A somber visit to the A Bomb Dome in Hiroshima

April 19^th, 2006

I’m done with Japan. We woke up early to go to Hiroshima for the day only to get on the wrong train, which took double the planned time. We rushed through Hiroshima, which seems a rude thing to do given the gravity of the events that took place there. The A Bomb done was startling in that you could clearly see the destruction that took place there. The bomb blew up right over it, which allowed many of the walls to withstand the explosion. Everything inside of the walls was instantaneously destroyed. Temperatures rose to 4000 degrees Celsius as a result of the explosion. One of the testimonials included a story of a guy who picked up his Mother’s bones with a chopstick (as is a ritual in many Asian countries) only to have the chop sticks catch fire. That was a week after the explosion.

Even after rushing through Hiroshima, we sill weren’t able to make it back to Kyoto in time to see the Geisha show in Gion. I damn near cried over this. We did make it to the Hot Bath which was nice. I’m not sure I want to bathe with a bunch of older Chinese women again, but it was interesting as an experience. Basically, the hot bath consists of a bunch of different Jacuzzi options and a couple of cooler options. The atmosphere was far more sterile than I imagined.

We enjoyed Japanese Tapas for dinner, although they certainly don’t call them that. Dinner was excellent and the wine was greatly improved over the previous night. We went back to our hole in the wall, 6 seat, pub and met a crazy Hawaiian guy named Chris. He read us the poetry he wrote in the previous bar. I really liked one of his lines, though. It was about unsuspecting promises – I take it to mean that you expect certain things to happen, but you never know exactly what those things will be or how they will happen. In my case, reality exceeds anything I could have suspected independently.

The trip back to HK was uneventful, but it required two taxis, two trains, one airplane, one bus. I’m not sure when that level of complicated travel stopped intimidating me, but I ain’t scared!