Before showing you more temples / cherry blossom / deer, let's talk a minute about the shinkansen, the Japanese high speed train. It is not only fast, very silent and perfectly punctual. The room each passenger has is incredible, compared to the trains I have taken in any other country. In France, my knees touch the seat in front of me (and I am not a giant...). As you can see in the picture below, a grown up man has about 30 cm of space in front of his legs. It really makes a difference.
And then something else I like in the local trains, or below in the ferry to Miyajima: most of the seats are reversible, you can move them in order to seat frontward or backward, or in order to face your friends if you are travelling with a party of 4 persons. That's clever! The 2 pictures below are the same seat, taken with the same angle, before and after I moved them.
The torii of Miyajima was built in the ocean. At low tide, you can see it standing in the mud, but as high tide, it seems to be floating:
And the whole shrine was also built on the water:
Behind the shrine, there is also a very nice village, full of small shops selling handicraft products.
That's a soy sauce shop. It seems that in Japan, you have enough different types of soy sauce to fill a full shop
And the best pastry I've eaten so far in Japan, a puff pastry stuffed with sweet potato. It might not sound mouth-watering but, trust me, it was awesome!!!
Back to the main island, moving on Hiroshima and its Peace Memorial Park.
Its purpose is not only to memorialize the victims, but also to establish the memory of nuclear horrors and advocate world peace
The building now known as the A-Bomb Dome was built in 1915, as the Prefectural Commercial Exhibition Hall. At 8:15am, on August 6th, 1945, an American B29 bomber carried out the world's first atomic bombing. The bomb exploded approximately 600 meters above the Hall, ripping through and igniting the building, instantly killing everyone in it.
Because the blast struck from almost directly above, some of the center walls remained standing, leaving enough of the building and iron frame to be recognizable as a dome.
The Children's Peace Monument is a statue dedicated to the memory of the children who died as a result of the bombing. The statue is of a girl with outstretched arms with a folded paper crane rising above her. The statue is based on the true story of Sadako Sasaki, a young girl who died from radiation from the bomb. She believed that if she folded 1,000 paper cranes she would be cured. To this day, people from around the world fold cranes and send them to Hiroshima where they are placed near the statue. The statue has a continuously replenished collection of folded cranes nearby
The Peace Flame is another monument to the victims of the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima, but it has an additional symbolic purpose. The flame has burned continuously since it was lit in 1964, and will remain lit until all nuclear bombs on the planet are destroyed and the planet is free from the threat of nuclear annihilation.
Near the center of the park is a concrete, saddle-shaped monument that covers a cenotaph holding the names of all of the people killed by the bomb. The monument is aligned to frame the Peace Flame and the A-Bomb Dome. The inscription on the front panel offers a prayer for the peaceful repose of the victims and a pledge on behalf of all humanity never to repeat the evil of war. It expresses the spirit of Hiroshima — enduring grief, transcending hatred, pursuing harmony and prosperity for all, and yearning for genuine, lasting world peace.
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