Adventures in Japan

Hiroshima

The reason why we took it so easy on Boxing Day is that we knew we had a big day after Boxing Day planned. Plus Japan doesn't have big Boxing Day sales or anything like that.

Wow, my segueing abilities are not working today at all.

So: Hiroshima...

Not working at all.

We went to Hiroshima.



In Hiroshima, we met a lovely friend of Nate's.



This is Utako. She met Nate in Vancouver. She was nice enough to show us around. After we had all checked in, we poked around for a bit and then decided that the best course of action was to go to the Peace Museum.

I don't want to sound glib, but glibness and irony and all that is how I respond to anything that makes me feel uncomfortable. I cannot speak for the others but I was fairly uncomfortable the whole time I was in the museum. There's only so many times you can read about school children loosing all their skin before your skin feels weird pressed against your body. Reading about the reality of that day made the rest of my day seem supremely unreal.

That skin stuff wasn't even the worst of it. There is just so much horror contained in that museum. Stuff that makes it hard to type because it won't leave my head. Fingernails that grow straight out from fingers... no. Let's not talk about that stuff. It was all bad. But I'm glad I went. I don't know how that works, but there you go.



There is one other main thing to do when you are in the Hiroshima area, and that is to go to Itsukushima shrine or is called Miyajima shrine?. It was a bit late in the day to get down to the boat to get us to the shrine. So we didn't do that. Instead, we took this picture.



Then we just kind of bummed around town looking for interesting things to see and do. For lunch, we ate some not good Italian.

After lunch, we split up. Carla and I found this:



That is an arcade game. That you sit in. It is like a mech simulator. You have all kinds of dials and levels and controls and pedals and such. And the entire interior of the unit is a screen. You are surrounded by the game. It looked intense.

We all met up again for dinner. We went out for Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki, as you all well know, is Japanese style pancake/omlette/pizza thingees. In Osaka, everything is just thrown all together in the batter and mixed up and then grilled. In Hiroshima, they cook everything separately and then stack it all up at the end. Either way: delicious!



After that we all turned in, there was a big day ahead of us. Plus Carla had to go to work.