OK. So we overdid it. We were so incredibly excited on the first few days of our trip, we walked all over creation (or at least Fukuoka and Hiroshima) and plum tuckered ourselves out, as they say in the South. We could have taken the tram or even a taxi, but why do that when the city is so small and eaily navigable on foot and you can see so much more that way! Well maybe, Patrice, because you are exhausted? Or maybe because you bought an all-day tram pass and have only used it ONCE? Last night, after getting some food in my belly, I tried to watch Seth's favorite "Indiana Jones" movie with him. I really wanted to, especially since I always, always fall asleep when we watch his favorite movies. But after twenty minutes I couldn't keep my dern eyes open. It wasn't even 8:00. Do you know what time I woke up this morning? EIGHT O'CLOCK. Twelve hours. My body took that REM sleep and said "this is delicious. I shall indulge. Thank you."
So on Monday we activated our JR passes ($300 for one week and you can take the trains anywhere in Japan -- which is a pretty good deal) and hopped on a shinkansen to Hiroshima. It was super fast! According to wikipedia, the maximum speed is 150-200mph! It was amazing. The trip took about an hour and after getting a city map from the information desk, we took a tram from the train station to the hostel. A little tip: if you don't know how to do something, like buy a tram ticket at a machine, all you have to do is turn around and say, "HELP" at the nice pack of tourists and Japanese people and a nice tall Japanese man in a suit will appear out of the blue who speaks perfectly good English. I learned that technique from our friend Brian Richards in Gwangju, who has been known to walk around Korea yelling, "FOOD!" Until someone just brings it to him. Or until he gets arrested.
Hiroshima holds special significance for me because I grew up in Oak Ridge, also known as "the atomic city" and "the secret city," i.e. a US-government sponsored city where they built the pieces for the atomic bomb that landed on, you guessed it, Hiroshima. Now the city is mostly old people who were carted in to help around that time but don't remember because it was 70 years ago, so they're all at least 90 now. My mom lives in one of the houses that was hastily built by government workers as one of the several each team built per day, at the time at the end of a dirt road which has since been paved. (She has since remodeled extensively, but one day and old man came over and told us about how he dug out our basement when he used to live there.) Oak Ridge had a jivin' population of 70,000 back in the day, but has since dipped to under 30,000, probably because not many people who live there have a lot of roots. Also, nobody told them what they were working on! If I was working on a war effort that turned out to be what it was, maybe I'd want to move out too.
So Hiroshima. It's a very modern city, which makes sense since they had to rebuild the whole thing. Our hostel is a 5-minute walk from "Peace Memorial Park." You can see an "eternal flame of peace" which still burned on during the rain yesterday, and a children's peace memorial, which was originally built for a girl who had been exposed to the radiation at age 2, but developed leukemia and eventually took her own life when she was 10. Eventually it became a memorial to all the children who died from the atomic bomb and their after-effects, and schools regularly get the kids to make lots of little paper oragami cranes to symbolize the need for peace. The park was beautiful and a great place for reflection, but the main attraction it seems was the A-bomb dome.
The A-bomb dome is exactly what it sounds like: a building that was damaged during the blast and preserved that way. Originally it had been an office building, designed in the early 20th century by a Czech architect. It was used for a lot of exhibitions and business, but it had a beautiful green dome on top (like a lot of buildings from that part of Europe) and was a point of pride in Hiroshima. When the bomb went off about 160 meters Southwest of the A-bomb dome, about 240 meters above the ground, everyone in the building was instantly killed. Because the bomb went off so close to the building (relatively speaking, right above it) the A-bomb dome was able to retain its shape. After about ten years of debate as to what to do with this memory-evoking building, the people of Hiroshima decided to keep it and even preserve it in that state, as a reminder. In the pictures I have, you can still see a piece of iron hanging off the side of the building. It was chilling.
Next to the A-bomb dome is a French restaurant called Caffe Ponte. In this restaurant, they take the big, fat, not radioactive at all, delicious oysters from the bay at Hiroshima and cook them French style. Right in the shell. In fact, I'm pretty sure one Japanese man there had a French accent, which I did not see coming. We got fried oysters and broiled oysters with arugala pesto sauce. Also on our decadent menu was cured ham with olives on toothpicks, and more oysters on baguette slices. Oh yes. It was magical. Also some orange-y cocktails. Alas there were only five enormous oysters per plate and we walked away pining for twenty more. We are in Japan though, and it was a French restaurant, both countries being known for teeny tiny serving portion sizes with really high prices. It was worth it, though.
After crying over the end of our oysters, we made our way to the Hiroshima castle. Obviously it had been obliterated in the bombing, but the good news is we got to go into a "faithful replica" and learn all about the history of Hiroshima. It was originally five villiages, but one guy whose name I have already forgotten came in sometime in the 16th century and decided it would be the perfect place to rule because of the nearby bay, so he took over the five villiages. It was built on sand and silt so the villiagers spent a whole lot of time over two years just removing water and silt from the area on which the castle would be built. The tower was five stories tall and on top you got a 360-degree view of Hiroshima. We also learned all about samurais and put on samurai clothes!
Optimistically, we walked back to the hostel and took some detours here and there, looking into shops and taking samples of food from people. As soon as I lied down from exhaustion though, I realized I was starving. The woman at the front desk recommended a great restaurant nearby, so we headed over. We'd had okonomiyaki before when we went to Nara, but that was the predominant Osaka style where everything is mixed together and includes some seafood (we're definitely going to be eating that again soon). This was Hiroshima style, in which all the ingredients are layerd on top of each other. Anyway, the woman who was there had clearly made it about 500 million times in her life. She started out by making something like a pancake on a huge flat grill. On top of the pancake she layered shredded cabbage and bean sprouts, and then some pieces of thin pork belly. Separately, she boiled a little ball of noodles and then cooked those on the grill, then put them into a nice round shape. She flipped the pancake over onto the noodles so the pork belly was in the middle, and spread some yummy sweet sauce on top of it and some green onions. It was awesome, and would have been even better if we'd been drunk. I'm pretty sure it's made to be drunk food, like the doeners of Germany or the poutines of Canada. Hopefully the video of Seth in the restaurant will load.
Well that was day one in Hiroshima! To be continued...
In the pictures: Seth as a samurai, the two of us looking like total assholes wearing old Japanese clothes and plastic wigs, the A-bomb dome, Peace Memorial Park, amazing oysters and drinks, okonomiyaki and the woman making it, and me under a teeny tiny $5 umbrella in front of the castle.
