#Japan16 Hiroshima and Miyajima Island

When I woke up, it was so cold it took me half an hour to coax myself out from under my duvet, but the prospect of a pre-paid western breakfast gave me the incentive I needed.

Burnd and Maggie (our hosts who I had enjoyed dinner out with the previous evening) had prepared a decent spread. I was excited to see a bowl of fresh fruit, and also yogurts, a staple of my usual diet which I had been missing. There was also four kinds of cereal, and toast... Everyone staying at the WFC had breakfast together at 8, so I got to meet the other guests. One was from Europe (I think East Europe - she wasn't very chatty), two from New Zealand who were at the start of a three month cross-continental trip, an Asian lady (also not chatty), and an American guy from California. We all discussed where we had been and where we were going, it was nice to be able to talk.

After breakfast Burt spoke to me and the other European girl (who had also checked in only last night) about the mission of the WFC, to educate foreigners on the danger and evil of atomic warfare, to teach Japanese adults English, and to provide a support group for survivors of the atom bomb.

I packed my bag and brought it inside, just in time to meet Kasoka-san, a survivor of the bomb (The Japanese have a special word for it - a Hibakusha). Kasoka-san's niece was waiting at the table we had just had breakfast at to translate for her, and all of us gathered around to hear her story.

Kasoka-san was twelve years old on August 6th 1945. She, like many Japanese middle school children, had given up her schooling to help with the war effort, helping to pull down some of Hiroshima's tightly packed buildings to create fire breaks in case of fire bombing, which Tokyo had seen extensively. Hiroshima had received conspicuously little attention in the way of air raids, and many of the buildings were timber built, so the pulling down of houses was to prepare for the worst. That particular day was Kasoka-san's day off, and at 8.15 she had just put out the laundry and cleared away the breakfast dishes. Her parents had gone into town to help a friend, and so she was alone with her grandmother. Kasoka-san told us she was in front of a window when the bomb hit. Thee was a very bright "beautiful" flash of light, the window shattered into her face, and then she blacked out.

When Kasoka-san came around, she felt blood on her face, but feeling no pain, ran to the air raid shelter with her grandmother. She told us how none of the adults knew what had happened. When they came up from the shelter, many of their houses (3km from the bomb) had been knocked over by the force of the blast.

It is harrowing, and not my story to tell, but Kasoka-san told us of the black rain that fell, of a neighbour who returned from the city with skin pink from burns, of how she tried to nurse her dying father who had ben too close to the epicentre, and of the ghost like people she saw on their way to the military hospital by her house. Her mother never returned, and was cremated en mass.

Whilst we were given a good overview of that happened that day, Kasoka-san:s story was moving and personal, and I doubt I shall ever forget it. At one point I had tears in my eyes as she spoke. I asked her if she:d been scared, and she said yes, she ran and hid inside from the ghost people. With all the horrific things she had seen though, she had just dealt with them as they had happened. I cannot repeat how she described her father's condition, but she tried to cool him with grated vegetables, and broke the top off a bottle of beer so that he could drink it as it was his favourite thing, though he was unable to. She said her lasting regret was that at the time they had been told not to let burns victims drink water as it would kill them, and she still regretted not giving her father the drink he begged for. She was only twelve. Even at my age, I think I'd just run straight back inside that air-raid shelter and cry until it was over.

After the story, three of us (including Maggie's Japanese language teacher, who had turned up that morning) went to the Peace Park, where we took a guided tour. I had no idea that there were so many monuments in the park, and it was great to have someone with the knowledge to show us the significance of so many. We also stopped by the A-bomb dome, the closest building to the centre of the blast to have survived in any part, and also a plaque for the hypocentre, a hospital which has been rebuilt in the same place today.

The A-bomb dome. I'm not sure what my face is doing here
but it felt inappropriate to take many photos.

After the tour I couldn:t face the museum. I found it hard to imagine such devistation in such a bright, lively city as Hiroshima is today. It:s full of normal people going about their day-to-day business just like any city which hasn't been raised to the ground. 140,000 people died as a result of that single bomb. 70,000 died on the spot, and their ashes are held in a special mausoleum for unidentifiable victims, either because there was nobody left to identify them, or because they were too burnt to tell.

After that sombre morning, I took a speedboat directly from the park to Miyajima island, my first day in Japan where I haven't used a train!

Miyajima island is a holy place within sight of Hiroshima city. It is also home to thousands of semi-tame deer. I met one pretty much straight on the boat. Remembering yesterday:s rabbits (was it really only yesterday?!) I took a quick photo before continuing on towards my hotel for the night. I had four hours left before sunset and I was on a mission!

