A day of remembrance!

Up early to do a day trip to Hiroshima. It's always been a dream/wish for me to go to Hiroshima. The first chapter book I ever read was "Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes" which I picked myself from the Glen Speck library. What crazy reading material for a 3rd grader. We picked up some breakfast from the train station (we are realizing now that Tokyo station has amazing food, but that it's rare). Train was only about 2 hours.

They were doing renovations to part of the museum so we couldn't see everything but I don't think I could've seen much more. It was very intense and sad. I had never thought much about what happened to those on the ground in Hiroshima, except radiation poisoning. When I learned about WWII, we see photos of Americans celebrating or the sailor kissing the nurse in Times Square. The pictures in this museum were shocking. Sad. Terrible.

This model showed where the bomb exploded (above ground for most damage above ground) and the damage it left. Very few buildings survived.

They had artifacts, clothing, sandals, a lunchbox with charred food still inside. Most of the audio guide tales were of school children ages 7-17 mostly.

This tricycle was a 3 year old's prized possession and when he died, they buried him with the trike. 40 years later, the family decided to give the child a proper burial and donated the helmet and trike to the museum. So sad.

The yukatas worn by women were charred and burned, and the photo on the wall is a woman's back. It's hard to imagine what these people went through, both in physical and emotional pain. I felt mostly terrible for those who didn't die immediately. The ones who died immediately truly were the lucky ones.

The peace dome is very elegant and a beautiful tribute.

They had a children's memorial. Sadako's parents helped raise the money to keep her memory as well as all the children who died. There was a bell with a metal crane on the inside.

The shrine had millions of paper cranes that people had left. I didn't know how to fold one (I've never been able to figure it out) so I just marveled at all the colors and patterns on the origami paper.

The biggest reminder of the bomb falling was the Dome. For some reason, the building didn't topple, but anyone inside died and the entire structure was unusable. Japan decided to keep it erected and try to maintain how it looked right after the bomb to remind others of what can happen with Atomic bombs.

After contemplating the whole afternoon, we changed pace by getting lunch. Our tour book said that Hiroshima's signature dish is "okonomiyaki" which is fried cabbage, noodles, a pancake type batter, with egg and some steak sauce. (ok, those are not the exact ingredients but you get the gist) It was delicious but very heavy. They handed us small spatulas and we ate it right off the grill.

Back to the train, we bought some cute pancake type treats filled with red bean. They were a delicious fiber filled snack for the ride back to Kyoto.

For dinner, we tried a skewers place. We sat at the bar so we could watch the chef make it all. He was probably the largest Japanese person we've seen the entire trip with the teeniest skewers ever. Pretty funny to watch him turn each one over hot coals. The parts on the skewers were not as tasty as they look, however. I think we got chicken neck, chicken "buttock", and a quail egg one that was wrapped in bacon.

After dinner, we checked out Gion, the area famous for the super expensive restaurants and Geishas. The area was quiet and well lit for a night stroll. We sped through as we weren't going to step into a bar, and quickly went back to Game Panic where we spent another $20 and 2 hours putting medals into a game.