6/9 Traveling to Hiroshima

So yesterday was pretty hectic. We had to meet up at the hotel lobby in Kashiwa at 9:00 sharp, then head to the trains to ride to Tokyo for the shinkansen to Hiroshima. The train was super packed, but I managed to sit down for the last two stops. We then got our rail passes for the shinkansen and we're off! 

This is how far we traveled. It took about 4 1/2 hours in total - 3 hours to get to Kobe and 1.5 to get to Hiroshima

Yes, the shinkansen is super fast. The one we went on went up to at least 171 mph (or 275 km/h). Courtney and I shared a bento box that we got from the train station, and the ride went pretty smoothly. 

Finally we arrived in Hiroshima! After almost hitting two people (I'm not used to so much activity going on at once), we got to our hotel and chilled out for a bit before going back out to explore. Our teacher brought us down this huge shopping street to an Italian place where I proceeded to have pizza. 

The pizza wasn't bad. There's better ones in the States, though.

Two of the guys had squid ink spaghetti and that was good. I kind of regret not buying the spaghetti. The pizza was really cheap though, about 399 yen for a personal pizza (which is less than $4.00). 

We then explored around some more. We went to the arcade where Grace and I played a round of DDR. She completely annihilated me! We then walked over to the Hiroshima memorial.

As expected, walking to the memorial was an experience. The memorial we saw was essentially where the atomic bomb first hit. According to Dominik, the reason this particular building was still standing was because the bomb was right above it, the only place for the building to go was a bit more downwards while everything else around it essentially disappeared. 

Some of us started talking about the war, and then about war in general. Both Grace and Courtney are Navajo, and they reflected on the Navajo code talkers that took part in and died in the war. I began to talk to some of the guys about the Japanese-Filipino vs. Japanese-American relations back in the day. While I know how I feel about the atomic bomb, I really don't know what to feel about WWII in general. While America basically dominated Japan, Japan did dominate the Philippines beforehand. Basically my main reaction was "Everyone was a jerk, it's just America were jerks with big bombs." 

I then went back to the hotel and one of the guys, Riley, was nice enough to walk back with me to the memorial so I could take pictures with my actual camera. The shots I got aren't the best, but that's because taking pictures at night is hard. But the memorial is lit up at night and it was a sight to see, so I wanted to at least try. This is what I managed to get - 

I ended up not coming back to the hotel until pretty late, which is why I'm uploading this the next day. Today (6/9) we'll be taking a guided tour of Hiroshima and then moving on to Miyajima. 

まったね！