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Published: October 14th 2010
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Hiroshima
We stayed two nights at J hoppers in Hiroshima. As soon as we got there we dropped our bags off and then we headed to the peace memorial museum. We did not have time to go through the entire museum but it was interesting, very disturbing and harrowing. I mentioned before that Japan and travelling has put my faith back in human nature and it displays how well we can all get along, but this places counteracts all these things. It showed pictures of the bomb, memos from the Hiroshima mayor to the world leaders to stop using nuclear power as a weapon…a few we noticed was addressed to the UK and France, harrowing pictures and stories of children being effected by the blast, letters to and from the us president and Winston Churchill agreeing to use the bomb and to keep it a secret, letters and meeting notes from the US government making decisions on where and how they will use the bomb and it also showed what Japan does to keep their peace declaration and how they protest against nuclear bombs. It was difficult to hear about parents trying to find their kids after the bomb and only
finding remains of shoes, bikes and lunchboxes. Very disturbing stuff, however this did not stop loads of people wanting to take loads of photos in front of pictures that showed skin falling off victims, death and remains of toys why?? I have no-idea. After the museum we had a walk round the rest of the memorial park and saw the Children’s Peace monument with the 1000 paper cranes inspired by the leukemia victim Sasaki and the A dome one of the very few building that has stood standing after the blast. After the park we went for some more ramen noodles and a few drinks before having a quiet night in chilling at the hostel.
The next day we did a day trip to Miyajima, another Japanese heritage site with temples and Buddha’s. It was day of sightseeing; we went into a temple and managed to catch the end of a Japanese original wedding. The temple was on the coast and you could see the floating shine from the coast, which looks quite impressive. Loads of wild deer around but there was no way I was going to feed them this time. We then did the hike up the
highest part of the island (misen) with the assistance of the ropeway. It was another hot day so walking up a ridiculous high mountain in the heat was loads of fun!! The view from the top were brillian, nice quiet and tranquil temples to ponder around, we saw a flame that has not been put out for 1200years apparently, a snake and a coke advertisement (they do manage to get everywhere). We decided to walk all the way down which took hours and we were worried that this may be the second time we would be stuck on a island for the evening ( the last one was for my 24th Birthday) as we may not be able to catch the last ferry back. We Just about made it and sailed home to get ready for an evening of baseball.
Baseball was brilliant, which is quite surprising as I don’t like cricket. We watched the Carps v’s the tiger at the Mazda ground. We sat in the Hiroshima Carps side; I mean we had to pick the carps. They are rubbish though and lost the game with a scoreline of about 1-5. The atmosphere in the ground was brilliant,
the crowd was full of children, women and of course the hard core male fans. Loads of enthusiasm and chants with a band in the corner and rowdy fans, a great way to spend an evening besides the fact our team lost.
The next morning we were off to Mt Aso, however not before going to the Mazda Museum, which I did not mind going to, but it was awful a young women showed us round and we didn’t get time to look at the cars or read anything we were shipped through the museum at high speeds, the cars weren’t that great either, only about a few crazy old cars and a few new green models. We were also put in annoying group of ppl, which didn’t help. After spending the morning looking at cars we made our way to Aso.
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