Steve and Cathy's Blog

Having left Nagasaki at 3:00pm the previous day, Insignia has sailed clockwise around southwestern Japan and entered the Seko Inland Sea at Kitakyushu during the night.  This beautiful sea is located between three of the four main islands of Japan: Kyushu, Shokuku and the main island of Honshu. It is 250 miles long, pretty much runs east/west and is dotted with 3,000 islands.  In some ways, some of the tiny islands make it look like Ha Long Bay, Vietnam.

We won’t arrive in Hiroshima until 10:00am, and it is a beautiful morning.  Hazy but sunny; a great day to cruise.  We are on the port side of the ship, and we see towns hugging the shore backed up to pretty sizeable hills and mountains.  As we pass one small island, we see a half dozen or small boats.  They are a fair distance, so we can’t really see what they’re about, but we do take photographs (After examining the photos, we see they are small fishing boats, equipped with sails in the stern to keep them into the wind – just like the lobster boats in Maine!).  Cathy spots a strange line of objects lying low in the water near another miniature island and guesses (correctly, we find out later) that it is an oyster farm.

We pass the morning reading and writing, have a nice lunch and are to be out at our bus at 1:35 for our excursion, Shukkeien Garden.  This is a short 2 1/2 hour tour that includes the garden plus a stop at the Peace Memorial Park.  On our way out to the bus, we stop in the Information Center on the dock to exchange money. There we meet two lovely ladies who are anxious to help us with information and Japanese yen.  They also graciously give us three tiny origami figures.

We board the bus and meet our delightful guide whose name is Yumi.  She explains how we will remember it: “As in you first; first you, then me.” She welcomes us to her city, the name of which means Wide Island as the city is in the largest delta of the island of Honshu.

As we travel about this city of 1.2 million people, Yumi gives us plenty of information about her community and her country.  As it covers many subjects, it is time to switch to Random Fact mode:

• The city is known as a “city of trams” as it has an extensive tram system. Two of the cars are seventy-three years old and survived the atomic bomb blast.  As other cities shut down their tram systems, Hiroshima bought more cars, so they have a system consisting of many different vintages as well as very new high-tech equipment.  They are very proud of their foresight in maintaining this heavily used tram system, so much so that these trams have right of way over cars on the streets.
• Mazda Motor Corporation’s world headquarters are located here, as well as one of their manufacturing plants. We notice that an enormous car-carrier ship is at one of the docks.
• There are 80,000 Shinto shrines in Japan, as well as 70,000 Buddhist temples. Yumi then says: “There are also 50,000 convenience stores,” leaving the significance of that statistic to our own determination.
• Earthquakes are a constant threat in Japan, so buildings are designed and engineered to withstand them. For that reason, the highest building in Hiroshima is only 52 stories high.
• Baseball is a hugesport in Japan, and Hiroshima is proud to have one of the twelve professional baseball teams. They are named the Hiroshima Carps.  This is the only team to be owned by the citizens of the city in which it is located (like the Green Bay Packers in the U.S.A.). It was started in 1950 as a symbol of hope for the future of Hiroshima five years after the city was destroyed at the end of WWII.
• The fish that we call koiare called carp in Japan, hence the name of the team.These are extremely popular fish, and many, many homes have them as pets.
• She understands that many of us are hoping to see blossoms on the cherry trees here in Japan.Unfortunately, the trees began blooming in March this year.  Some trees still have them, of course, but the main period of blossoming cherry trees came early this year.
• The Hiroshima area has few natural disasters (other than the unpredictable earthquakes) as the sea is to the south and the mountains are to the north.
• Japan is an extremely clean nation for many reasons, but one of them is the training that children get from an early age. In elementary school, the students clean the rooms, not some custodial staff member.
• In Japan, the number 8 is a lucky number. Conversely, the number 4 is an unlucky number.
• Shintoism used to be considered a kind of “animism” in that it was believed that many things, even inanimate objects such as rocks, contained a soul or were gods to be worshipped. This is no longer current thinking.  While 80% of the country participate in Shinto practices or rituals, only a small percentage consider themselves Shintoists.
• There are seven rivers in the greater Hiroshima Prefecture which is actually a delta. In the prefecture, there are 2,700 bridges over these seven rivers.
• Yumi shows us two primary Japanese characters: Male and Female. The way that the male character is drawn is meant to symbolize power; the female character to symbolize a person kneeling to pray to God.

Now let us return to today’s destinations, the first one being Shukkeien Garden.  Yumi tells us that the theory behind the design of Japanese Gardens is that nature itself is aggressive and wild, so the designer strives to make the garden peaceful.

