War and Peace in Hiroshima

We’re doing a one-night dog-leg to Hiroshima from Osaka, so we start early to get our first bullet train of the trip! We’re super excited! Until we get to the tube station and realise I’ve lost my (very expensive, multi-day, all inclusive) travel pass. We’re on a tight schedule though, so we just have to take it as a (tearful) loss and buy a new one to get us back through the barriers and literally back on track. We’re travelling some 350km to Hiroshima, in a mere one and a half hours! This isn’t even the super-speedy service, as we make a few stops on the way. Nevertheless, the world speeds by outside the window (although a good portion is in tunnels, and the train soothes James to sleep through half of it!).

In no time at all, we’re in Hiroshima, and head to our hotel to dump our bags for the day. We wonder if we’ve navigated to the wrong place as we walk into a fancy, top-floor, hotel reception bar. As they struggle to find our reservation, we realise it’s too good to be true, we’ve clearly booked some cheap hostel with the same name and gotten confused by Google Maps. So, it’s with huge surprise that, after some help of a colleague, our booking is eventually found. We are staying here after all! After a brief regroup and reset on the sprawling, luxurious sofas, it’s time to head out and learn about what Hiroshima is sadly most famous for.

War All the Time

I’ve gotten rather tired of writing about the horrors of humankind, so I’ll try and keep this one brief, instead using photos of some poignant display boards.

A map shows the parts of the world with no nuclear weapons, and a pact to never have them… basically the whole southern hemisphere.

Part of us wishes all leaders with nukes in their arsenal would have to come to this museum before bandering around the threat of nuclear destruction, to see the human price paid for the decisions of a few men (on both sides to be fair). But as we’ve sadly now seen across the world, there are just some leaders who put so little value into human life. If a leader came here, would they care about the human cost so painfully exhibited? Or, would they just see that the USA ‘won’, they got their surrender, there was no fallout for the USA, was there? No price they had to pay for obliterating two cities in a single moment, and destroying the lives of those left behind in multiple ways?

The museum calls for disarmament as the only solution.

After a walk through the garden around the museum, passed a monument to the child victims, a beautiful rose garden with gifts from countries across the world, a multi-storied stone pagoda, we end our tour at the A-Bomb dome.

The A-Bomb Building survived as much as it did because the bomb detonated in the sky, and this building was kind of in the “eye of the storm” where it didn’t suffer the full effects of the blast further into its radius. The people inside, of course, were not so lucky.

This building is being maintained as best as possible to look just as it did after the bombing, as its own monument. It’s clever. Especially now after decades have gone by, a city rebuilt, trees, grasses, gardens, shops, everything around beautiful under this blue sky and glorious sunshine. The mangled wreck of this building serves as a stark reminder to the history of this place, so that we may never forget what happened here, and the people that paid the price for the world to see the true cost of these new weapons.

Needless to say, the prospect of a nuclear war is all the more terrifying, having seen the protratic and multi-faceted fallout experienced in Hiroshima. Not only were the immediate effects of the bomb devastating in that moment for so many lives, and the city itself, but those that survived within the radiation radius suffered horrific illnesses due to radiation poisoning, and still died, but slowly and painfully. People also thought radiation sickness was contagious so you also had to deal with a psychological torture alongside the physical pain. Add in that their city had been wiped out, there was barely any infrastructure to care for anyone or provide services, and the West was covering up the true fallout inflicted on these innocent people. If they survived those immediate years, many still developed cancers later in life in higher proportion, including impacts to their children. Lives, homes, jobs were lost. People who survived had to survive on nothing.

How does a city rebuild back from something like that? What we see in the city rebuilt is one of dignity, an amazing feat technically, mentally, physically, and structurally, that could so easily have taken a darker path, but chose peace and light and hope. An example to us all, that I hope no place ever has to go through again.

Back to the Present

We grab a lemon sorbet ice cream to try and lift our spirits as we head back to the hotel, putting the world to rights, and wishing for a simple solution.

