Hiroshima

A few weeks ago I took a quick weekend trip to the southern region of Japan. It took about 4.5 hours on the Noizumi Super Express train from Tokyo to Hiroshima...incredible! I think it's over 700 miles or something insane like that. You forget how long Japan is. I was so surprised at what a bustling and leafy city Hiroshima is. It really gives you great hope in the power of human survival and renewal. After the bomb dropped, the Japanese were told that a tree wouldn't grow there for 100 years because of all the radiation damage. But there are big beautiful trees everywhere and wide boulevards and a packed cable car. You'd never know this city suffered such a tragedy. The Atomic Bomb Museum was worth making the trip for. The temperature here rose 3,000 degrees for a split second and destroyed everything, except the "Atomic Dome" as it is now called. It was a European-style museum that had just been built in the late 1930s before the war. The Japanese were very proud of it and when the entire city was in ashes, the cement dome still stood. And here it is with a park around it, preserved. The interesting thing is, there doesn't seem to be any anti-American sentiment there or any bitterness. I have to give it to the Japanese for this. They're looking to the future, always. They don't harp on things that happened (they did some terrible things themselves, after all) and they don't bring politics up. They consider it rude and I'm beginning to agree after being attacked in so many countries just for my country or origin.

Aside from the bomb, which is all most Americans think of, Hiroshima is also famous for OKINOMIYAKI, aka a huge thick pancake stuffed with squid, vegetables, seaweed, bacon, scallops, fried oysters (another Hiroshima specialty) and just about anything else you can think of. I found a great little spot in "Okinomiyaki Corner" to get one. The atmosphere was great and I even managed to have a conversation with the cook in Japanese. The only problem: It didn't really taste very good, and there was A LOT of it. The cook would've been very insulted if I didn't finish it so I did my best. But my experience with food here in general, is that the excitement and presentation is always much better than the taste...sigh.

Miyajima is an island about an hour from Hiroshima. It's a sweet little leafy island with a gorgeous shrine built right on the water, called Itsukushima, known for this big orange gate in the middle of the water. I had a nice day exploring but the only problem with these places is that the Japanese are obsessed with kitschy souvenirs and there are stalls selling plastic Hello Kitty dolls and tiny models of the shrine and rice spoons with pictures of deer on them all over the place. It kind of ruins the atmosphere, but then again, so does tour groups of 300 Japanese people snapping photos obsessively.