Hiroshima - ugh...

It will take me a long time before I will wrap my head around the happenings of Hiroshima. Actually, I doubt I ever will. How two countries can such horrible things to each other, and then move beyond with so little judgement, is really a contradiction and a testament to how human and inhuman we can really be.

The day after visiting Mt. Fuji we took the bullet train to Hiroshima, and had some free time in the evening (a nice part of these trips is that many leave time for exploring on your own). Karen and I found the highest rated restaurant on Trip Advisor and decided to give it a try. Then we found out it was all the way across town, so we made use of the local (and cheap) local buses and cable cars to get there. When we arrived, it really didn’t look like a restaurant. It was small and looked like some sort of fishing shop. When we went in, it was tiny! Seats maybe 20 total, and had one person who acted as hostess, server, and bartender. She spoke some English, but the menu was completely in Japanese, so we simply asked her to recommend some dishes and drinks. 

Students diggin' the bullet train.

Snapper

Wow, what amazing food. Fantastic sashimi, salad with an anchovy dressing (best salad dressing I’ve ever had), baked snapper that we cleaned to the bone, and then she just kept bringing different drinks for us to try, on the house. Then dessert. This went on for a couple of hours. The bill? Under $50 US for the two of us. I actually felt bad paying so little. Coming on the heels of our Tokyo trip with Hisao, I was worried that our expectations for food might be impossibly high, but this place really unique and the food was outstanding. There are few things I like more than hanging out with Karen, laughing and eating. My kind of night.

The next day we went to the Hiroshima Peace Park and Museum. I will tell you this up front – I simply don’t have the literary skills to describe what it was like to walk through the park, watch the cutest Japanese kids in their school uniforms laughing and waving at us, and then 10 minutes later stare at pictures of the burned bodies of kids the same age from the same place in a time in the not too distant past. The park and museum are amazing from the standpoint that they are done in a completely non-judgmental way – no mention or no blame. The US isn’t mentioned. Japan isn’t mentioned. Only people. I felt pretty lousy being a people that day. In fact, I joked with Karen at one point when I really couldn’t stomach any more death and destruction and said “How bout lunch?”. So, we had lunch. Seemed like an inappropriate reaction to have, but I just wanted to feel something other than lousy.

School kids waving at us.

Charred tricycle of a child who didn't survive the bomb.

So, we went to restaurant that specialized in the local specialty – okonomyaki. It’s a unique dish where they take tortilla-like breads and put all sorts of stuff in between, add some sauce and egg and cheese and let it get nice and hot and gooey on the grill. It’s hard to describe but wonderful to eat.

Karen waiting for our okonomyaki.

Preparation of our okonomyaki. Good stuff!

Then, off to Miya Jima, which is a wonderful and beautiful island just off the coast near Hiroshima that is home to many Shinto shrines. We spent a few hours walking and learning about the differences between temples and shrines, and the basic tenets of Buddhism. Pretty dang cool actually.

Myajima and a party crasher.

And believe it or not, there’s more. After Hiroshima we spent a night and two days at a mountaintop Buddhist temple. This was a trip I really wanted to do, and it was so different than anything I’ve done before. After arriving, we checked into our room – a true Japanese-style room with rice paper walls. And 30 degrees when we walked into it and dropped our bags. The monks live like this year round, but they were nice enough to provide us with a kerosene space heater, which worked wonderfully until about 4 am. We laughed, dove farther under the covers, and stayed warm until we had to be in the temple at 6 am to watch the monks go through their morning chants and rituals.

The real treat was a cool fire prayer that they only do once in a while. Fire, chanting and drums. For me, that’s a combination that is hard to beat. I absolutely love drums – not really sure why – and the odd rhythms between the drums and chants were really different than anything I’ve heard before.

Next stop, China! In 2 days....