Peace Memorial Park & Miyajima Island
This morning, Chris & I went to visit the Peace Memorial Park & Museum after breakfast. Due to the history of the A Bomb, I thought the atmosphere was going to be sad, depressing, & upsetting, but the whole place is actually beautiful. They really push the 'peace' part of the memorial park. Lovely statues everywhere & a glorious pool called the 'Pond Of Peace' along with the 'Flame Of Peace'. The only part of the entire area that I felt really sad about was in the 'Hiroshima National Peace Memorial Hall For The Atomic Bomb Victims' which is underground, beneath the park. It's a circular room & around it, in a panoramic view from the former Shima Hospital, are scenes from the blast. It's made out of tiles, each one representing one of the 140,000 victims who died by the end of 1945.
There were loads of school kids from different schools, clearly on school trips; hundreds of them! Some looking at various statues & memorials, others talking to tourist, & more still paying tribute to the children's memorial area. It was quite funny because when one of the kids spotted we were English, they would called out "hello!" then all the kids would start calling "hello!" It was lovely & great fun to join in & wave & say "hello!" back! Such lovely, friendly people.
We met Christine by the A Bomb Dome - the building at the centre of the explosion - then the three of us got a tram to Miyajima-guchi Pier. It took over an hour to get there, but at least we didn't have to get several trains or trams. We took the ferry over to Miyajima Island (宮島), which is nice, & we made a bee-line towards the famous statue there before deciding to look at some different place were on the way.
I think everyone who lives on the island is in the tourism industry in one way or another - there are just shops selling souvenirs & knickknacks everywhere. So many shops sold momiji manju, which is a steamed cake, traditionally filled with red bean paste & in the shape of a Japanese maple leaf. Seems you can only get them on Miyajima Island & they now have lots of different flavours.
We visited the five-storied Pagoda & Senjokaku (千畳閣) (or Toyokuni Shrine) but didn't go in as it cost quite a bit. There was another shrine/temple you could go in, called Daishō-in Temple (大聖院), but again it was expensive. Then we headed across the beach as the tide was out & walked right up to the Itsukushima Shrine (厳島神社), otherwise known as the Giant Torii. There were lots & lots of people there, & unfortunately they were doing maintenance or something on part of the structure so it was marred by a large grey square surrouding one of the legs, which was a shame, but at least it will help preserve it for other generations. We found that people had placed coins in the wood of the shrine, & there were hundreds, if not, thousands of coins at the base in the sand. Probably for luck. We had a stroll around & by the time we came back, the tide was coming in.
This evening, we took Christine to the place we had dinner at yesterday & introduced her to okonomiyaki.
