Next stop, Hiroshima. After getting all packed up I headed down to the ticket office to reserve my shinkansen seat. The ticket officer went to his books, hemmed and hawed a little bit, and let me know the quickest way there was to catch a train to Shin-Osaka and then transfer to another train that would take me all the way to Hiroshima. The catch? I had 3 minutes from when I train got in to when my transfer took off. Feeling up to the challenge I said that was OK and headed over to the track for my first leg.
Rolling in to Shin-Osaka I gathered my stuff and first checked the track reader-board to see if my train was possibly the one on the track adjacent to the one I got off at. No such luck. Remembering where the closest master reader-board was I headed downstairs and found that my train was only a couple tracks over and made a quick dash for it. I hopped on the train with more than a minute to spare feeling pretty happy with myself, that is, until I realized I left my umbrella on the previous train. Of course, 10 minutes out of Shin-Osaka the rain starts coming down again.
After picking up yet another 500 yen umbrella from a convenience store at the train station I headed over through the rain towards my next hotel, the Hotel JAL City Hiroshima. The hotel was only about a 5 minute walk away and luckily it was even marked on map right there at the station. The people at the hotel were nice enough to let me check in 30 minutes early so I dropped off my stuff and got ready to head over to the peace memorial park. The room was much smaller than my last couple of rooms but then again, it was cheaper as well. The TV only got Japanese stations, which was fine since by this point I’d gotten really tired of the talking heads on CNN.
My room arranged I headed through the downpour over towards Hiroshima castle and then down towards the atomic bomb dome and then through the peace park. It was pretty a pretty weird juxtaposition standing in front of an symbol of the immense destruction caused when the US dropped the bomb and having little Japanese kids come up all smiling and saying hi.
The museum was not a very uplifting experience, especially as an American. Its one of things I’m glad I did but I have no inclination to ever repeat. They do a good job at explaining the history leading up the event on both sides, then show some before and after scenes using both pictures and dioramas to convey the area of effect the bomb blast had. They then go into nuclear weapons and Hiroshima’s role as a center in the anti-atomic weaponry movement before getting into artifacts section. This is where it really gets disturbing, as they show a number of items donated by impacted families such as carbonized children’s lunchboxes, burned clothing, sloughed off skin and fingernails - each with a name and unhappy story attached. They show pictures of a number of the burn victims, examples of warped girders, melted roofing tiles, even a section of stone steps where the shadow of sombody is burned in. They then go into the effects of radiation and described the agonizing deaths of those “lucky” enough make it though the initial explosion. It’s easy to think of nuclear weapons abstractly as the ultimate in destructive power but once you see impact of that terrible power applied I think its nearly impossibly look at them in the same way.
By time I got out of the museum the rain had completely stopped and I headed over to the nearest shopping area to find something to eat. I had okonomiyaki, this time Hiroshima style where they fry up a number of ingredients in between two thin crepes. I had one with cabbage, pork, squid, soba noodles, egg, and cheese and it was delicious, I definitely think I like Hiroshima style much much better.