Day 3- Himeiji Castle & Day 4 Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

We were up early and headed to the train station. We easily bought our tickets and jumped aboard the bullet train to arrive in Himeiji only an hour and half later. The city itself was cute if the one large shopping street was any indication. (** Note many shopping streets are covered with an opaque high ceiling between the two rows of shops- these roads are called handorii’s…at least I think they are ☺)

We walked down the street and headed to the famous Himeji Castle!!! Himeji Castle is a castle that dates back to 1331. Of course none of the 1331 castle remains but since it’s conception many kings have redesigned and added to the complex. Wikipedia states, that the castle relatively took its present design in 1601. The actual main castle has survived constant attacks since then including WWII bombings in 1945.

“The castle has a five storey main donjon (heavily fortified central tower) and three smaller dojons, and the entire structure is surrounded by moats and defensive walls punctuated with rectangular, circular, and triangular openings for firing guns and shooting arrows. The walls of the donjon also feature ishiotoshi- openings that allowed defenders to pour boiling water or oil onto anyone who made it past the defensive slits and was thinking of scaling the walls.” (Lonley Planet Japan- pg. 360)

Interesting facts about the castle:

One wall is made of clay and sand mixed with boiled rice water!

The picture showing metal discs is a picture of tiles with family crests engraved on them

“One of Himeji's most important defensive elements, and perhaps its most famous, is the confusing maze of paths leading to the main keep. The gates, baileys, and outer walls of the complex are organized so as to cause an approaching force to travel in a spiral pattern around the castle on their way into the keep, facing many dead ends. This allowed the intruders to be watched and fired upon from the keep during their entire approach. However, Himeji was never attacked in this manner, and so the system remains untested.” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Himeji_Castle

To cover unsightly nails between the boards the Japanese put beautiful metal discs (often with a family crest)

After the castle, we walked out of the grounds turned left and voila were in a true Japanese Garden! The garden, Koko-en, is composed of nine different gardens. It is not a historical garden as it was created on the grounds of samurai houses and roads but gives a great feel of a true Japanese Garden. There were miniature hills and waterfalls, large Koi fish (think goldfish on steroids), bamboo, a tea ceremony house, flowers, and beautiful maple trees.

As we were in the garden the loudest thunder I have ever heard crackled above us as lightning illuminated the sky. Old hobbles (Roberta with a sprained ankle) and myself dashed as fast as we could (not very) and out ran the storm to do a little window shopping before we caught our train home. We opted to forgo the bullet train as it massacred our wallets and took the slow train back to Hiroshima. About 4 hours later and Roberta ready to piss her pants we made it safely back to Tom’s city. We decided to have some Spanish Tapas, again this makes sense in Japan … right??? (in our defense Korean food is very much like Japanese food and any other varieties are hard to come by where we live). We borrowed a cell phone from a stranger and headed back to Tom’s to sleep promptly after Tapas.

Day 4- Shopping/ Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum

We started the day with some breakfast and a coffee and decided to head to the museum while our minds were still fresh. Before, I explain the important museum I will report that shopping was fun. We didn’t buy much, were treated much nicer than in Korea, and the picture with the bag on my head is to be worn when trying on clothes so that makeup doesn’t get on the non-purchased garments.

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum is extremely well done. The task of conveying the brutality of the bombings is a daunting one but the people of Japan have succeeded. The museum starts off showing a history of different Japanese wars finishing with WWII and its involvement with the United States. It goes on to show letters detailing the Manhattan Project and reasons for choosing Hiroshima and Nagasaki as targets. The bomb was dropped on the Japanese in an effort to end the war without bringing the Soviet Union on side. (Hiroshima chosen because of the its military presence and lack of Allied prisoner camps) If the Soviet Union had become allies this would have increased their influence which would have subsequently decreased the United States influence as a large world power. In the end, the use of the bomb justified the large amounts of money the government was spending to create/test it, as well as, portrayed the United States as being the most powerful nation in the world… and is that not what war is all about?

The museum is filled with great visuals… a 3D map of the city before the bombing, and then the dust that lay afterward, videos from the time- trying to bandage people, chaos in crumbling buildings etc., a watch that stopped at the exact time, a wall with black rain trickling down (from the acid rains days after), a shadow burnt into a cement stair from a person that stood beside, effects of radiation on skin/gums, photographs of burnt flesh, clothes patterns burnt into flesh, and stories that went along with personal articles- such as the sandal that was the only remains left of a mother’s lost child. I read many of these stories, and watched some videos in which survivors told their stories and then I just couldn’t stomach anymore. I would look at the visual and my imagination could tell me the story for that burnt tricycle.

It was all too much. I left the museum and looked at a painting on the way out of a skeleton standing upright surrounded by ashes. This is when I began crying. The husband of the corpse stood beside her… either within the painting or on a plaque beside it read… “I am so sorry it must have been so hot.” The fireball that was released on the civilians was over one million degrees Celsius in the air and on the surface up to 5000 degrees Celsius and extended 280 meters. The blast pressure 500 meters from the hypocenter was 19 tons per square meter and thus crushed buildings and hurled people to the sky.

The sad reality of this and the objective of the museum is not solely ‘lest we never forget’ but ‘lest we never repeat history.’ The museum finishes by showing a globe with markings for all the nuclear weapons (20 000) the world presently contains. Nuclear weapons that are even more powerful then the one unleashed 63 years ago. Nuclear weapons that if unleashed and survivors remain, would create a cold icy world where few animals and species of vegetation could exist. I cynically shook my head when I read about the U.S. and Russia getting rid of a few of their bombs. I thought, ‘big deal when each of them still has enough to destroy the planet!’ Looking back now, I will still shake my head as I can’t comprehend war, but museums and monuments such as those that exist at Hiroshima, are there to inspire/motivate us to make even the smallest steps towards peace. The fire, in the ‘Peace Flame,’ will keep burning until those steps reach us to a nuclear free world.

Peace Be With You
XO