Hiroshima Revisited

Trips organised by the University are really of great values. We each paid 4,000yen for transport (about 5 hours by coach each way), one night accommodation at a Japanese-style hotel, a rather lavish dinner, admission to the Itsukushima Shrine and Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum.

So even though I had already been to Miyajima and Hiroshima, I couldn't resist not going!

Similar to the trip to Shirahama last November, there was the usual karaoke session following the dinner. I didn't sing though. Seb, Daan, Andrew and Morgan weren't there. It would feel odd, if I were to sing without them. It wouldn't have been fun at all.

And perhaps it was because there were only 37 of us (instead of maybe 90 in Wakayama?), there was no late-night partying. After dinner most of us went to see the Itsukushima torii for a second time. When we arrived in the afternoon it was a low-tide so we actually walked out to the torii; then at around half nine in the evening, when the tide was high we went there again to take more photos. After that I think most of us just went back to our rooms and slept...



The next day we went to the Peace Memorial in Hiroshima. I had already seen the ruins of the atomic bomb before, but last time the museum was closed so it was my first time there. As expected, I had that creepy chills down my spine, goosebumps all over my skin, and tears starting to fill my eyes (I was determined not to cry in public though) as I did when I visited the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. five years ago.