2 weeks of suffering & Hiroshima, Japan

I just had the worst 2 or so weeks, frantically running around assisting dad and my brother with their stolen passports, money transfers and constant ear bashing with their complaints and sulking. The story is that dad went with Jeff to Italy for a music competition and had their most valuable bag stolen in Rome Airport along with…well, everything.

If I had known this was going to happen, I would have told dad to not go outside Rome Airport for a smoke and leaving Jeff solely responsible for the oh-so-important bags. I would have also not packed dad's new ipad 2, iphone, Sony video camera and my beloved Canon S95 into the later stolen bag. Nothing can be worse than running around during the day sorting out all these problems and then having to stay awake anywhere between 4-7am talking to dad on Skype due to time differences between Melbourne and Italy. Thanks to that I am now quite jet lagged as well. This was the first time and hopefully the last that I have to go through such an ordeal. So sorry to all my readers for my absence during this time, the ordeal is now over and I can finally get back to my normal life. At least I've gained a certain amount of knowledge about what to do next time, so if you ever run into such an unfortunate event, feel free to ask me for advice.

Ahem. So I had been wanting to continue my significantly more glamorous trip to Japan from where I left off last time (Miyajima). After Yuye and I left Miyajiama, we stopped very briefly in Hiroshima. Although it was a very rushed experience, we did manage to quickly walk through the Peace Memorial Park, a major landmark in remembering the Hiroshima bomb attack back in 1945. Yuye didn't want to go to Hiroshima in the beginning for reasons that I understand - it wasn't exactly the most fun or happy place to visit. However, as it had such a historical significance, I wanted to visit just that once.

A-Bomb Dome - one of the only buildings left standing after the bombing

The Dome in contrast to the recovered city and new buildings

Peace Memorial Museum

There were original or replica artefacts and statues of remembrance in every corner of the Park and the Museum halls were so quiet and sombre that I felt bad taking any photos at all. I took just a few below in which you can get an idea for what we saw and felt.

Timeline of events

Original watch artifact donated by Akito Kawagoe

Model of the city before bombing

Model of the city after bombing, as you can see, not many buildings survived

Remnants of the rubble left behind, some rocks can be touched.

The surroundings of the museum was quite beautiful and was full of statues and monuments that I had seen in my high school text books and various documentaries.

This one is of the Statue of the A-Bomb Children, in memory of all the children who died in the bombing. The top of the monument is of a girl holding a large crane which came about through the true story of Sasaki Sadako, a girl who died from radiation. She believed that if she folded 1000 paper cranes, she would be granted one wish. To this day, many paper cranes are donated from throughout the world and placed in the glass cases behind this monument. I believe on the anniversary of the bombing each year, paper cranes are hung below the monument in memory of the tragedy.

Statue of the A-Bomb Children

Paper cranes sent in from all over the world

We were too late to go in and ring the Peace Bell but it didn't stop me from capturing the moment of silence.

Peace Bell

This photo is of the Cenotaph for Korean Victims, in memory of all the Koreans who were killed in the bombing, including Prince Yi Wu.

Cenotaph for Korean Victims

I know this wasn't the happiest post I've written and I wanted to keep it short (it's a bit hard to write after so long) but I promise the posts to come will be full of excitement, fun and of course, lovely photos of food! My next instalment of the Japan trip will be (this time I'm not telling lies) Kyoto, the city of geishas, beautiful temples and great food.

Just a side note, has any of you lost passports/bags while travelling and how did you deal with it? I'm curious to see whether I sucked at it really. :P

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