Konnichiwa - Japan Part V (Hiroshima)

When visiting the grand country of Japan, travelers have a big decision to make after visiting the central part of the island. Most tourists spend a decent amount of time (if not they're entire time) in Tokyo, Kyoto, Osaka, and Nara. After that, you can choose to either turn north or south to continue exploring. We visited in 2012, just a year after the Fukushima nuclear meltdown, so staying away from the north wasn't only a personal decision but a government one. I would have chosen the south anyway, so that we could spent some time in Hiroshima, the city destroyed by the United States during World War II with an atomic bomb. I've mentioned before that I'm a huge history buff especially WW2 history. Hiroshima, for me, was a "must see"!

We woke up at 4:45AM the morning of Thursday, April 5 and caught the Sakura Shinkansen from Shin-Osaka to Hiroshima. The trip only took 1.5 hours because this high speed bullet train at times reached speeds up to 200 mph. The ride was so smoothe, we only realized how fast we were going by how quickly the scenery whipped by us. After arriving at the Hiroshima station, we walked to the entrance of our hotel that connected directly to the station and, once again, asked them to store our bags. (If you haven't realized this already, this method of storing our bags at the hotel worked out so well for us. We often arrived in a new city early in the morning. Unable to check-in until 2 or 3pm, every single hotel we stayed at graciously stored our bags. We've found this to be true all over the world. Don't hesitate to ask your hotel for this convenience if you ever find yourself in a similar situation.) The Hotel Granvia Hiroshima was by far the nicest hotel we stayed in out of the entire trip. Every major city had a branch of this popular hotel chain, but in cities like Tokyo or Kyoto, the going rate for a single night soared into the $500s or $600s. Hiroshima was overall much cheaper, and we got a room for 2 nights in this hotel for only $180/night. Given the significance of how much less we paid for this hotel, I'm positively certain we could have stayed in Hiroshima for a ridiculously cheap amount, but it was worth it to us to spend a few extra dollars (while still staying under my $200/night budget) and getting a really nice room. (And by really nice room, it was still tiny! All hotel rooms in Japan are tiny...like really tiny, but we probably had 25-30 more square feet in Hiroshima.) My trip advisor review basically says the same thing. 

By 9AM, we dropped our bags and made our way to the Peace Memorial. We took a short street car ride that dropped us off right at the A-Bomb Dome, a world heritage sight, in memory of the first atomic bomb. Looking at it, I always thought that it was a cathedral, but as it turns out, the structure opened in the early 20th Century as a building for arts and education exhibitions. Located 160 meters from the hypocenter where the pilot of the Enola Gay detonated Little Boy, it remained the only structure left standing due to its steel frame. Instead of tearing it down, Japan spent time and money reinforcing the weakened structure to prevent it from collapsing between 1950-1964, and then they built a peace park and memorial around it. 

A-Bomb Dome - Hiroshima, Japan

As we walked through the Peace Memorial from the A-Bomb Dome to the museum, we had a rather unique encounter. An elderly Japanese lady approached us and asked us if we spoke English. Prior to this, our encounter with all random strangers in Japan had been most pleasant, especially all of our experiences with older Japanese women. Additionally, we read in travel books prior to coming to Japan that it was not uncommon for Japanese people who lived through World War II to seek atonement from visitors. Very strange, right? On any other trip in Europe or elswhere, the guide books cautioned us against gypsies, pick pockets, scammers, street peddlers, etc. but never did we ever expect that there would be strangers wandering the streets just trying to be friendly. But when this lady approached us, we kindly stopped and chatted with her. She asked us questions about where we were from and how we liked the food. Then she introduced us to her grandson and said that he was studying English in school and hoped to travel to the USA someday. I know what you're thinking. This whole situation is incredibly weird. I know! It was weird for us too even while we were standing there. Not throwing all common sense out the window, I kept one hand on my cross-body purse the entire time (which had our cash, passports, credit cards, etc). My husband had his wallet in his back pocket, and he said that he always kept an eye out to make sure no one came up behind us. All travel cautions told us that this encounter was not honest or genuine, but they stayed at a decent distance from us, and her grandson couldn't have been older than 13 or 14. 

Then she asked to take our picture with her grandson. What? Wasn't this situation already bizarro enough? But being the stupid American tourists that we are, we agreed. The grandson clearly looked embarrassed by his grandmother, so he stood a good couple of feet away from us for the picture. Thinking that if ever they were going try and scam us, it would be during a picture, I make sure to clutch my bag extra tightly. Then...THEN, as if we weren't utterly confused already, the old lady wanted to give us gifts for our kindness. We politely refused, but she insisted.  

*Quick side note about Japan. If you've ever been to Las Vegas, you know that as you're walking down the strip, there will be guys handing out cards that advertise peep shows and exotic dancers. In Japan, they have similar same guys who are handing out ads (not ads for women, but for shopping stores, etc) but instead of the ads being on cards, the ads were printed on mini packs of tissues. We collected as many of these as we could and saved them because public restrooms often had toilet paper for pay or had no toilet paper at all. These little tissue packs really came in handy. Ok, back to the story...

