Rebecca's Adventures in Tokyo: Hiroshima

Dad and I arrived in Hiroshima in the evening after much of the city was shut down for the night, so we found an okonomiyaki restaurant and settled in for a relaxing meal. Okonomiyaki is a regional specialty of Hiroshima that is sometimes called a Japanese pancake or Japanese pizza. Its name means "grilled whatever" and that's basically what it is... cut up bits of veggies, meat, seafood and noodles that are fried with a thick batter to create a kind of pancake/pizza type thing. It's delicious.

After our big meal and a great deal of sleep, Dad and I set out to explore Peace Park and the Atomic Bomb museum. Our first order of business was to lay some paper cranes that Mom's English 6 students had folded at the base of a monument dedicated to Sadako and all of the children who died, became sick or were orphaned because of the atomic bomb. I have vivid memories of reading Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes as a 4th grader, as many girls my age probably do.

Along the way, we stopped to see huge mound of earth that houses the ashes of the people cremated during the blast and in the following days, as well as the Phoenix trees that miraculously survived the blast though they were burned to the core and are flourishing and their wounds seem to be healing.

I highly recommend that anyone who visits Japan make time to travel to Hiroshima and visit the Atomic Bomb Museum, budget and time permitting. It's a very good, very disquieting, very thought-provoking look at a dark time in world history, the immediate and long-term affects of atomic bomb detonation, and the peace and nuclear disarmament movement in Japan.

After spending all morning and part of the afternoon at the museum, Dad and I were pretty lost in our thoughts and thought we would take the streetcar and ferry to a nearby island in the Inland Sea called Miyajima. Miyajima is famous for its red torii gates set into a sandbar in the ocean that greets travelers entering the island. Since ancient times, Miyajima has been considered a sacred place, and as such, no one is allowed to give birth or die on the island. I'm not sure how exactly this rule is enforced (?), but it's a curious part of its history. Additionally, somewhat tame deer roam the island all the time, for the most part ignoring the constant deluge of tourists unless they think you might have something to feed them. Dad and I spent a happy afternoon wandering around the island, eating oddly flavored ice cream cones (melon!) and watching people dig for clams at low tide.