The port area at Hiroshima, dont know what the big silver monument was, but it was pretty cool
Even though Hiroshima is only about 175 miles from Osaka, our ship took 13 hours to make the journey as we had to thread our way through islands and under bridges. We docked in Hiroshima about 09.10am, it was raining steadily, the temperature was around 10 deg C (50 deg F) and Izzy was feeling good after her previous few stressful days. Our tour was scheduled to depart at 09.30am, so we headed down to the dockside and boarded our allocated bus A3.
Two pictures from Shukkeien Garden
The bus left a few minutes late and drove toward town and our first stop, Shukkeien Garden, dating from the early 17th century. The garden was completely destroyed, by the atomic bomb in 1945 and it wasn’t ‘til 1974 that restoration was completed, we spent about 45 minutes strolling around enjoying the scenery.
Me with the A-Bomb dome across the river
Izzy rings the Peace Bell
Two kids at the Childrens Peace Monument
Next stop was Peace Memorial park and A-Bomb dome, the park was created in remembrance of the lives lost in the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The A-Bomb dome is the former Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, it stands as it was, immediately after the bombing, as a lasting symbol of the horrors of war. We rang the peace bell, then walked down toward the Childrens Peace Monument where thousands of folded paper cranes were displayed. The crane symbolizes long life and it’s believed that if you fold a thousand origami cranes, it leads to a long life. Next stop was the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum, displaying many artefacts left by the victims, photos, re-creations and other material, it was a moving and thought provoking visit.
The kids who asked us some questions
As we exited the museum, we were approached by some school children, it seems that their school project was to interview visitors. They wanted to know where we came from, why we had come, what kind of Japanese food we liked etc. and it was fun talking to them as their command of English was pretty limited and our Japanese language skills were limited to 4 or 5 words. They were very interested that we had come from the ship and we managed some communication with hand signals and animal noises, as Izzy spoke to them I went back to the bus, got our copy of the ships itinerary and gave it to them.
Izzy samples some Saki
We returned to the ship around 01.30pm and decided to walk the 20 minutes to a local supermarket. By 03.00pm we were back at the dock, the local tourism board had set up a display of Saki production and we had a few samples, they permitted us to keep the neat square cups used to drink the Saki. I grabbed a quick sandwich and had an hours sleep back in the cabin while Izzy went to the medical centre for her shot and around 05.00pm we sailed away, the weather was drizzling rain as it had been all day, but we still enjoyed our visit and were sad to be departing Japan as we moved off on our way to the next port, Incheon, Korea. I went to the show in the evening, comedian Milt Abel, he was dreadful, but I stuck it out ’til the end, don’t know why as plenty of other people didn’t. I found Izzy and we decided to have an early night as we were both tired, all things considered, Izzy did well today, there was a lot of walking and she held up quite well.