The lady gave us these little tissues packs wrapped in cloth cases and a pin made from newspaper. 

Gifts from a random Japanese stranger

After giving us these gifts, she walked away. The entire encounter was only about 5 minutes at the most, but it left us standing there completely baffled. What just happened? We checked our pockets and nothing was stolen. We told ourselves that maybe it was as the travel books said. Here was this little old lady just trying to spread some goodwill with tourists? The only thing that made us question that is because later that day as we exited the museum, we saw that same lady chasing some other western tourist down the street saying, "excuse me sir, excuse me sir..." It was most bizarre. In hindsight, she had all the makings of a scammer though we didn’t have anything taken. Were we used as training for her grandson? Was it not a scam? We’ll never know. But this was by far the most unusual thing to have happened to us while traveling.

Memorial to the A-Bomb Victims

We then walked through the peace park to the peace memorial museum. We enjoyed the museum very much; the exhibits really impressed us! The first section gave us a bit of Hiroshima and Japanese history before the war, went through the war itself, explained the history of atomic/nuclear weaponry, and then the specifics of the bomb dropping and the rebuilding of the city. That first section was comprehensive enough that there didn't even seem to be the need for another section. We were sorely mistaken. The main portion of the museum centered around the effects of the bomb and the aftermath. Display cases featured artifacts that fused together during the blast, destroyed clothing fragments, and pictures of school-aged bomb victims. Later in the exhibit, we learned more about the aftermath of the war and the subsequent effects that bomb victims continued living with years later from cancer to discrimination. Hiroshima became a taboo place to live, and a-bomb victims became second-class citizens because they reminded the rest of Japan about the shame of the war. 

What I appreciated more than anything else about the museum was the truly unbiased approach the Japanese took with the exhibits. Being a student of historical methods and having sat through class after class about the importance of unbiased history, I've also learned that when you have personally experienced something, bias is inevitable. In the last exhibit, the Japanese use the museum to make their best attempt to convince visitors of the need to rid the world of all nuclear weaponry.  The Peace Museum could have easily attacked the United States and denounced them for this unforgivable action which thrust the world into the nuclear age and decimated two cities and hundreds of thousands of innocent lives. (Much like the museum in Paris that barely mentioned role of the United States in the war against Nazi Germany.) Instead, throughout the last exhibit, Japan took full ownership for instigating the US involvement in the war. They acknowledged that their imperialistic ways and attack on Pearl Harbor sealed their fate. I was honestly shocked that they didn't place any blame on the United States. Not that this surprised me. Everything we had learned about the Japanese people so far, and everything we've learned about them since has only reaffirmed what an honorable and genuine people they are.  But I'm getting side-tracked. 

After the museum, we got lunch on the go from a 7-11. Sounds strange, but it was very authentic and delicious. We really hadn't had too much sushi up to this point and our trip was more than halfway over. The most remarkable thing about this lunch wasn't the food itself but our venue.  We couldn't find any trashcans. This is true of the whole country. They very much follow a "take your trash with you" motto. We found the 7-11 in a train station where they had lots of seating in the middle with free wifi. (Kind of like a food court in a mall.) Unlike an American food court with trashcans everywhere, here, we couldn't find a single one. Not a single one! We ended up carrying our lunch trash around with us for the majority of the afternoon.

7-11 lunch in Hiroshima, Japan

Next we made our way to Hiroshima castle. Although the bomb in August 1945 leveled the original, Japan promptly rebuilt the castle in 1951. We toured the museum on floors 1-4 and enjoyed the observation deck on floor 5. We then took a break with cocoa and milk tea from a beverage machine inside the observation deck. 

Hiroshima Castle

From the castle, we walked to a Japanese tea garden called Shukkeien. Some cherry trees were finally blooming! Here, we saw yet another wedding taking place, and we read all sort of plaques about those who took refuge here after the bomb. We fed the fishes in the koi pond along with a ton of Japanese children and then walked back to Hiroshima station. 

Shukkeien - Japanese Tea Garden

In a previous post, I mentioned that the Japanese shopping malls were often multiple stories high and that they had both groceries and prepared food on the lower levels. That evening for dinner, we decided to give ourselves each Y1000 (or about $10) to buy an assortment of prepared food from this market called Fukuya. Since our Hiroshima hotel room was actually large enough for a table, we brought our “treasures” back to eat at the hotel after checking in.  

Dinner from the Fukuya department store in Hiroshima, Japan

We had one more full day in the Hiroshima area, but instead of spending it on the main island, we took a reprieve from the cities, castles, and temples, and traveled out to the island of Miyajima for a day of nature and hiking. We didn't know what to expect, but the signs cautioning us against vipers (yes, vipers!) made us a little leery. But more on that HERE to keep reading. 

Thanks for reading!

- Foxy the Traveler