Nasty Conjugation

Instead of Day 6 I should probably just say Final Day, or perhaps Day Omega. This is it, folks. The trip is over, and I’m done writing about it. The last pictures are uploaded, so feel free to look at those as well. Expect to be subjected to plenty of pictures and stories when we get back to the United States, but for the time being you don’t have to hear anything else about it. Please enjoy, and thanks for reading about our trip!

Pictures of Day Six in Miyajima and Hiroshima.

Finally, after crossing the width of Japan’s main island, we had arrived at our last stop. After a restful night in the ryokan, we got up at 6:30 determined to see all of Miyajima and Hiroshima in a single day before boarding an overnight bus for home. An ambitious plan, to be sure, and one deeply rooted in folly, but that’s how we do things here.

We wanted to get to Miyajima before the massive touristy crowds took over, so our first order of business was getting to the ferry. It was a half-hour train ride to the boat, and a fifteen-minute ride across the bay to the island. The approach to Miyajima was gorgeous. There was a slight breeze on the water, and the morning mist had yet to burn off, so we got to see the island and shrine slowly materialize out of the fog. Once on the island we were greeted by an extra bonus – more sacred deer! Nobody told me there would be sacred deer! I was giddy like a little boy with my new, unexpected friends.

Itsukushima shrine is built over the water because of the island’s previous status as holy ground. Commoners weren’t allowed to set foot on the land, so they took a boat through the floating torii and worshipped just offshore in the shrine. Nowadays the view of the torii is considered one of the three great views of Japan. The shrine is regularly swamped by tourists, but we timed our arrival early enough that it was just getting busy when we were leaving. The tide was up when were there, too, which was a fortunate coincidence. With the tide down it’s not so majestic, just lots of mud and a shrine sitting on stilts. Basking in our continued luck, we enjoyed our beautiful surroundings, bought some souvenirs, frolicked with sacred deer, and then boarded the ferry for the mainland.

Back in Hiroshima, we wandered aimlessly for an hour trying to find the center of town and the Peace Park. Along the way we did some souvenir shopping at a flea market (I bought a carving of a little old man with a turtle) and ate lunch at a little bistro. After finding a map and realizing we had walked completely past our destination, we turned around and finally located the memorial. It’s not that the Peace Park is small; it’s actually pretty big. The problem is that the part of our brain that handles directions is dangerously defective.

So, finally, here was the Hiroshima that the world knows. I feel the need to digress a little here and talk about our impressions of the city in a broader sense. It’s impossible to talk about Hiroshima without talking about the bomb. The two are bound forever by the first instance of nuclear warfare, a moment so horrifying that the image of a mushroom cloud is now permanently burnt into the collective unconscious under the label, “instant, helpless terror.” Lyndon Johnson used it to scare the country into voting for him in his Daisy commercial. Countless Japanese cartoons have the heroes struggling against some ultimate nightmare weapon. The world watched it start here on August 6th, 1945 and in Nagasaki on August 9th of the same year.

With all that in mind we had trouble deciding what to expect of Hiroshima. Like I’ve said before, it’s hard to form a proper image of a place when your head is all cluttered up by preconceptions, but the history of this place differs significantly from that of Nara. Rationally we knew not to expect nuclear winter and smoking craters, but that image – like any irrational, morbid image – wouldn’t go away.

Obviously the last sixty years have been plenty of time for the city to rebuild. Modern Hiroshima is clean, spacious, and attractive, possibly the nicest city we stayed in for the whole trip. The post-war planning for the city was brilliantly and efficiently handled, so that all signs of the bombing have been confined to the vicinity of the Peace Park. They wisely chose to remember the event without forcing themselves to be immersed in it every day.

So, here we are, back at the Peace Park. The first stop, and the most dramatic, is the Genbaku (Atomic Bomb) Dome. The building was the closest structure to the hypocenter of the bomb to remain standing, and it has been preserved exactly as it was found in 1945. Standing in front of it, it’s hard to imagine the moment of instant destruction that twisted solid steel and flattened everything in a mile-wide radius in just seconds. The bombing of Hiroshima has been compared to the firebombing of Tokyo in terms of sheer destruction, but I can’t comprehend that here it was wrought by three planes and a single bomb.

After the Genbaku Dome we made our way further into the Peace Park to see the Children’s Memorial and the museum. On the way we signed a petition for nuclear disarmament and gave a donation for something (I’m not clear on what). We found the Children’s Memorial nearby, a large statue with a girl holding up a folded paper crane. The girl on the statue is Sadako Sasaki, who contracted leukemia – the so-called, “atom bomb disease” – in 1955 from radiation exposure. Reminded of the Japanese legend, she decided to fold one thousand paper cranes to convince the gods to heal her. She died at age twelve having folded over a thousand tiny paper birds, but her classmates didn’t want her effort to go in vain. They started an effort to raise money for a monument, which stands there today surrounded by paper cranes sent by people from all over the world. While we were there a little boy was ringing the bell under the statue, over and over again. It was a little annoying, but I didn’t think he should stop.

We headed towards the museum next, passing the Peace Flame and the cenotaph that contains the names of all the victims of the bomb. I won’t go into too much detail with the museum. I doubt there’s anything there that you can’t easily find on the Internet or a library. The most important thing is to note how utterly depressing and terrible the price of nuclear warfare is. Seeing it up close made me ask why anyone would ever want the power to create more Hiroshimas, and it disgusted me that I immediately knew how redundant such a question was. According to the museum’s counter, only twelve days had passed since North Korea conducted their first nuclear test.

On our way out of the museum we could see a crowd gathering on the lawn leading to the cenotaph. Everyone was waving Japanese flags, and a group of men were slowly walking down the path to the memorial. Naturally curious, we scurried downstairs to see what was up. We got there just in time to see whoever-it-was making his way back with his entourage, shaking hands and talking to a few older ladies in the crowd. He got into an official-looking black car with flags on the headlights and left with a police escort. Who was this mystery man? Why, Crown Prince Naruhito, the man next in line to become Emperor of Japan! He must have heard that we would be there.

Having soaked up as much terrible history as we could, we decided to call it a day and take a cable car back to the station. We sampled once more of Hiroshima’s delicious okonomiyaki before leaving. My choice was the house special, containing squid, octopus, pork, egg, spring onions, soba noodles, cabbage, and whatever else they could fit. Soon we would be boarding the twelve-hour overnight bus for home, so I figured I would fill my face as full as possible before we were trapped.

I guess this marks the end of the chronicle of our journey across Japan’s main island of Honshu. The trip was almost surreally successful. Despite massive uncertainty regarding the schedule, sleeping arrangements, native language, train lines, and money, we managed to make it from point A to point B without self-destructing or getting sold to the Yakuza. Everything taken into account, I’ll have to grudgingly call this trip a success.

This entry was posted on Friday, November 17th, 2006 at 10:11 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.