13th April 2009 - Hiroshima

Today was a special day... I've wanted to visit Hiroshima for a long long time and it was finally happening today!

We tried to get something different this morning for brekkie and headed off to Maccas (we really felt like a bacon & egg muffin).

When we got there, the only muffin they had included bacon, egg, cheese, and 2 sausage patties. That was a bit too much (even for me) so we continued our trek for munchies. As we walked around further, we realised that the morning was full of inappropriate breakfast food... It was 9am and it was way too early for ramen. We were then greeted with Starbucks and I realised I haven't had a sip of coffee for over a week. That needed to be addressed... STAT!





I downed a grande mocha from Starbucks... Normally the coffee there tastes like rubbish but I guess I've missed the coffee so much that it actually tasted fine. It seems all the foreigners in Hakata congregated at this Starbucks (this was by far the largest gathering of white folk I've seen since Osaka airport)


One thing you'll notice about Japan is the amount of vending machines around each corner. You'll never go thirsty (if you've got coins in your pocket). You can get a 500ml bottle of mineral water for 110Y (about $1.50AUD) at some "non branded" vending machines... However if you go to a "Coke" vending machine, the prices of the drinks are slightly dearer (same bottle of water will cost 150Y).





We still needed brekkie... In comes the bakery. There's a buddhist saying "excess is suffering" and boy was I getting sick of bakery food... This time the main bakery at Hakata station had less on offer... the place was called Trandor.







Our selections this morning... Ham, cheese and onion. The ham actually resembled spam andd was quite salty.



This was a bacon, egg and curry roll (the curry hit us with surprise as we didn't expect that)

The time had come for us to hop ontot he bullet trailn bound for Hiroshima. This is the Hikari Rail Star Super Express.

The ride lasted about 1 hour from Hakata to Hiroshima station. When we stepped out of the North exit, we could see our hotel in the distance (it's the one with the white sign) It as a 3 minute walk from the station and we had to go through a protest rally (I had no idea what their cause was - they looked like labourers so it's possible they had lost their jobs)

In front of our hotel was a people mover that resembled a space ship

In the distance on top of the hill near the entrance to our hotel was a large cemetary.

This is Hiroshima station... I didn't realise how huge the station was until we returned back from our hotel.

The next stop was the Hiroshima Memorial Park and we had to go back through the Hiroshima terminal to get to the south exit. The south exit had trams (they call them street cars over here) which takes you directly to the Hiroshima Memorial Park.

The 15 minute journey costs a flat rate of 150Y per person. As you can see below, Hiroshima is a LOT less crowded than Tokyo. The pace here is so much slower and relaxed... In fact, the locals here seem to adopt the principle "I'll get there when I get there" which meant that I was able to keep up with the cyclists on foot.

This is the coin machine located next to the driver, you drop your 150Y fare into the white box at the top of the machine. If you don't have the right change, this is a change machine as well.... you just issue the 1000Y note into the note feeder and coins drop out of the bottom. The driver does not manage money whatsoever so that they can focus on driving. GENIUS!

When we got off at the 10th stop (M10)... We were greeted with the A-bomb dome. This building (or what's left of it) is now a heritage listed building. This building was so eery... even the rubble inside the ruins seems to have been untouched since that August morning in 1945.

One of the many small memorials around this park

This photo on one of the boards next to the A-Bomb dome took my breath away. The devastation the bomb created was immense. Just looking at the picture below... you can see there was absolutely no escape.

As this building is heritage listed, the Japanese government now intend to preserve the building as it is forever. There have been 2-3 major restoration projects on this site over the past 65 years and this steel reinforcement brace was completed during one of those restoration phases.

Here's the canal that runs through Hiroshima

More memorial shrines

This is what the A-bomb dome looked like prior to the bombing

This is the Children's Peace Monument. This statue is surrounded with little cubicles with what looks like pieces of fabric from afar.

I remember when I was in primary school of a story involving a Japanese girl who had survived the A-Bomb (was not in the immediate impact zone) but developed Leukemia when she was 10 years old (she was 2 at the time of the bombing). She tried to fold 1000 paper cranes when she was in hospital as it was supposed to grant her a wish. She got to 700-800 before she passed away. Her classmates completed her work by making the other paper cranes.

Below is a close up shot of a girl holding a big paper crane, I'm guessing that statue is the girl from the story.

After taking the above picture, I looked to see what was inside each of those glass cases surrounding this statue. There were thousands of paper cranes from school children across the globe. There is a registry here at the Hiroshima memorial for schools/groups who contribute to the paper crane donation. Some of the work here from children is amazing.

Submission from down under :)

Here is the flame of peace, it is set in front of the Hiroshima Memorial Museum that is visible in the background.

