A history lesson in Hiroshima

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After an action packed few days in Kyoto, we were on our way to Hiroshima, about 2 hours south.

Hiroshima is most known for being blown apart by the Atomic Bomb which the USA dropped without any warning on the city on August 6^th 1945 (end of WW2), wiping out the whole city and anyone within 3km of it – more of this to follow shortly.

We arrived in Hiroshima by the Bullet train in the afternoon and jumped on a tram to our hostel for the next 2 nights called J-Hoppers. The building used to be a traditional Japanese house and has kept many of the original features, so our room had fold out futons on tatami mats on the floor as beds, with a low table and cushions as seats in the corner and a sliding Japanese door, really cool. As soon as we checked in we saw a big sign on the notice board about a baseball game happening that evening between the Hiroshima Carps and the Yakult Swallows, so decided to go and check it out. We got back on the tram to the Mazda Zoom Zoom baseball stadium, bought tickets on the door for just £13 each and climbed up to our seats in the top tier. Although these were the cheapest seats in the stadium they had really good views of the pitch and we were excited to be seeing not only our first ever baseball game, but our first Japanese baseball game which was sure to offer up something different.

The game started and although we didn’t really know the rules we got into it and cheered along with the home fans, one of whom was on his own and shouting/singing at the top of his voice for the entire game and getting really animated which was funny. Another below us was kitted out like a ninja and was throwing some funky shapes when the home teams’ anthem came on. We noticed straight away that almost every single person had bought along food for the game, which can last for up to 4 hours, and rather than the typical hot dogs, burgers and chips you might see at a football match back home, these fans were tucking into ramen noodles, sushi and dried fish throughout the match! At one point about an hour into the game a man came and sat near us, got out a big ‘Hello Kitty’ soft toy and another teddy (team mascot), and proceeded to take photos of them with his massive SLR camera, with the baseball field and teams in the background, before moving on to another area of the stadium. We looked at each other and laughed, but no one else even batted an eyelid!

At half time, the team mascot (a man in a chicken/pumpkin costume?) came onto the pitch and started doing dance moves to a song/video that was playing on the big screens. To our amazement (we shouldn’t have been surprised really), half the stadium – grown men especially – stood up and starting copying the dance moves! At another time, a player had just hit the ball and ran to 1^st base when the game was ‘paused’ and his face came up on the big screen and everyone cheered and clapped – apparently it was his 250^th game for the club…can you imagine at home a footie match stopping right in the middle of it so that everyone could cheer a player who had just got the ball?? Then in the last quarter of the game, everyone got out these huge red balloons, blew them up and on cue let them go into the sky which made for a nice photo but we didn’t really understand why this had happened. The Japanese are quirky to say the least…!

We left just before the end of the match and decided to walk towards the downtown area of Hiroshima to grab a bite to eat on the way back to the hostel. The walk was nice but after about 30 minutes we ended up in the red light area of downtown instead of where we wanted to be (where all the restaurants and bars were), and as we didn’t really know where we were, it was dark and quite cold, we just carried on walking towards our hostel which took another 20 minutes or so. We grabbed a supper of pot noodles, spring rolls and fried chicken from the 7/11 and ate it in our hostel, before going up to our room to do some computer stuff and getting to bed shortly before 1am.

The next morning was sunny so we were up and out fairly early, ready to learn about the history of Hiroshima with our first stop being the Peace Museum. We took an audio tour through the museum, which was very informative and detailed but also sad, and learnt all about the Atomic Bomb which the USA dropped on the city in 1945…

The bomb was dropped, and then detonated 600 metres above the city and upon exploding reached over 3000 degrees, turning into a fireball and destroying almost everything in the vicinity. Over 150,000 people were killed, either instantly or in the days after the attack, due to severe burns from the heat of the bomb or effects from radiation which the bomb caused. Pregnant women who survived the attack often gave birth in the months after to babies with physical difficulties and growth stunts due to the radiation. The USA chose Hiroshima to be the victim of this attack mainly because it didn’t have any Prisoner of War (POW) camps there. They justified its attack on the city as follows – if they hadn’t done it, the (then) Soviet Union would have. They justified the cost and years of making the bomb (which started being built in 1942 and cost millions of dollars) by saying it would end the war. What they didn’t say was how many innocent people were killed by it, how many lives were torn apart by it, and how much destruction they caused by it. Basically they wanted to be the first to claim this equipment that eliminated what was once a prosperous Japanese city. As if this wasn’t enough, they continued to bomb Japan until the Japanese surrendered to them. Of course there are two sides to everything and we only saw it from the Japanese's side but what we saw was devastating.

However, the Japanese being the resilient and efficient nation that they are, started to rebuild this broken city soon after the horrendous attack and by the end of 1948 Hiroshima was trading again, with new houses being built, hospitals and schools constructed and a community returning there to continue their lives. Ever since the bomb was dropped, the mayor of Hiroshima has written every month to embassies of the countries that still have and test nuclear weapons (USA, UK, China, Russia and France) in a bid to stop something like this ever happening again.

After a tough but necessary history lesson in the museum, we walked around the aptly named Peace Park nearby, which used to be made up of buildings and houses but was flattened by the bomb. When the Japanese people started to rebuild their city, they thought it would be appropriate to commemorate the event with a beautiful memorial park to further instil their fight for peace. Every year on August 6^th a ceremony is held in the park, remembering those who were killed and bringing together generations of people who live here.

