Peace and Sadness in Hiroshima

4/17

I've only been in Japan for an hour and a half and already I've seen: a Japanese dwarf (which I think just seems particularly funny because I imagine they should be doing acrobatics or something stupid like that- I know, I suck), a woman dressed in a full kimono complete with socks and sandals, and a girl/young woman all Harajuku'd out in red with bows, frills and lace. 

Once again, I have to try to keep these entries shorter, because I just get backlogged and then I start to feel overwhelmed and almost start to dread it when I actually really enjoy writing them.

So today, I got in by ferry to Shimonoseki, going through the lovely straits of Japan.  The train station was a short walk away so I went over, remembered that I had no idea or plan as to where I was going and just walked onto a train.  Once on the train, I looked at a map and decided that from there I'd go to Hiroshima for the night and since the train was still at the station while I was making up my mind, I just got up and walked off.  I had to go South to get a train to go North to Hiroshima, but I got there.  Since I didn't have a hostel booked and didn't have a guidebook, I needed to get online to look one up.  This sounds simpler than it was. 

Internet (cable or wifi) is not just available here in coffee shops or public places.  They have it, of course, but you have to go to a specific Internet Cafe.  These are usually quite nice; comfortable, fast internet speeds, free soda/coffee/tea, and a manga library, but it is inconvenient as I'm used to being able to pretty much pop in anywhere to get internet (even if I have to pay for it or buy something).

Still, I found one, looked up a hostel that looked decent and made it over to J-Hoppers, a hostel group in four cities here.  I got a dorm room with internet access and just hung out there for a while resting.

In the late afternoon, I had to get out and do something, especially if I wanted to leave Hiroshima the next day.  Plus, I was starving.  I caught a train into the city center, go off at a main shopping area and found a ramen place, then walked over to the Peace Park which included several different types of memorials, burial shrines, trees still alive and marked from the blast, and a building of some importance left as skeletal as it was after the bomb was dropped.

Epicenter of the bomb, though higher up in the sky

Hiroshima was fantastically done.  It really was; the Peace Park was non-judgemental, simply factual, and calming, and great. 

Thousand Paper Cranes Memorial

Yet somehow, it was still terribly, horribly depressing.  I started to think about it though and it's really my own fault; I'm the one who was stupid enough to go from one country known for civil war/genocide/land mines to a country known for civil war/foreign interference to a place where the worlds first atomic bomb was dropped- really what could I expect?