My computer occasionally goes through phases where it decides it wants to be in Norwegian. These phases are getting worse recently and I have no idea what sets it off. This computer didn't even go to Norway!!! /(>.<)\ I don't understand in the least... Just now I tried made a search about Hiroshima just to make sure I was getting names right. This is what happened: There are two in english, but google kindly offers to translate those for me. Thank you computer. Thank you.
In other news... Hey! It's been a while. And actually there has been a lot going
on. My life over here rarely gives me a moment to breath but I really
wouldn't have it any other way. But, I'm going to backtrack in a time a
bit back to October. October was the AKP fall field trip during which
AKP took all of the students to Kurashiki, Hiroshima, and Miyajima. I'll
be honest Kurashiki wasn't particularly memorable but Hiroshima and
Miyajima were absolutely wonderful! Of course Hiroshima was not the
happiest of places but it's a place that I think more people (and I
don't mean more Japanese school children, there were enough of those) should go. AKP also arranged
for a survivor of the bomb to come and speak to us and should anyone be
interested in it, I have the print-out of his speech in english. It's quite interesting, he has a surprising way of telling his story.
Moving on. Pictures!
First off, Hiroshima
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| View from the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, you can see the Genbaku (atomic bomb) dome in the background. |
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| Memorial statue for the children who died due to the bomb. The group of kids in front sang a song and then presented the 1,000 cranes they had made. |
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| The monument is made specifically in honor of Sadako, a girl who was 2 at the time the bomb was dropped and later died at the age of 12 due to after effects of exposure. Sadako spent her time in the hospital folding paper cranes as the old story said that those who completed 1,000 paper cranes would have their wish granted. The colorful boxes behind the monument were full of strings of 1,000 cranes that people had folded. |
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| The Genbaku Dome: the largest (maybe only) structure left standing in the city after the bomb detonated almost directly over it. |
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And now on to something a little happier, Miyajima! I'm willing to bet the name means nothing to most of you, or at least I had absolutely no idea what or where this place was. But perhaps this picture can help...
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| The Torii in the water. Probably one of the most iconic locations in Japan. The shrine was funded by Taira no Kiyomori who, despite this place being so popular, is very much an unloved figure in Japanese history. |
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| There were a lot of deer. At least they didn't attack as much as the deer in Nara... |
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| The shrine without water... |
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| The shrine with water...yay... |
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| I hiked to the top of the mountain spur of the moment with another friend. It was supposed to be a roughly2.5-3 hour hike up. We didn't in a little over one hour. We were on a time frame, had to be back for the boat and we all but had to sprint back down. |
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| This is from about halfway...maybe less than halfway up the mountain. |
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| Turns out, we also took the "pilgrims path" up. Meaning suffering, more or less. (It was steep) |
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