Trip to Asia: Days 5-6 (Japan)

On Sunday, May 22, we went to church in Kobe. We could have gone to church in our hotel in Osaka--there was a chapel in the building itself. In fact, apparently it isn't uncommon for hotels to build chapels right into the hotel. But since we wanted to go to an LDS church, and one where the services were in English, Kobe was our only bet. It also turned out to be the church where my dad spent much of his time as a missionary 35 years ago. After over an hour on local trains and 30 minutes walking through the rain, we finally found the church in a beautiful neighborhood on the Kobe hillside.

From Kobe, we took a bullet train to Hiroshima, where we spent Sunday afternoon.

Perhaps the most moving experience  we had in Hiroshima was viewing the "A-bomb dome"--one of the few structures to somewhat survive the atomic bomb that the United States dropped on the city nearly 70 years ago. I'm glad they have left the building there as a reminder of what happened.

Across the river from the A-bomb dome, the city has constructed a park to memorialize the effects of the bomb on the city. We saw the cenotaph (upper left), the paper cranes (bottom left) sent by school children worldwide to the peace memorial (upper right), and the mound where lie the ashes of thousands of bomb victims (bottom right). After visiting these sights, we gained a new perspective on nuclear war. Growing up, I always heard from parents and schoolteachers what a blessing the nuclear bombs on Japan were, since they saved so many American lives, including possibly my grandfather's. I don't disagree that this is true. But visiting the memorial with hundreds of Japanese citizens made us internalize a little more the devastation to their society of the bomb that took so many innocent civilians' lives. The whole experience made us value peace even more.

After we visited those sights, we met up for dinner with two law school friends--Kyle Miller and Rebecca Ulich--who were also visiting Hiroshima. It was fun to see them again.

On Monday morning, we took a train from Osaka to Tokyo, where we spent a few hours before our evening flight to Singapore. We ate lunch in Shibuya, which appeared to be like Tokyo's Times Square.

We also visited Shinjuku station, the busiest train station in the world. I don't doubt that 2 million people pass through the station every day: Even in the early afternoon it was as busy as I've ever seen a train station in NYC. In Shinjuku, we saw several cool office buildings, including the Tokyo city office building (bottom left).

We loved our time in Japan. Perhaps the thing we will miss most is the beautiful countryside.