the full range of human emotions
today was the most unbelievable day of my life. i think we had the full embodiment of the human experience today. i guess i will start by saying we went to hiroshima.
i visited hiroshima in 2024 and technically visited again in 2025, but the 2025 trip was spent entirely on an island just off the coast called miyajima. for the 2024 trip, one of the only things i did here was visit the peace park, and it kinda messed me up emotionally for the rest of my trip.
we went there again this year, and went to a nearby museum on the atomic bomb. but this post isn’t all sad.
i don’t generally tend to very artsy or flowery with my writing on here, but it is difficult to not do so with the day we had.
anger/regret
our day began by packing all our stuff and heading back to shin-osaka station. alex had to get some work done while we were here, so we hung out in a little cafe at the station for a couple hours. it was at this point that i realized i forgot my laptop charger and power brick in the airbnb. it was too late to go back for it, and it would cost more to take a taxi there and back than it would cost to just buy a new one. so (with some assistance from tsukasa), i bought a replacement charging cable on the japanese apple website, and had it shipped to our airbnb in hiroshima. it is apparently arriving on the 8th, the day i leave. that will be fun to sweat over in a couple days.
relief / joy
we took our train to hiroshima, and then took a tram from the station to a stop pretty close to the airbnb. its a beautiful giant house. i think the owner might be mobility impaired in some way, because there is an elevator in the house, and a lot of handicap accessible stuff around, especially in the restrooms. this is by far the nicest house i have ever stayed in in japan. we dropped our bags and headed out to find some sushi. it is nearing the end of the trip for the people with me, and we have yet to get sushi. unfortunately, the only place nearby that was open was sushiro, a famous conveyor belt sushi place. its good food, but it does feel kinda wrong for the only sushi experience to have on a japan trip to be the cheap stuff.
contemplation
our next stop was the peace park, a place near the epicenter of the atomic bomb dedicated to spreading a message of peace and nuclear disarmament. there are some spots here where i didn’t take any photos because it is difficult to be here, especially as an american.
there is a really fascinating dissonance to this place. this beautiful, pristine, perfectly maintained park covered in cherry blossoms in full bloom, has curated an atmosphere that some would call cheerful and pleasant, if not for the things it contains and the history that made it exist.
the saddest picture i think i will ever take, in front of a memorial to the children lost to the bombings and subsequent radiation sickness.
grief
i did not know this when i visited in 2024, but there is an atomic bomb museum next to the peace park.
it must have been a really strange experience for our japanese friend to take three americans to this museum.
i did not take any photos here, but this place is a lot. there are some extremely graphic photos of the aftermath of the bomb, and several things that are extremely difficult to look at. photos of victims of all ages, visualizations of the blast area before, during, and after, quotes from people who were there, preserved tattered children’s clothing, tools used in rescue and cleanup operations, and the famous shadow of a man that was burned into the steps in front of a building when the bomb went off.
i think you kinda walk in thinking you know what it’s going to do to you mentally, how its going to feel looking at it. but i think every single person who walks out the exit of that place would probably say it was much more powerful than they thought it’d be. it’s really difficult to express how intense it is.
i think the world would be a kinder place if everyone had to come here and see this.
reflection
we walked out of the museum and just sat down for a bit decompressing from the experience we all just had. tsukasa told us he came here to this museum when he was twelve for a school trip, and that doing so at that age is very common in japan. i cannot imagine seeing some of the things in this museum at twelve years old.
we left the park and decided to walk home, as it would be an opportunity to see more of this great city. i took some good photos here, but this one is probably one of the best i’ve ever taken.
the photo is upside down.
hiroshima really is a beautiful city.
bewilderment
the walk back to the airbnb was about 40 minutes. i think this was a great call, as taking a cab back and sitting in the airbnb would have probably been weird and quiet and sad.
we headed back out almost immediately to go to a 7-eleven for some drinks and ice cream. while we were standing outside it eating ice cream, a guy came up to us and started yelling in english asking if we were american. we told him yes, and he started just saying “do you know” and then saying something american. back to the future. metallica. just like rattling off american things. then he asked us what we liked about japan and started complaining that japanese burgers are tiny and american burgers are
really really big.
