We reserved seats the night before for the earliest shinkansen at 7:20am to Hiroshima. We stopped at FamilyMart and McDonald’s for breakfast and snacks before boarding the train. It was a nice ride and I got to catch up on my travel journal.

We decided to walk from Hiroshima Station to Hiroshima Castle. I kind of prefer walking when it’s possible (and when my feet don’t hurt yet) because you get to see a little more of the city. There’s noticeably less English in Hiroshima although most train signs and announcements are still in English and Japanese.

The Hiroshima Castle and grounds were beautiful and so much less crowded than Osaka Castle! I got to try on a kimono and Ryan tried on samurai armor. They had a huge display of samurai swords. And we got a nice view from the top observation deck. We got strawberry gelato just outside the castle before starting our walk to Peace Memorial Park.

This area was really confusing to walk through because there were underground walkways and not a lot of crosswalks. Before we completely left the grounds we found the Eucalyptus tree that survived the atomic bomb (there’s also a willow tree that survived but we didn’t come across that one).

The whole experience in Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park was very emotional for us. It was like a strange version of survivor’s guilt I guess? The Children’s Peace Memorial was touching and so was the Peace Bell (which we both rang). The A-Bomb Dome was incredible. The atomic bomb went off 600 meters above and only 160m southeast of there. Since the blast was almost directly above, the prefecture building had walls still standing. There was a man next to the A-Bomb Dome whose mother was 4 months pregnant with him when the atomic bomb hit. She was exposed to the site 10 days after the blast. Due to this, he was really sickly as a child and ended up with cancer. He had notebooks full of information in several different languages. He was really passionate about making sure everyone understood the truth about what happened and what effect it had on Japan.

Then we met a man with a little dog in a Winnie the Pooh costume! He was telling us that he had been to Disney back when it was only Magic Kingdom. There were several other memorials in the park. At the time of the bombing, Korea was under Japanese control so thousands of Koreans were there working when it happened. There was also the Mound where the ashes of the corpses were gathered.

We made our way to Peace Memorial Hall. Inside was a panoramic photo of Hiroshima and 140,000 tiles to represent the approximately 140,000 people killed. Because so many government buildings were destroyed, it was impossible to have an accurate count. The walls also had the names of the neighborhoods as they existed at the time. The photo used in the panoramic was taken by the US military before it happened.

We went into a secondary building of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum since the main building is being renovated and earthquake-proofed. I basically cried the entire time we were in that building. There was a section about how the United States chose which city they would bomb and how one of the criteria they used was which city would cause the most emotional anguish. There was an entire exhibit of artifacts that had been destroyed – fused glass bottles, a watch stopped exactly at 8:15 (when the bomb hit), clothes and safe boxes. The hardest to look at was a tricycle. It belonged to a 3-year old boy who was out riding it when the bomb hit. His father buried him with it in their backyard as he knew his son would be happiest with it. After 40 years he transferred his son to a family burial area and donated the tricycle to the museum.

There was another exhibit all about the after-effects – losing hair, skin lesions, tumors, etc. They showcased the story of Sadako Sasaki. She was two when the blast happened and seemed to not have been affected but contracted leukemia 10 years later. She folded paper cranes out of medicine wrappers hoping it would help her get better. She folded 1300 in total but she didn’t survive. She is what inspired children and adults form all over the world to send paper cranes to the museum (President Obama included!) every year.

Probably the most interesting thing for me at least was a display about what a photographer went through just 3 hours after the bomb hit. He got close to the hypocenter and raised up his camera to shoot but just couldn’t bring himself to do it. Eventually he did and those photographs are an important record of what it was like. It was a tough afternoon but I am so glad we went.

After I collected myself we started the trek to Miyajimaguchi Station to catch the ferry to Miyajima. We were under a time crunch since we already had reserved seats for our return train to Kyoto. So naturally we needed two trains to get there! There were two ferries running and one was operated by JR so we were able to use our pass again to get to the island. The Itsukushima Floating Torii gate wasn’t floating while we were there because we caught it at low tide. But it was still impressive nonetheless.

We had to just run through the checklist and run back out. Take pictures of floating torii, check. Pet a deer, check. Get a goshuin from Itsukushima Shrine, check. Sprint like mad back to the ferry, check.

We were literally racing the clock once we got to Miyajimaguchi Station – complete with having to run up and down MORE stairs to get to the correct platform. We made our train from there to Hiroshima Station (standing room only for 30 minutes) then made a mad dash to transfer to our shinkansen with just a couple minutes to spare. Phew! It was so crazy to do but I’m glad we at least got a few minutes at Miyajima. We even had time to grab “dinner” from 7-Eleven. We literally have only eaten from convenience stores and food stalls since we left Disney. Maybe we’ll get a sit-down meal tomorrow!