I’m excited today because I get to ride on a bullet train for the first time. I’m leaving g Tokyo for Hiroshima. With my pre-paid rail pass I simply reserve a seat on one of the many express trains that will go this way each day. Tokyo station is an experience in itself. It’s enormous. The volume of humanity that must pass through here daily is staggering. I did hear that in one of the stations here in Tokyo, maybe this one, an equivalent of the entire population of New Zealand passes through each day. I suspect that may include the NZ sheep population as well. Everyone seems to know where they are going, which clearly sets them apart from me.
I find the right train with some help and away we go. Just awesome. They are built for speed these trains. They even look the part with their highly aerodynamic noses rivaling something out of a science fiction movie. Seating is spacious and the ride is as smooth as an aero plane. We follow the coastline. The scenery ribbons past at great speed. Between Tokyo and Osaka the track is lined with dense living the whole way, with some industry and rice fields finding any space it can. Mount Fuji dominates the landscape to the west. Between Osaka and Hiroshima the houses thin making way for picturesque patches of rice fields. They illuminate in the light of late afternoon.
I arrive in Hiroshima at 4.30pm and get to my hotel easily. It’s attached to the railway station. I want to try and get some photos in the setting sun so find a bus and rush to the Peace Park. Unfortunately I miss the sun so I take a stroll through the park to the Atomic Bomb Dome. The city was obliterated in 9 August 1945 when the Americans detonated an atomic bomb 600 meters above the city during WW2. The elevated detonation would ensure maximum impact. And so it did. There is one building that resisted the impact when all others largely failed. All inside were incinerated as were 70-80 thousand other residents of the city. The bridge I’m standing on was actually the target the US pilots were aiming for. The Atomic Bomb Dome is now Heritage Listed and a symbol of anti nuclear weaponary.
angusmccoll 