Hiroshima
On August 6, 1945, Hiroshima was the first city to have an atomic bomb detonated above it.
On August 9 Nagasaki became the second and, hopefully, the last.
Hiroshima now is completely rebuilt and you wouldn't know anything happened but they did leave a few buildings unchanged to remind the world what happened on that day.
There is nothing, in my opinion, about Hiroshima that is worth visiting except the memorial to that event.
It's a flat, dull and drab town and originally we were only going to spend one day here but something happened to the visit we were supposed to make in South Korea - maybe the Trump asshole had something to do with it but at any rate we didn't get to stop in South Korea and got and additional day in Hiroshima instead. Poor us!
This is the atomic dome. The atomic bomb was detonated about 600 meters directly above.
A picture showing what it looked like before the bomb.
And another showing the surroundings after the bomb.
This is another building nearby that had very little external damage. Everyone in the building was killed though.
Another shot of the atomic dome from a different point.
This guy must have shit his pants at some point in the excursion. A real smelly bugger.
Many bodies of the victims of the atomic blast are buried under this mound of earth. There were far too many bodies and too little time for proper burials so they just excavated huge holes and put the bodies in. There are many of these mounds although we only saw this one.
We visited a museum as well - full of people as usual - and the shots below were acquired there.
After we went to a more up-lifting site. A nice Japanese garden.
And this is a Japanese toilet. A bit different from the Chinese model I found a few days ago.
And instructions! Christ what's wrong with these people? They eat with sticks and poop like wild animals.
On the way back to the ship we go by Hiroshima Castle. The original was built in 1590 but was destroyed by the atomic bomb. This i s replica built in 1958.
Day 2 in Hiroshima and we're going to visit a sacred shrine.
I finally figured out how to tell a shrine from a temple - at least in Japan. All shrines have this gate thing - shown in below two pics.
A nice enough place I guess. Not sure I'd come here again though.
A nice quite garden we came across.
And the pastry machine. These things were everywhere and everybody was eating these pastries - except us of course.
Check out of the machine in action.
Even though it's a shrine it's a tourist trap kinda shrine. Lots of store selling lots of junk. I did manage to find a tee shirt here though.
And the rain is really coming down now. And we're too cool to carry an umbrella.
Some sort of fish farming.
The weather has gone right to hell by mid afternoon.
That concludes Hiroshima,