Our next stop was Hiroshima, heading the furthest south in our journey so far. It was a quick 60-minute Shinkansen ride from Okayama, and a tram (or street car as they are called) ride from Hiroshima train station to our apartment. The Airbnb apartment was just over the river from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, with the park and Atomic Bomb Dome visible from our fifth-floor balcony.
It was a lovely apartment with three bedrooms, a kitchen and dining and lounge area. The kids get their own big double beds. A downside was being Japanese style dining table and lounge room we had no chairs to sit on. Also, the tram ran along our street, and so you could her the tram during the night.
A quick visit to the supermarket to stock up on supplies, we then walked into the main CBD to find some dinner.
The following day we set out to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, where we took our time walking through the park and visiting the memorials. The park was a beautiful and peaceful space, awash in green and autumn colours, with leaves colouring the ground. The park is laid out with a main axis aligning with the a-bomb dome, some similarities to the war memorial and Anzac Parade axis in Canberra, with the a-bomb dome a haunting reminder of the complete destruction. We then headed to the Peace Memorial Museum. With the main section of the museum under re-development, the exhibits are all located in the East building. Here it covers in detail the history of Hiroshima City before the bomb, the development and the decision to drop the bomb, the lives of Hiroshima citizens during World War II and after the bombing, and ends with information about the nuclear age and efforts for international peace.
The displays are presented well and provide both information to educate while also conveying many personal stories, including video testimonies from survivors. It is a rightfully disturbing and depressing visit; the scale of the death and destruction is unimaginable. On entry to the museum you are given a postcard along with the entry ticket, and so we take a welcome break to post the postcards. The final sight is the display of President Obama’s message for peace and his folded paper cranes from his visit last year.
We emerge back out into the peace of the park, and quietly walk back through the park with a greater understanding. Past the Cenotaph for the A-bomb Victims, the Flame of Peace, and stopping to ring the Peace Bell.
In the afternoon we headed back to the apartment for some needed rest. After some downtime the boys and I logged onto the Geocache app on my phone and spent a couple of hours walking and finding geocaches. We then returned to the apartment and all headed out for dinner.
At the museum we bought the Sadako and the 1000 cranes book from the gift shop along with a pack of 100 pieces of origami paper. We together read a few chapters each day while learning to fold paper cranes. We finished the story after three days of reading, and have each been folding a paper crane every day since, and so we should finish all 100 before leaving Japan.
The following day we headed to the Hiroshima Prefectural Art Museum. A 30-minute walk took us an hour as we continued with the Geocache hunting and found a few on the way. The museum is housed in a large, impressive building with quite a good collection. At least some names we recognised (Dali, Picasso) and enjoyed a mixture of sculpture, international and Japanese art. The high quality of Japanese museums and galleries continue to impress us. The other attraction for us was Shukkei-en, another fabulous historic garden to visit.
We spent an hour or two walking through Shukkeien in the afternoon, again enjoying the autumn colours on a beautiful sunny day. Shukkeien’s name can be translated into English as “shrunken-scenery garden”, which is a good description of the garden itself. Valleys, mountains, and forests are all represented in the garden’s landscapes with the garden providing a large range of differing scenic views all within quite a small space. We walked the path that winds throughout the whole garden with the pond at the centre. The carp were one thing not shrunken, as they seemed to be the largest we have seen so far.
Shukkeien has a long history dating back to 1620, just after the completion of Hiroshima Castle. It was reconstructed and reopened in 1951 after being destroyed in the nuclear attack on Hiroshima.
From Shukkeien we continued our Geocache hunt into the city, where we had dinner and walked back to the apartment.
The next morning we packed and readied ourselves for the short trip to Miya Jima. We now recognised the sound of the Peace Bell which we could hear occasionally from the apartment, along with the chimes that sounded at 8:16 am each morning to mark the time the bomb detonated. Though the visit to Hiroshima revolved around the devastation of the a-bomb, we enjoyed our days in a vibrant and friendly city that felt very liveable. And a city that has a strong message of peace for all of us.
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