Japan day 9 miyajima and Hiroshima

morning view from our Hiroshima hotel.  for some reason the mountainous islands with the fog make me think of Vietnam.  I've never been to Vietnam, but I picture that this is what it looks like (I could be completely wrong!)

tony's second course for breakfast. they had western food as well and I ate lots of cornflakes and pancakes.  got matt to eat a few pancakes as well!

Satoru-san headed home to tokyo to pick up puppy (his adorable old papillon) from the petsitter and kiwako, tony and the kids and I took the train to myajima-guchi and the ferry to myajima. This is our view of the tori gate of the Itsukushima-jinja shrine from the ferry - we hit as tide was toward low, high tide would have been more amazing - but it was pretty amazing anyway!

so, we had heard that you could feed and pet the deer here, which goes against everything I've taught my kids about wildlife.  sure enough, when we got there, there are multiple sig saying the deer are wild animals and not to touch or feed. we did not feed them (other than the half of a paper luggage tag one managed to snack off of our bag) but we petted them a bit before we saw the signs. 

tony and I had seen this adorable symbol all over Tokyo and decided it was a package delivery service.  kiwako confirmed that it is - she says they are in the states too - black cat!

beautiful!!

tony was just standing there and the deer came over and laid down next to him. 

sampling the local delicacies.  ice cream in an ice cream cone like maple leaf container and Hiroshima soda.  the ice cream was good.  the soda was a bit off, spicy somehow, but not hot spicy - different, not bad, but I don't think we would get it again. 

had to buy this - the stall was advertising that they had a steam bun for vegetarians!!!  filled with bean curd - not bad!

Kaitlyn and her deep fried bacon asparagus treat - she tried to get oyster, squid, bacon and potato but they were sold out of all of those. 

temple at the top of the hill above the shrine. 

lanterns in the underground street crossing. 

we headed back to Hiroshima and took the street trolley to the peace park.  this structure is called the A-bomb dome.  it is below the epicenter of the atom bomb that detonated 600 meters above. one of the few structures that remained standing.

matt made friends with a Hiroshima survivor - he was a baby when the bomb hit.  he showed matt how to fold a flying crane and he made the most amazing tiny little crane that he gave matt. 

This is the only picture that I took at the museum.  it's a section of wall stained with the black rain that came down after the bomb. almost everyone within 1km radius was killed outright.  140,000 people in the first few days.  many lived for a few days with burns over most of their bodies.  many schoolchildren that were in the center of town helping build firebreaks.  the museum is absolutely a must do.  difficult, but necessary.  I can only hope the world will become a more peaceful place.

 

this is the children's peace memorial, built in honor of a girl who died of leukemia more than 10 years after the bombings.  she folded more than a thousand paper cranes.  paper cranes are still delivered almost daily to the memorial.  those brightly colored boxes below are all the cranes - some in big bags, some made into pictures. 

waiting for the final train home.  thankfully satoru-san came to our rescue and picked us up from the train station just before midnight so we didn't have to piggyback him home (about 1 mile walk).