Friday, March 19 - Hiroshima

I know I've been out of the picture this past week, but spring is a very happening time, so expect to see more entries this week.

On Friday I left for Hiroshima with the other students in my foreign exchange program. We rode the "Nozomi," the fastest Shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima City. Our first stop was "Okonomimura," (okonomiyaki village), at which we all split up into groups and were able to cook and eat our own okonomiyaki, which is a grilled food that looks like a pancake and has egg, meat, cabbage, and noodles mixed in. Hiroshima is famous for this food, so although I've eaten it in Kobe, it's different eating it in Hiroshima.

Next we went as a group to the Peace Park and Memorial Museum. The museum was intense, and it described Hiroshima's pre-World War II history, how Hiroshima was chosen as the site on which to drop the first atomic bomb, and the effects the bomb had on Hiroshima's citizens and urban area. It went into great detail, and there were many models and photographs within the museum.

I walked through the Peace Park briefly, and I also met for the first time a friend who is studying abroad at Hiroshima University, so we compared notes on our exchange programs, and he and his friend walked me to Hiroshima Castle, which increased my Japanese castle count up to six castles visited during the past seven months.