- Sobering stroll through Hiroshima, but uplifted by thousands of children giving new life to the area.
- Missing the Miyajima shrine to low time, but catching the gondola to see a glorious panorama from the top of the island
- Eating Osomiyaki for the first time, and learning what all the hype is about
Craig's long-winded version
It's almost midnight on Wednesday night, early morning Wednesday in the US, and I'm (Craig) struggling to stay awake. Tania is long passed out and hopefully enjoying the new set of pillows we had room service bring up since we hadn't slept well the last few nights. Even though the room is much better than what we had in Tokyo, we hadn't slept well the first two nights in the room, and we blamed the pillows. So new pillows we ordered. I'll report back tomorrow on whether the change worked or not.
Today was very simple. A bullet train ride down to Hiroshima to roam the grounds where the US dropped the first weaponized atomic bomb on August 6, 1945. The city is bustling, and if its history wasn't so ingrained in our minds and hearts, one wouldn't know that such a travesty occurred there so few years ago.
But it did. There's the bridge at which the US directed the bomb be dropped from the Enola Gay. There's the hospital 300m away from that bridge over which the bomb exploded, 600m above ground. There's the domed building's skeleton that still stands in ruins, the only solid proof of the destruction caused by this massive weapon. And now, there are a slew of museums and memorial structures erected to remind the world of how devastating such a violent tool can be. And the museum, in which I spent two hours while Tania sat in the park outside, not only recalled the events leading up to and after the bomb dropped, but it does its best to show the world why we need to, as a global community, rid ourselves of this useless weapon so that we as a people can sleep peacefully knowing this type of horrific incident won't be happening again. The museum is a beacon of this hope, but I'm scared that our world and its leaders are far too beyond this type of utopia, and too deep into a militaristic power struggle, to ever get to a point where such massive threats are unnecessary. Sadly, the Flame of Peace will likely continue burning for a very long time.
As sober as people can be, Tania and I caught a few trains over to the port in Miyajima and a ferry to the island so we could see the floating temple (which wasn't floating since the tide was too low), and ride the gondola up to the top of Mt. Misen, which is ranked as one of the top three views in all of Japan. Since we had so little time to take in this site before the sun went down, we didn't get to sit and ponder its beauty, but we did get enough of a view to understand why it's regarded so highly Here's a view from the bitterly cold top of the peak, but no monkeys as they promised. :(
So that's it for today. We were greatly humbled by the sites of Hiroshima, but given hope by the thousands of school children wandering the grounds and learning how horrible it was, hope that they'll do whatever they can to build a world without this type of conflict. And we were given a different type of hope on Miyajima island, a hope that our eyes would continue to gaze upon even more and different types of glorious landmarks like those we've seen in this incredible country.
PS Here's a shot of the kobe steaks we ate last night before our private chef threw them on the grill. That's my sirloin on the left, and Tania's tenderloin on the right. Aren't they purty?
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