Okayama and Hiroshima

On my way to Hiroshima (on the slow trains) I stopped off in Okayama, famous for its snacks, a garden and a black castle, known as the Crow's Castle. The name reminds me of a place near Osaka, called Okayamate, which is not pronounced like OK mate.
The castle was lovely.
But then it started to rain, so I couldn't go to the nice garden, and we decided to look for soba (buckwheat noodles, v. tasty) instead, but finding out that people don't really eat soba in western Japan, its all about udon (chunky rice noodles- nice but I was fairly sick of that after Osaka...) and we had to settle for udon.

After that it was back on the train, alone apart from some obaasan (old women) who insisted on giving me cake and snacks, headed for Hiroshima.

I arrived at night, but found my hostel, made some friends and went out for food with them.

The next day I went round the main Hiroshima sights. First of all is the Genbaku Dome, or A-Bomb Dome, which I believe is the only building in the city which predates 1945. It was pretty much directly under the bomb when it exploded , which is the reason it still stands today as a reminder of the damage and destruction. It is now seen as a symbol of Hiroshima.

It's only small but when you think about what it survived, it's fairly incredible. As the bomb went off, everyone inside the building was instantly killed and this required a few moments of quiet reflection.Many things made me sad in that area, such as the Peace Memorial Park, which was an area completely destroyed by the bomb. There are memorials for all different victims of the blast, such as the Korean workers, who were being forced to work in Japan at the time.

There is also a memorial for the children, as the majority of people who were killed or affected were women and children, and this is surrounded by origami cranes. The story behind these is that as girl called Sadako, who was at home, about a mile from ground zero when the explosion happened. She contracted leukemia. She had hear a traditional story that anyone who folds 1000 origami cranes is granted a wish by a crane. Some stories say she didn't meet her goal before she died, and others say she folded that many and continued. She died in October 1955, 12 years old.

Afterwards her friends continued to fold these cranes, and people all over the world still do so and send them to Hiroshima.
The peace memorial museum was also very moving. It was very unbiased and went into lots of detail. I think it is an essential visit for anyone who goes to Hiroshima.

After that I was feeling quite sombre and I met my flatmate, Yoshi from Tokyo, who had also been to the museum that morning, and we met up with Emma, who studies Japanese with me at Newcastle, and went for the Hiroshima speciality food of Okonomiyaki, also known as Hiroshimayaki. This is a different style to that in Osaka, and much more fancy. It involves bacon (if you eat it) and noodles, and a fried egg, plus anything else you might wish to include, other vegetables, Kimchi, cheese, anything. The tradition is to have it with Yakisoba- fried chinese noodles, which is very nice, but I also had it with udon, which I have to say was berry derishasu.

Despite the city's tragic past, it is really busy and a really nice place. It had quite a "European" feel about it. We went to the castle (obviously a reconstruction) and had traditional Japanese style photos taken...
And inside it we saw this :
Which lead to this:
Which just goes to show that there is more to Hiroshima than people first think.