Wow, if I had a little bit of a feeling of being trapped in my little town, they’re gone now. Saturday I caught a train into Hiroshima to see the sights and shop a little. First I took the streetcar from the train station to the Peace Memorial. The A Bomb Dome, the remains of an exhibit hall that was effectively at ground zero, is at the entrance to the park. Its very eery, this devastated building standing as a reminder of the tragic past in middle of a lively, green park. Wandering along the tree lined sidewalks, I came to the memorial to the victims of the bomb, where the anniverary ceremony had been held the previous day (I watched some of it on TV before heading to work). Its a small, arched structure at the end of a reflecting pool. Through it, you can see the A Bomb Dome at the other end of the park. There were still many people bringing flowers, burning incense and praying at the memorial.

Next was the museum. It does a good job of being multilingual, with little audio playback devices being available for rent and most signs in English and other languages in addition to Japanese. For the most part it tries to be somewhat balanced in its presentation, detailing Hiroshima’s history and involvement as a miltary base in the time leading up to World War 2 and the various, mostly Japanese incited, conficts with Korea, China, Russia and of course the US. It also presents pretty clearly the US’s reasons for the bombing (mostly related to pre-cold war posturing to the Soviets).

But the museum’s strongest message is that while this was a conflict of nations, it was a tragedy of individuals. The many personal artifacts and their stories are incredibly moving — a child’s lunch box, the contents turned to charcoal from the heat that killed the boy it was for; a tricycle that had been buried with another youngster and of course the paper cranes folded by leukemia victim Sadako Sasaki who folded them in the passionate belief in the legend that if she could make 1000 of them, she would get her wish to live. School children from around the world send cranes they’ve folded to a memorial for her in the park to this day.

On a more uplifting note, just outside the museum is a tree that has recovered from the effects of the blast, now green after having been stripped of leaves and branches. Anyways, surfice it to say that the museum and park were deeply moving. I definitely feel that world leaders, before taking office, should spend a day here so that they can reflect on what personal devistation their decisions and actions can inflict.

After my tour, I returned to the lively, modern city that Hiroshima is today by wandering up and down the streets heading back to the train station and doing a bit of shopping. Well, perhaps more than a bit… ^-^;; I browsed through several book stores, suffering manga overload as I couldn’t find anything I was looking for among the numerous shelves, even floors of the comics.

Similar was the overload of looking through the multi-storey DeoDeo computer store (seperate from their general store), which even had Mac stuff. Discovered they had fan making kits for printers, guy at the store gave me one with my picture as a demo. Ended up buying one of those and a USB keychain drive for transfering files from my computer to the work one. Another thing I’d been looking for was a keyboard for my PS2 to use while playing FFXI (which I hope to be able to do again in a week or two when I get broadband again). I saw several small ones that would be nice, but instead just had to get one by Sammie that builds a tiny keyboard into a PS2 controller. I’d always had problems with typing and using the controller together, perhaps this will work since I’m used to the small keys on the Zaurus PDA.

Anyways, also found a manga/doujin store, a model & figure store, various toy stores, and lots of other stuff. Hiroshima may be a dangerous place to my wallet…

So it took me most of the afternoon to make my way along the 2 km back to the station. I guess that’s not bad considering the distractions.

[Saturday evening to be continued in next entry]

Related Posts