May 5, 2009: Hiroshima, here we come!

We had a big day of traveling ahead, so we wanted to get started early. It would take about three hours to drive to Hiroshima. We had never been before and it seemed like an interesting place to show the in-laws. We kicked off the morning with Mister Donut, which is a popular franchise owned by Duncan Donuts.

If I’m not driving a car, riding in one is like taking Nyquil. I’m a horrible passenger and it doesn’t take long for me to start nodding off to sleep. So, I slept for a good part of the trip to Hiroshima and Brandon didn’t get lost once (so he told me)! He did a great job of navigating his way to the world-famous city. If you haven’t brushed up on your history, this is where the first atomic bomb was dropped.

Our stomachs were growling, so we spotted a Subway, as in the American-based chain restaurant, and we stopped. Like most large cities, parking is a nightmare, so we’ve tried to suck it up and pay the chunk of change it takes to do so.

Various peace memorials

We wandered over to the nearby Peace Memorial, along with other statues representing the more than 240,000 victims that were lost in the bombing. The “A-Dome” is one of the few buildings that is left standing. We read about how the bomb was dropped precisely above this and that’s why the walls are still in tact.

See, I told you the walls are still in tact. Unbelievable!

The Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum was eye-opening, to say the least. One of the things that caught my attention was a wrist watch. The incredible thing about it is: it was found with the time stopped, at the exact time that the bomb dropped. It was an eerie thought. That wasn’t the only thing that gave me the chills. There was a replica of the town before and after the blast to show the magnitude of damage and I couldn’t bear to look at all of the pictures of victims; some were badly burned and others had body sores from disease related to radiation exposure.

The exhibit on the left displayed the awful scene after the bomb dropped. Then, on the left, the picture shows a model of what the city looked like before incident.

This is replica of the "A-Dome" inside the museum

We often forget the other side of the story, when it comes to what happened with the atomic bombs being dropped (the other one was sent to Nagasaki a few days later). We learn about the war and the bombing, at school, but we don’t realize the level of suffering that went on. This visit gave me a dose of reality.

Since we came to Hiroshima during the Japanese “Golden Week,” which is a series of four holidays in a row, they were celebrating their annual flower festival. So, while it was a somber mood inside the museum, our spirits were lifted once we stepped outside. There were several different groups of people in costume and others were on a stage dancing to loud music. We watched for a little while, but it started raining harder and we got cold.

We drove to our hotel and got cleaned up for dinner. We found a Japanese-Italian restaurant near the hotel. After dinner, Brandon & Kelly decided to do some “father-son” bonding, while Teresa & I opted for rest. They went to a couple pubs before deciding to head back to the hotel for a good night’s rest.