Japan Day 8: Itsukushima Shrine and Hiroshima.

Itsukushima Shrine is on the island of Miyajima, just a 10 minute ferry ride from the mainland. It was a sunny day but it was COLD! I came downstairs with 2 merino tops under my jumper, felt the wind and marched straight back to my room to grab another one. It turned out to be a wise decision.

This island has always been worshipped by the locals and is considered to be Kami. So, to avoid hurting the land and bringing bad luck to the people, in 593 they built a Shinto temple on the seashore. We saw the gate at high tide, and it was beautiful.

Can you believe that I’m seeing all of this stuff?

This is only the gate to the shrine, which is built over the beach.

The vermilion colour is a protection against evil spirits that could hurt the people.

It didn’t hurt that people brought their dogs along with them…

This arched bridge was only used by the emperor’s messengers.

And then suddenly, as we were walking on the beach, the sun came out and I was able to capture the brilliant shade of Orange I was unable to get with my photos. Here is the colour I was seeing!

This is what I had for lunch. Hiroshima is famous for its oysters, but they don’t eat them raw. They cook them.
I know… talk about ruining a perfectly good oyster! But these weren’t too bad.

Then we wandered around the shops.

I quite liked the humour here.

This one’s been busy shopping.

The island has wild deer that roam around. There are many signs and recorded announcements asking people not to feed them, but they do it anyway.

They also remove the antlers to keep the tourists safe.

Our next stop was Hiroshima.
This morning on our 2 hour bus ride, Ben told us the story of Sadako. 

She was one year old when the bomb dropped, and she was 5kms away and inside. It looked as if she was ok, but when she was a teenager she developed leukaemia.

There’s a Japanese superstition that if you fold 1,000 origami cranes, you can make a wish and it will come true.

She used the paper wrapping from her medicine to make the cranes. Sadly, she didn’t get to make the thousand cranes, but after she died her classmates got together and finished the job. Now, people bring paper cranes here. In the bus on the way into Hiroshima, we all made paper cranes.

It’s lucky it was a two hour bus ride, because there were a few tricky bits. Ben had his hands full teaching us what to do. We’re a large group!

This is the Dome monument; the building that was almost directly under the atomic bomb when it went off 600m in the air above the city. It’s left as it was, even with bricks and debris around the outside, as a stark reminder of what happened that day.

Here’s what it looked like before.

There were 300,000 people in the city of Hiroshima in 1945. Most of the young men were gone, so it was mainly the elderly, women and children.

170,000 people died after the bomb fell. This hill in the Peace Park is where the ashes of 60,000 people who died in the area were buried together.

The bomb was dropped at 8:15 AM. There were hundreds of schoolchildren outside that day, as they were helping to demolish certain houses, to stop the spread of fire racing between houses when conventional bombs were dropped. No one expected what was to come.

I snapped this photo of the tree and the river, but caught the building in the background. This was another building that partially survived the bomb. At 8 AM that morning, a guy went down to the basement to check on some documents. Out of 48 people who worked there, he was the only survivor.
The top two stories collapsed on top of him. Imagine his bewilderment and horror when he got out and saw what had happened? He ended up living into his eighties.

Before we went to the museum, we dropped off our cranes. See Sadako with the crane over her head?

People drop paper cranes off by the tonne. They’re sewn together and then dropped off into storage.

There’s a bell beside the Sakako memorial. I tested it out. It rings.

The memorial was full of symbolism. The front is shaped like a bunker, with the words roughly translated to: Let all the souls here rest in peace, for we shall not repeat the evil.

There is water here. After the bomb exploded, black oily rain fell. The survivors were greatly injured and craved water, so most of them drank this rain. It was highly radioactive, of course. Many thousands of people died asking for water, so they have it now, so they may rest in peace.

Behind the pool is an eternal flame, like the one we have at the Shrine in Melbourne. This flame in Hiroshima will burn until the last nuclear bomb in the world is destroyed. Then it will be turned off.

And finally, in the far background, you can see the Dome.

I took a few pictures inside the museum.

The day after the bomb.

The sign says: A melted statue of Buddha.

Between the war museum in Saigon a month ago and now this one today, I’ve seen some very confronting stuff. It’s saddening, of course, but when you go outside and see the bustling city as it now is, I am heartened by the resilience that ordinary people show.
I deliberately chose a tour to Japan that included Hiroshima. My grandfather was a Tivoli performer and came here after the war to entertain the troops. After coming here today, I wish I had’ve thought to ask him about what he saw.

Dad Joke of the Day: