Sun in Hiroshima

We had no firm plans for our last day in Hiroshima so decided to head back to the peace park and see where the day took us.

We walked to a nearby bakery for food once we left the hotel. Teneille rated their pastry options and they were also very reasonably priced.

Once the children stopped complaining they were hungry we walked from the bakery to the peace park with a couple of stop-offs on the way.

We ventured inside a discount variety store in search of a suitcase. We’ve bought too much shit and need extra carry space to get it home. A search the night before had yielded super expensive suitcases for which I wasn’t willing to pay. We found something more suitably priced in Don Quixote, whose store mascot is a penguin. I think. Bizarrely the store is open from 5am to 10am so we resolved to stop in on our way back to grab what we needed.

A bra for your butt… Teneille wouldn’t buy it.

We ducked into a video game arcade for the last time and let the kids run around playing random stuff. Teneille took a liking to a shooting game that utilised a real gel blaster. Not sure if I should be worried. We also wasted too much money on claw machines and won nothing. They are a scam. Don’t play them. 

From the arcade it was just a short walk to the park where we spent some time wandering through the precinct to look at small memorials and monuments we hadn’t taken the time to look at yesterday in our rush.

We found a giant mound which contains the ashes of many of the atomic bomb victims. With so many dead bodies to deal with, cremation was the only way. Their ashes are here.

The mound containing the ashes of the dead.

We found a memorial for a big housing precinct that had stood at a certain point in the park. It was so close to the hypocentre that everyone inside died instantly but there was no way of knowing how many because a lot of people there were entire families. How do people know you are gone if everyone who cared to look for you was gone as well?

There was a giant peace bell you could gong. The inscription requested people gong respectfully and not with great force. A number of people we watched toll the bell did not respect that request. Tourists, honestly.

The peace bell.

We then found a tiny building in the middle of the park you could enter via a sliding door. It would have been no more than 10m by 7m. It showed an original section of Hiroshima street from the day of the bombing. The site was discovered during survey works in 2019. What they found was part of a road, the gutter and the entrance to a house flattened by the blast. A carbonised tatami mat sat just inside the doorway. Projections showed what the street would have looked like before the blast and you could look down and see the real foundations of the old city.

It was a hot and sunny day so the time in the shaded park was quite pleasant. We also walked to the very edge of the river where we sat and chilled out for a bit just soaking in the city. It really is hard to imagine so much destruction when you see it now.

The atomic dome from the other side of the river.

Once we were finished in the park we walked back to the apartment to start packing ahead of our trip to the airport tomorrow. Yes, we grabbed our suitcase on the way.

We don’t have an early start tomorrow but we do have a bullet train to Shin-Osaka and then a connecting train to Kansai Airport. I’m not stressed, you are.