Thanksgiving, Weekend in Hiroshima!
Trip Start
Jun 27, 2009
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15
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Trip End
Jun 25, 2011
Nachikatsuura, Hiroshima,
Japan
Sunday, December 3, 2006
Lily and I hosted another party here at our apartments, which was lots of fun as always.
That next week was Thanksgiving, and the date of our American holiday of Thanksgiving actually coincided with the Japanese holiday "Labour Thanksgiving," so we had the day off which was nice! People came over here and we cooked a big dinner and watched movies - (no turkey though, they don't know what that is here and definitely don't eat it) It was nice to do be with friends though :) Sara and her British friend who was visiting got to experience their first American thanksgiving too.
Lily, Tony and I headed to Osaka early Saturday morning to catch the bullet train (shinkansen) to Hiroshima, site of the first atomic bomb to be dropped. We met up with Lily's boyfriend on the 3rd stop which was fun! We arrived in Hiroshima about an hour and a half later, which was really awesome because if you look at the map it's actually pretty far away. It takes about 7 hours on the local trains! I think it's worth paying $90 for a ticket.
We checked into our little Japanese hotel, with only 6 rooms, owned by a nice woman. We set out walking and explored the large peace park, stopping at various statues and memorials for students/teachers, children, Koreans (in the 1980's the Japanese finally admitted they had thousands of Korean slaves that died in the a-bomb, and made a memorial for them), and unknown victims.
01 sunrise
One of the most powerful memorials is the "Children's Peace Monument" which is a statue of a girl standing on top of a dome holding an origami crane, a Japanese symbol for health and longevity. The monument was created for the many children who died, or suffered from the effects of radiation in the blast, but especially after one girl named Sadako who was diagnosed with leukemia 9 years after the blast. She began to fold paper cranes in her hospital bed and hoped that if she reached 1,000 she'd be cured. She died before she could finish, but her classmates continued after her death and went on to build the monument too. People from all over the world continue to make thousands of paper cranes in different sizes and bright colors and send them to the memorial. Unfortunately a bitter university student set some of the cranes on fire a few years ago, so now the majority of the cranes are safe inside glass cases.
We saw the infamous A-Bomb Dome which was really eery seeing as only the frame of the building is left. After much controversy the people of Hiroshima decided to let the building remain as is, and have only maintained it so it will not deteriorate anymore than it's current condition. The building is so famous because it is located almost at the hypo center of the blast and was one of the few structures that remained standing in the entire city.
Next stop was the Cenotaph, that contains the names of all the known victims of the bomb. Every year at the memorial service on August 6th, the memorial is opened up and any new names of victims that have been confirmed are placed inside.
02 biking home from school...streets in nachi
There is a large reflecting pool and then the Flame of Peace, which will only be extinguished when the last nuclear weapon on earth has been destroyed. Sadly it seems like wishful thinking in today's nuclear age...For dinner we decided to head to the shopping/restaurant district to taste the famous Okonomiyaki, one of Hiroshima's specialties. It's similar to a pancake that has separate layers of cabbage, bean sprouts, meat/fish, and noodles on top. It was delicious!!!
The second day in Hiroshima we took a ferry to nearby island of Miyajima. The island is famous for it's huge torii gate that stands in the water in front of a large shrine. We stepped out of the ferry station and I literally ran right into a deer! There are hundreds of very very tame deer that roam around the island bothering tourists, eating their maps, and grabbing food from peoples hands. It was kind of sad to see them scavenging around for food amongst hoards of tourists when you know they belong in the mountains! Despite a light shower of rain all day we had a great day hiking around and exploring all the little temples scattered all over the island. We wanted to take a cable car up to the top of the mountain to hike around there, but the day got away from us, and there was a sign that said one of the trails was closed due to landslides from the typhoon! Overall we had a great little excursion and were happy to get back to our futons at the hotel.
For our last day in Hiroshima was got up early and headed to the Peace Memorial Museum, obviously a "must see" in the city.
03 another view
It was a fascinating museum, and everything was also written in English which was so nice to finally know what was going on. They had a 360 view of the city after the bombing posted on a large wall, which was really eerie to see-and think that we had just come inside from walking around the same city. I felt badly walking around as an American in the museum, not as though people were looking at me like it was my fault directly, but kind of...Time got away from us there and before we knew it 5 hours had passed and we quickly wrote some postcards from the Peace Mail Center and headed back to check out of our hotel. We all agreed you could definitely spend more than 3 days in Hiroshima and want to go back! caught the bullet train back up to Osaka and met Justin for some delicious Mexican food.The next 2 days were spent with all the other JET's from Wakayama, at our mid-year conference. It was good to see everyone despite the boring 'team teaching' workshops we were required to go to.
School observations:
-afternoons in elementary schools are often a time for what i like to call "life skills" classes. at one school the 4th graders spent 5/6 periods in the kitchen classroom (like a home ec class with ovens, sinks, counters at each little island) and 7 mothers came in to help the students cook Japanese okonomiyaka
-a boy broke his arm, and i asked if i could sign his cast. they looked at me like i was crazy! why would i want to write on his cast! haha
-went to cultural festivals with lily at her middle schools, displayed students: sewing, art work, robots, watched singing contests
-shuffling cards for games, students are AMAZED at how we do the 'bridge' shuffle
-love watching me write "romaji" (English) on their papers, think I do it really fast
-most 1-2 grade classes have to stand up at the end of the day and say something good that happened
-like to use trash for projects, things around the classroom, think we are really wasteful.
04 one of many shops that sell whale in my town
when i had them turn classmates into toilet paper mummies for Halloween, one girl started re-wrapping the TP when we had finished! most students just ripped it all off of their bodies. very into recycling - yet the Japanese package EVERYTHING in separate plastic wrapping/bags...-first time kids have touched my hair! i took my hair down out of pony tail today and 6th grade girls crowded around me saying "WOW, COOL! Look, it's yellow and _____ (I didn't know the word)" - about 3 minutes of me searching in the dictionary for the word, I finally found it - SOFT! hahah then I touched their hair, and to my surprise it is a lot more coarse! looks so soft and shiny tho!
-think its really funny that the name "aunt" is the same sound as the insect "ant"
-principals have complimented me on how much Japanese ive learned! and they say I know a lot now (I do not.) but nonetheless, it's nice that tell me they notice a difference!
-never thought about this before coming here, but it makes sense now...on a map in a classroom, to put the country in which you live, in the middle of the map. it just seems a little off to see japan, a tiny country, in the middle of the world map.
-also never thought about how little worlds like "Ummm" or "soo..." or "yeah" or "ouch" would actually SOUND different in other languages. the other jets and i are constantly laughing to ourselves now that we know what those little words mean, we can equate them to "ummm let me see" or "OUCH!"
If you're still reading, thank you!!
Trying to get in the Christmas spirit with a few decorations, but it's not the same! Only 19 days until we leave for Beijing and Thailand - I can't wait!!
