Japan, Part 1

Continuing to work backward through our Japan travels, with a few parts out of order.

We spent Wednesday afternoon in Hiroshima. In the days leading up to Japan, we had a kind of viral origami movement take hold on the ship. It started with my offering to read the library's copy of Sadako to the dependent children and fold paper cranes with them. If you aren't familiar with it, the story is about a 10 year old girl who developed leukemia after being exposed to the Hiroshima bomb blast at the age of 2. Following Japanese custom, she attempted to fold 1000 paper cranes to grant her wish to get well. The student life team and many others on the ship heard our plans to fold cranes, and donated time, paper, and publicity. We ended up with more than 600 made, or about one for every S13 student. Some were transported to Hiroshima by students and staff, and a few by our family. We hung them at the children's memorial there, which has become the tradition. I did the same thing when I was here at the age of 15, and was very pleased to share the same experience with Jr. There is a picture below of him hanging a string with many others at the memorial. 

Monday afternoon and Tuesday was Kyoto. We stayed in the quietest hotel we've even experienced there. It was connected to a Buddhist temple complex, and is used as a retreat center by people who visit Chion-in temple.  It was simpler than the ryokan in Miyajima, and definitely did not cater to tourists of any type, especially western ones, but we felt welcome and enjoyed our stay immensely. In addition to a very nice Japanese dinner and breakfast service, Sr, Grandpa, and I were able to attend the early morning Buddhist service. It was a real exercise in trust to show up at the appointed meeting spot and follow the young man who led us to the service when we had no idea what we were in for or exactly where we were going. It turned out to be a walk to the temple complex across the street, where we sat in two different buildings for about 20 minutes each while monks chanted and incense burned. No one else from the hotel came along, in fact we were probably the only ones there except for a Japanese couple we saw a few times since the major part of the temple complex is being renovated until 2019. We wandered around Kyoto for a few hours looking temples, a historic street of houses and tea shops, and a little market before leaving by train for Hiroshima.

On Sunday Jr, Sr, and I had taken the train from Yokohama, where the ship docked, into Tokyo which was only a half hour away. Grandpa had a field lab for one of his classes, so spent the day with his professor and classmates meeting the former Japanese ambassador to China and his wife in their home outside Tokyo. We had some fun Tokyo experiences that first day including ending up in the famous Ginza shopping district when it was open to pedestrian traffic (Sunday afternoons only) and find ing what Jr called "the best toy store ever" with 4 stories of fantastic Japanese games, gadgets, and a slot racing setup where Jr raced a rented car on a giant track for a couple of dollars. 

By the way, all of this popping around Japan was made possible by train passes we had purchased before getting to Japan. Much like you can do in Europe, it is possible to buy a rail pass for the major inter-city routes.