So we went down to Hiroshima [広島] by shinkansen 9th July, I was meant to be presenting at a conference for the JGS and Greg had taken some holiday to join me....OoooOooh! it's expensive, 37,100yen EACH for a return ticket on the fastest train there (Nozomi) and that takes just over 4 hours! But it's alright, the lab paid my train fare for the trip and 3 nights accommodation! (Taking the an internal flight is similar in cost and saves you about 1hour, if you are efficient at getting to and from the airport at both ends; in Tokyo Haneda airport [羽田空港] is not too far from the city centre, but the airport at Hiroshima [広島] is over 1.5 hrs away from the city centre. Anyway, we were lucky enough to wangle a Gakuwari [学割] officially known as a gakusei waribiki[学生割引-がくせいわりびき] (a student discount which you can get on JR journeys over 101km long - I only get 10 of these coupons a year, so I guess I should use them wisely). ALL that aside, this was the first photo that we took coming out into the(significantly less humid) summer heat of Hiroshima; Trams of Hiroshima. There is no metro system (unlike Nagano [長野] or Kyoto [京都]), and we managed to snap both the new and old style trams in one shot.
After dropping off our bags at the 'Comfort hotel Otemachi' [コンフォルトホテル大手町］ we took a walk in the blazing sun to Hiroshima castle [left]. It had all been reduced to dust due to the the A-bomb, but had been reconstructed to show what it should have been like. Apparently, it was more of an administration office/HQ than that of a defence structure...more typical of the late Edo (I think). The inside of the castle (free for students! - and about 300yen, possibly less if you are a normal human) it was more of a After the castle we wondered Eastwards towards a very nice looking garden. I liked the red umbrella in the entrance.
the garden
There were some strange fish in the gardens pond, who swam around hoovering the water surface, and they seemed to be doing it in formation.
We found quite a lot of crabs too, the first one was by some bamboo (far far away from water), which was odd, then later we found a stream teeming with them...
We also spent some time to go to the Peace Memorial Museum, just 10mins walk from our hotel (and also where my conference was going on in an adjacent building). Only 50yen to get in, and audio guides were 300yen, available in a variety of languages. The museum itself has lots of english guidance, so there was not much need for the audio guide unless your eyes or brain got tired of reading. Basically, the museum describes the situation leading up to the Pacific War...the general atmosphere at the time, politically speaking and the wars that Japan was involved in, in Russia and China. It also detailed the harsh living conditions in Japan while at war; the constant hunger and the forced labour of Chinese and Koreans. Then it moved on to the Americans, and their development of the bomb. Worst of all, they described why they used it - which I am still disgusted at: they didn't want to have to explain spending soo much money on the A-bomb project and not have any fruits at the end of it. Tactically, speaking they also didn't want to give Japan over to the Russians (another option to ending the war but they feared giving Russia too much power) which would have saved alot of lives. Scientifically, some people wanted to test the effectiveness of the bomb, which is also why they chose such a high population place and gave NO WARNING - just so that they could see the power of the bomb. nice.
A model of Hiroshima before and after the A-bomb
tears
There were many moving stories of the scenes of suffering just after the bombing, as well as descriptions of the after effects.
On a completely different note; after my presentation at the conference, we managed to get hold of the free rental bikes from our hotel. So we cycled to the East side of town to a large park; where we found a nice little temple, an art museum and a lot of very hungry mosquitos.
After feeding some mosquitos we thought we'd better drink something and so we popped into a cool cafe that we saw on the way; it apparently sold 'CRAPES' - great. and had a huge spray painting of Ultraman on the wall.
That night we had a very delicious dinner at a fresh fish restaurant. They had many fishes in tanks which could be fished out and cooked to order, and we also saw some small octopii which were in lidded tanks to stop them from escaping. I saw at least one fish pulled from a tank, only to be filleted alive. It looked painful - but I bet it was tasty.
So we went down to Hiroshima [広島] by shinkansen 9th July, I was meant to be presenting at a conference for the JGS and Greg had taken some holiday to join me....OoooOooh! it's expensive, 37,100yen EACH for a return ticket on the fastest train there (Nozomi) and that takes just over 4 hours! But it's alright, the lab paid my train fare for the trip and 3 nights accommodation! (Taking the an internal flight is similar in cost and saves you about 1hour, if you are efficient at getting to and from the airport at both ends; in Tokyo Haneda airport [羽田空港] is not too far from the city centre, but the airport at Hiroshima [広島] is over 1.5 hrs away from the city centre. Anyway, we were lucky enough to wangle a Gakuwari [学割] officially known as a gakusei waribiki[学生割引-がくせいわりびき] (a student discount which you can get on JR journeys over 101km long - I only get 10 of these coupons a year, so I guess I should use them wisely). ALL that aside, this was the first photo that we took coming out into the(significantly less humid) summer heat of Hiroshima; Trams of Hiroshima. There is no metro system (unlike Nagano [長野] or Kyoto [京都]), and we managed to snap both the new and old style trams in one shot.
4 comments:
Hi WayWay
Recently I watched the documnetary about Hiroshima by BBC.
Americans did not bomb Hiroshima or Nagazaki during the war with other bombs to see the effect of atomic bomb only. People in Hiroshima were all the time waiting for bombing but did not know when will it be. at that day there was a weater checking plane on the sky first so people went to shelters, and after it passed they thought everything is over, but they could not forseen the coming of a single bomb.
Americans say that they warned Japanese by telling them to disarm the Japanese army, but the Japanese side understood as the Americans feared from the decisiveness of the Japanese people, so that they did not take it as a treat and told Americans they do not accept their terms.
A single event, which politicans must be learn more, and try not to let it to harm other people again in any time in any country.
Peace!
Hey Seda!
yeah, they mentioned that in the Museum too...they definitely chose Hiroshima because it hadn't been previously damaged by bombing... and if they dropped it on a 'fresh new' city, they would be able to see the full effects. which is just sick. they also chose Hiroshima and Nagasaki because there were no Prisoner of war camps with American personnel there.
The documents that we saw in the museum seemed to imply that they gave NO warning of any bombing, all they did is ask for surrender - but they demanded that the Emperor be removed (one of the conditions the Japanese refused to give if they were to surrender) they said NOTHING about bombing them if they did not surrender. Even the scientists who thought that they need to develop the bomb and helped build it were appalled by the decision of the US military not to give any warning or indication of potential consequences of not surrendering. It made them as bad as and even worse than the enemy that they were fighting.
Yeah, war is dumb at the beginning :( Both sides can give stupid decisions, especially the politicians.
Hope that nobody will ever think to used those bombs again...
If I have a chance, I would like to see Hiroshima too.
How was the conference? Any questions? ;)
I totally recommend going to Hiroshima, although the town itself is not horrendously interesting, the museum is fantastic.
The conf was ok. I got 2 questions; mainly because no one wanted to ask anybody else in my section (questions were done at the end of all the presentations) so the chairman asked me a question, then some one in the crowd followed it up with another one...
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