Monday July 21, 2008. Hiroshima Day
Breakfast was a huge meal with fish, pickles, veggie, tofu, omelette etc. I exchanged my veggies with SH who gave me her meat dishes. I was very full afterwards.
Then we went down to the streets to buy gifts to bring back. I bought a box of maple leaf shaped pastry for my host family. We couldn’t buy any of it back because the expiry date was sooner than our stay here.
The tide was back in the morning and the torii looked better with water at its feet.
We took the bus and then the ferry back to the main island. Then it was a 50 minute bus ride to Hiroshima. We stopped at Hiroshima for lunch.
For lunch, we went to Okonomiya Village.
Okonomiyaki is a Japanese pancake thing with loads of veggie filling. Okonomiyaki Village is a building with three stories of stalls all selling okonomiya. We just sat at a random stall and ordered our okonomiya. The shop owner must really like a certain singer a lot becasue he has his posters everywhere and his concert was played in a loop on the TV in the shop.
The apprentice-like peson took our order and made our okonomiya. I thought we would have the chance to make one ourselves but, oh well.
My serving was tall. Hiroshima’s okonomiyaki has soba noodles which I don’t find tasty. I’ll say okonomiyaki is not on my list of nice Japanese food.
My lack of appetite was also probably because of my period. I felt bloated and my stomach was acting funny. In the end, I had about a quarter left and HY helped me clear some to not offend the boss.
I posted a postcard to myself before we got back on the bus to the Peace Memorial museum. It’s a must go for visitors to Hiroshima. There were loads of tourists while we were there. Rich folks who talked loudly. Hmph.
In museums, I like walking around alone because you don’t know how fast your company read and things like that. So I wandeed around by myself, looking very anti-social in the process.
In the past, I’ve always thought that victims of the atomic bomb just died. I thought that the bomb ended in a neat ring and life around the place was normal. I never thought that others were burned by the heat waves and others affected by radiation. The museum showed three wax figures of people with melted fingers and those whose internal organs and blood was affected by radiation. It was very sad.
Model of before and after
After the museum, I walked under the hot sun to the Dome, It was leftover from the atomic blast. It survived because the bomb exploded on top of it and the walls on the side were not affected.
Flowers
There was a cute little girl with her family.
After that, I met SH who was there alone too. We went to the rest house nearby and I bought milk in a glass bottle at 100 yen. It was delicious, drinking cold milk on a hot day.
Our trip ended here and we rode on the four hour bus back.
I bought an ice cream cone too.
WHen we got back, I went to MOS Burger coz I thought the family might have had dinner. Expensive set meal at 500++ yen. The coke was in a glass because in Japan, it’s not polite to eat and drink while walking. Cultural differences that is cute.
I called the host family when I was at the school’s station. Okaasan and K were there to pick me up when I reached the station. I felt very embarassed coz they had waited for me to have dinner.
I still stuffed myself with rice and had some cherries.
I dropped back to sleep but was still sleepy when I woke up the next day.
YQtravelling 