Today the city is modern, busy and exciting, the only obvious evidence that it went through such a harrowing ordeal less than 70 years ago is the shell of one original building in the park, which used to be the Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, a place of entertainment and information. With its burnt out metal dome structure and crumbling stone walls still partly in-tact due to the proximity of the blast, The A-Bomb Dome (as it is now known) is a stark reminder of Hiroshima’s pre-war face. We walked around the building, which is now a Unesco World Heritage site, not quite believing how it survived the blast when nothing else did, before crossing the bridge to leave the park and collect our thoughts.

Within 5 minutes we were in the bustling downtown area that we had tried to find the night before, so stopped for some lunch (pasta today yay!) and a donut from Mister Donut before deciding to head back to the hostel for the afternoon for our first bit of relaxing since arriving in Japan 11 days ago. We enjoyed watching a couple of episodes of Homeland on our laptop and napping for the rest of the afternoon, before getting changed and going out that evening. We walked back to the downtown area which is about a 20 minute walk (and saw the A-Bomb Dome lit up at night) looking for an Indian restaurant for dinner as we were craving it, but instead we found a cool Mexican where we enjoyed Burritos and a couple of drinks. We had intended to go to some bars and maybe a club later on, as Hiroshima has a lot of nightlife, but we must have been too early as everywhere we went was really quiet (it was only about 9.30pm but it was a Saturday), so we called it a night, stopping at a shop on the way home for some chocolate and biscuits which we enjoyed in our room with cups of tea and some more episodes of Homeland before falling asleep before midnight– I know I know, we are just too crazy!

On our last day in Hiroshima, Scott was up early to go for a run and I walked round the corner to a bakery we had spotted the day before to get some yummy pastries for breakfast. We had them with a cup of tea in our room before checking out and making our way to Miyajima, a small island about an hour away from Hiroshima, which you get to by ferry. Miyajima is a nice little day trip and is most famous for its floating red Torri Gate, which is best seen at high tide, so we timed it well and saw the structure at lunch time to get the best shots of it. You can also climb or get a cable car up to Mt Misen, but we didn’t fancy that. We walked around the island which was really cute, with lots of wild deer, little shops and Green Tea places (!), Scott tried and disliked a squid cake (like a fish cake but pure chewy squid on a stick), and we got the ferry back to Hiroshima a couple of hours later.

We then went back to our hostel, got our bags, and jumped back on the tram to the train station to get on the Bullet train one last time to our last stop in Japan, Osaka…

Hiroshima was a really cool place to spend a couple of days and despite its sad history, the variety of places to eat and drink, along with the traditional tram and easy access across the city made it an enjoyable stop for us.



S&V's Travel Info & Tips:

General Info: Approx 125 yen to £1. Hiroshima, for obvious reasons is on most peoples Japanese itenaries. The city itself is much smaller in scale than most towns we have visited in Japan and most destinations can be reached by foot. The Peace Museum costs a bargain 50 yen, whilst the audio tour is an additional 300yen.

Transportation: Tram is the main mode of transport here - a single journey, whatever the distance costs 150 yen whilst a one day travel card costs 600 yen. Note, if you are transfering between tram lines, ask the driver for a transfer card which allows you to get on any other tram within the next 30 minutes for free.

Food: By this point in the trip, we have finally hit the wall when it comes to Ramen noodles. We treated ourselves to some delicious pastries for breakfast (120yen per cake), pot noodle type things for lunch (110-215yen) and went out for a mexican dinner (800 yen per burrito, 700 yen per beer/spirit and mixer)

Accomodation: We stayed in J Hoppers Hostel which is located in the Dobashi are right next to the peace park in a private room for 5,400 yen per night (booked on hostelworld). Although one of the older hostels, it was in the perfect location and had all the usual facilities you come to expect - including a great info desk.

Other observations:

x) Japanese school children love to interact with foreign guests and practice their English, we were stopped on a good few occasions to aanswer questions, pose for photos and recieve small gifts.

xx) Halloween! Although almost a month away, Japan has been in the festive spirit for a while. Shops are filled with all types of quirky Halloween confectionary, posters are everywhere and even the cute little dog clothes shops have outfits allowing you to dress your pup up as a 'pumpkin', 'witch' or 'Sully from Monsters Inc'!

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Comments

[Amanda]

See both sides
Hey you two, loving the blogs! You do write a lot, which is great for us all following you but must be quite hard work, but makes a great journal and keepsake for you both. So Hiroshima was the end of world war 2, not 1. Although empathy for the Japenese is there and war is always terrible, my grandfather was a prisoner of war of the Japenese during this war and I have read books about it and how they were treated, so you do see both sides and they were nasty f...kers! Likewise when I went to Germany in June, we only hear the British side of the war, but we blew the Germans to smithereens and devastated many of their cities, so I then appreciated their side a little more then too. At the end of the day it is not usually the humble man in the street that decides these wars but unfortunately they and their families have to suffer the consequences. So I heard today that you are loving Hong Kong, very jealous as that is very much on my bucket list to visit. So hoping you write loads and photo everything that moves! Lots of love to you both, enjoy and be safe! Amanda xxxx

[ChloeC]

Book
Guys i think you should set up a career writing travel books with all your top tips at the end! No doubt more accurate than ohters too.... PS Love the bit bout Scotty going running and toria off to the bakery!