Japan 2023

February 17th, 2023

This morn­ing our time in Tokyo came to an end. We left the hotel at 6:30 and took the metro to Tokyo Cen­tral Sta­tion. On the way there an impres­sive sky­line showed up.

From Tokyo’s Shinkansen sta­tion, we then depart­ed on time with the Nozo­mi Shinkansen at a top speed of 300 km/h in 4 hours to Hiroshi­ma. Below you can see our train arriv­ing at the dead-end station.

Hiroshi­ma is locat­ed in the south­west of the Japan­ese main island Hon­shū with some islands in front of it and is the admin­is­tra­tive seat of the Hiroshi­ma Pre­fec­ture (Hiroshi­ma-ken) with the same name.

The city gained world­wide sad fame due to the first atom­ic bomb dropped on August 6, 1945. After recon­struc­tion start­ing in 1949, Hiroshi­ma devel­oped into an impor­tant indus­tri­al site and today ranks 11th among Japan’s largest cities with a pop­u­la­tion of over 1.1 million.

Hiroshi­ma was orig­i­nal­ly found­ed in 1589 as a cas­tle town on the delta of the Ōta Riv­er. After the Mei­ji Restora­tion in 1868, Hiroshi­ma devel­oped into a major urban and indus­tri­al cen­ter. In 1889, Hiroshi­ma offi­cial­ly received the sta­tus of a city. Dur­ing the Impe­r­i­al Era, Hiroshi­ma was a cen­ter of mil­i­tary activ­i­ty and played an impor­tant role in the First Sino-Japan­ese War, the Russ­ian-Japan­ese War, and both World Wars.

Since most of the city itself was destroyed in the atom­ic bomb­ing, there are few his­tor­i­cal sites. In the cen­ter of the city is now the 12-hectare Hiroshi­ma Peace Memo­r­i­al Park. The peace mon­u­ment in Hiroshi­ma, the “Atom­ic Dome,” ruins of the for­mer Jan Let­zel Cham­ber of Com­merce and Indus­try build­ing, has been pre­served as a memo­r­i­al in its con­di­tion imme­di­ate­ly after the atom­ic bomb­ing. Hiroshi­ma Cas­tle, the “Carp Cas­tle” was also rebuilt in 1958 in its old style.

A-Bomb Dome

The build­ing is the world-famous land­mark of Hiroshi­ma and a memo­r­i­al against the hor­ror of nuclear war. When we were here in 2014, the ruins were cov­ered in scaf­fold­ing as part of restora­tion work. Arriv­ing at the famous A-Bomb Dome, we met sev­er­al groups of school chil­dren who had arrived in bus­es to vis­it the Peace Memo­r­i­al Park.

The build­ing was com­plet­ed accord­ing to a design by Czech archi­tect Jan Let­zel in April 1915 and was destroyed by the U.S. atom­ic bomb “Lit­tle Boy” dropped by U.S. bomber Eno­la Gay at 8:16 a.m. local time on August 6th, 1945. It burned out com­plete­ly. All the peo­ple work­ing in it at that time lost their lives.

Despite the short dis­tance of only 140 m from ground zero, many build­ing struc­tures have been pre­served, includ­ing the char­ac­ter­is­tic sup­port­ing struc­ture of the dome roof, to which the mon­u­ment owes its cur­rent name. The remains have been con­served since the drop. In Decem­ber 1996, UNESCO declared it a World Her­itage Site

At 3:00 p.m. we were able to check in at the Mit­sui Gar­den Hotel. We got a room on the 22nd floor with a great view over­look­ing the city. Our room was quite small, with three beds it was more like a sleep­ing land­scape than a room. After set­tling into the room as best we could, we went to Peace Memo­r­i­al Park again first.

In the Peace Memo­r­i­al Park you can find sev­er­al col­or­ful hang­ing paper strips. These are strung origa­mi paper cranes. The sto­ry behind them is touching:

A girl named Sadako sur­vived the atom­ic bomb­ing of Hiroshi­ma seem­ing­ly unscathed at the age of 2 1/2, but lat­er became ill with leukemia. An old Japan­ese leg­end says that some­one who folds 1000 paper cranes would have a wish grant­ed to the gods. Sadako there­fore began fold­ing tiny paper cranes, hop­ing for health and a long life. Although she seemed to be get­ting bet­ter for the time being, how­ev­er, she died before she could fin­ish her sec­ond series of 1000 cranes. Her class­mates fold­ed the miss­ing cranes for her and erect­ed a mon­u­ment (the “Children’s Peace Mon­u­ment” right pic­ture below) in Hiroshi­ma Peace Memo­r­i­al Park.

Today, paper cranes are donat­ed by vis­i­tors as a sign of peace and in mem­o­ry of Sadako.

After­wards, we strolled fur­ther through the city and end­ed up in a nice café (no Star­bucks this time). There we had straw­ber­ry ice cream waf­fles and for Luise a straw­ber­ry iced tea. Simone and I had the usu­al lat­te macchiato.

After­wards we walked a lit­tle bit through the shop­ping street. For din­ner, we want­ed to go to an okonomiya­ki restau­rant that was rec­om­mend­ed to us. Okonomiya­ki is pre­pared in Hiroshi­ma in a spe­cial way with noo­dles, we real­ly want­ed to try it. We went to the restau­rant by this cute old elec­tric street­car in the pic­ture below on the right. It was­n’t far, but we real­ly want­ed to try it.

For din­ner we were at Naga­ta-Ya, the Okonomiya­ki - restau­rant rec­om­mend­ed to us. The restau­rant seemed to be very pop­u­lar, out­side were already some guests wait­ing in line. We have queued up in the end and were already hand­ed a menu. Short­ly there­after, our order was then already tak­en outside.

After about half an hour, we had then made our way to a table. The ordered Okonomiya­ki came quick­ly and were very tasty. The restau­rant also had beer in a rea­son­able size 😉. In the mean­time, we also got along with the chop­sticks already quite well. After the long day we were now very tired and went back to the hotel.