So today we woke up bright and early at the ryokan, and went down to eat breakfast, which was yummy. I really like Japanese breakfasts. American breakfasts are generally just too sweet for my tastes.
Anyway, after that, a couple of us went down to the giant torii (shrine gate) in the ocean (which is basically what Miyajima is most famous for). The tide was almost all the way out, so we walked down to the torii and were awed. I heard that the base of the gate has been there for 800 years (although I don't know if that's actually true or not). In any case, it was encrusted in barnacles, and people had stuck a bunch of coins in between the barnacles/in splits in the wood for luck. Pretty cool. I have lots of pictures.
Then I went and did some omiyage (closest English I can think of is "souvenir") shopping and bought momiji manju (little cakes shaped like maple leaves with various fillings) for my host family.
Then we all hopped on the ferry and a train and went back to Hiroshima. There we all got in taxis and rode to the Hiroshima Peace Museum. And the taxi ride was...interesting. The taxi driver started lecturing us about how horrible America was for dropping the bomb on Japan and how the war was entirely America's fault and how Americans weren't the least bit sorry for it and needed to be taught better and weren't we feeling grateful that he was teaching us how we had attacked the poor, defenseless Japanese people without provocation? (Apparently Pearl Harbor was America's fault. 'cause FDR knew about the attack and didn't do anything so he could declare war on Japan without warning. I just...what. Hello. History. Do you know it? At all?)
Needless to say, it was horribly awkward. Because what do you say? "I'm sorry that my country bombed your country 65 years ago, but really I had absolutely nothing to do with that decision, 'cause my PARENTS weren't even born yet, so can you stop being angry at me please"? Or do you just start chanting, "Rape of Nanking" over and over and over?
In any case, our responses were something like, "Oh, I see. That's a very interesting opinion you have."
So then we went to the Hiroshima Peace Museum, which was really good, even if it made me hate humanity a little bit. The nice thing about it was that they DID talk about the bad stuff Japan did during the war, including all the forced labor (although they didn't talk about comfort women, but that didn't really have any connection at all to Hiroshima, unlike the forced laborers, who died in the bombing). And the slant was less "ooh, America is so evil" and more "the atomic bomb is horrible; let's not do it again." (Not that I needed convincing. English 1A pretty much pounded that into my head.)
In any case, I already knew pretty much all the information in the museum (because I read A LOT), although I did get to see some lovely pictures of burn victims and people with their flesh melting off and cancerous tongues and the like. There were a couple of rooms that I had to go through relatively quickly because I started feeling sick to my stomach.
I actually thought the most interesting bits were about the (non-medical) aftermath: all the rebuilding and also the American attempts to censor information about what had happened in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Anyway, after that lovely, happy experience, everyone was exhausted and didn't want to go anywhere else, so we hopped on the train and rode back home.
My host parents went out to dinner this evening, so my little host brother and I had dinner by ourselves, and then played possibly every game in the house (and then some). And I learned how to play Othello, which is actually a lot of fun. My not-so-little host brother showed up at some point, ate half his dinner, and then curled up on the floor and fell asleep. ('course, he was playing soccer in the ridiculous heat, which is enough to make anyone exhausted.)
Tomorrow morning I'm hoping on a train and riding to Yokohama for more crazy adventures. WHOO. Dunno if I'll have internet, but I probably will. If I don't, don't freak out, please.
Anyway, g'night.
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