Entry into the Hiroshima Memorial Museum is 100Y. I was amazed at the size of this exhibit. I was expecting a few pictures and photographs.. but there was so much more to see than I expected.

August 6th 1945, this is the day that changed this city.

Here is a watch from a civilian... it seems the a-bomb impact froze the inner mechanisms in the watch so it had stopped working at the moment of impact.

Here is a letter from Albert Einstein urging President Roosevelt to authorise research to create an Atomic Bomb.

A scientific probe used to measure the impact of the atomic bomb (specifically the heat and air pressure when the bomb is detonated). This probe is delivered via a cloth parachute and radio's back the readings to a hovering US aircraft.

Various official correspondence from parties within the US Government discussing likely targets for the dropping of the first A-Bomb.

A huge panoramic image spanning an entire wall encapsulated Hiroshima in the hours after the bombing.

On the ground level of this memorial museum were two huge scaled models of Hiroshima city... both before and after the bomb was dropped.

There was also a large image of one of the first photos on the ground from a Japanese reporter immediately after the bombing.

"I fought myself for 30 minutes before I could take the first picture. After taking the first, I grew strangely calm and wanted to get closer. I took about ten steps forward and tried to stap another, but the scenes I saw were so gruesome my fiewfinder clouded with tears." - Yoshito Matsuhige

When you walk upstairs, there are some more interesting models and actual bits of Hiroshima that have been removed from their original home to be immortalised in the museum.

Here's a replica of the A-Bomb that was dropped... It's the size of a volkswagen polo (3.5m Long and weights 4 Tonnes)

This was pretty gruesome... The deep scarring marks in this CONCRETE wall was from the impacts of fragmented glass which flew through the air at such velocity that it left marks a few cm deep in concrete. Can you imagine what these bits of flying glass would have done to human flesh?

Here's a child's tricycle... not sure if the child was on the bike at the time of the explosion.

There were also a whole heap of videos and images of actual injuries sustained to the people during the blast. I didn't manage to take any pics of them as I was too taken by the graphic nature of the injuries they endured.

Walking back outside, we started making our way to Hiroshima Castle. We passed this one final memorial piece in the park.. the Peace Bell.

On the way there, we saw a parking station for bicycles.

Here's some snaps of the Hiroshima Castle and it's moat…we didn't end up going into the castle itself (had to squeeze some shopping in)

I've eaten from Bento Boxes bigger than this car...

We didn't think Hiroshima had any large shopping malls and were looking forward to shopping in smaller stores... We were wrong. This is the Sogo Supermall...

Again, Sogo was one of those premium outlets which were well beyond our budget... attached to it was a smaller mall called Aq'a which catered for the stuff that we were after.

It was 4pm by now and we haven't had lunch yet so we headed straight to the basement level (which is where most food places are located within shopping malls). Ee Laine opted for a prawn salad, I bought a fried egg thing on something I thought was turnip/taro (but turned out to be a seafood/cabbage mixture that tasted like an oversized fishball), as well as some Chicken karage (deep fried chicken)

Food was meh (especially the seafood patty of death - it was so rich and tasted too seafoody.. I think it's meant to be split up to feed a family of 8)

Here's Ee at a typical clothing store for Japanese teen girls... The "in" thing in Japan right now is layered t-shirts with suspenders... We've seen this EVERYWHERE. The thing is, you can't purchase the suspenders on their own so that you can have this look from your existing clothing collection. The suspenders are sold as a complete set involving an additional 2-3 garments.

On the top floor of the Aq'a mall, there's a massive book shop with an impressive collection of magazines.

In the car magazine section, they sold limited edition collectable toys authorised by the local car companies. Here is one of the Fairlady Z 2+2 (280Z in Australian speak).

I picked up a few GTR magazines :)

When we finally made it out of the Aq'a shopping mall, we walked down the main strip (about 50m) and we were then greeted with this MASSIVE shopping alley called Hondori St. This stretched for about 500m and connected another 5 or so shopping centres. We were not expecting Hiroshima to have such a massive shopping precinct. Hondori St was lined with independent stores selling more unique clothing (at a much more reasonable price... t-shirts here start from 1900Y or about $30AUD, and jeans from about 7000Y/$100AUD))

In one of the chemists, we spotted the engrish sentence of the day

We also ventured into a 100Y shop where EVERYTHING in there is 100Y -

I bought this little pocket calculator as I was through converting Y to AUD in my head (and getting it spectacularly wrong).

A few stores down was a toy store which had a lot of cool stuff...

I was pondering this, a GTR set including the current shape and the boxy version from the 70s.

Instead I got these for 300Y a pop

By the time the stores started closing down at 8pm, we were both smashed to buggery. We picked up the following gourmet dinner from the 100Y shop and ate ourselves silly. We had an early night as we had a big day planned (visiting the Mazda Museum)