hiroshima...kyoto...paato 2

We were on such a tight schedule on this day because we had to see and do everything in Miyajima and Hiroshima that we had planned and still make our shinkansen reservation in the afternoon to take us to Kyoto for the night.

Therefore, we had our first bento of the trip for lunch and had to eat it while traveling on the tour bus from the Miyajima pier to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.  This bento was very appetizing...besides tasting good, the food is always presented so appealingly.  It had three different onigiri or musubi as we call them in Hawaii, rice balls with different fillings.  One had seaweed, one had salmon and one was made with shiso (or beefsteak plant, which tastes like ume or pickled plums).

Our first stop was the Children's Peace Monument, known as Sadako's Statue.  It was named after a girl named Sadako Sasaki who contracted leukemia due to the lingering radiation from the A-bomb dropped on Hiroshima on August 6, 1945.  A story was written about her, called Sadako and The Thousand Paper Cranes.  She tried to fold 1000 paper cranes in the hopes to being granted a wish to get better, but passed away before completing them.  Her friends had the statue built as a memorial to Sadako and all the children who died from effects of the atomic bomb

One of our band parents, Chris Urabe, and her family folded 1000 cranes to be presented at the memorial; it is the second set of cranes shown in the picture.  It was a solemn and touching moment when our entire group joined hands around the memorial to sing the Doxology, pray for those lost that day and afterwards, and to present the cranes.

One of our seniors, Kawai Chock, recently won the state speech title with his presentation called "Shin's Tricycle," the story of a little boy who was riding his brand-new a tricycle when the bomb exploded and who died when he was buried in the rubble.  Later, his family found the tricycle and it is now in the Hiroshima Peace Museum.  Kawai did his presentation for the group next to Sadako's statue.

Our guide took us through the entire park, over the bridge to the A-bomb dome, and then to the various monuments, then finally to the Museum.  The whole trek was exhausting, physically and emotionally.  I went into the museum but did not really have the energy to see everything.  I had had the opportunity to visit it 20 years ago.








This is Hiroshima City before the A-bomb:














And this is what is looked like afterwards...total devastation.









Group shot before leaving the park.

Then it was on to the train station to catch our shinkansen to Kyoto.









And time for another bento - dinner on the train. Talk about eating on the run!


It was another two-hour shinkansen ride to Kyoto.  Our hotel, the New Miyako, was across the street from Kyoto Train Station.  We checked in and went to our rooms.  Darrell and I stayed back to rest and settle in while the kids went across the street to the train station to check out the shopping and dining areas.

It was a long day, covering three major Japanese cities, not including those we passed through via bullet train.