Hiroshima Peace Museum (Tuesday)

On Tuesday we got up and took the tram to the Hiroshima Peace Museum. When we got off the tram the A-Dome was right there. What a somber sight that was. 600 meters above the dome was where the atom bomb went off and since it was directly above this building the pressure caused some of it to remain standing, even though every body and every thing inside of it was incinerated. We walked around the dome and then over to the peace flame. The Peace Flame is another monument to the victims of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, but it has an additional symbolic purpose. The flame has burned continuously since it was lit in 1964, and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs on the planet are destroyed and the planet is free from the threat of nuclear annihilation. Yes, I took that off of Wikipedia. :-) Actually, if you are interested, here is the link to the information about the area we visited. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiroshima_Peace_Memorial_Park

We walked around the park, looked at the children's peace memorial, which was really neat with the thousands of paper cranes. We then went through the museum and it was so sad. It was a very humbling experience.

We headed back to our hostel to get our bags, then over to catch the Shinkansen (bullet train) to Nagoya. We had one transfer about two and a half hours into the ride. Then we had another hour and a half on that and then had to walk to the bus station and catch a bus. We missed it by 3 minutes!!!! So then we had to wait two hours for the next one. While we were in the station waiting these two older women tried talking to me. I finally got Ike over and they wanted to know if I was their mother. Then one of them said that Pete looked like he was in the movies. :-) Our bus finally came and we had a 2 1/2 hour ride on that to Iijima. On our way to Ike's we drove by this little tempura restaurant that he had never been to so we decided to eat there. It was SO good!!! The guy in there was really nice and asked us a bunch of questions (we couldn't believe Ike had never eaten there!) and gavbe us two ceramic tea cups as gifts. :-) We then came home and started laundry and crashed. Ike has school today so Pete and I are chilling, doing laundry and I'm trying to get caught up on my blog and pictures. Pete is begging for the computer now so I'll have to put up photos later. :-)