Stop Two - Hiroshima

So its been a while... but im gonna throw the rest of the pics i took up anyway. The second stop i took was in hiroshima. The bullet trains are sweet. 

Hotel room view. I had no idea that Hiroshima was such a river city. This river runs through the center of it, and sort of splits a few times so the city is sort of sitting on a huge set of deltas. Anywhoo, nice hotel view!

This is the annoying hotel key. Its like a bathroom pass.

When you get in the room, you have to turn it on. This is the room switch.  Im not sure what it says, but if you dont put your roomkey in, nothing in the room will turn on.

Hiroshima has a large castle as well. This castle has a cool moat  and a sweet bridge that i apparently forgot to take a picture of.

One of the coolest parts of the castle was that its in the middle of a city.

There were lots of underground tunnels like this for pedestrians, covered with tile floors and walls. 

A train stop in the middle of a busy street. A sort of awkward picture to take as you have to stop in the middle of a city street and stand on the tracks... which seems double unsafe.

There is a huge peace garden in the city. This is a picture of  the city after the bomb hit.

A-Bomb dome from the back. This was the old chamber of commerce building. It was one of the only buildings left standing after the bomb. After the attack, many residents wanted to clean up all destruction, while some felt it was important to remember these things. So while most of the structures have been cleared away, A-Bomb dome stayed as one of the only reminders of what the whole city looked like.

Plaque!

Front of A-Bomb dome, Lots of school groups visit this site, you can see one in the lower right. They keep shouting at you "Welcome To Hiroshima!" and "HELLO!". It made me sort of uncomfortable to be an american in hiroshima with people shouting at me.

More of the dome. There is fairly high security around it, as people used to try and take stones from the building for souvenirs.

The have propped up the building a bit so it will stay around. It sits right on the edge of a river, theres a large drop off right behind me while i take this picture.

Memorial tower to the students mobilized during the war.

There is a button to push on the bottom of this memorial that starts playing a loud audio track telling you about the 6000+ students involved in forced labor in the city when the bomb struck.

A-Bomb dome from across the river, with the new city in the back.

Children's peace memorial, dedicated to Sadako Sassaki, the little girl who famously tried to fold one thousand cranes. The glass cases in the back are full of cranes, like packed full no room. They are pressed against the side to make patterns.

The Bell of Peace, which sits in a nice lilly pond.

There is an atom right where you strike the bell, which i though was a neat touch.

The memorial mound mentioned above.

Interesting as its not something that i had ever thought of before.

The monument mentioned above. 

One of the main monuments, taken from the wrong side as i cant read the japanese directions and no one else was around. It looked much better the other way... so there are pictures of that below.

Super long monument. There are a number of plaques at the bottom of this (on pictured below) which sit in about 3 inches of water.

Plaque for the above monument.

Part of the city from peace park.

Everything had cranes on it. Some school children stopped me and asked if i supported world peace (i said yup!) and so they gave me a crane, which i left on one of the monuments because it seemed the thing to do.

These are across the road from the main memorial.

You walk through the arches, which have words written on them and look like they light up at night.

This tree had a large scar all the way up the side, caused by the bomb. Its healing over, but can still be seen.

Plaque for above tree.

Hopefully you can read it... :)

One of the rivers and one of the bridges. Notable because there  is no railing between the lower sidewalk and the upper one. Lots of little things like this give everything a different feel. Its as if the japanese understand that if someone does something stupid its their own fault. "Dont walk off the ledge" is a good enough reason not to do so in japan.

Another of the rivers from the center of one of the bridges.

One of the cooles stores, called "Yellow Submarine" i think. Full of anime figures and playing cards. Awesome.

Hiroshima again.

One of the neat ways to park. You pull up, and it lifts and stows your car in a car-cubby. Then retrieves it for you later. This is the back of one of these car lifting parking things, seen while i walked one of the rivers in Hiroshima.

Time to go, next stop is Matsumoto!

Taking pictures from a bullet train... the train is too fast, so you get shearing from the relatively slow scan rate on  the iPhone camera i was using.

Super nice insides of the bullet train. Soon a lady with a food cart will walk by saying "thank you" over and over again.