Japan, Day 8
Sunday was the last full day we had in Japan. Sadly, our trip was winding down.
We traveled to Hiroshima in the morning and had a partial day to look around. We went to the Peace Park as well as the museum. I felt bad for not bringing any origami cranes with me, and very sad at the numerous tragic personal stories in the museum.
The museum presented facts about and accounts of the bombing, including the brief mention of some things you might have expected to be omitted, like the Nanking massacre, Korean/Chinese slave labor, or schoolchildren being conscripted to construct firebreaks and perform construction. The one notable thing I thought was completely missing was why Japan had been fighting in the first place.
One thing I learned was that while the blast emitted very intense heat and radiation sufficient to ignite wood and roast people, it didn't vaporize everything like I had imagined (I guess Starcraft might not be a completely accurate source of nuclear blast behavior). At the time, most of the buildings in Hiroshima were wood and so were completely demolished, but some concrete buildings fairly close to the hypocenter remained standing, the closest being only 150 meters away.
After we finished at the museum, we had Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki for lunch. The main difference between this and Osaka style is the construction - rather than being all mixed, together, it is made up of layers and includes noodles. Based on the places we ate okonomiyaki, the layering approach allows for much faster assembly line like production; we certainly got our food much faster here. I suspect it may not be representative, but this place included a layer of bacon and had the sauce on the side (which I appreciated as I preferred a very small amount). I think this was the tastiest dish of the trip.
We had some time to kill, so we wandered around a shopping area. It was covered, but still open to the outside. I got a few more books with my please-interpret-this-list trick, and found that game/model stores have some pretty cool stuff and wished I had tried going to some earlier.
The reason we had some spare time was that our final tourist stop was Miyajima to see the floating torii. It doesn't actually float on the water, but appears to when the high tide hides the supports. The day we were in Hiroshima, high tide was around 10 AM (before we arrived) and 10 PM.
We didn't actually want to go at 10 PM, as we thought that was too late. We made our way over around maybe 5-ish, which turned out to be a good idea. Although the torii is illuminated at night, I don't think you get as good a view or impression of the surroundings. We got to Miyajima shortly before dusk, and left after sunset; most of the shops were closing down as we left. There were more deer around, though my understanding Miyajima was trying to discourage people from feeding them. They were still pretty fearless though.
We couldn't decide where to go for dinner, and tired of trying to come up with places, defaulted to a nearby KFC. The best I can say about this was that the breading tasted slightly different from what I remember of KFC, but it wasn't a great meal to end the trip on. Travel tip of the day: On vacation, it's silly to eat fast food you can get at home.
Additional manga volumes acquired: 4
We traveled to Hiroshima in the morning and had a partial day to look around. We went to the Peace Park as well as the museum. I felt bad for not bringing any origami cranes with me, and very sad at the numerous tragic personal stories in the museum.
The museum presented facts about and accounts of the bombing, including the brief mention of some things you might have expected to be omitted, like the Nanking massacre, Korean/Chinese slave labor, or schoolchildren being conscripted to construct firebreaks and perform construction. The one notable thing I thought was completely missing was why Japan had been fighting in the first place.
One thing I learned was that while the blast emitted very intense heat and radiation sufficient to ignite wood and roast people, it didn't vaporize everything like I had imagined (I guess Starcraft might not be a completely accurate source of nuclear blast behavior). At the time, most of the buildings in Hiroshima were wood and so were completely demolished, but some concrete buildings fairly close to the hypocenter remained standing, the closest being only 150 meters away.
After we finished at the museum, we had Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki for lunch. The main difference between this and Osaka style is the construction - rather than being all mixed, together, it is made up of layers and includes noodles. Based on the places we ate okonomiyaki, the layering approach allows for much faster assembly line like production; we certainly got our food much faster here. I suspect it may not be representative, but this place included a layer of bacon and had the sauce on the side (which I appreciated as I preferred a very small amount). I think this was the tastiest dish of the trip.
We had some time to kill, so we wandered around a shopping area. It was covered, but still open to the outside. I got a few more books with my please-interpret-this-list trick, and found that game/model stores have some pretty cool stuff and wished I had tried going to some earlier.
The reason we had some spare time was that our final tourist stop was Miyajima to see the floating torii. It doesn't actually float on the water, but appears to when the high tide hides the supports. The day we were in Hiroshima, high tide was around 10 AM (before we arrived) and 10 PM.
We didn't actually want to go at 10 PM, as we thought that was too late. We made our way over around maybe 5-ish, which turned out to be a good idea. Although the torii is illuminated at night, I don't think you get as good a view or impression of the surroundings. We got to Miyajima shortly before dusk, and left after sunset; most of the shops were closing down as we left. There were more deer around, though my understanding Miyajima was trying to discourage people from feeding them. They were still pretty fearless though.
We couldn't decide where to go for dinner, and tired of trying to come up with places, defaulted to a nearby KFC. The best I can say about this was that the breading tasted slightly different from what I remember of KFC, but it wasn't a great meal to end the trip on. Travel tip of the day: On vacation, it's silly to eat fast food you can get at home.
Additional manga volumes acquired: 4