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So I arrived into Hiroshima at 1:30pm on Saturday after having my usual lunch of rice in seaweed. First I checked into my hostel for the next couple of nights. After that I headed to the mixed contemporary arts museum. It had some moving art on the atomic bomb in the foyer and in the exhibition they had some great exhibits including a video describing the procress of life and a video of a cherry tree growing in a mans head but it had some really weird shitty ones like a video of a guy diving (yeah that’s “art” :rolleyes:).

After that I went to the prefectural art museum but it was shut so I just had a wander around town. I tried to find a cinema that was “close” to the city hall. After I found it was actually several metro stops to the south which is hardly close so I didn’t find it. The city looks nice but it’s basically like any other Japanese city. After that in the evening I had a Hiroshima pancake dinner which was delicious, ordering it was an experience too as their were no photos and the menu was only in Japanese. After this I returned to my hostel for the evening.

On Sunday morning I got up bright and early at 7:30am and headed over to Miyajima for the morning. I managed to get the 8:50am train from Hiroshima station west on the Sanyo line to the short JR ferry over to the island. This worked well and first I went to the floating shrine Itsukushima-jinja the island is famous for.

That was pretty impressive and as it was only an hour off high tide it was completely covered in water below it’s base making it look like it was floating. After seeing this I headed up to the temple Daisho-in which was very beautiful and also didn’t have an entry charge which was a refreshing change. The temple was also one of the most attractive I have seen here in Japan. After this I headed over to the cable car to head up the mountain. This was expensive at ¥1800 (£13) but worth it. The views at the top of the inland sea were absolutely stunning and it was well worth it. There was even a walk for the final distance to the very top of the mountain for an amazing view as well. After that I headed back to town on the train to take a look at the Peace Park and the museum there. That was very moving and had stuff on the leadup the war in the Pacific as well as why Hiroshima was picked and the aftermath. They also had the 1,000 paper cranes made by the girl who wanted to cure her Lukemia which was probably the most moving thing in the museum. All in all approximately 140,000 people died in the A-Bomb at Hiroshima.

There were some notable emmissions of the history though. They probably should have gone into more detail on the Rape of Nanking rather than quibbling about the number of people killed, the number is probably at least 100,000. They also failed to mention that American bombing before had been pretty hurrendous and that 100,000 people had been killed in three nights bombing in Tokyo which puts the deaths in some perspective. There was also nothing on the Americans land invasion of Okinawa where 260,000 Japanese and 13,000 Americans died in the invasion of that island chain because the Japanese fought to the death which adds a lot of weight for the justification for the atomic bombing.