Bambi and co.

As I arrived at the hotel, I realised why it had cost nearly twice as much as the WFC. It was another fancy hotel (with Onsen, yes!) and I dumped my bag and took my day-pack up to grab a cable car (or as they call them in Japan, Ropeway) up Mount Misen, the highest point on the mountain. The cable cars were crammed with eight people (and three of us were European size!) but luckily the windows opened so it wasn't too stuffy. We were all literally shoulder to shoulder.
At the top I had the option to climb to the summit, but I established from hikers returning the other way that there were no monkeys there, and that was my primary interest with the top of the mountain. So instead I took the reportedly scenic route down, heading towards Daisho-in temple.

My excuse for this selfie is that there wasn't enough room
in the car to get the camera further away from my face!

The route was indeed scenic. The sun was getting quite low, and the path was mostly stone steps, all made out of rough stone blocks, so I could never take my eyes off the ground for too long, but it looked wonderfully rustic! The island was very green and there were even a few waterfalls, and the occasional blossoming cherry tree too.

The temple itself was right at the bottom of the walk, an array of fantastic traditional buildings snuggled into the hillside and encircled with sakura. It was stunning, but the sun was too low for any spectacular photos. I resolved to return in the morning before I left for Kyoto.

In the main town, which was thronging with tourists, I found a pub with an English Menu offering vegetable tempura. I dove in and, dodging all the conger eel on the menu (tempura, sashimi, steamed or broiled) I ordered tempura, omelette, and rice. I even had a dessert, which was the typical japanese dessert of egg custard, but instead of caramel this had blueberry jam on top, and in the middle was a small random slice of yam. I left just in time to watch the sun go down.

Miyajima is famous for its Tori gate, which is part way out to sea. When the tide is low (as it was now) tourists flocked to it to take photos, and in the sunset it glowed bright orange. With its distinctive shape, it also looked amazing silhouetted against the sun setting between the distant mountains on the mainland.

The Miyajima Tori gate

I returned to the gate at night to photograph it lit up. The tide never came in but it looked great anyway. On the way back I saw some more Miyajima wildlife - a small racoon like creature snuffling throuh the undergrowth. It was kind of cute but I was wary of it. As I wandered back to the hotel in the dark, the stories of Kasoka-san's ghosts began to come back to me, I couldn't believe the horror she must have felt.

The steaming onsen soon relaxed me though. I had them to myself, and it was an unexpected bonus as I thought I had experienced onsen for the last time. The hotel was similar to the Ryokan in that I also had a yukata and slippers, but the bedrooms were in a western style.

#Japan16 Okunoshima

Easter Monday. After checking out of my hotel, I walked up to Fukuyama castle (less than 500m away) and took some photos of the castle. It was more like Wakayama castle than Hiroshima, although all three were pretty similar, and I didn't linger there long.

I had plans to go to the Belgian waffle shop in the station for breakfast, but it was closed, so I went to 'Mister Donut' and bought some snacks there instead. They were much lighter in texture than something you might bjy from Gregs, and therefore did almost nothing to quell my hunger. I then gook a train to Mihara, changing onto the coastal line for Tadanoumi.

One of the small Hiroshima prefecture coastal towns

It was another scenic journey, similar to that through Shikou in terms of rural villages and hills, but with additional bursts of seaside. I was impressed to see stretches of tropically sandy beaches under tall palm trees. I seemed to be a long way south of Tokyo!

The beautiful Sinto Sea

The queue for the rabbit island ferry was immense, and I didn't make it onto the first boat, but luckily there was a second a few minutes later, which wasn't mentioned in my timetable for whatever reason.

I had barely got off the ferry port when I saw my first rabbit. The island was swarming in tame rabbits, and the rabbits were swarming with children. I was gratified to see that 90% of the tourists were Japanese, but obviously the secret had got out further afield, as there were a number of Americans too.

The bunnies were very cute. They weren't shy either, and let me get really close to take lots and lots of photos.

  

I hired a bike from a hotel, the only inhabited building on the island, and cycled around, stopping every hundred or so metres for a photo of the rabbits, the scenery, or... the poison gas storage tanks.

Okunoshiwa Island had been taken off the maps for a time last century, as the Japanese military used it to manufacture thousands of tons of mustard (blistering) gas and tear gas. When America occupied Japan, the gas was disposed of, either through being burnt or dumped in containers in the pacific(...) some sources I have read say that this was to hide the extent of it from the allies. Others say that it was done under American orders.

