Everyone knows Hiroshima and its sad history. The city is one of the mandatory stops when you want to have a true and good insight of Japan and its main island.
However today, the city is a rich economic place also full of history, modern and ancient. The side of the city we all know is the role Hiroshima played during WWII, leading to the Japanese capitulation.
First, the most stunning — and moving — place for me was the Atomic Dome. Indeed, realizing that only a few decades ago the first Atomic Bomb exploded right in the sky over you can be quite disturbing.
The Dome itself is a melancholic memory of what happened. My experience was even more moving since someone on the other side of the river was playing a melancholic music with a traditional flute …
When you continue your “pilgrimage” in Hiroshima, your next stop is the Peace Memorial Museum. Inside the museum itself, the atmosphere is very heavy — and no one talks. The respectful silence is moving and gives you the chills, while reading the testimonies of the victimes and the consequences of the atomic radiations.
Here are some paper cranes to commemorate a little girl’s wish to be free of her Leukemia. She made 2,000 of it, following the 1,000 paper cane tale that says that if you fold 1,000 cranes, your wish will be granted.
After this disturbing atmosphere, our next stop was the Yamato Museum. This place is a little bit far from the center of Hiroshima (it is located in Kure, near the Kure Maritime Museum) and not very well known by foreigners. However, it is really worth going, since it is a place full of unknown history — especially focused on the Japanese Navy.
They also possess a huge replica of the Yamato, the Japanese biggest war boat ever created.
This place full of history is interesting and not filled with the heavy atmosphere we first encountered in the Peace Memorial Museum, since a lot of children visit every day.
To finish our little tour of the city, we visited the beautiful Hiroshima castle, full of another kind of history (centered more specifically on the Edo era and samurais).
The castle was destroyed by the atomic blast and later reconstructed next to its remaining fondations.
The castle itself is quite high and allows you to enjoy a really cool view of the city and the park surrounding the castle.
Hiroshima is not the city you can expect, you would be surprised how interesting it is and how developed it became 🙂
