The day started with our first experience on the world famous Shinkansen bullet train as we are leaving Osaka and taking it first to Hiroshima and later in the day to Kyoto. Navigating the Japan rail stations is not for the faint of heart. It is almost overwhelming in its size and intensity. I am certainly glad I did not have to navigate it on my own. Insight did a good thing in deciding to ship our luggage separately by truck to our next hotel so we did not have the additional complexity of the handling baggage to/from the train.

The original bullet train was the Tokaido Shinkansen line inaugurated in 1964 between Tokyo and Osaka. It was the world’s first high speed train system. The original 320 mile system has since been expanded to cover 1,834 miles. Train speeds run between 160-200 mph. Since 1964 the system has carried 6.4 billion passengers! At peak times the trains run 16/hour in each direction, often with a separation of only three plus minutes between trains. The system shuts down from midnight to 6 AM each day for maintenance. It is quite an engineering marvel.

Trivia for the day (compliments of Yvonne): The original bullet train design posed a problem by causing a large sonic boom as it exited a tunnel. Needless to say neighbors were upset. A local engineer who was a bird watcher commented that a hummingbird did not make noise because of its long snout. Current bullet trains now have that snout and the noise problem no longer exists. (I am not sure about the bird analogy but the laws of aerodynamics support the snout concept).

Our train left Osaka at 9:44 and was scheduled to take 1.5 hours to reach Hiroshima. To drive it would have taken over seven hours. Our seats were reserved and the trains were extremely quiet.

The time passed quickly and we were soon in the location where USA action brought about the end of the war with Japan when on August 6, 1945 they dropped an atom bomb (a uranium fission bomb known as Little Boy) on Hiroshima. Three days later they dropped a second bomb (a plutonium based bomb called Fat Man) on Nagasaki. The Japanese formally surrendered on August 15, 1945. Between 90,000 and 166,000 died in Hiroshima over the next 2-4 months, about half on the first day. Ninety percent were civilians. The bombing ended the suffering from the war but created a new era of weapons development and insecurity that we have to live with to this day. The current population of Hiroshima is 2,058,000. In 1950 it was 503,000.

We visited “Peace Memorial Park” where the remnants of a partially destroyed building remains as a sign of the destruction. There is also a very sobering museum dedicated to telling the story of the bombing and the stories of people who died and those who survived that day. It is a sad testimony of the inhumanity we often must live with. The museum reminded me of another sobering museum, the holocaust museum in Washington DC.

Lunch was at a local, nearby restaurant where we had another famous, popular dish:  okonomiyaki. It is a wheat flour pancake made with cabbage, egg and other ingredients, fried on a griddle and served with a sauce.  It was delightful and my favorite Japanese street food  so far! It is especially good when accompanied with a cold Japanese beer! Oh, we were warned that we would have to remove our shoes when entering the restaurant and had to sit at low tables. Luckily we did not have to sit on the floor but it was humorous watching us old people struggling to get comfortably situated at the low communal table.

After the delightful lunch we returned to the Peace Park where we met with a survivor from that day, Kiyomi Kono. She is now 93 years old. Luckily she was not near the hypocenter of the blast but at her home,. She did go with her mother the next day to look for her sister (who had survived) and witnessed the devastation. We all were surprised that the radiation did not ultimately kill her as it did for so many others. Somehow she survived until this day. Noriko acted as her translator as she told us about the infamous day. Here is a link to her life /story:

https://www.hiroshimapeacemedia.jp/?p=144334

It was now time to retrace our steps to the train station where we boarded another bullet train that would take us to our next stop, Kyoto.  By 6:30 PM we arrived at the awesome Kyoto train station. It looked like it was part of a Star Wars set! I have never seen anything like it. The next surprise was walking across the street to our “over the top” hotel, The Thousand. It, too, was an OMG experience, both in looks and amenities. But at $600+/night I guess it was to be expected.

As we had walked to the hotel we passed an interesting restaurant at the edge of the train station that offered an eclectic menu and we decided that would be a good place to grab a light dinner. It turned out they were completely booked but there was room at the bar so we chose to stay where we indulged in our first of the trip Manhattan, accompanied by a shared pizza.

It made for a successful day and we were looking forward to tomorrow when we tour some of the sights of the ancient capital of Japan.

Steps of the day:   12,402!