Leaving Kyoto, Hiroshima

I debated titling this, "Hiroshima is the bomb" but even I have my limits.

Before I begin this post I realized that I forgot one thing about our stay in Kyoto. Rebecca had wanted me to try a yaki-niku restaurant, where they give you raw meat and you have a little grill and you grill it yourself. Sounds good, right? Well, we got the meat (beef) and it was about 60-70% fat, if not more. If you don't know, I am rather picky about the fat content of my meat. I think the restaurant staff realized this after a bit and so they gave me a pair of fat-cutting scissors, with which I could get the majority of it off, but there was still quite a bit of fat marbled in the meat. I was cooking the meat a lot, even letting it flare up a bit, but I still gagged a bit when eating it. I think Rebecca thought I was just being picky. And I guess I was. However, it was proven that my pickiness has certain motivations, when I became violently ill that night at 2 am. I seriously felt like I was going to die. My entire GI tract was rebelling against my body for the cruel treatment it had been put through. The stomach would not stand for it! The intestines would not put up with it any longer! There were warring factions and students singing "Le Internationale" and debates on which form of government the new nation of the Independent Organs of Erica's Digestive System would use-- I think they were leaning towards a system of Soviets when finally the revolt was squelched.

The next day we stuck mostly to American food.

Also the night before, we went to this really neat cultural presentation in Gion corner in Kyoto. Gion is the really old district in Kyoto where there are still geishas and meikos (apprentice geishas). It was really beautiful. I wish we could have seen some geishas; we did see one in the presentation though. I won't spend too much time going through what we saw though, because I remembered that my camera took videos and I took one of each of the main parts of the presentation. I'll upload them to the youtubes once I get home.

The next morning was our last morning in Kyoto. I really wish we could have spent more time there-- if I could rearrange our schedule, I would have spent an extra day each in Tokyo and Kyoto, and less time in random small towns. Actually I would have been fine with half our time in Tokyo, half in Kyoto, and a day in Hiroshima. Anyway, we tried to find the Steam Locomotive museum, which I was really excited about-- for 200 yen you could ride a real steam locomotive!! And as you all know, I really like trains. We ran all over trying to find it, even asking two people (Rebecca asked a lady if she knew where the "old train" museum was) and then it was closed when we got there! I was really sad.

We went to Hiroshima by bullet train again. There wasn't much to do when we got there, so we kind of just rested. The next morning we got up early and went to Miyajima, which is an island right off the shore of Hiroshima. The main thing at Miyajima is Itsukushima Shrine, which is supposed to be one of the three best views in Japan. You've probably seen a picture before-- it's an orange gate seemingly floating on water. Miyajima is also known for its oysters (we could see bamboo "islands" used to harvest oysters on the ferry there), and I had some fried ones. They were so delicious and tender-- probably the best oysters I've had in my life!!

After we got back we went to Peace Memorial Park and the A-bomb dome in Hiroshima. The A-bomb dome is located not far from the target of the atom bomb, and so it wasn't completely destroyed since the blast came nearly directly above it. It's left exactly how it was right after the explosion as a reminder.

We saw a lot of pictures and video of the aftermath of the bomb. It was truly horrific. It made me kind of ashamed to be American, to be from the country that released this terror. And I found out that the U.S. decided that they would use the bomb on Japan (not Germany) well before Germany surrendered. Now, this is probably partially because Japan attacked us, but I also think that it's because they are so different. A lot of Americans have German ancestry. It's much easier to hate the Japanese. And the immense amount of hate that Americans must have felt towards them in order to do this, not to mention the internment camps, is just mind-boggling. I wish that I could say that we've gotten better, but it's nearly the same as how many Americans feel about Arabs. I've heard many arguments as to why it was okay to drop the bomb (from "they attacked us first" to "it ended the war faster, and less people died in the end as a result"). The latter is the only one I think is even worth commenting on. First of all, Russia was poised to invade Japan and end the war soon anyway-- we just didn't want the Soviets to be the ones to end the Pacific war and so have some control in that sector. Secondly, even if more people died in the end, but less civilians died, and they died in slightly less horrible of a fashion, without radiation sickness and cancers going on for decades afterward... I think it still would have been better to have traditional war rather than dropping the atomic bomb.

Also, I know other countries have done their share of atrocities as well. Especially in the 1930s-1940s. Japan itself had the Rape of Nanking and tons of medical experiments and poor (to say the least) treatment of prisoners. Germany had the Holocaust, the USSR had the purges... seriously, what was wrong with people in those 20 years? Was there something in the air? Was it just the aftermath of the depression? I mean, I know atrocities go on all the time. It seems there's always a genocide somewhere in the world. But this was several places at once, and (I hate to sound elitist, but) these were established countries that should have known better. And I think that's really the thing, why I am disappointed with America's actions then and with some of them now. I feel like we should know better. I think highly of my country, deep down, and I feel like we have a lot of potential. And then we muck it all up and do stuff like this. And when we do, it's that much worse, not just because it's my country, but because I expected so much more. It's like when you're little, and your parents are ashamed of you when you mess up instead of getting angry, because really, they're not Iraq's parents and they can't control what he does, only what you do. And they don't care if Iraq's friend hit you and if he is threatening you, they are just disappointed that you hit him and took his cookies. Because you should know better, America. I mean, didn't you learn anything from that time you nuked Japan?