Hiroshima & Miyajima Island

For those that missed this yesterday, this is our son-in-law Regis on Deutsche Welle news re the super typhoon in the Philippines that has displaced a million people.

MF-san put a load of washing through the hotel laundry at 5:45 a.m. (all the machines were in use before we went to bed last night). Some of the people on our tour were opting for the dryer as well - a 2-hour cycle (!); we had ours washed in half an hour and it dried in the bathroom during the day.

The queues for breakfast in the dining room were insane; we missed the worst of it because we were relatively early. We’ll certainly be lining up at 6:15 a.m. tomorrow to hopefully beat the rush …

Big, wide, tree-lined streets - city rebuilt after the war. Trams (street cars) here. Pretty parks.

So we ticked off the regular monuments: the Peace Clock Tower, the Hiroshima Peace Memorial (Genbaku Dome), the Peace Flame, the Cenotaph of A-Bomb Victims. 

We met briefly an in-utero survivor of the atomic bombing (born in 1946) He is one of the volunteers (Hibakusha) in the Peace Park who share their personal experiences to advocate for nuclear disarmament and to educate visitors and raise awareness, especially among foreigners.

As one of the exhibits at the Peace Memorial Museum stated: ‘No more Hiroshimas’.

The volunteer reminded me of the 2024 romantic drama ‘Touch’ that I saw late last year about an aged Icelandic man (a widower) who travels back to Japan to find a Japanese woman (Miko), his lost first love whom he had met 51 years earlier. 

She had suddenly vanished (spoiler alert!) because her father takes her back to Japan after discovering she is pregnant. The father's actions were driven by a deep fear related to his family's history in Hiroshima. Miko's mother was pregnant with her during the atomic bomb attack and later died of radiation sickness. The father believed, due to common fears and a lack of full medical understanding at the time, that Miko might pass on radiation sickness or related health problems to a child.

So, on to the Peace Memorial Museum. What can you say that hasn’t been said before?

The misery and destruction; here one moment, gone the next - literally - and graphically depicted by the exhibit that shows the shadow on the stone steps at the entrance of the Sumitomo Bank: the person sitting on the top step waiting for the bank to open died on the spot, the intense heat of the bomb turning the steps white and the stone under the sitting person remained dark, like a shadow.

But it is the personal testimonies of the survivors that is so telling: the immediate aftermath of the bombing and the long-term impacts.

I have to say though, it was intensely crowded in the museum which did detract from the experience which in my opinion requires some physical space in order to digest the emotional impact.

An interesting thing: in our hotel room on arrival yesterday I noticed an origami crane which I thought at the time: ‘how cute!’. It turns out it is of some significance here in Hiroshima. It symbolises peace and hope, stemming from the story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who died from leukemia 10 years after the atomic bombing. According to an ancient Japanese legend, folding one thousand cranes grants a wish, so Sadako folded them in the hope of recovering. Her story inspired a movement to create the Children’s Peace Monument in Hiroshima.

Next on our itinerary for today was something COMPLETELY DIFFERENT: a visit to Miyajima Island, the island of the gods, the home of the floating shrine and the jewel of the Seto Inland Sea. It is a scenic island in Hiroshima Bay famous for the iconic Itsukusjima shrine and its red ‘floating’ torii gate which appears to float on the water at high tide. 

Lovely day - 17 deg C. 

We took the requisite photos amongst the enormous crowds and were pleased to walk up into the maple gardens where the autumn colours were lovely. Our 7-Eleven sandwiches were sniffed out by the deer who are wilder here than at Nara, so lunch was not all that relaxing as we kept them at bay. Someone in our group said they saw a Japanese tourist have a 10000 yen note eaten by one of them!

More relaxing was a nice coffee we had on the way to the port for the ferry. 

Enroute we watched the momiji manju sweets being made; and bought (another) two, but these are the ‘real deal’, whereas the two we bought at the station last night are tourist-variety.

Also had a yummy sweet potato icecream. 

Back across the water to the mainland and bus to the hotel where we arrived about 4:30 p.m. and I immediately changed into my yukata (a casual, light version of the kimono) and made a bee-line for the onsen: I had the place to myself and even tried out the three different pools because 1. I could 2. It wasn’t 11:30 at night (which is what it was when I went last night) and 3. it was overwhelmingly busy last night.

So lovely to have all that SPACE to wash and soak. Why would you use the hotel bathroom - which is TINY - when you have this choice?

I have to say though, coming from a country where water is such a scarce resource, it seems like the height of decadence: you sit in the onsen and Archimedes’ Principle delivers an ocean of water out of the pool and then water runs back in via a gutter to replenish it.

Out to dinner - back at Hiroshima Station again in one of the myriad food halls. 

MF-san had an Asahi beer (remember the building back in Tokyo with the sculpture nick-named the ‘golden turd’?); I had a lemon syrup sour (of the Hiroshima prefecture). We had Waygu beef burgers, mine with lemon ponzu sauce which I wasn’t a fan of; the burger was so tender!

Cold tonight on the walk back: 9 deg C.

Finished off the Rikuro cheesecake. Eck .. we didn't really need this.

Walked 10.5 kms (needed to - to compensate for that cheesecake!)