Today I got up around seven and headed off to Kobe to catch a bus for Hiroshima. Just catching the bus was a minor victory – none of the signs were in English, and I had to deduce some Japanese kanji characters to figure out where to go. Once I was there, I just jumped on the correct bus and settled in for a four hour bus ride.
The bus ride was cheaper than the bullet train – the bus costs around $90 round trip, and the bullet train costs around $150 round trip. I had more time than money, so I picked the bus. We stopped about halfway in Okayama to hit the restrooms and grab some snacks, and at about 1:30 in the afternoon we pulled into Hiroshima.
Mr. Hayashi had drawn a map to the hotel, but the bus dropped me off at a different location, so I really had to wing it to find the place. Once again my katakana skills paid off, and I was able to read the sign and figure out the right place. The room was tiny – just a little bit longer than I am, but I did have a private bathroom with a nice deep bathtub and shower.
I freshened up and headed out the door, but as I walked by the registration counter, the guy working there had a minor fit and kind of freaked out. Apparently the protocol is to leave your room key at the desk while you are away, and pick it up again when you get back. Strange, but OK, no problem.
While on the long bus ride I had come up with a game plan for Hiroshima. First thing I did was head to the Peace Park to see the A-bomb dome and the museum. To get there, you had to walk through Honmachi arcade, a big shopping avenue.
Hiroshima is a big town, and like any big town, there are tons of shopping areas. It is an especially interesting contrast when you walk out of Honmachi and enter the Peace Park. From noise, commercialism, the beautiful and the cool, to such a natural setting – the Peace Park was quiet and busy at the same time.
There were numerous monuments throughout the park, some more dramtic than others. The best of the bunch were the Children’s Peace Monument, and the Memorial Cenotaph. The Children’s Peace Monument was surrounded by wreaths of origami paper cranes, and featured a child lifting an origami crane at the top. The Cenotaph was aligned with the A-bomb dome, the museum, and the Flame of Peace, which is supposed to remain lit as long as there are nuclear weapons still around.
After lots of pictures, I visited the museum, and spent about an hour looking through an overwhelming exhibit documenting the history of Hiroshima before, during, and after the atomic bomb hit on 1945. The exhibits were remarkably well documented, and there was never any obvious political bias that I noticed – it just reported the facts and made a strong case against nuclear weapons. You could touch bottles that had been melted from the heat of the blast, and the pictures and models were extremely well done.
After the museum I went over to the A-bomb dome. The dome refers to the shape of the last remaining building that remained standing after the bomb dropped. The building is twisted and gutted, and is reinforced now to keep it standing. I sat for a while next to the building on a bench and watched people walk by. It was weird to think that the bomb went off right over my head.
Afterwards, I headed back towards the hotel, and took a few pictures of Hiroshima castle, which, like everything else in town, was rebuilt after 1945. There was a flower show nearby, and the leaves were just starting to change colors. In keeping with my tradition of smiling and nodding at people I walk by, I met an old man riding by on his bike – he stopped when he saw me smile at him. We talked for a bit in English and Japanese, and it turns out that he was in the war at the time of the bomb, he was in the navy away fighting battles, and lost his entire family to the A-bomb blast. I didn’t know quite what to say, but he was friendly enough, and was more interested in Arnold as governor and the wildfires of California.
For dinner I had heard that the okonomiyaki in Hiroshima was famous in Japan, so I wanted to try it out. Okonomiyaki is like a Japanese pizza, just made a little differently. I had tried it out a couple of times in Japan, and it had made a great impression. According to my guidebook, there was a place downtown that had three floors of okonomiyaki stands, and so I followed the directions, and a half hour later I was bellying up to a stand that my guidebook said was the best in all of Hiroshima.
Apparently, I wasn’t the only gaijin that had the guidebook; the owner flipped me a menu in English before I finished sitting down. I picked a pretty spicy one – it had Chinese noodles, garlic, kimchee, an egg, sprouts, onions, bacon, three different sauces, and a tortilla like thing that sat on the bottom. The difference between Hiroshima style okonomiyaki is that in Hiroshima they create layers of ingredients, but everywhere else they mix it all up so that it is evenly distributed throughout. I definitely prefer the Hiroshima method.
After a couple of beers, and a new believer in my guidebook’s recommendations, I tried to track down a bar called Mac, listed in the guidebook as a “laidback bar”. It was located across the street, but I quickly got lost and ended up in the red light district. There were tons of American soldiers walking around, and hawkers outside the bars asking thought provoking questions like, “You wanna Japanese girlfriend?”
I gave up on Mac, and went instead for a beer at the yakitori across from my hotel. It seemed like a pretty quiet place, but there was weird vibe, so I went back to my room and planned for the next day. I was asleep by 10:00 p.m.
