Due to the silly train schedule I had no choice but to show up to the station 40 minutes before our designated meeting time. Thankfully, I was not the only early one and I settled in and chatted with my fellow punctual SCTIers. We boarded the train and I must say I love that the seats of the train can flip around. So instead of having a rows of seats facing one direction on the train, our group flipped some of them around so we had mini pods.
By the time we arrived in Hiroshima it was lunch. Yum! Lunch. Our group was steered to a plaza of Hiroshima style okonomiyaki. I enjoy okonomiyaki, but to be perfectly honest, it doesn't quite hit the spot for me. But I must say that I do prefer Hiroshima style to Osaka. Sorry, Kansai.
Following lunch we went to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, which is actually more like a war museum, but I guess that's just nomenclature. Those places depress me. I do think it's important to understand what happened in the past, but I just don't like being there seeing it. Gah! What made it worse was the hordes of school children. They were loud, and for guilt ridden Americans, kind of obnoxious. Moral of the story: kids will be kids, even in war museums.
After the museum our group was in for more sadness. The program arranged for a survivor to speak to us. She was 12 when the bomb dropped and was a little over a kilometer from the epicenter. The wounds and radiation she received from the bomb meant that she was an unsuitable candidate for marriage, which was something that she continually brought up, especially in the question and answer segment. But I must say, that I got a lot more out of speaking to her than the visit to the museum. It was just sad.
For some reason the program decided to juxtapose intense sadness with merrymaking. After leaving Hiroshima behind and catching a ferry to Miyajima, our group was taken to our ryokan where we got to don cotton yukata and eat a 10 course meal paid for by the ever generous Bings.
Following dinner most of us headed to the giant Torii. Depending on the tides it is either submerged in water or as in our case you can walk out to it. So we gathered at the base of the Torii and took and obscene amount of pictures. It was quite pretty from there. Not just the Torii, but you could also see the city lights across the ocean. Then onsen. Very relaxing once you get past the whole, yeah, I'm naked with other people in a tub of too hot water thing. And then sleep. Sleep. Sleep.
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