Japan - 2016
Read More
A view from a clear section of floor.
Me sucking up to the people who gave me the funds for this Fellowship!
A shot of me 350m above Tokyo.
The streets of Shinjuku are hopping at night! Notice the figure in the middle-ish...I love Japan!
Kyoto is "temple town". I sadly wasn't there long at all and didn't get to see some of the more increidble temples in the mountains. This is Higashi Honganji which is actually a very important temple for a specific sect of Shin Buddhism. I got to watch a Buddihist ceremony - it was quite interesting. Chanting, incense, and a bunch of things said in Japanese!
Beautiful garden in Kyoto
Any bee that is referred to with the singular tense is a bee I don't want to mess with!
I'm a sucker for bridges like that!
Takoyaki - fried balls with pieces of octopus in them. Not exactly my favorite, but I tried it!. Notice the chopsticks - when visiting Japan, you either learn how to use chopsticks, or you go hungry. I got decent by the end of the trip (although I'm sure I still looked like a baby trying to eat by the locals!)
This is my Japan Rail Pass. It let me travel on any train I wanted to for two weeks. Aside from my passport, I guarded this little booklet thing with my life. I used the heck out of this!
Hiroshima Castle - it looks amazing, but like pretty much everything else in Hiroshima, it's not older than 1945 (think about why that might be...)
I loved this picture - selfie with my nice camera! This is quite a flattering view!
Yup, I AM a FFT Fellow!
Panorama of Hiroshima from the top of the Hiroshima Castle. Notice the moutnains surrounding the town (they are much more impressive in real life). I LOVED Hiroshima. While it didn't have as much to do, it was my favorite city of the trip by a wide margin. Such a neat town!
On of the gates to the Hiroshima Castle. Note that this is the first day that I was in Japan that the sky didn't look grey! It pretty much stayed blue for the remainder of the trip!
Hiroshima Castle
"A-Bomb Dome" - this building is a famous symbol of Hiroshima. Formerly the Hiroshima Prefectural Industrial Promotion Hall, it stood about 150m from the hypocenter of the atomic blast. It stands as it did after that date as a visible and dramatic reminder of the power of the bomb.
Prayers in front of the Cenotaph. This coutnains all of the names of people killed by the bomb. Notice the A-Bomb Dome and the flame in the background. It is said that the flame will burn until all nuclear weapons have been destroyed.
Statue of Mother and Child in the Storm with the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum in the background.
This is a third of what I ate a ton of in Hiroshima - okonomiyaki. A "Japanese pancake" of batter, soba noodles, cabbage, onions, egg...all eaten straight off the grill. Delicious!
This unassuming "T-shaped" bridge was actually the target for the bomber of the Enola Gay. The A-Bomb dome is behind me and the Memorial Park is to my left.
Cool boat that was preparing for a festaval the next day.
Hiroshima Children's Peace Monument - the buildings around it are filled with paper cranes from across the world. One sad note about the bomb is that the area that was hit was full of children that were working to build fire breaks to prevent further damage from bombings.
The paper crane has come to symbolize the hope for peace in Japan. These were paper cranes from a girl named Sadako who died 9 years after the bombing due to leukemia. While she was in the hostpital, she tried to fold 1000 paper cranes. She died before she could finish and her friends continued the tradition. This is where the paper cranes got their start. These are some of her cranes.
Picture (not that flattering...) of Obama who had recently visited the site. It was a big deal for a US President to visit Hiroshima and the museum had a large exhibit about it.
President Obama's message and two paper cranes he folded.
This is the Peace Bell in Hiroshima. Visitors are encouraged to ring the bell for world peace.
Hall of Rememberance in Hiroshima. This building housed many memoirs from survivors of the blast. The image formed from in the top of the wall is made from 140,000 individual tiles - one for each person who died as a result of the atomic bomb.
The clock is at 8:15 AM - the time of the bombing in Hiroshima.
Hiroshima Carp baseball game - the groud really gets into it!
During the 7th inning stretch, the entire crowd fills up these...strangely shaped...balloons. They play a video - everyone dances - and at the end, everyone releases the balloons! It's quite cool!
I celebrated the Carp's success with this guy often!
"Floating Torii" at Miyajima Island off the coast of Hiroshima.
View from Mount Misen. To the left you will see a gondula station that takes tourists to the top. That is, the it takes the tourists who aren't dumb enough to hike up the mountain like I was!