March 17

Today, we decided to visit the atomic bomb memorial museum and Miyajima. Christian also wanted to see a particularly pretty bridge, but I didn’t want to spend the 2000en to get there, so we visited the memorial museum and nearby malls instead. The museum was moving. It had replicas of government correspondence on the bomb and original specimen from the aftermath. Among the horrific were body fragments and clothing saved by family members from victims, melted/fused glass bottles and roof tiles, and images of victims. it wasn’t a particularly huge museum, but it explained and displayed a lot of information. Somehow though, the science seemed a bit glazed over at times.

After such an intense experience, we decided to do something much so, therefore, we rode the cable car around until we found something interesting, but that didn’t really happen, so we got off at a mall. After spending a bit of time there, we headed off in what we thought was the direction of Miyajima, but I found I had forgotten my guide book at the mall, so we had to go back. We had been going in the wrong direction anyway though, so we got another car to the Miyajima port. I beat myself up quite a bit that da for not skipping the mall and going directly from the museum to Miyajima because I grossly underestimated the time it took to get there (as well as the early hour of sunset). We ended up only having a few hours on the island (which seemed to abound with traditional attractions that were closed for the night). After getting off the densha (the cable car had to travel so far that it changed into a one-car train after a while), we boarded a ferry to get to the island. There, we were met with countless docile deer and the opportunity to walk through the famous tori (due to low tide). If you can get a coin to stay on the tori (usually by throwing it so ti will rest on the horizontal planks) ou will have extra fortune (on top of walking through it), so we tried, but I failed. We were able to go up the ill to a gigantic jinja and its pagoda, but by the time we got back to the edge of the town, most places were closed (and it was really dark). We weren’t able to visit many shops or go inside the jinja, see the outside of the onsen while it was open, or hear the island peddlers, but we did find one place where we had our last Hiroshima-style okonomiyaki before heading back to the mainland to catch our bus to Kyoto.

The drama wasn’t over though, as it became apparent it was a problem that I had not gotten my host family omiyage. It wasn’t an issue of finding something of quality (though non-edible souvenirs seemed lacking in the department), but that my host mom doesn’t eat sweets, therefore; I would have to get her a cheap gift (unthinkable) or sweets that I was willing to eat (as she would inevitably make me eat them). I had something picked out, but wanting to get it home fairly fresh, had put off buying it. By the tie we got back to the mainland, it was past 9:00, and most places were closed (especially those selling omiyage). I had accepted my defeat and we boarded the cable car to Hiroshima eki, where the miraculous happened; there, in the eki, at the konbini inside were tons of omiyage, including the kind I had planned to buy. I was saved by the convenience of the konbini!