trip to Hiroshima and Miyajima

Over the weekend, Kris, Susanne and I took the shinkansen, or bullet train, to Hiroshima. The train is very fast, as the name implies, and very comfortable with attendants walking through the compartments offering drinks and snacks as they do on planes. We stayed in a hotel with traditional tatami rooms and both nights, we each unrolled our bedding side by side on the mats.

On the first day, Saturday, we visited the neighboring island of Miyajima, known for its temples and shrines and wild deer wandering around looking for any paper maps or pamphlets or better still, anything we normally think of as edible that an unsuspecting tourist may be holding. They are quite aggressive and there is a warning as you disembark the ferry to make sure that you put away your Japan Rail Pass safely before venturing on the island. I was lucky enough to witness a formal marriage ceremony

held in one of the shrines...many bystanders were watching and taking pictures as the bride in a gorgeous white satin kimono and the groom also in traditional clothes, went through the marriage rituals.

Hiroshima of course is known as the first place where an atomic bomb was exploded in 1945, initially killing about 140,000 people outright and many more who died of radiation related illnesses. The crane, a traditional Japanese symbol of happiness and longevity, became associated with HIroshima, when a little girl who developed leukemia at the age of 11 in 1955, decided to fold 1000 paper cranes. Unfortunately, she died before reaching her goal but her classmates folded the rest and since then, paper crane folding is a Japanese pastime. The pic at the top of this posting (sorry, the images are out of order with the text) is the remaining shell of a famous building that was left after the bombing.

The memorial hall has some moving stories of survivors on video and computerized records of the names of known victims, including some American servicemen and prisoners of war who happened to be in Hiroshima that August day.

These days, Hiroshima is also known as a prosperous city with a lively nightlife scene. We visited a bar after our okonomiyaki meal on Saturday but crashed pretty early. My final picture- which is the first one at the top- shows us posing with some college students who had an assignment to ask us questions in English!