Hello from Hiroshima

We arrived in Hiroshima yesterday, passing through Himeji and Kobe enroute. The famous Himeji Castle was spotted. The famous Kobe beef was not. I tried, but we only had 10 minutes at the train station.

We had a great group activity last night, starting with an okonomiyaki dinner before heading to Karoke! They have places here where there are rooms upon rooms of Karoke stations you can rent by the hour for a group, so then you only embarrass yourself in front of the people you know and have to see again instead of the people you don't. All you can drink for the hour included for 1000Yen/person. I had never worked up the guts to do it on stage before but it seemed safe enough in a private room so I gave it go and tried to sing along with one of my travel mates, Dean. I didn't know such a thing was possible in non-competitive Karoke, but I got absolutely schooled in Bohemian Rhapsody. I can carry a tune alright, but that guy can really sing!

Loads of fun, and if that kind of establishment were available in Calgary, I could actually see myself imbibing again back home.

This morning was Miyajimi Island. More crowded than I was expecting, but I don't know what I was smoking to be expecting a non-crowded tourist spot in Japan. None the less, it was great, and I could have spent an entire day there easily. Aside from the usual temple-hopping, there was great little streets filled with shops and restaurants. The highlight though was the local deer that are tame enough you could take them home as pets. Someone told me you can even hug them so I decided to try. Surprisingly, it is actually true!

After some sushi for lunch, we headed to the Memorial Peace Park. Hiroshima of course being famous as the site of the first atomic bomb explosion, it was something I had been looking forward to. I almost dozed off on the tram ride over so I was pretty groggy when I got there, but seeing the site of the 'Atomic Dome' brought me racing back to a very contemplative reality. It's one of the few buildings within a kilometer of the epicenter of the explosion that wasn't completely destroyed, although it may as well have been. Instead, what remained was kept as a memorial of the event, and it definitely gives you a sense of the force the bomb unleashed. We also toured through the museum, which was both fascinating and gut-wrenching. I'm not sure if even the Holocaust museums I have seen evoked such strong emotion in me. Enough anger to want to punch someone, enough sadness to want to cry, enough shock to feel sick to my stomach... it's unreal. Don't really know what else to say, other than you can not come to Japan and not go through it. IMHO.

Me being me, I was the last one out of the museum. We were on our own after that so most of the group had skadaddled, but I managed to catch up with one of the girls from the group. We did the necessary debriefing after seeing all that, then strolled past the Hiroshima castle since I had yet to see a Japanese castle. I saw a couple on the bullet train, but 'seeing' something from a bullet train window is a bit of a misnomer. The one today doesn't really count either as it was a reconstruction. Based on the before and after city models in the museum, the original vanished when the bomb was dropped. New one looks nice though. Then we strolled through the nightlife district of Hiroshima, which was quite something. Japan seems very conservative, organized, and efficient, but this area was a little more loud, neon-lighted, and chaotic. It felt like we had left the 'Western' part of South-East Asia and ventured much deeper in... except not really because we still didn't have to think twice about safety. Nice place to grab dinner (Pumpkin Pasta!) before catching the tram back again.

Tommorrow we head out bright and early for one of the ever-growing list of highlights on this trip: Koya-San. I'm not entirely sure what awaits us, other than we have to transfer something like 4 times to get there before ending up at a mountain monastery where we will spend the night hanging with some Buddhist monks, and I believe getting to observe their morning prayers the next day. Couple of ealy mornings coming up, so I should crash...

but first, yes, I have managed to get some pics uploaded... more details in a bit.