Peace Memorial Park

For our only full day in Hiroshima, I had planned to hit as much of the "big stuff" as possible. For us, that meant visiting the A-bomb dome and the Peace Park and then spending the afternoon on Miyajima Island.

Our hotel, the Rihga Royal Hotel, was literally across the street from the A-bomb dome. It also happens to be the tallest building in Hiroshima. We were on the 24th floor and had an unobstructed view of Hiroshima Castle.

As we walked into the park, the first thing we encountered was the A-bomb dome. This was almost directly below the epicenter of the blast. Amazingly, the structure of the building is still standing. Unfortunately, while we were there they were assessing its structural integrity and so we had to see it with the scaffolding. 

 It's an odd experience visiting places like this - do you smile for pictures? For me, it was important to get pictures with us in them - Egan won't remember this trip, but he will be able to look back and think "I've been there."

Scattered around the park are shrines dedicated to different groups of people. I believe this was specifically for all the children workers who were in the blast area that day. I didn't ever know this, but the Japanese government employed their students to work as part of the war effort. That day, several groups were demolishing buildings to create fire breaks in the event of an air raid. 

This was the children's shrine. Surrounding it are crates stuffed with origami cranes. 

There are literally thousands of cranes in these crates. These chains of folded cranes are sent or brought from all over the world.

 This is the Peace Flame. It's supposed to look like two hands open to the sky. It has burned continuously since 1964 and will continue to burn until there is no more threat of nuclear weapons.

 The Memorial Cenotaph - it contains a scroll with all of the names of those killed by the a-bomb. It sits at one end of the Pond of Peace and you can see several monuments line up through it.

 And this was the museum - it was sobering. Half of the museum was under construction and evidently it was the half that shows the lead-up to the bomb dropping. I think it would have helped to have seen a bit more, because we walked into "the bomb has dropped, people are dead/dying/fatally burned and now the city is on fire." It was a little overwhelming.

We visited a few of the other monuments on our way back to the hotel. Overall, I'm happy we visited and I think it is so important that we have these memorials and reminders of the tragic nature of war. Tim and I have somehow found ourselves on a tour of WWII memorials and I would definitely rank this up there with Auschwitz in terms of the brutal honesty of the exhibit. 

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CupNoodles and Chinatown

One of our first adventures was to the CupNoodles Museum in Yokohama with our friends Eric and Michelle. CupNoodles were invented in the 60s by a poor Japanese man name Momofuku Ando, who (if you believe the museum) is a national treasure in Japan. 

This is one of 3 walls showcasing the history and variety of CupNoodles. There are flavors here I had never heard of - did you know they have seafood curry? Pretty much any flavor you can think of, they've put it into CupNoodles!

My favorite part of the museum was on the 3rd floor. Here we are decorating our OWN CupNoodles! As you can tell, Egan was quite helpful...

 Our finished drawings - Tim and I weren't quite as inspired as Eric & Michelle!

Once you finish decorating your Cup, it's on to the filling and sealing stations. Earlier in our tour (and several times throughout the museum) they tell you how Momofuku revolutionized noodles by filling the cups upside down. We got to crank our cups through the special machine to fill the noodles in correctly. You can also see the toppings station further down. We could do one flavor (seafood, curry, tomato, or original) and four toppings. I believe I added chicken, garlic, green onions, and corn with original flavoring. Tim had cheese in his and did the tomato flavoring!

Here are Eric and Michelle modeling our finished CupNoodles. Yep, they provide a small balloon package to keep it safe during transport!

This was one of exhibits the museum created to demonstrate creative thinking. It's all about perspective!

Momofuku Ando!

After the walking through the museum, we decided to head over to Chinatown. Yokohama has the largest Chinatown in Japan and for some reason we never visited the first time we came! Thankfully Eric and Michelle knew their way around and we feel pretty confident about visiting again in the future.

This large gate is the entrance - it was pretty astounding.

Tim and Egan walking down the street - I don't know if this picture gives a good enough impression of how crowded it was in the street. It was definitely a busy place!

There were hundreds of restaurants and the aroma in the street was delicious! In Japan, many of the restaurants have display cases outside of their menu items. We saw this monstrosity next to a full display case - do you think we could order it??

 And, of course, Chinatown wouldn't be complete without a few beautiful shines sprinkled throughout the area.

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Seattle Aquarium

The Monday following our trip to Arizona, I met up with some friends at the Seattle Aquarium. 

You know you have good friends when they say "Hi, I'm going to steal your baby" and then they proceed to entertain him throughout the entire trip.

We visited the tide pools, but didn't partake in any touching. I have no doubt that Egan would have tried to chew on everything!

The jellyfish were quite mesmerizing.

But, unfortunately, Egan has a ways to go before he's the same height as a sixgill shark.

He loved the fish tanks and the fish loved him! This is one of many times they swam right up to the glass to say hello.

Egan was clearly happy with all the attention he received!

Proof I was there...

This seal was absolutely hilarious - he kept posing for pictures and came right up to the glass to play with Egan.

After the Aquarium, we headed into downtown for lunch. I didn't realize it at the time, but it was kind of ironic that we ended up getting sushi... :-)

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