Miyajima Island and First day in Sasebo

 Our friends in Iwakuni told us about this little Chinese place where you can get some pretty good chicken on a stick, so we decided to check it out. The pictures don't do it justice, but kind of tucked into a hillside you come across all these lights and banners. There are all these outside tables and pathways next to a river. This was our first experience with a Kotatsu, the Japanese table with a heater underneath and a blanket that covers the table. You sit "criss cross applesauce" with the blanket over legs. We were very stiff when we got up (not Japanese enough). Sam however spent most of the dinner time under the blanket.

Miyajima Island

From the top of this beautiful island.

You take a ferry across to the island. They have lots of Oyster farms and this is one of the boats pulling a load full of oysters. Yum! says Tom and Tom alone.

Miyajima is known for it's Tori gate in the water as well as it's many deer. 

Hazel, posing, constantly.

Some Japanese wanted a picture with the blonde Americans at the Tori gate.

 They also had a red pavillion temple....

...and the world's largest rice spatula!

We rode a cable car, well 2 actually, to the top,

where we were able to hike to......

 the Eternal Flame of love and...

a really nice viewing spot.

That night we drove to Sasebo where you can eat Sasebo burgers.

and ride on a boat to see the 99 islands which means many islands in Japan, there are actually 230 in this area. We rode on the Pearl Queen, which I had to include because of Sam's awesome face in this picture:

 Lion Island

Submarine or Mexican hat island.

Iwakuni and Hiroshima

Hiroshima

Very humbling experience for all of us. We visited the museum where we learned the bomb exploded in the air and obliterated about 2 km radius and many exposed to radiation burns. One guy living in the basement of the Hiroshima Dome building that is still standing survived until he was 80 years old.

 One girl named Sadako Sasaki was only two when the bomb went off. She had little to no side effects until she was nine years old and was diagnosed with Leukemia. She had read that if you fold 1,000 Oragami paper cranes you can be healed, however she died before she was able to make them all. Some kids from her elementary school decided to memorialize her by making more paper cranes. It eventually led to a physical memorial in her name and many more that people can donate. The boxes are filled with groups of 1,000 paper cranes from all over the world.

 The Hiroshima dome that was left standing after the bomb.

These other pictures are from the Hiroshima Castle. Also a Samurai headquarters.

 

Pictures in the castle museum showing what was left of it after the A-bomb hit.

 An A-bomb tree, still alive.

Kintai Bridge

Kids loved the Kintai bridge, not because of how cool it looks, but because it was an awesome place to place tag on the rocks below it with water between most of them. Everyone had wet feet by the time we were done.

 We also drove up to the top of an island and were able to see the area all around. We played steal the flag and saw this old Japanese house built up there, there was even a car where there was no road. We really wanted to know the history of that little place.

Himeji Temple

This was by far my favorite place we went to. The Sakura were at their peak and it was just so beautiful. This is also called the Heron Castle because it is white and unfortunately it is under construction, but still so beautiful. It was castle to Samarai warrior families.

This is the samarai lord with his wife Princess Sun.

Different Samarai costumes.

These next two pictures, despite being blurry give a great depiction of how the Japanese celebrate the Cherry Blossom season. They put out picnic blankets, and drink themselves silly.