We skipped our walk this morning (although the weather was delightful in Kyoto) and slept in until 6. We had to make sure our bags were all set. The large bags are being shipped to the airport and we will be living out of our small bags until Wednesday when we leave. We brought our bags down to the lobby after breakfast and set off by taxi to the train station. Several of the other folks from the tour, who are leaving for home today, came down to wave us off. We took the bullet train. What a wonderful invention. The seats are very comfortable with lots of foot space. Several of us made origami cranes to pass the time on the train. Junko put them together in a chain so that we can hang them at the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. We arrived a little after noon and dropped our bags at the lobby of the hotel as our rooms were not ready yet. Junko then treated us to lunch to experience Hiroshima style Okonomiyaki (vegetable and fish pancakes). Several of us requested ours plain having experienced the dousing of mayonnaise on the other one we had. It was very good! We sat at the counter with the grill directly in front of us so we could watch the whole operation. First the pancake was cooked and then a hefty portion of cabbage with strips of bacon on top. The pancake was sprinkled with water and then flipped to cook the bacon. Meanwhile on another part of the grill a healthy portion of noodles was cooking. An egg was cooked with the yolk broken. Small shrimp and squid was also cooked and placed on the pancake. When the egg was done, the noodles were placed on top and then the whole thing was flipped on top of the pancake. Grilled oysters were served on the side. The ladies who were doing the cooking were cute. They kept giggling over John and Dave's beards. They thought Dave looked like Colonel Sanders of KFC fame. They gave us each a Japanese lollipop which was on a long stick and what looked like a gumdrop on top, but it was hardened sugar in the shape of a gumdrop. This was our Halloween treat. After lunch, we took the trolley to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. It was was a sobering experience. There were models and photo panels presenting the history of Hiroshima before and after the bombing on August 6, 1945. Some of the photos and artifacts (pieces of clothing) were quite graphic. It was really hard to walk through and I found my eyes avoiding some of the exhibits. One of the most poignant stories was of a young girl, Sadako, who was two when the bomb was dropped. She lived a normal life until she was in sixth grade and they discovered that she had radiation related leukemia - they gave her a year to live. She spent eight months in the Red Cross hospital and decided to make 1000 cranes. It is believed that if you make 1000 cranes, your wish will come true. She made well over 1000 cranes, some of them very tiny - less than the length of your small fingernail (see photo - the box is about 1 inch square), but sadly her wish for a cure did not come true. When she died the children at her school started a fund raising campaign to build a memorial. Many children and adults heard her story and a Children's Monument was erected in the Peace Memorial Park honoring all of the children who were killed. There are millions of cranes that have been made by both children and adults and they are hung all around the monument in glass houses (see photo). We chose Kelly to hang our chain of cranes (see photo) as she is by far the youngest of the group. We then walked over to a mound where the remains of 70,000 unidentified victims are buried. After ringing the peace bell, we walked to the Atomic Dome building - one of the only buildings left standing after the bomb. It has been shored up, but the skeleton remains as a reminder of the horror of that day. We returned to the hotel to check in and after a short while, the five amigos went across the street to the eleventh floor of the department store to have dinner. We chose Italian. It was good, but not as good as the one in Kyoto. After dinner, Dave and John went to explore the food store in the basement while "the girls" rode the escalator down floor by floor to see what there was to see. This is a very fancy department store - I don't think I'll be buying anything here! Tomorrow we will travel by train and ferry to an island nearby.
No comments:
Post a Comment