Taking the train from the main island of Honshu to Hokkaido you go 240 meters under ground & sea thru the 54 km Seikan Tunnel. About an hour of nothing but tunnel out the window, but still kinda cool.

Japanese pizza places just don’t smell the same as American ones. Not enough cheezy greese & different meats (pepperoni is unheard of!?!). So I knew Shakey’s in Shibuya would be good when I walked in.

I had plans today to go to Miyajima to see the Tama-no-tori festival. Weather was pretty clear and looked good, so I headed off and arrived at the island a little before 11:30am. The event was supposed to start at 12:00pm according to the link above, so I figured I was doing good. Noon rolled around, still nothing going on at the site (I could see the set-up, there just wasn’t anyone around it). I wandered around a bit and eventually ran across a poster advertising the event — it indicated that things were to start at 11am… Doh! Apparently it was over pretty quickly, there were no obvious clues when I arrived that everything was already over. Too bad, I hadn’t been able to see it the previous years because it was on weekdays. Not that big of a loss I guess, but probably would have been fun. Gonna have to check the times more closely on these “last chance” events…

I wandered around and took yet more pictures of the island. Here’s one of a future samurai, or maybe fisherman, not quite sure:

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Today was the 61st anniversary of the bombing of Hiroshima. I decided that since this is my last year, I should attend the memorial ceremonies in the morning. My first year, I’d just gotten here and hadn’t even visited Hiroshima yet — I think I watched the event on TV. Last year was the big 60th anniversary. It was obviously going to be a bit too big an event for my taste, so I decided to do the night-time lantern ceremony (where candle lanterns with messages written on them are floated down the river). It was quite pretty and moving. But I hadn’t attended the main memorial in the morning yet, so I got up early this morning to catch the 6:48 train into the city.

Even getting up that early was cutting things a bit close. The ceremony was to start at 8:00, I arrived at Peace Park at 8:15, just as the bell was tolling the time of the bomb blast. Most people stopped to observe a minute of silence, so I stood there reflecting on it, within sight of the A-Bomb Dome. I then made my way over to the area that the ceremony was taking place. As expected, it was very crowded but I managed to find a spot in the back with a good view (at least via 10x zoom). I’d missed the laying of the wreaths, but had arrived in time to catch Prime Minister Koizumi’s speech. One of the other speeches was delivered for UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, who obviously couldn’t attend because he is currently busy trying to make peace. Anyways, I think this is the first time I’ve seen a world leader type person like this.

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I took this pic back in May and ran across it when cleaning up today. No idea what caused this mutation, there were a few of them like it. And, no, there’s not lingering radiation in Hiroshima and Mukaihara’s more-or-less on the “island divide” so there shouldn’t be too much strange stuff in the water…