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Published: March 16th 2012
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Thursday, March 15, 2012 I was up at 5:00 am this morning. Since everyone was still asleep, except Jenny, I went to the hotel lobby to work on my blog. When arriving in the lobby there was a man, in a suit with his briefcase, sleeping in a chair. Within 10 minutes he moved to the floor for sleeping. By 5:30 am, it looked hotel security woke him up and asked him to leave. This is pretty funny.
Jenny was skyping a friend when I returned to the room around 6:45 am.
We headed to breakfast around 8:00 am. Breakfast was as good as Wednesday. I had the yummy Miso Soup again.
We made our way to the Osaka train station to get our seat reservation for our journey to Hiroshima. We arrived around 9:30 am and found out that there were no seats until 10:59 am. We headed back to our room for a short break before we departed. This morning was a slow start.
Our 1.5 hour journey on the train to Hiroshima was uneventful, however the terrain outside we passed was
beautiful. It was very mountainous and snow capped on one side and the Pacific Ocean on the other side.
Hiroshima We arrived in Hiroshima at 12:30 pm. We again used our Japan Rail pass. We have not had to pay reservation fee each time we to a different city. In Europe we had pay a fee each time we wanted to travel to various cities.
From the train station we bought a street car pass to travel to the A-Bomb Dome stop. Our street car trip took about 20 minutes.
We arrived at the Peace Memorial Park area. Our first stop was the A-Bomb Dome. This structure is one of the few buildings that survive the US bombing. Before the bombing it was the Industrial Promotion Hall. Attached are a few photos of the remaining building. There is an ongoing effort to keep this structure intact.
We walked through the park and stopped at the Flame of Peace. It is said the frame will always burn until all nuclear weapons have been eliminated from the earth. Afterwards we walked to the Cenotaph. The Cenotaph is for all
the victims of the bomb. It also contains all the names of all those who died. It has an inscription stating “Rest in Peace. We will never repeat the error.” We also visited the Children’s Peace Monument. A little history about this location according to DK Eyewitness Travel book. The statute depicts a girl with outstretched arms hands. A crane, the Japanese symbol of longevity and happiness passes above her. The work refers to story of a child victim of the bomb who believed that if she could make 1,000 paper cranes she would recover from her illness. The girl did not survive, but here story is known throughout Japan, and fresh paper cranes sent by school children from all over Japan always adorn the memorial.
Before leaving Hiroshima, we visited the Peace Memorial Museum. It did a nice job of showing the city before and after the bombing as well as the after affects of the bombing. The whole experience was very humbling. Attached are photos of the before and after of the bombing.
Today’s lunch was bought at a train station café in the Osaka train station. We are traditional ham and
cheese sandwiches. Pretty boring, but it was the easiest because of our aggressive schedule.
We left Hiroshima headed back to Osaka. Before returning to the hotel for dinner, we took a subway to see the beautiful Osaka Castle. It was night time, however it was incredibly large and well lit sitting on top of a hill. It is white in color. The castle is surrounded by a moat; however during the day I believe it is open for touring. The original castle was built in 1586 by Hideyoshi, however was destroyed in 1615 by Tokugawa shogunate. At that time, it was the largest castle in Japan. The current castle was reconstructed in 1931 and is much smaller.
Arrived back at the hotel around 9:00 pm and found a buffet open. The selection was good, however a lot of Japanese food. They did have a Crepe bar and strawberry fountain.
Friday we are checking out of the hotel a day early to go to Tokyo, however we will visit Nara first.
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