then he pulled out little prepackaged dorayaki, which are like 2 little pancakes with some red bean paste in between. a classic japanese sweet. in this moment we were very thankful for japanese sweets generally being individually packaged. he said his name was rei (or maybe ray). he thanked us for talking to him and went on with his day. we walked back to the airbnb. i thought the day was going to end here.
love
tsukasa and alex went for a walk looking for the ocean, and mike went to bed. it was like 10 pm at this point. i started editing photos and trying to catch up on the blog. around 10:45, they call me and ask if i want to go to a “snack bar”, which is a piece of japanese culture i was completely uninformed about.
these are tiny, cozy little bars with usually less than 10 seats at a counter, run by a woman, referred to as mama. or i guess more appropriately, mama-san. alex and tsukasa found one they wanted to go to.
i was immediately in and walked faster than i ever have to get there in about 20 minutes. tsukasa later told us that usually the proprietor of a snack bar is a woman in her 40s. but this one was unique because the mama was 83 years old. she told us she has been running this little snack bar for fifty three years.
it was a tiny little place with like 6 seats. you pay ¥3500 and get unlimited drinks and snacks. there is a karaoke machine, and you can come here to do karaoke with friends or just chat with the mama.
this is exactly the kind of vibe i want from a bar. light salty snack foods, good drinks, in an environment that isn’t super loud or overstimulating. and the mama at this bar was extremely funny. she didn’t speak any english at all, but i speak enough japanese to know “wow this guy is gigantic!” like 2 seconds after i walked in. its funny when you know a little bit of the language, some of the stuff you can pick up when people think you don’t understand.
we sat here and drank shochu with this nice old lady for around an hour. she told us about her kids and grandkids and great grandkids. she asked us to add her as friends on line, which is basically the japanese equivalent of whatsapp. i now have two japanese friends on line! she also gave me a little charm with the name of the snack bar on it to take home as a souvenir.
she tried to get us to do karaoke, and i told her i can’t because i lost my voice and my throat hurts. she told me that is everyone’s excuse and told me i had to do it. then i said i dont know any japanese songs. she of course was ready for that one and said there are 100 american songs on her karaoke machine. i had to keep protesting, because i literally was not physically able to sing. if i had my voice i absolutely would have sung something. but i eventually got alex to sing country roads. she sang a really beautiful enka song. enka is like traditional japanese love ballads from the 50s, 60s, and 70s. it was a really beautiful song. she also sang her favorite english song, tennessee waltz by patti page. yeah, you can definitely tell this woman is 83!
around midnight, she wanted to close up for the night. we got ready to leave and she offered to drive us home. i was stunned. this woman is a national treasure. just totally unprompted and for free, she drove us back to our airbnb. i love this lady.
curiosity
i’ve since done some research on what the deal is with snack bars, and its kinda interesting. around the time of the 1964 tokyo olympics, the japanese government was cracking down on adult entertainment establishments (as in things adults do, like bars. not like entirely about the sex work industry). they established a rule that adult entertainment establishments had to close at midnight, and i guess by changing to serving snacks alongside the drinks it allowed them to circumvent this law.
in practice, this kinda sits right between the girls bars / hostess bars you can often find in japan, and a traditional bar / pub experience. with the girls bars / hostess bars, the whole point is to go there and have pretty women in their 20s pour you incredibly overpriced drinks (or charge a premium for unlimited watered down drinks for a few hours) and tell you how funny / handsome / charming you are. this isn’t that. this is one nice older lady, a relaxed atmosphere, and is just a really cozy place to have a few drinks and chat with the owner and/or some friends. my limited research on the subject says that its pretty common for women to go from one to the other. work in the hostess bars in their 20s and 30s, then pivot to running a snack bar in their 40s.
this whole experience was something else. i think maybe it might not have registered as powerfully to me if i hadn’t experienced everything else i did today, but it was i think the perfect capstone on an otherwise not very positive day.
eepy
this was a very long day. i think i was up from like 7:30 am to 1:30 am. while the actual step count might not be as high as some previous days, the mental step count was extremely high.