The presence of the bunnies on the islands also has two possible reasons. Rabbits were used to test the gas manufactured on the island (It's upsetting to think about, but what isn:t upsetting about chemical weapons?) They may have been released after the factory closed. Alternatively, it has been suggested that all the experiment rabbits were killed, but some schoolchildren released their pet rabbits onto the island after it had been abandoned. Either way, these founding rabbits did what rabbits do best, and now the island is covered with cute rabbits of every colour, size and coat. I didn't see any lop-eared rabbits though.

Most of the tourists had brought whole lettuces to give to the
rabbits. I saw one woman with a lettuce the size of a basketball.

As I wandered around feeding and stroking the rabbits, I began to notice that a lot of them had eye infections. Some of them had a blind white eye. Some of them had uncomfortable looking weeping eyes, and some of them had eyes too gross for me to really look at. As soon as I noticed this, I avoided touching the rabbits and washed my hands. I noticed that there were a lot of no-go areas on the island with large metal cylinders behind fencing, but the rabbits had hopped through or dug under it. Maybe they were experiencing disease as any creature in the wild might, or maybe they were feeling some ill-effects from their sinister home.

I could also smell something alien and unpleasant in the air. As I climbed higher up the mountain, occassionally being approached by rabbits as I walked (they had learnt humans were not to be feared, and provided lettuce), I began to feel that this island was a bit creepy. Everywhere there was the decaying ruins of gun batteries and poison storage tanks, I began to notice more and more the disfigured rabbits, and that smell was making my imagination run wild. What if I was smelling traces of the gas?

As I neared the top of the island on foot, I began to feel the rare sensation of complete physical exhaustion. I couldn't walｋ as fast as I was trying to, it was all I could do to keep moving with my backpack on. I wasn't tired or hungry, just weary. I knew this fatigue was coming from having travelled and experienced so much in so few days, but I was determined to last at least until the end of the trip!

Sakura

I reached the top of the island for 365 beautiful views of the Sinto Sea. It was bright blue in the afternoon sunlight. I took it all in for a while before returning to my bike, planning to return it and get the next ferry off the island, despite originally planning to stay longer.

As I cycled the last stretch towards the hotel, I saw a number of bikes parked outside a tunnel, and pulled up to take a look. Through the tunnel was the burnt out shell of the poison gas factory. It was utterly haunting.

Here on the coast, the smell was less strong. I returned my bike and couldn:t resist going for a paddle in te beautiful blue water, trying not to think of all the containers full of toxic chemicals which had been dumped somewhere out there at sea!

You can see why I was tempted by the water!

I didn't paddle for long though because despite the beautiful weather, it was still March, and the water was turning my feet numb with cold! I got on the ferry back to Tadanoumi, the train back to Mihara, and then eventually rode another Shinkhansen to Hiroshima, where I would be spending the night.

It was raining lightly when I got to Hiroshima. The station waｓ packed full of baseball fans - I:d just missed a game at the Hiroshima stadium　Not that I'd　have　gone　if　I　could　-　I　don:t　know　the　first　thing　about　baseball　in　my　own　language,　let　alone　Japanese!)

I took　a　local　train　and　then,　when　I　stared　at　my　map　for　too　long,　a　local　lady　kindly　guided　me　to　a streetcar (tram)　to get to　where I was staying. I found it quite poignant to ride a streetcar, as I could recall from a documentary I had seen about the atomic bomb, that a survivor interviewed had been driving a streetcar for the first time when the bomb exploded. I recalled that she said her first concern was that she'd done something wrong.

It was an easy walk from my stop to the World Friendship Centre (WFC from hereon), and I was greeted by a German man who looked so perplexed that I momentarily wondered if (despite the glowing signs outside, and having exchanged emails with his wife earlier that afternoon) I:d got the wrong place. They soon warmed up though, and after I had put my bags in my room (a whole room to myself again, but this time with Tatami mats and Futon, and a shared bathroom with the man across the hall) we all went out to dinner together at a tiny local eatery run by two brothers.

One of the brothers spoke pretty good english, and both were very smiley to the only guests in their restaurant, and I drank some Japanese spirit (not Sake, but I don't think it was Whisky either. All I know is that it came from a sweet potato) with warm water, then ate a large amount of vegetables, some cold, and some battered as tempura.

Yummy Tempura (holiday calories don't count)

We chatted happily about travel, life in Japan, touching only briefly on Hiroshima's history, nuclear weapons and prospects for world peace. I enjoyed the meal and got an early night on my mat.