And that it is.  Right smack in the middle of the bustling city of Hiroshima, this 10-acremasterpiece was completed in 1620 and is centered around a large pond fed by the Ota River with several islets and scenic bridges.  The name means “landscape garden in miniature” and is an imitation of West Lake in Hangzhou, China.  Obviously it was destroyed in the 1945 bombing, but was rebuilt by the mid 1950s.

We enter with our bus group, and Yumi proceeds to take us on a tour. However, only a few minutes after arrival, Cathy and Steve decide that, by being in this group, we will neither experience the peace and tranquility that we sought by coming here or be able to take pictures that aren’t full of our fellow tourists doing the very same thing. So we wander off by ourselves.  There were some cherry trees in bloom, and several that were grafts and so had more than one color of bloom. Gorgeous!

As can be seen in the map, the central feature of the garden is the pond and small islets.  We walk through the garden and are able to see Takuei Pond and its features from several perspectives.  The Japanese truly do have a flair for creating a serene and beautiful environment and we are very glad to be here.

We are sitting on a small hill overlooking the pond and the classic bridge crossing it.  There are lots of people around, but the most interesting are two sets of parents and children.  The first one we see is a little girl who must be around three or four who is feeding the koi fish that live in the pond.  Now koi fish are interesting in many ways, but one of the more unique things about them is that the size they achieve is directly related to the size of the body of water in which they live.  The bigger the pond, the bigger they will grow.  And these fish are big: big and beautiful – and hungry.  It is a treat to watch this young lady feed them.  Pictures are below, but they can’t really capture the frenzy these koi are in.

On the other side of the bridge, Cathy spies a little boy in a stroller feeding the pigeons that live in the garden.  This ain’t exactly their first encounter with people feeding them. They are all over this three-year old. He is annoyed when one tries to hop on his lap, but he certainly isn’t frightened.  Another fun time watching this young man interact with these very aggressive urban dwellers.

We continue over the bridge and continue walking around the pond. Steve can’t get over the size of these fish, and Cathy is enjoying the beautiful afternoon.  She looks over to a small pavilion and spots three or four women dressed in kimonos.  Thinking this might be a group of local women posing for pictures, she takes a closer look and says; “No, they’re tourists.  One of them is a blonde.“

A few minutes later it is time for us to return to the entrance gate to continue on our tour, and we run into … the blonde in the kimono. She is our shipmate and friend Patricia Watt from Toronto.  Pat is probably one of the most popular people on the ship, including among the staff. She has been invited by a staff member of the Canyon Ranch Spa to join her in this garden to try on kimonos. The two of them look radiant, and pose for a picture for us.  Leave it to Pat to come up with such an interesting experience in Hiroshima.

We must move on, this time to view the remains of the Hiroshima Prefecture Industrial Promotion Hall, now known as the Atomic Bomb Dome.  We view it from one side of the river, cross over the river on our bus and are dropped off for a thirty-minute visit at the Peace Memorial Park.  We people watch (see the beautiful mother with her baby below) and wander the beautiful grounds (lots of blooming tulips) as Yumi describes details of the bombing and impact on Hiroshima and the Japanese people.

Yumi relates her family’s experience.  Her mother, grandmother, uncle and pregnant aunt lived just over two kilometers from ground zero.  The blast leveled their house.   Within days, the aunt had lost her baby.  Her uncle died from injuries.  It took a couple of years, but her grandmother passed away as well.  Then her aunt died.  The only one left was her mother who spent the rest of her life with survivor’s guilt.  Yumi is very emphatic that the Japanese people understand that they are both “victim and victimizer,” to use her term, and that they were the invaders that started the war.  As with the people of Nagasaki, their interest is in promoting the idea of peace; that war – especially nuclear war – is an unacceptable way to resolve disputes.

It’s time to head back to the ship, and we are due to sail at 7:00pm.  We arrive back by 5:00pm and relax.  Around 6:00, the sun begins to set, and we have a perfect view of it from our veranda. Around 6:30 or so, we begin to hear drums.  We are being given a sendoff in a very unique way.  There is a drummer pounding on a huge drum down on the dock.  He plays for about fifteen minutes straight.  Steve’s arms ache just watching this virtuoso cultural performance.

He ends to the enthusiastic applause of everyone who was lucky enough to be on the port side of the ship to hear him.  Lines are cast off, and Insignia eases into Hiroshima harbor. Steve and Cathy have dinner in the Grand Dining Room and call it a day.  We now know Hiroshima, Japan for more than that horrific August 6, 1945. Amen to that.