Our Japan travels continue in another big city – Hiroshima for 4 nights, and then the smaller town of Kurashiki for 2 nights. We have seen a lot in just 3 weeks in Japan but our trip is nearing the end.
Hiroshima is primarily known for the atomic bomb. The city has embraced this and have tried to change the anger and sadness of that day, with monuments dedicated to peace. In the museums and monuments, we never saw anything expressing anger at America or the Japanese Government. It mostly focused on how terrible war is. We visited the “atomic” dome building that is still standing, the peace museum and several monuments and fountains dedicated to peace in Hiroshima peace park. Reliving the horror of that day is tough but important to witness. It is one of those historical sites that really can envelope you in emotion. It reminded us of the feeling we had visiting Dachau or the killing fields of Cambodia. Hiroshima is now modern successful city with over a million people but it is always going to remembered as being destroyed by the first atomic bomb. We also visited an art museum filled with French art and the rebuilt Hiroshima castle. Unfortunately the castle is closed because the floors and stairways are deteriorating even though it is only 70 years old…
The Peace Park isn’t the only UNESCO world heritage site in the area. We needed to also visit Miyajima. It is a small tourist town on Itsukushima island that has the famous Itsukushima Shinto shrine that sits out in the bay. You can take a boat from Hiroshima but we decided to take the cheaper route of a 45 minute local tram connected to a 15 minute short ferry ride. The weather wasn’t great but we got our photos along with the hundreds of other tourists. It feels weird to walk through a Shinto shrine over the water that was designed for contemplation and reflection, but we are surrounded by tour groups from all over the world following someone with a flag or umbrella. Tourist shrines are not working for me. The tourists have also corrupted the deer on the island. They have been trained to like “people food” and it was said to see them begging or stealing from anyone that bought takeaway food. We did have a nice lunch of okonomiyaki before we took our ferry and train back to Hiroshima.
Our highlight of our stay in Hiroshima was seeing a baseball game at Mazda Zoom Zoom Stadium. Watching the Hiroshima Carps play was an experience! The crowd came alive when the Carps were up to bat. Every player had their own chant and one of fan sections really got into it similar to the behind goal fans at a European football match. The Carp fans have invented the “Squat Cheer” which consists of half the crowd sitting and the other half standing while chanting the name of the batter. Then they alternate sitting and standing every 3 seconds. The seventh inning stretch was also really fun. Everyone buys balloons and dances with them for a bit during the inning break until letting them go all at once. There were red balloons flying everywhere. We have seen a South Korean baseball game a few years back which was also very entertaining and unique. We need to see more professional sports while traveling, and I am regretting not seeing anything in Australia.
We know we like small towns better than big cities but we seem to always book the big cities when we are new to a country. We are trying to fix that and booked a couple of days in Kurashiki. It was a great choice. We needed to see some of Japan that didn’t have crowded trains, buses and tour groups everywhere. Kurashiki isn’t really that small, but it has a great historical downtown with all sorts of older buildings filled with little shops and restaurants and a picturesque old canal. It was still a bit touristy but at least we left most of the big tour buses that seemed to be everywhere in Hiroshima. We did the art museum, a very bad walking tour, a lot of wandering around by ourselves. Everything seemed to be much more relaxed than the big cities. Our walking tour guide said that they didn’t get bombed during World War II because they had a museum filled with classics from El Greco, Picasso and the French Impressionists. I’m not sure that is true… but the town had more old buildings than we had seen in all of the cities we had already been to.
It is hard to believe our time in Japan is over. There is so much to see here that I am sure that we will be back. There are many non-touristic parts of this country that we will really enjoy now that we have seen the big ticket attractions. Japan has entered our top 10 favorite countries and might rise a bit higher after another trip. For now, we are super excited about returning to Seattle for a couple of months this summer. We miss everyone and just want a couple of months to decompress and recharge. and the World Cup is coming to Seattle!!!! Thanks for following along!