Hiroshima aka: 広島

The whole WWII memorial, peace park stuff can easily be done in a day… and it is very interesting, but a full day of a-bomb stuff and your kinds all emotioned out. It’s all very tragic, but pace it out… it can get to you.

Aside from the WWII stuff, I didn’t find much else of interest for tourists like me.

...and the best part was the Hiroshima Okonomiyaki (Hiroshimayaki). DAMN that stuff is awesome! Great food.

Hiroshima Okonomiyaki is AWSOME!

i went there in 2004, on the eve of the 59th anniversary of the bombing, so i was there to see a lot of the events surrounding it’s remembrance. it was beyond words moving, being able to stand almost directly at the hypocenter of the blast and think about the horrid events that unfolded on that day. everywhere we went, people offered us stories of what happened that day. both that, and the museum, were heartbreaking.

what really got me was the memorial to sadako sasaki, a girl who held to the belief that folding 1000 paper cranes would grant her a wish, in her case to survive leukemia (many kids developed the disease 10 years after the bombing). it started a campaign based around the paper crane, and they were everywhere i went, as a result (see the picture i took of cranes folded for the memorial to children workers killed—incidentally, the ribbon denotes the secondary school class which donated the cranes).

definitely worth visiting.

MAPLE

completely awe-inspiring. very sad, but i’m so glad i went while i was in japan. americans need to see the destruction caused by the atomic bomb to prevent its use again.

verrrrry difficult to be there…
hard feelings

great learning experience
beautiful island
very sad

Technology + History = Hiroshima

You will understand what I mean when you go there.

For ISWC 2004.

Visiting Hiroshima is not easy. I don’t mean that in the sense that it’s hard to get to, but in the sense that it is a weighty place. While it’s inhabitants get up and go to work like people everywhere—for an outsider nothing about this city is ordinary. “Hiroshima” is almost a metaphor for the inhumanity that people can inflict on each other. It seems almost sacraligious to laugh here, disrespectful to smile. But it’s just a city afterall.

I went to the Hiroshima A-Bomb Museum and I was moved to tears. Hiroshima is beautiful and I would definetley return.