Wednesday, April 4, 2012

Week 8 - Japan - Emily Van Torre


Dear Bloggers,

I’m so sorry I didn’t write to you guys yesterday. Our day was just so filled with things we had to visited and at the end of the day, I was too exhausted to go online and write.
So, today was our last day at Hiroshima and it was fantastic.

Today we went to the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park. The park is a tribute to Hiroshima as the world’s first city that was attacked by “Little Boy”. It was built to remember the horror that had happened in Hiroshima but also to stimulate world peace.

When I crossed the Children’s Peace Monument, I couldn’t help myself but I cried silently when I read what this statue stands for. The statue is dedicated to the hundreds of thousands of children who died due to the bombing. The statue represents a girl with wide stretched arms and a folded paper crane rising above her. It’s actually based on the true story of
Sadako Sakasi, a two-year-old girl who died from the consequences of the nuclear bombing…

The must-see building in the park was the A-Bomb Dome. This ruin was left exactly the same as how it was after the bomb. It’s completely authentic, that’s what makes it so special. All the people that were in the building were killed instantly, or so I’ve heard.

Then we entered the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.  This museum learned us facts about the nuclear war and it’s goal is to prevent something like this again. I saw horrible things in this museum: videos, personal belongings from victims, photos…My god, it must have been so terrible…

We walked on the Peace Boulevard. This boulevard is one of Japan’s main streets and you can actually see the south side of the Memorial Park. The street is 100 meters wide and is 3.6 kilometers long. Can you believe that we actually walked the whole 3.6 kilometers? Of course, we were exhausted afterwards. We had dinner at “Kaki-den”, a famous restaurant in Hiroshima. I had to taste the traditional and trendy okonomiyaki. It’s basically a pancake that you can stuff with anything you like. I had one with shrimps, onions, tomato sauce, cheese, the usual omelet on top( it almost looked like a pizza!) and some okonomiyaki sauce. It’s a sweet and sticky sauce, jummie!

After a very long dinner, we went fulfilled back to our hotel and fell in a very deep sleep…

Xoxo Emily

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