Day Two: Hiroshima!

Hey everyone! I have arrived home safely from Japan! Now I will actually have time to post, since we had such delightfully packed days for the past two weeks! This post will be very long, since I will try to cover the entire second day we had in Hiroshima. I will warn you that there will be some sad content during this post, since we visited the Hiroshima museum following the dropping of the atomic bomb. Sometime in the next week or so, I will be posting a collection of educational materials that goes into more depth which can be read by anyone or used as teaching resources for anyone who is interested. There are also plenty of cool things and happy things from the city, and I think this speaks to the success the Japanese have had in rebuilding their city!

 Fish are a central component of Japanese culture and are often used as city "mascot" sort of.

 This bank was the only building that survived the bombing completely in 1945. This picture is the current photo and then the picture below is immediately following the bombing.

 Prior to the trip, my grandparents on my mom's side showed me a photo album of their trip to Japan, and there were a lot of boats in it, so I also took many pictures of boats while I was there! I love this picture!

 These roses are from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial rose garden.

 Here is a picture of all of the people who were on my trip! You will definitely be seeing a lot of them in upcoming posts! We are in front of part of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial.

 And here is a picture of one of the main parts of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, called the Genbaku Dome. It was purposely left how it was after the bombing and not rebuilt, to serve as a reminder of what happened there, in the midst of other parts of the city that were rebuilt.

This post has way too many pictures, so click "read more" to access the rest of the post!

I'm already leaving Japan!

Happy Tuesday! I am currently packing to head home and get ready for bed, but I just wanted to post a quick update! This whole trip has been an incredible experience, and one that I am sure I will never forget! The six cities that we were able to visit in Japan each offered something unique and I learned more than I imagined! I took a ridiculous 3,982 pictures, and I can't wait to share them with you! There will be a plentiful supply of posts over the next couple days, and perhaps even especially in the upcoming day or two if I experience any jetlag and find myself awake at random times. While I will board the plane tomorrow morning and leave Japan physically, I know it will be forever engrained in my mind and an understanding that I will carry on with me, to share with not only friends and family, but future students as well! I look forward to seeing you all and talking to you soon!

This is Kimiko Gunji, the coordinator of the program and a wonderful, fearless woman with a huge heart!

A few fun picture updates!

Hey guys! I am about to go to bed in Kyoto! It was a crazy wonderful day, and I know I am majorly behind, but I figured I would give you some fun picture updates from the day! Many of these are very silly!!

School children who are going on field trips wear these awesome yellow helmets! They were also running across the street.

Lauren and I in front of the Osaka Castle!

Right outside the Osaka castle, this dog was modeling. It kept doing different poses for pictures!

This was from a store near the Osaka Aquarium that sold bags. One of the members of the trip, Kenny, was jokingly trying out this cat bag.

 However, sometimes things get lost in translation, and someone who only speaks Japanese might not catch it. Thus, there are words such as "Mike" and "tomorrow" on a bag of cat adjectives!

 And bags that say "arch hung on the sky" instead of "rainbow"!

We had a blast at the Osaka Aquarium, the largest in the world!!

 This fish has crazy eyes!

 Speaking of crazy fish, at dinner we took a picture doing fish faces. Unfortunately, Paritosh decided he didn't want to do a fish face, so Matt and I looked silly :)

Happy Friday!! (to those of you in the Central time zone!)

I'm Back and Quick Updates!

Hello everyone! I am currently in Miyajima, Japan, and have already watched the sunrise and climbed up and down a mountain this morning by 9 am. This never happens, especially since my night owl tendencies cause me to sleep in until later in the day. I am realizing I won't be able to blog as much as I thought during the trip to maximize my actual travel experience, since each day has been packed with greatness! This post will be quick since I am waiting for a shower, but I will share two paragraphs I typed up two days ago in response to my first night with my homestay family, which included two of the sweetest women ever, a mother and her 25 year old daughter. I will also include just a few photographs!

Yanai:

With the children's Taiko group! They were wonderful!

 With my host mom and her daughter on top of the mountain!

At a bridal kimono shop!

Miyajima:

Wow. That is truly all I can say after my first day in Yanai. I am completely stunned, blown away, inspired, have so much respect, feel so lucky to have this opportunity to be here and to be in contact with all of these wonderful people, and my smile muscles are definitely getting a workout! It’s honestly feeling like I am so full of happiness and love that I might explode. Each day goes through different highs and lows and fast-paced wonder, especially when, in reality, we have no idea what is about to hit us next. Even though we have spent four days in Japan so far and it still feels like the beginning, it also feels like I have been here forever. I definitely realize how with travel, and especially meaningful travel like this, whenever you visit somewhere, you leave part of yourself in that destination, but then take a part of where you visited back with you. I truly feel this way already, with Japan as a whole, but already with Hiroshima and Yanai.

So far from this trip, I have already learned a lot about language. On the surface level, I have learned significantly more Japanese than I knew before, which was none, well, except maybe Konichiwa. Now I am constantly saying many of the important phrases we have learned, such as ohayo gozaimasu (good morning), superachi (wonderful), oishi desu (it’s delicious), watashiwa Sarah desu (I’m Sarah), nani desuka? (what is that?), and most importantly, arigatou gozaimasu (thank you!). I have learned even more about non-verbal communication, such as the importance of bowing, but also using other strategies to understand one another, such as pointing or acting things out. Perhaps the most significant thing about language that I have learned is that at the end of the day, an understanding of the language is not necessary to begin to understand the beauty of a culture, or a kindness of the people. Even though words make it easier to communicate, I have still found such a wonderful warmth and sense of peace from the Japanese people I have interacted with, whether it is for an extended period of time or even for a brief second in passing. I love these people, and I love this culture. Japan is honestly incredible.

Look forward to talking to you all more later! Happy day!

A special treat...

We were asked to dance at the closing ceremony for the Rotary International Peace Forum in Hiroshima, Japan. We didn't really know too much of what was going on in a choreography sense, but we gave it our best shot. We come on stage in the second half of the video!

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!