Arrival in Hiroshima, Day One Part Two

Arriving in Hiroshima was actually a very powerful experience. I had never imagined, upon learning about the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II, that I would actually be visiting Hiroshima. Both as we were landing in Hiroshima and as we walked from the airport to where our bus was, I found myself thinking a lot. I could not imagine flying over the city and being the one to drop the bomb on this city. While they have obviously rebuilt, I am so impressed by the way development and nature blend together here as well. With such a rich natural landscape, they have built around it, rather than destroying the nature in the process of development.

Sunscreen is not common in Japan, as people, especially the women, prefer to use umbrellas and long pants and long sleeves to protect their skin.

There is a great trolley network in the center of every street!

Another beautiful thing about Japan is that there are bikes everywhere, and no one locks their bikes. Yet the bikes do not get stolen. It is just something I am so impressed by! I even asked one of our program directors about poverty in Japan and he told me that since dignity and honor are very important, so even the homeless keep their belongings incredibly orderly and poverty is sort of "hidden", since the signs are not that obvious.

I was so excited when I saw this! Ironically, it is in English, so perhaps they are trying to advertise this fact?

Now we are at the Hiroshima Peace Park! We had the incredible opportunity to attend the Rotary International Peace Forum in Hiroshima and it was really cool! The park is beautiful, despite the fact that it was at the epicenter of where the bomb was dropped back in 1945.

There were also many school groups and many tour groups visiting the park on both days we were there, which I found to be very interesting, especially when they were there on Saturday. The kids couldn't have been cuter! We waved at each other and did peace signs!

Our honors program made 1,000 paper cranes to bring to the conference, where they were joined by other Peace Cranes, such as those pictured below.

Here are some of the people from our trip in one part of the Peace Museum!

Happy picture of the day! I loved this little courtyard-patio sort of area. Also, the mural is made out of pieces of rubble from the bombing. It is always really powerful to me when artists use destroyed materials to create something beautiful and new!

These bonsai trees were a central part of the exhibit and are all over 100 years old.

 In this picture, many individuals from the Rotary group are participating in a tea ceremony.

This picture is a map of the trees throughout the park that survived the atomic bombing. While some estimated that there would be no signs of plant life for at least 75 years after the bombing, these trees survived and came back relatively quickly following the bombing, giving the Japanese people a sense of hope and empowerment to rebuild.

This was part of an art gallery protesting the dropping of the atomic bomb.

This is the heart of the memorial in the peace park.

Bridget and I in the Children's Peace Cranes part of the park. The statue is for Sadako, the girl who made 1,000 paper cranes with hopes of curing her leukemia.

I think our lawn service workers in the US could invest in some of these human-powered machines to transport plant materials instead of using cars.

 These students were here for a field trip, and I love their backpacks!

 This is a close-up of the CHP paper cranes!

 At the peace forum, we were each divided up into breakout sessions, in which we discussed different aspects of peace with members of the 52 countries that were represented. This picture shows Matt and Megan, two of our trip participants, sharing their ideas in one of the activities.

 There were over 2,000 participants at the forum! So many important people!

This beverage tasted like Gatorade!

 Part of the program included singing and dancing from one of the Children's Choirs! They did a great job! Also, spoiler alert, I will mention them again in my next post with a very funny story and video!

I still have a lot more to tell you all about Hiroshima, and have a lot of educational resources I hope to share, but we are off to Yanai very soon, which is the small town in which we have our home stays with our host families! I am not sure if I will have internet, so don’t worry if you don’t hear from me for a few days! I am definitely a little nervous, especially since my Japanese is not yet where I would hope it would be, but it will be quite an experience nonetheless! I am looking forward to bed, but I hope you have an amazing day!