24 May 2010
Day 7: Peace, Once Again
Posted by Roland under: Travel .
After several days of staying in Hiroshima, we finally decided to actually tour the city. While most of our day would be occupied by traveling to Tokyo, the morning/afternoon was free to tour through Hiroshima. We started by walking from our hotel down the main shopping street in Hiroshima towards Peace Park. Peace Park is always a sobering sight, especially when you reach the A-bomb Dome and see the first visible reminder of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. We would walk through a few more of the monuments at the park before getting to the main focus of the park, which was the Peace Museum.
Full of stories about Hiroshima before and after the bomb, I had gone through the museum at least three times now, but each time the images were very powerful, especially of the recollections of the day of the bomb. Me and Tom went through the museum silently for the most part, the museum did most of the work for us. We spent our time slowly walking from exhibit to exhibit, as each part of the museum lent some insight into the bomb falling on Hiroshima, never placing blame of anyone or anything, just explaining why and what happened.
Once done with Peace Museum, we decided to head for Hiroshima Castle, to give Tom at least one taste of a Japanese castle. While Hiroshima Castle was no Himeji, Tom still enjoyed the walk through the castle, albeit it being very steep for our very tired feet. We would also walk by the old baseball stadium, I was a little disheartened to see it regelated to being an exhibition hall for peace cranes.
In order to keep my ramen streak alive, we would have an order of Hiroshima tsukemen (the noodles separate from the soup), which featured a hot sesame oil dipping sauce. Tasty enough for me! And it counted in my mind for my “everyday of ramen” plans. We would take a streetcar back to our hotel, where I had the idea we could get a transfer ticket and not have to pay for our car back to the station. Unfortunately that was not the case and we would instead just save our yen and walk from the hotel to the station with our bags. Not a big hassle but after long days of walking we would’ve appreciated a free streetcar ride.
Not much to say about our long trek back to Tokyo. The ride was without incident on the bullet train. When we got back to Tokyo we hopped on a subway towards our hotel, unfortunately the subway we got off at lacked an elevator so I had to lug my bags up for a few flights of stairs. But once at the hotel we settled in quickly, Tom got ready for his clubbing night out near Shibuya, but I would be having none of that, rather desiring just to sleep. The both of us would enjoy a light dinner at a nearby izakaya before parting ways for the night, Tom heading out on his own (would he make it back?) to Shibuya while I settled in at the hotel for a relaxing night at home.