Our room is no less luxurious than the reception bar we checked into earlier. We even have a view out onto the peace memorial and garden. It seems we’re lucky being here mid-week where the prices are a third of their weekend rate. We jump into bed and soothe our tired and saddened heads.

For dinner, we go to check out a recommendation from my buddy Karl. It’s a narrow four story building full of simple eateries, specialising in ‘okonomiyaki’. Okonomiyaki is, simply, a dish of noodles and fillings grilled on a big metal plate. We had some in Osaka, but this is a main dish of Hiroshima it seems. Two stools empty up facing a huge metal plate in front of a lone chef wielding metal spatulas.

We go for the squid and prawn mix, and the house special. It’s SO good. I’ve tried squid before and it was rubbery and tastless, this is smooth and easy to eat, the tiny prawns also juicy. You can just taste the freshness here, I doubt anything has been frozen, and it makes a massive difference.

Not only is the food itself gloriously tasty, the production itself is like watching a work of art being made. Each mound of ingredients expertly brought together by our head chef, whilst the younger woman at her side handles the admin and cleaning. There’s definitely a lot to be said for specialising in a certain dish and just doing it really well. Something Japan has gotten down to a fine art.

Peaceful Miyajima

Our second day in Hiroshima is spent visiting the neighbouring island, Miyajima, before we bullet train our way back across the country to Nara. We say farewell to our lovely hotel, and ditch our bags at the station. We’re amazed that there are coin lockers in almost every station in Japan. It’s SO useful, especially when accommodations have check-outs at 10am and check-ins as late as 4pm!

We take the ferry across to the island finding ourselves in a picturesque, old-style village, full of eateries and souvenir stalls to tempt the tourists to part with their cash. There are also ample pagodas and temples, and even some rather friendly deer!

We have a Mount to explore instead, so we speed through town, a beautiful garden, and jump onto the handy cablecar that will take us most of the way up.

There’s a (surprisingly strenuous) walk around the top of this Mount, across to the various viewpoints. It’s lush and green all around us, beautiful.

After exploring as much as we can, we decide on a route down that doesn’t threaten so many mamushi snakes. As we enjoy the jaunt down the hill, we pass many a hiker sweating and spluttering their way up. Something tells us many of these people didn’t realise how hard this would be, as we see all sorts somehow making their way slowly but surely up. Where there’s a will there’s a way. But I’m very glad we chose the easy option for the grand sum of £10.

As we make it to the end, some huge traditional roofs stick out amongst the trees. We pass an entrance, and there’s a whole complex behind these here walls, and no entry fee! We decide to check it out. And we’re glad we did. The place is huge, spectacular, and not too busy. There’s side gardens with jizo statues adorned with red crochet hats and bibs, prayer wheels lining the stairs up and around, pagodas and temples and cute traditional structures all over. Everywhere you look, there’s beauty, whether it’s natural or man-made, they seem to work perfectly together.

After this little find, we are well and truly shattered, and stop off for some food at a quiet hidden away eatery, enjoying a katsu curry and beer. We make our way back to the ferry, taking a few final photos of the famous floating torii.

And enjoying some traditional Miyajima stuffed cakes/biscuits:

After taking the ferry and tube back to pick-up our bags, we jump on the first bullet train at the platform, forgetting to check if it’s the one we reserved a seat for. It is not. As luck would have it, it isn’t the super-slow-stopping service that takes three hours, but a super-fast-two-stopping service that takes even less time than our way out here. If the world sped by before, now it is zooming by. The way out seemed just like a fast train. This one really feels like we’re on a bullet. Of course, the lucky locals on the window seats couldn’t care less, as they sleep, work, or distract themselves as they take this amazing feat of engineering for granted, and James and I stare out passed them and through the windows.

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Adventure – clambering down Miyajima and through the temple complex

Excitement – finding out we’re staying in a really fancy hotel for hardly anything, seeing very friendly deer, the amazing 360 views, and beauty of Miyajima

Trauma – more reminders of the horrors of man, and how much more relevant they are today, losing the very expensive train pass