Finally a day that we could sleep in! We slept in until about 7:30 this morning, which for us was a major deal. After a big breakfast at the hotel, we headed out for our day at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park, the second main reason we wanted to come to Hiroshima (Miyajima island being the other).

The first thing you see at the park is the Atomic Bomb Dome, which was a building that was left partially standing after the blast and that has been maintained as a memorial and a reminder about what kind of damage the blast did. It was very moving to stand before it and think about the people who were just going to work there that day, with no idea what was coming.

After the dome, we walked through another chunk of the park, checking out some of the other memorials, including the Peace Bell (which Christine rang), a tower that remembers the students who were mobilized into the labour force during the war (6300 died in the A-bomb blast), and the Atomic Bomb Memorial Mound which contains the ashes of over 70000 people who died, but were unidentifiable.

One of the other major memorials that we saw was the Children's Peace Monument (which was inspired by a little girl named Sadako who survived the blast but then later got leukemia and died). Christine has a book about her that she always reads to her students, so that hit home for her in a big way.

Next was the Peace Memorial Museum and it was amazing, and very sad all at the same time. It had a lot of history on Hiroshima in it, lots of discussion about why the bomb was built and why the American's dropped in on Japan, and the immediate aftermath of the explosion, and that was all just the first floor! The 2nd floor had more information about what happened after the explosion, the people who got sick from the radiation, and the reconstruction efforts. The third floor had lots of information about nuclear arms and disarmament, nuclear accidents and talk around peace efforts and future goals of a nuclear-free world.

The main building was next and it had a very gruesome wax figure scene of victims of the blast with their skin hanging off them, and severe burns. It was awful! It also had a lot of artifacts that survived the blast, everything from children's clothing to roof tiles that had melted, to pieces of a wall that had buckled from the shock wave. There was also a very large section dedicated to Sadako and her story. It contained some of the over 1000 origami cranes that she had folded while she was sick (the legend is that if you fold 1000 cranes you will be granted a wish).

All in all, the museum was very moving and sad, but we were glad to have taken the time to see it. Even though Christine spent most of the time crying!

Once we were done in the museum, Christine went to take a picture of the monument to Students and Teachers of the National Elementary Schools. When she was done, we headed back to the streetcar stop (walking through an underground shopping area to get there) to take us back to the hotel so we could pick up Christine's backpack and go catch our Shinkansen train back to Tokyo (that's where we are writing this blog entry).

A smooth 4-hour ride got us back to Tokyo station, where we had some trouble finding the bus terminal so that we could catch our bus to the Radisson by Narita Airport. Finally, a very helpful JR employee helped us to get on the right path, and we were on our way to the hotel.

Tomorrow AM we fly to Seoul for the 2nd part of the trip. We can't believe Japan is already over!