| HIROSHIMA |
~2000~ Tokyo - September 2002 Hiroshima - September 2000 Madinah - November 2000 Makkah - November 2000 1999 My Travel 2001 My Reflection |
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| The Peace Dome, Hiroshima |
| Hiroshima city is in western Honshu (the largest of Japan's four main islands). It's a big place and boasts around 1,100,000 inhabitants. Hiroshima means "wide island" literally and refers probably to the expanisve delta on which it is built. It is in fact made of many islands, and none of them actually very wide - all long thin affairs. The city was founded back in the late 1500s by a Mori Terumoto, as a castle town to control trade and promote good order. A visit to the castle provides a great insight into the city's growth and construction |
| Hiroshima is a very pleasant place. The flipside of the destruction wraught upon it at the end of the war has been the freedom it has offered town planning since. Leafy parks and boulevards abound, and the city is broken up by seven rivers which carry breezes down from the surrounding hills to the island packed inland sea. This helps keep it cooler than other Japanese cities, even at the height of broiling summer. There are a few trips availible on the rivers. |
| Hiroshima is easy to get to, about an hour and a half on a faster Shinkansen from Osaka (10,000 Yen or so for people with no rail pass, but the rail pass is highly recommended and can potentially save hundreds of pounds - contact the Japanese Tourist office in England if you want one), and perfect for people on route to or from Kyushu. Many people come here even if it is not strictly on their circuit though, mostly to see the Peace Park and Peace Museum, and to see for themselves the legacy of the atomic bomb. The bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945 and exploded about 500m above the city centre at 8:15 in the morning. The Peace Park is now built on top of an old entertainment district that was obliterated in the blast, being only a few hundred metres from the hypocentre. Though many of the memorials in the park and the museum itself are ugly concrete structures, the sheer force of history is such that few can come here and fail to be moved. Downstairs in the museum and free is a small gallery of artwork by survivors of the bomb, with descriptions of what they saw, where they were and so forth. This is an incredibly moving exhibit that deserves a lot more time the main museum itself. |
| When you were born, you were crying and everyone around you was smiling. Live your life so that when you die, you're the one who is smiling and everyone around you is crying. |
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