More On Hiroshima

October 14, 2006
2:47 p.m.
Hikari 416

We changed trains at Shin-Osaka. We are on our way now to Tokyo Station, where we will change again before going on to Koriyama.

Now for a little more on Hiroshima. Over the course of the last 51 years, Hiroshima has returned to the busy population center it once was and then some. After arriving at the Hiroshima Station, we took a street car to our hotel. We checked in, went to our room, and put our stuff away before heading off to see the peace dome. By the time we finished seeing the dome and walking through the nearby museum, it was dark. We walked the few blocks back to the hotel via a wide street closed to vehicular traffic and passing through a shopping district.

We eventually came to a busy intersection that we needed to cross. After looking around for a minute or so, we realized that we would have to go down stairs to a level below the street. What we found down there surprised and amazed us. There was a mall on that level arranged in the shape of a giant cross with rows of stores extending out from a central hub for blocks in all four directions. There were a variety of clothing and other types of stores. If we hadn’t known better, we would have guessed we were at Castleton or Keystone Mall. The amount of stores definitely exceeded the amount you could find in either of those places.

There were restaurants on that level too. We ate dinner at one called “Auntie’s Pasta”. Italian food is big here, and it’s big with the Gilmores too. We enjoyed a delicious meal before heading back to the hotel and off to sleep. By the way, we’ve been going to bed each night around 9 pm or so, which is unusually early for our family. But we are finding ourselves to be exhausted each day by that time and thus ready for a good night’s rest. Not to complain, but in addition to being a little tired, my back has been hurting due to a combination of extremely hard pillows and mattresses (see an earlier post from Dale) and lugging some heavy luggage on and off the trains. I only mention my back to ask for a bit of prayer as we continue.

One more little bit of humor in closing. The street car we took from Hiroshima Station to our hotel actually consisted of about three subway-type cars linked together. We climbed on, lugging our luggage up with us, as quickly as we could (the car remain only briefly at each stop) and found a seat near the middle of the cars. We quickly observed that people were to enter the street car through the side doors like we had done, but that they were to exit the front door near the conductor. Well, by the time our stop rolled around, the cars had filled with people. In fact, it was standing room only. Now we faced the daunting task of pulling our luggage past thirty or forty feet of other passengers standing in the narrow aisle to go out through the front door. Someone might say, “Just go out the side door. It’s no big deal!” The problem was, you don’t pay the fare (380 yen) until you get out. In other words, if we had left through the side door, it would have looked like we had tried to “steal” the ride to the hotel. As crowded as the stops were, it also would mean forcing a number of people to step aside as they were attempting to enter the car. All we could imagine was a street car full of Japanese rolling their eyes and saying, “Those crazy Americans!” Oh well, one of the car’s conductors squeezed past people by us on his way to the front. We asked him what we should do, hoping he would understand. He indicated we should go to the front to pay like everyone else. So we gestured toward our luggage. He gave a wide smile and granted us permission to use the side door. We gave him the 380 yen; and, like Moses parting the Red Sea, we parted a sea of people waiting to get on the streetcar as we exited and then made our way on to the hotel.