds-barred. You see very graphic images of the injury and death sustained from the bombings. The tour group was very quiet at the conclusion. It was very clear it had impacted everyone.
We ventured through the museum for about an hour. It is a very good museum in that it gives a very detailed account of life prior to and after the bombing. It highlights the wars Japan was involved with in the mid / late 1800's. There are artifacts recovered from the city after the bombings, things like plates and glasses (drinking) fused together, pieces of deformed bone and even preserved skin removed from survivors.
The museum is not biased. It recognises that had Japan not bombed Pearl Harbour and invaded the Pacific then there would not have been a bomb. The common statement is "If there was no war, there would be no bomb"! Perhaps this is part of the reason why US / Japan relations are quite strong today.
Hiroshima is a big anti-nuclear campaigner. It officially condemns any country who tests a nuclear bomb and the Mayor personally contacts that country to discourage further testing and promotes peace.
There is a clock in the museum lobby. There is a digital clock at the bottom which shows the number of days since the last nuclear weapon was fired. Unfortunately the clock reads only 5 days since the last firing, thanks to the North Koreans and their missile testing. The Japanese are very concerned about their close neighbors and their recent antics.
We concluded the tour at 5:30 and we returned to the Granvia. Prior to disembarking Amy gave us all a paper crane which she crafted while we were in the museum. We were all pretty blown away, it was a great gesture and really completed the trip.
If I had more time I would do my own walk around the Peace park as there is quite a bit to see and read. Unfortunately it's time I don't have since I head back to Tokyo in the morning.

So this concludes the touring section of Japan. I catch the Shinkansen in the morning for the 5 hour trip back to Tokyo. 1.5 hours to Shin-Osaka, a train change then all the way to Tokyo. Hopefully on my return to Tokyo I will be catching up with a former work colleague and get a chance to have a few beers and see some of the other sites of Tokyo before I depart the country.

Until tomorrow.
Sayonarra

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Photos

Torii gate
This is not embedded into the sea floor. It rests on the floor under it's own weight.

Thousands of Paper cranes
donated from children all around the world

Days since last nuclear missle fired
Bloody North Koreans

Clock stopped at 8:15
August 6, 1945. The time the bomb hit Hiroshima

A roof tile idicating who died in the house
This tile was discovered by a son of the deceased who was away from the city at the time of the bomb and returned to locate his family.

Comments

[Jacob]

Hiroshima
Hiroshima is such a nice city. I loved Miyajima when I visited there - one of my favourite places in Japan. If you let me know where you are staying in Tokyo then I can come and meet you sometime in the early evening. I thought I could take you to an izakaya (Japanese style restaurant) to try some local food, like the okinomiyaki.